Joint Special Operations University

7701 Tampa Point Boulevard

MacDill AFB, FL 33621

https://jsou.libguides.com/jsoupublications

JOINT SPECIAL OPERATIONS UNIVERSITY

In Advancing SOF Cultural Engagement: The Malinowski Model for 

a Qualitative Approach, Robert Greene Sands and Darby Arakelian propose a special operations relevant model for engaging 

populations, illuminating their worldviews and values, appreciating their interests, and translating significant social, cultural, and 

political information into operational analysis. Their objectives 

are to introduce the core concepts, the base vocabulary, and the 

foundational skills in anthropology and sociology necessary for 

improving the human aspects core competency. While Greene 

Sands and Arakelian do not expect SOF to become anthropologists, they assert that Malinowski’s population-centric research 

methods are desperately needed to make sense of contemporary 

human aspects of military operations.

ISBN 978-1-941715-31-4

Advancing SOF Cultural Engagement: 

The Malinowski Model for 

a Qualitative Approach

Robert R. Greene Sands and Darby Arakelian

JSOU Report 18-2

JSOU Report 18-2 Advancing SOF Cultural Engagement: The Malinowski Model Sands and Arakelian 

Bronislaw Malinowski, professor of anthropology, pictured in 1930. 

PHOTO BY FLICKR
Joint Special Operations University and the 

Center for Strategic Studies

The Joint Special Operations University (JSOU) provides its publications 

to contribute toward expanding the body of knowledge about joint special 

operations. JSOU publications advance the insights and recommendations 

of national security professionals and the Special Operations Forces (SOF) 

students and leaders for consideration by the SOF community and defense 

leadership. 

JSOU is the educational component of the United States Special Operations 

Command (USSOCOM), MacDill Air Force Base, Florida. The JSOU mission 

is to prepare SOF to shape the future strategic environment by providing 

specialized joint professional military education, developing SOF-specific 

undergraduate and graduate level curriculum and by fostering special operations research, analysis and outreach in support of USSOCOM objectives. 

JSOU conducts research through its Center for Strategic Studies (CSS) 

where efforts center upon the USSOCOM mission: 

USSOCOM mission. USSOCOM synchronizes the planning of Special 

Operations and provides Special Operations Forces to support persistent, 

networked, and distributed Geographic Combatant Command operations 

in order to protect and advance our Nation’s interests.

Press publications are available for download from the JSOU Library 

web page located at https://jsou.libguides.com/jsoupublications.

Joint Special Operations University

Brian A. Maher, Ed.D., SES, President

Boyd L. Ballard, Director, Center for Strategic Studies

Francis X. Reidy, Deputy Director, Center for Strategic Studies

Robert Nalepa, Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Air Force, Ret., Editor in Chief

Lisa Sheldon, B.A., Advertising, JSOU Press Editor

Elizabeth Sylvester, B.S., Journalism, JSOU Press Assistant Editor

Resident Senior Fellows

Peter McCabe, Ph.D., Political Science, Colonel, U.S. Air Force, Ret.

Will Irwin, MMAS, Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army, Ret.

Paul Lieber, Ph.D., Mass Communication & Public Affairs

David Ellis, Ph.D., International Relations, Comparative Politics

Editorial Advisory Board

Roby C. Barrett

Ph.D., Middle Eastern & South Asian History 

Public Policy Center Middle East Institute and 

JSOU Senior Fellow

James J.F. Forest 

Ph.D., Higher Education Administration

Associate Professor, School of Criminology and 

Justice Studies, University of Massachusetts 

Lowell and JSOU Senior Fellow

Mario Forestier

Chief Warrant Officer, U.S. Army, Ret.

Director, Joint Special Operations Command 

Center for Counterterrorism Studies

Thomas H. Henriksen

Ph.D., History

Hoover Institution, Stanford University

and JSOU Senior Fellow

Bernd Horn

Colonel, Canadian Dept. of National Defence, Ret.

Ph.D., War Studies

Command Historian, CANSOFCOM Education 

and Research Centre

Russell D. Howard

Brigadier General, U.S. Army, Ret.

John D. Jogerst

Colonel, U.S. Air Force, Ret.

James Kiras

Ph.D., History

School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, 

Air University and JSOU Associate Fellow

William W. Mendel

Colonel, U.S. Army, Ret. 

JSOU Senior Fellow

Alvaro de Souza Pinheiro

Major General, Brazilian Army, Ret.

JSOU Senior Fellow

James F. Powers, Jr.

Colonel, U.S. Army, Ret.

JSOU Senior Fellow 

Bryan C. Price

Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army

Ph.D., Political Science

Director, Combating Terrorism Center at 

West Point

Richard H. Shultz, Jr.

Ph.D., Political Science

Director, International Security 

Studies Program, The Fletcher School, 

Tufts University and JSOU Senior Fellow

Robert G. Spulak, Jr.

