As much media attention is currently focused on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, I turn my attention to the financial, social and human costs of war. To start with, this interview with anthropologist Catherine Lutz and political scientist Neta Crawford, just posted by PBS, is worth watching. The two scholars direct the Eisenhower Research Project at Brown University. The interview focuses on the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. involvement in Pakistan and the costs of these conflicts that will keep surfacing for at least 40 years.
If you wish to dive more deeply into studies of war with your students, check out Breaking Ranks (2010) in which Lutz (and Gutmann) explore the lives of six Iraqi veterans who openly opposed the war. Carolyn Nordstrom is also well known for her insightful war ethnography, A Different Kind of War Story and Shadows of War are both on my bookshelf.
