| ID | 168493 |
| Title Proper | Sensing, territory, population |
| Other Title Information | computation, embodied sensors, and hamlet control in the Vietnam War |
| Language | ENG |
| Author | Belcher, Oliver |
| Summary / Abstract (Note) | This article analyses a mid-20th century computerized pacification reporting system, the Hamlet Evaluation System (HES), used by the US military to measure hamlet-level security and development trends in the Vietnam War. The significance of the HES was its capacity to translate US Military Advisor observations of Vietnamese hamlet life into a machine-readable format used by US military systems analysts to disclose ‘patterns of life.’ I show how US Military Advisors operated as ‘embodied sensors’ within the HES, producing a distinctive location-based event ontology – a ‘view of below’ – accompanied by rudimentary digital maps in-formation from incoming hamlet-level observation streams. I argue that acts of translating the rich texture of hamlet and village life into an objectified information format constituted a unique form of ‘epistemic violence,’ rooted not so much in the narrative subjection of the ‘Other,’ but in the pure abstraction of life into a digitally stored data trace. |
| `In' analytical Note | Security Dialogue Vol. 50, No.5; Oct 2019: p.416-436 |
| Journal Source | Security Dialogue Vol: 50 No 5 |
| Key Words | Security ; Development ; Vietnam War ; Hamlet Evaluation System ; Computation ; Embodied Sensors |