Ph.D., Physics/Nuclear Engineering

Sandia National Laboratories 

and JSOU Senior Fellow 

Jessica Glicken Turnley

Ph.D., Cultural Anthropology

Galisteo Consulting Group 

and JSOU Senior Fellow 

Rich Yarger

Ph.D., History 

JSOU Senior Fellow
JSOU Report 18-2

The JSOU Press

MacDill Air Force Base, Florida

2018

Advancing SOF 

Cultural Engagement: 

The Malinowski Model for a 

Qualitative Approach

Robert R. Greene Sands and Darby Arakelian
Comments about this publication are invited and should be forwarded to 

the Director of the Center for Strategic Studies, Joint Special Operations 

University, 7701 Tampa Point Blvd., MacDill AFB, FL 33621.

*******

The JSOU Center for Strategic Studies (CSS) is currently accepting written works 

relevant to special operations for potential publication. For more information, please 

contact the CSS Director at jsou_research@socom.mil. Thank you for your interest 

in the JSOU Press. 

*******

This work was cleared for public release; distribution is unlimited.

Printed in March 2018.

ISBN 978-1-941715-31-4
The views expressed in this publication are entirely those of the 

authors and do not necessarily reflect the views, policy, or position 

of the United States Government, Department of Defense, United 

States Special Operations Command, or the Joint Special Operations 

University.

Authors are granted academic freedom provided their work does not 

disclose classified information, jeopardize operations security, or 

misrepresent official U.S. policy. Such academic freedom empowers 

authors to offer new and sometimes controversial perspectives in the 

interest of furthering debate on key issues.
Recent Publications of the JSOU Press

Growing SOLO: Expanding the Spectrum of SOF Advisory Capabilities, 

JSOU Report 18-1, Troy White

Resistance Views: Tartu Resistance Seminar Essays on Unconventional Warfare and 

Small State Resistance, edited by Kevin D. Stringer and Glennis F. Napier

How Do SOF Contribute to Comprehensive Deterrence? 

JSOU Report 17-11, Robert Haddick

The Death of the Golden Hour and the Return of the Future Guerrilla Hospital, 

JSOU Report 17-10, Warner D. Farr

Property Rights and Social Justice as an Indicator of Stability: The SOF Nexus, 

JSOU Report 17-9, Bill Mandrick 

Transitioning from War to Peace: Post-Deployment Support for Special Operations 

Forces, JSOU Report 17-8, Jennifer M. Hazen

On the cover. Kula Rings are traded throughout the Trobriand Islands, Papua New 

Guinea. PHOTO BY DAVID KIRKLAND/NEWSCOM 

Back cover. Bronislaw Malinowski, professor of anthropology, pictured in 1930. 

PHOTO BY FLICKR
v

Contents

From the Director ........................................................................vii

Foreword ......................................................................................ix

About the Authors..........................................................................xi

Acknowledgements .....................................................................xiii

Introduction .................................................................................. 1

Chapter 1. Malinowski: Alone and Unafraid.................................. 5

Chapter 2. A Field-Based Method for SOF ................................... 19

Chapter 3. The Value of a Qualitative Approach for SOF.............. 35

Chapter 4. Applied SOF Ethnography .......................................... 59

Chapter 5. Thinking and Bias: The Legacy of 

Human Cognition........................................................................ 73

Chapter 6. Notes on the Limitations of 

the Malinowski Model ................................................................ 89

Chapter 7. Developing a Sustainable Learning Program for 

Qualitative Approach and Methods ............................................. 99

Chapter 8. Conclusion............................................................... 109

Acronyms.................................................................................. 113

Endnotes.................................................................................... 115

vii

From the Director 

Just returning from a London vacation and an opportunity to revisit the 

British Museum, it is serendipitous to read this monograph centered on 

anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, whose ethnographic collection from 

the Trobriand Islands in the early 1900s is displayed. 

Robert Greene Sands and Darby Arakelian rekindle Malinowski’s model, 

ostensibly to remind Special Operations Forces (SOF) that heavy reliance on 

technological processes to better understand or predict human behavior may 

lead to an under-analysis or under-utilization of some important qualitative 

aspects and perspectives. These two scholars offer clear recommendations 

for not only SOF to consider, but many Department of Defense, interagency, 

and nongovernmental organizations facing national and international cultural challenges or crises. We welcome your comments or assessment of 

their work.

Boyd L. Ballard

Director, Center for Strategic Studies

ix

Foreword 

In October 2016, the Joint Chiefs of Staff released the Joint Concept for 

Human Aspects of Military Operations (JC-HAMO) asserting that U.S. 

military tactical and operational successes over the past sixteen years of 

combat have not yielded corresponding strategic success. JC-HAMO attributes this failure to an overemphasis on defeating an adversary’s military 

capability and an underappreciation of how an adversary influences the 

human and social dynamics of conflict. JC-HAMO is deliberately described 

as a mindset and approach requiring the Joint Force to engage in institutional 

and cultural change to create a human aspects core competency to effectively 

engage in twenty-first century warfare. 

