I finally found an excuse to link to an awesome blog that I’ve been reading avidly since I found out about it a few months ago. From an Anthropological Perspective, Dr. Marcus Griffin’s blog about his experiences as an embedded anthropologist under the “Human Terrain System“.

I talked about the importance of functioning infrastructure in a recent post. Dr. Griffin talks about it too, in a slightly different way.

I am tentatively thinking that a lack of communal social space is likely a hardship for urban Iraqis. The poorer neighborhoods that have closely spaced housing compounds and no courtyards may be experiencing greater anomie because the rubble and debris on top of and around their dwellings compound their lack of communal space.

I find this fascinating. We don’t often think about the psychic weight that a lack of community can cause, but how can people build a government when they can’t talk on the street, when they’re afraid to leave their house?

Trash may be removed from primary streets but that does not alleviate the social anxiety caused lack of functional space for group interaction within their own living areas. Bulk removal operations should be seriously considered to create usable social space denied residents as a result of kinetic operations.

Another unexpected consequence of our actions- every time we blow up a house, we create rubble, rubble that clogs up roads and makes travel and socializing difficult. When the trash sits around forever, it doesn’t exactly engender trust or faith in the government. Foreign Policy’s awesome feature “Seven Questions” talked to Toby Dodge a few days ago and the infrastructure question came up.

FP: Unless it can actually get into neighborhoods and provide necessary services, is there a future for the Iraqi government?

TD: I don’t think so. The fundamental cause of all these problems is the collapse of the Iraqi state. I was living in Baghdad in April 2003, and it was amazing to watch the institutions of the state disappear. You would see men running out [of buildings] with computers, then desks and chairs, then the plumbing and electrical wiring out of the walls. The state was dissembled, taken away, and put in people’s houses. And what the looters didn’t do, [Coalition Provisional Authority administrator L. Paul] Bremer’s de-Baathification did. It broke the institutional memory of the state.

On that basis, we don’t have a failing state or a collapsed state—we simply don’t have a state.

Both articles are worth a read and talk about other important issues. Consider yourself urged to check them out- and subscribe to Dr. Griffin’s blog!

Trackposted at Diary of the Mad Pigeon

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