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Sensing, territory, population: Computation, embodied sensors, and hamlet control in the Vietnam War

Belcher, Oliver

Sensing, territory, population: Computation, embodied sensors, and hamlet control in the Vietnam War Thumbnail


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Abstract

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.

Citation

Belcher, O. (2019). Sensing, territory, population: Computation, embodied sensors, and hamlet control in the Vietnam War. Security Dialogue, 50(5), 416-436. https://doi.org/10.1177/0967010619862447

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Apr 11, 2019
Online Publication Date Aug 5, 2019
Publication Date Oct 1, 2019
Deposit Date Aug 14, 2019
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Security Dialogue
Print ISSN 0967-0106
Electronic ISSN 1460-3640
Publisher SAGE Publications
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 50
Issue 5
Pages 416-436
DOI https://doi.org/10.1177/0967010619862447

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Copyright Statement
Belcher, Oliver (2019). Sensing, territory, population: Computation, embodied sensors, and hamlet control in the Vietnam War. Security Dialogue 50(5): 416-436. Copyright © 2019 The Author(s). DOI: 10.1177/0967010619862447




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