In Advancing SOF Cultural Engagement: The Malinowski Model for a 

Qualitative Approach, Robert Greene Sands and Darby Arakelian propose 

a Special Operations relevant model for engaging populations, illuminating 

their worldviews and values, appreciating their interests, and translating significant social, cultural, and political information into operational analysis. 

Their objectives are to introduce the core concepts, the base vocabulary, and 

the foundational skills in anthropology and sociology necessary for improving the human aspects core competency. Greene Sands and Arakelian have 

extensive experience working with the military and SOF students. Drawing upon their familiarity with the force, they bring to life an accessible, 

educational, and rich picture of how to advance the enterprise’s capabilities 

through the story of Bronislaw Malinowski who, as an anthropologist in the 

early twentieth century, lived alone and unafraid amongst foreign and vastly 

different populations. While Greene Sands and Arakelian do not expect SOF 

to become anthropologists, they assert that Malinowski’s population-centric 

research methods are desperately needed to make sense of contemporary 

human aspects of military operations. 

Dave Ellis, Ph.D.

Resident Senior Fellow, Center for Strategic Studies 

xi

About the Authors

Dr. Robert R. Greene Sands is one of the foremost experts in crosscultural competence (3C) and culture-general in the Department of 

Defense (DOD) and has worked closely with several 

DOD organizations to develop and deliver innovative 

blended learning programs in culture and language. 

Several iterations of his courseware have been utilized 

by Special Operations Forces (SOF), U.S. Army, U.S. 

Air Force, U.S. Marines, and foreign area officers, 

among others. Sands developed the first-ever Massive Open Online Course in 3C, Operationalizing 

Culture: Thinking Differently about Behavior in the 

Human Domain.

Anthropologist Sands is currently CEO of LanguaCulture, LLC and 

adjunct professor at Norwich University. His prior experience includes 

positions at Air University and Air Force Culture and Language Center, 

Defense Intelligence Agency, and Director and Senior Research Fellow at 

the Institute for the Study of Culture and Language at Norwich University 

and adjunct professor in the College of Graduate and Continuing Studies 

Program. Sands’ research and writing is represented in nine books, three of 

them along with numerous journal and book chapters on various aspects 

of culture and language. He received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the 

University of Illinois.

Darby Arakelian, M.A., is a national security 

expert in strategic communications and audience analyses and segmentation. She was a member of 

the intelligence community, specializing in terrorism 

and counterterrorism, communications strategy and 

analysis, cyber warfare, and automated media monitoring and analysis. She is a former research fellow at 

Norwich University’s Institute for the Study of Culture and Language and serves as coeditor of The Journal of Culture, Language and International Security. She earned her master’s 

degree in security policy studies from George Washington University.

xiii

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge David C. Ellis for his helpful 

comments and suggestions on the manuscript. Robert Greene Sands 

would also like to thank Thomas Haines for his sage wisdom on this topic 

as the manuscript took shape. Finally, Sands would like to acknowledge the 

many special forces students seeking their bachelor degrees that he has had 

the pleasure of teaching through Norwich University’s Strategic Studies and 

Defense Analysis program in the last four years. The simple premise of this 

monograph is that SOF enlisted and officers have the ability and motivation 

to grow an organic capability in understanding and applying a qualitative 

approach and methods to their missions. If these students that have gone 

through Sands’ classes reflect SOF capability, that premise is reachable. Their 

knowledge, skills, and experience do not make them Ph.D.s that can win bar 

fights, but critically-engaged and adept applied ethnographers that with the 

right social science foundation can excel in the social and cultural complexity that is now the new normal in missions and operations.

1

Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

Introduction 

The United States and its allies need to recognize the indications and 

warnings (I&W) of nascent threats far left of a problem and apply 

appropriate mitigation measures before they materialize into national or 

international crises. This monograph is especially useful for SOF such as 

intelligence analysts, civil affairs (CA), and military information support 

operations (MISO) personnel for whom the mission demands populationcentric analytical skills and in-depth understanding of local social and 

cultural knowledge. Advancing SOF Cultural Engagement: The Malinowski 

Model for a Qualitative Approach can be of critical utility to operators who, 

over the course of a career, multiple deployments and assignments, will benefit from the transferable knowledge and skill-based competencies involved 

in a qualitative approach and methods advocated in this monograph. Neither 

the DOD nor the Services currently feature such organic education and 

training capability, and attempts at “outsourcing” this need (i.e. Human 

Terrain System [HTS]) have fallen short of actual mission requirements. 

This monograph strongly suggests that as “gray zone” activities and events 

increase in prevalence and importance to U.S. national security, developing 

this organic capability is an imperative for SOF, not a luxury. 

Current fascination with the retrieval and management of what has been 

called “big data” to provide an intelligence and operational understanding 

of the behavior of adversaries, allies, neutral actors, and the many culture 

groups that make up the social and cultural “interactive space” of mission 

skews and even ignores critical understanding of how culture systems operate in locations with “real” groups. Ellis and Sisco point out that big data 

and technology solutions predominate intelligence tradecraft, but fail to 

deliver contextually rich population analysis.”1 The big data approach does 

not include the kinds of qualitative methods and perspectives that can offer 

valid and reliable social and cultural knowledge critical to the success of 

SOF-peculiar missions. Nor can big data provide key information to construct better I&W for future behavior. 

Tremendous investment has been directed toward technological 

solutions for operationalizing [such methods as sociocultural analysis – SCA] including “big data” and social media monitoring efforts. 
2

JSOU Report 18-2

Unfortunately, these capabilities lack the rich, population-centric 

understanding required to develop baseline assessments, conduct 

qualitative and quantitative analysis, and produce strategic I&W.2

This monograph demonstrates why a qualitative approach is necessary 

for SOF and provides examples of research methodologies that can greatly 

improve intelligence gathering and rapport-building activities. In short, a 

qualitative approach promotes a nuanced understanding of the sociocultural 

factors in the human domain and, in turn, improves the likelihood that 

SOF activities will align with the interests and norms of the different target 

audiences in foreign areas. In the post-9/11 operational environment, culture 

and language are two key components for mission success when cultivating 

relationships with foreign audiences and partners in theater. In describing 

recent special forces (SF) efforts, a former Green Beret writes, “while U.S. 

Special Forces were trained and prepared as combat warriors, much of their 

work involved training, cultural understanding and psychological efforts to 

explain the messages of U.S. freedom and humanity.”3 The authors wrote this 

monograph precisely to enhance SOF capabilities to navigate in the cognitive 

space for which quantitative approaches alone are insufficient.

In Advancing SOF Cultural Engagement: The Malinowski Model for a 

Qualitative Approach, the authors build on Robert Greene Sands’ 2016 JSOU 

monograph, Assessing Special Operations Forces Language, Region, and Culture Needs: Leveraging Digital and LRC Learning to Reroute the “Roadmap” 

from Human Terrain to Human Domain. Sands argues that current SOF 

language and culture learning efforts do not adequately prepare SOF personnel for the kind of mission and operations that constitute the backbone 

of deployed SOF engagement activities. 

The authors recommend building a deliberate sociocultural capability for 

SOF to advance critical knowledge and skill-based competence beyond the 

level of language and culture currently provided to SOF in existing learning 

programs. This approach proffered here would embed with preexisting SOF 

Language, Regional Expertise, and Culture (LREC) learning programs the 

development of a graduated program of qualitative methods and skills. Key 

to this capability would be the incorporation of a theoretically-informed 

ethnography, a set of methods that are centered on participant-observation 

of the “fieldworker.” Sands defines ethnography as a qualitatively-oriented 

array of data gathering methods. An exploration of ethnography will follow 
3

Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

later in this monograph. A deeper and more authentic presentation of different culture groups’ realities is critical to framing and undertaking an 

on-the-ground identification and analysis of existing and projected behavior 

in population-centric operations and missions. Such a presentation of local 

reality can only be accessed through methods that incorporate ethnographic 

and other sociocultural approaches where the researcher and the change 

agent are one and the same. More than a century ago, Bronislaw Malinowski 

pioneered many of the methods from which SOF could benefit. It is to his 

story we now turn.

5

Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

Chapter 1. Malinowski: Alone and Unafraid

The anthropologist must relinquish his comfortable position in 

the long chair on the veranda of the missionary compound, Government station, or planter’s bungalow, where, armed with pencil 

and notebook and at times with a whisky and soda, he has been 

accustomed to collect statements from informants. ... He must go 

out into the villages, and see the natives at work in gardens, on the 

beach, in the jungle; he must sail with them to distant sandbanks 

and to foreign tribes.4

There is a growing realization that contemporary U.S. military missions will play out in a messy, chaotic, culturally-complex, unstable, 

unpredictable, and morally ambiguous operational landscape. The operating 

environment characterized by Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), and now prevalent in conflict globally, is a 

stark departure from conventional, Cold War warfare. Current and near 

future U.S. security strategy will depend increasingly on population-centric 

operations and the approaches developed during counterinsurgency (COIN) 

carried in OIF and OEF. SOF will undoubtedly feature prominently in this 

growing struggle for influence in the human domain.

The 2016 SOF Operating Concept white paper identifies the human 

domain as an essential component of mission success. It states: 

In an increasingly interconnected world, a broadening array of state 

and non-state actors employing irregular and hybrid approaches 

challenge U.S. interests. Identifying activities and intentions of 

these malign actors within disordered societies and disenfranchised populations is challenging, but not impossible. To achieve 

this, persistent operations and deep understanding of the human 

domain will be necessary to identify and influence relevant actors 

to produce outcomes acceptable to the United States.5

The white paper suggests that many core SOF activities essentially require 

confronting adversaries by cultivating allies and partners with whom the 

United States shares strategic interests. The immediate and long term success 
6

JSOU Report 18-2

of SOF will be built on “a deeper understanding of the environment to see 

and act ahead of flashpoints of instability, inform the development of U.S. 

options, and reduce operational and strategic blind spots.”6 In other words, if 

SOF are to discern and correctly interpret evolving conditions and respond 

with the appropriate activity, they need to be actively and persistently 

engaged in social and cultural environments throughout the world. They 

will need to align their actions and relationships with an ever-changing constellation of local culture groups who are, or could be, partners to recognize 

the flow and pace of social and cultural behavioral changes. Such a posture 

would allow for the detection of small or seam splitting changes in an era of 

cross-cultural complexity, enabling “leadership to make informed decisions, 

exploit opportunities, and employ appropriate preventative measures. This 

process creates the strategic space necessary for our Nation to develop and 

implement effective policy.”7

The United States Army Special Operations Command’s Human Factors Considerations of Underground Insurgencies, first written in 1965 and 

revised in 2013, offers a more detailed look at the human domain. Human 

factors are defined as “psychological, cultural, behavioral and other human 

attributes that influence decision-making, the flow of information and the 

interpretation of information by individuals or groups at any level in any 

state or organization.” Probing beyond this conceptual perspective, Human 

Factors suggests that “understanding a population’s support or rejection of 

such [insurgent] movements requires understanding of a broad set of political, economic and social factors, and often requires an understanding of how 

individuals respond to oppression, violence, or terrorism.”8

Both the 2016 SOF Operating Concept and Human Factors reflect the 

DOD’s general approach to the human element, which typically frames the 

range of human behaviors through the truncated or narrowly focused lens of 

military end-states. Though a significant focus of military involvement with 

‘cultural others’ may not involve warfare, conflict, or conventional missions, 

the DOD has difficulty interpreting the human element through existing core 

activities, doctrine, and operating perspectives. This is also apparent in the 

SOF Operating Concept white paper where there is no mention of a need for 

underlying intimacy with local social and cultural knowledge and behavior 

other than that which immediately affects or pertains to mission objectives. 

Unfortunately, by labeling, defining, and viewing the human element 

through traditional military lenses, the force amplifies at its own peril the 
7

Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

cognitive assumptions and biases underlying its military goals and its vision 

of success irrespective of whether they align with local perspectives. The first 

casualty of this cycle is often the accurate and authentic appreciation of social 

and cultural reality that could greatly enhance mission planning and activities. This restriction of focus or lack of motivation to stretch understanding 

of knowledge and behaviors beyond strategic and operational boundaries 

effectively limits the understanding of how human behavior is conceptualized and the development of an accurate and authentic cultural reality of 

others. In other words, labeling, defining, and describing the human element 

and behavior through traditional military means, or even utilizing concepts 

developed for military action, affects the bias of military organizational goals 

and the essence of success. 

When cognitive biases go unmanaged, the result is a reduced ability to 

effectively elicit, analyze/apply, and act on meanings of behaviors that form 

others’ social cultural realities. More to the point, how we think is just as 

important as what we are thinking. How we think about others who are 

different from us, in terms of beliefs and behaviors and cultural expressions 

(e.g., family/kinship, law and order) and governance, is even more critical to SOF now that the human domain is featured so prominently in the 

operating concept. Mission success depends 

on the ability of SOF to overcome cognitive 

biases to achieve the advanced understanding 

of foreign groups’ interests and behaviors to 

both influence them and forecast their future 

behaviors.

Former Director of National Intelligence 

James Clapper outlined in his 2016 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community given to the Senate 

Armed Services Committee, that a complicated regional, national, and global terrorist landscape,9

 terrorism, and an increased 

threat posed by a resurgence of foreign powers such as Russia and China, 

combine to create a complicated tableau of state and non-state actors that 

intersect in culturally dense ways promoting a complexity that cannot be 

solved or even overcome without a strong understanding and engagement 

of cross-cultural capabilities. Looked at differently, the forays of these actors 

How we think about others who are different from 

us, in terms of beliefs and 

behaviors and cultural 

expressions (e.g., family/

kinship, law and order) 

and governance, is even 

more critical to SOF now 

that the human domain is 

featured so prominently in 

the operating concept.
8

JSOU Report 18-2

into foreign lands also creates opportunities for the U.S. to influence their 

decisions as they become dependent upon diverse populations they are also 

unlikely to understand.

The thesis of this monograph is that SOF can develop a more theoretically-sound understanding of culture and develop the cross-cultural skillbased competencies to better collect, analyze, and apply social and cultural 

behavior by employing a qualitative approach to revealing a population’s 

Theory of Mind (TOM). Briefly, a TOM is a way of expressing a population’s 

worldview, norms, values, ethics, and corresponding cultural practices, but 

the concept is elaborated upon subsequently. As it currently stands, SOF lack 

a program of instruction dedicated to mitigating the cognitive and perceptual biases that impede the force’s ability to appreciate foreign perspectives. 

While SOF, and DOD more broadly, have gone through stages of sensitivity to, or perhaps acceptance of the importance of cultural knowledge and 

skills, the authors argue that a further significant “pivot” is necessary. The 

pivot advocated in the pages that follow is toward a qualitative, ethnographic 

approach that fits naturally with many SOF core activities.

Mission Parallels a Century Apart

Within this context, anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski offers a relevant 

model for advancing SOF social and cultural intelligence and cross-cultural 

engagement capabilities. He arrived alone in the scarcely explored South 

Pacific Trobriand Islands to conduct three years of fieldwork as WWI raged 

across Europe and elsewhere. Malinowski was part of a cadre of early anthropologists (mostly Europeans) who traveled to distant foreign lands to study 

primitive societies and demystify their cultural exotica while scientifically 

testing out grand theories of humanity. Like immersion experiences foreign 

area officers have when first discovering a country, the people, and the security apparatus, Malinowski and his kind left the comfort of academia and 

their familiar societies. He, like his colleagues, traveled thousands of miles 

for months to field locations in far-flung foreign lands because secondary 

and tertiary travelogues, posts from colonial administrators, interviews with 

travelers returning from foreign cultures and other sources of data could not 

stand in for experiencing “native” society and behavior in person.

His work and experience serve as a model for appreciating, and then 

building, a solid foundation of cultural understanding, access, and rapport 
9

Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

with foreign populations, and he pioneered the appropriate methods for 

ferreting out the kind of information that SOF today would find critical 

for mission and operational success. Malinowski’s years of fieldwork offer 

intriguing insights and parallels for SOF as they prepare for complex and 

newly encountered roles in the current and future uncertain and complex 

international and transregional threat landscape. 

Today, the mission is not to rule and administer over foreign populations as colonial powers did, and as early anthropologists did in support of 

colonial administrations. Much to the contrary, the mission is primarily to 

build partner capacity to govern effectively and legitimately with as little 

external support as possible. Yet, the requirement to appreciate local conditions, relationships, and patterns of life remain remarkably similar. Modern 

incarnations of the anthropological requirement include concepts like the 

Human Terrain (HT), the Human Domain (HD), sociocultural analysis, 

gray zone, and Human Geography among others. However, as will be shown, 

these concepts bring cognitive and operational biases that often work against 

what Malinowski was trying to uncover. In the end, the contemporary mission requires deep insight into population dynamics for which superficial 

language and culture-specific knowledge such as etiquette-based cultural 

training, prove inadequate.

Malinowski understood that to effectively study the nature and operations of cultural and social systems of a foreign population, he had to step 

“off the verandah”10 and leave the proverbial 

thatched hut or the pitched tent of the anthropologist and venture into the heart of “native” 

everyday society. He was one of the first 

anthropologists to actively become part of 

the culture’s “space and place” to collect valuable and meaningful field data. Malinowski’s 

participant observation methodology pioneered what later became ethnography—the 

intimate and qualitative fieldwork method 

that has been the hallmark of anthropology 

and, more recently, other social sciences. Participant observation establishes the authority of the data gathered by the 

fieldworker and enables, through an extended period of both observation 

and participation, the exploration of the various contexts of meanings. This 

Malinowski’s participant 

observation methodology 

pioneered what later became ethnography—the 

intimate and qualitative 

fieldwork method that 

has been the hallmark of 

anthropology and, more 

recently, other social sciences.
10

JSOU Report 18-2

method includes interviewing key informants, sometimes referred to as 

gatekeepers, or in military parlance, key leader engagements. Introductions 

to informants result from extended interaction with community members. 

Participation and observation provide the ethnographer checks and balances 

on what has been recounted by others, ensuring another filter of validity 

(validity is addressed in chapter 6).

As one of the very few Europeans in the archipelago, Malinowski was 

often the only European (white man) islanders had ever seen. He was constantly in a state of observation and on frequent occasions participated in 

everyday Trobriand life, living as a kind of “Trobriand shadow”—having 

one-on-one and group discussions, afternoon walks, taking part in celebrations and accompanying islanders on fishing expeditions. Rather quickly, 

Malinowski learned the language, which allowed him even further access 

into the daily swirl of Trobriand society. Malinowski was insistent that 

anthropologists must have daily contact with their informants if they are 

to adequately record what he referred to as the “imponderabilia of actual 

life”11—the kinds of data that could yield identification of patterns of Trobriand behavior, also reflected in their symbols and artifacts. These patterns 

would ultimately aid Malinowski (along with future anthropologists and 

Figure 1. Bronislaw Malinowski sits with natives on Trobriand Islands in 1918. 

PHOTO BY WIKIMEDIA COMMONS/PUBLIC DOMAIN.
11

Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

social scientists) in demystifying the workings of economic, political, religious, and kinship systems. Malinowski’s experiences are striking in similarity to the kinds of social and cultural experiences that have been described 

more recently in Village Stability Operations (VSO) and that were in high 

demand in recent foreign internal defense (FID) and COIN operations. 

Malinowski believed that the goal of the anthropologist was “to grasp the 

native’s point of view, his relation to life, to realize his vision of his world.”12 

To that end, he was interested in behavioral similarities and differences displayed by the local population. He noted that repetition, or similarities, 

tended to support things important to everyday life, whereas differences signified something special. He was particularly interested in how interactions 

among villagers revealed a behavioral code of cultural importance—what 

SOF now understand as governance norms. 

The need to replicate scientifically the cultural other’s worldview 

depended on the duality of fieldwork method: observation and participation. Malinowski’s peer group of anthropologists was trained in this qualitative scientific approach. To the classically-trained anthropologists, the 

ethnographer could work through the scientific method to expose the native’s 

cultural reality using a process of behavioral validation of observation (and 

verification through active engagement of cultural other) and participation. If Malinowski could participate as a Trobriander in Trobriand daily 

and ceremonial life, building and sustaining relationships and predicting 

future behavior, then his view of their cultural reality would map accurately 

to the islanders. 

Malinowski saw what he did as the “science” of human behavior. In this 

scientifically detached perspective, the ethnographer was often the silent 

stenographer of cultural reality that was faithful to the islanders. Today, 

there are anthropologists and social scientists who subscribe to a postmodern perspective and argue that, due to the nature of social and cultural 

behavior and how the meaning of that behavior is accessed and interpreted 

by the “ethnographer,” describing a qualitative approach as “scientific” is 

a misnomer. However, most of the social and behavioral sciences view a 

qualitative approach and methods as one means of scientific inquiry. In 

this book, methods such as ethnography provide access to the validity and 

cultural authenticity of what the ethnographic “stenographer” and cultural 

interpreter can provide to organizations such as SOF in discerning cultural 

reality. 
12

JSOU Report 18-2

Applying the Malinowski Model to SOF

SOF are responsible for a range of missions that require the ability to discern 

and decipher local behavior and meaning to better inform their activities. 

Recent FID campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, COIN activities in Iraq, and 

irregular warfare (IW) missions, such as VSO in Afghanistan, demonstrate 

the continuing relevance of cultural knowledge to SOF. The utility of language and culture has long been part of SOF development and preparation. 

However, identifying “culture” as important does not guarantee that those 

elements are embedded in learning programs.13 For SOF, whose missions 

are often accomplished over an extended period with a variety of culturally 

complex groups, preparation requires a more in-depth learning program in 

cross-cultural capability than what is currently offered. A revised program 

would include greater emphasis on the means to decipher local cultures 

and the cross-cultural skills to form and sustain relationships necessary to 

elicit sociocultural data, which can then be applied to more nuanced future 

strategy and operations. 

SOF require an approach that promotes more effective and representative 

use of sociocultural data and that introduces the value of establishing and 

understanding local core beliefs as relevant to intelligence gathering and 

interpretation. They would greatly benefit from developing and implementing a “thinking differently”14 capability that makes them better sociocultural 

intelligence gatherers “in the field,” to successfully handle cultural complexity, and to make more culturally-informed decisions. For example, to 

influence populations important to local stability and bolster their resilience 

against insecurity and terrorism, it is critical to comprehend the nature of 

the core beliefs and values that motivate individual and group behavior that 

then offer potential courses of action to assist in building platforms and 

programs to resist threat actors. 

To reveal a population’s TOM, the Malinowski Model consists of three 

elements: (a) the methods utilized in participant-observation “packaged” 

broadly as ethnography; (b) the attitude of the participant-observer that 

promotes a cognitive approach to cross-cultural competence that mitigates 

social and cultural bias, promotes effective perspective-taking, and effectively engages active learning, and (c) a process of ongoing hypothesis testing 

through cross-cultural communication to determine validity, reliability, 

and authenticity of the perceived social and cultural reality. Together, these 
13

Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

Theory

of Mind

Ethnographic

Methods

Cross-Cultural 

Competence

Cross-Cultural 

Communication = + +

Figure 2. Overview of the Malinowski Model.

elements infuse deep sociocultural insights into intelligence, mission analysis, and operational planning. 

The Malinowski Model provides SOF an essential ethnographic skillset and toolkit for navigating through, collecting data on, and aggregating 

analyses on culture groups who comprise a local population. This monograph explores in detail elements of ethnography as it applies to SOF and 

their missions. Briefly here, the Malinowski Model considers the general 

ethnographic approach first utilized by Malinowski in his fieldwork, and 

for the most part, is reflected in the disciplines beyond anthropology that 

have now adopted ethnography and more generally, qualitative methods of 

inquiry and discovery. At its core, the success of the ethnographic method 

depends on extended and meaningful participant-observation by the ethnographer, the systematic capture and recording of qualitative data through 

field notes, notes and transcripts from informal to formal interviews, photographs, charts and maps of social interactions, as well as representations 

of cultural and natural landscapes, and more. The method also depends on 

the continual process of data validation exposing social and cultural reality by the fieldworker through observation and active engagement of local 

inhabitants. The Malinowski Model considers how ethnography can best be 

applied in intent and method to better facilitate the SOF mission. 

Good ethnography is an iterative process. It involves situating or embedding in the local social and cultural landscape and building meaningful relationships with individuals and groups. Ethnography demands an academic 

and interpersonal patience to establish effective relationships with local individuals and culture groups involved in missions. Participant-observation is 

the primary data gathering method in ethnography, and these relationships, 

through participation in and observation of local social interactions, will be 

critical to eliciting social and cultural knowledge necessary to construct an 

authentic and valid social and cultural reality. Over time, ethnography, if 

appropriate methods are used, will reveal a deeper understanding of behavior 
14

JSOU Report 18-2

and motivations of behavior of the local populations. In essence, the longer in 

the field and the greater and more in-depth the development of relationships, 

the more accurate and authentic the knowledge elicited is and the perception of the local 

reality. Ultimately, a synthesis of the data will 

provide a solid foundation to build accurate 

prediction.

The success of the Malinowski Model 

depends on developing skill-based competences that are critical components of crosscultural capability that serve to provide a solid 

learning foundation to support the model. These competencies provide the 

ability to learn and apply cultural knowledge and develop the capability to 

engage interactional skills to sustain, as well as solicit, critical social and 

cultural reality of those individuals or groups important to mission success. 

The qualitative approach, such as the Malinowski Model, is based on the recognition that human cognition, or thinking, especially as it involves people 

and groups that may be socially and culturally different, rests on the ability to 

perceive others’ social and cultural reality. The authors refer to this capability as TOM. Chapter 2 will explore components of cross-cultural capability 

and how it supports TOM before moving on in the following chapters to 

introduce more specific elements of the Malinowski Model.

Reframing the Culture Concept 

In addition to advocating for the Malinowski Model, this monograph suggests that a reframing of the more traditional construct of culture is critical 

to understand the contemporary local actors and social and cultural lay of 

the land that SOF must comprehend and engage within. Culture is not a 

bounded unit that corresponds to geography; culture can be conceptualized as patterns of peoples’ behavior (activities, actions, and, inferable from 

these, their thinking). These patterns, and what they mean to those who 

share them, underlie and motivate all human activity across the spectrum 

of behavior, including how they govern, worship, defend the group from 

external forces and each other, connect to the past, mobilize to face natural 

and human-made crises, and adapt to face adversity. 

Over time, ethnography, 

if appropriate methods 

are used, will reveal a 

deeper understanding 

of behavior and motivations of behavior of the 

local populations.
15

Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

These patterns are not static and unchangeable; they are malleable to outside conditions and influences, both human and natural, and thus are always 

in a state of flux from what people do daily and/or how they adapt/adjust 

to these outside conditions and influences. If enough people adjust or stop 

reinforcing these patterns of behavior, they will eventually change or taper 

off and cease to exist. Even when things are consistently reinforced, they 

almost always accumulate changes over time, resulting in notable changes 

in behavior—“anyone who tells you that a culture ‘hasn’t changed for 1000 

years’ just isn’t paying attention.”15 In fact, Michael Agar writes about cultures as “open, dynamic systems co-evolving in their environment, complex 

systems on the edge of chaos [and within the human domain].”16 The reality 

is that culture, or these meaningful patterns of behavior, is used to identify 

a group of people and the system in which they live. On the ground, there is 

no cloud of culture floating around influencing people’s thinking. 

People tend to use these patterns of behavior as a Leatherman multi-tool. 

When presented with a new situation or a crisis, they pull out their Leatherman and try to find a blade or a tool to help them deal with it—consciously 

or unconsciously. This can produce some connections that seem odd. For 

example, when a group feels itself under threat of coming apart, people 

may start reinforcing a religious or ethnic identity to keep people feeling 

connected to one another, even if the actual reason for the problem is economic, political, or something else. To start to probe a population’s meaning 

of behavior, it is critical to describe and comprehend its beliefs and values, 

social structures, religious institutions, economics, and politics. Yet, being 

able to see beyond one’s own conceptual categories to digest what people are 

doing and why, is necessary for a more useable and representative approach 

to understanding the operating environment. 

At the heart of culture group affiliations are core beliefs. To the authors, 

these beliefs act to anchor a group’s behavior, offer means to adapt behavior 

to external forces, and when necessary, change to fit the need.17 As groups 

of people face extraordinary human and natural forces and threats, they 

utilize all cultural facets to adapt to survive. It is hard for SOF to appreciate 

and grasp the implications of others’ behavior because SOF typically do not 

face the extraordinary influences to the degree felt by those cultural groups 

that are of interest. Consequently, there is little to no experience to draw 

upon to help with understanding. Now, add in the complications to forecasting future behavior based on high-risk security areas featuring instability, 
16

JSOU Report 18-2

insurgency or COIN, and terrorism; everything discussed thus far about 

“culture” comes into play when attempting to understand and interact with 

local cultural groups. 

Chapter Outline

The Malinowski Model stresses that what is “seen” as culture, is just the patterns of people’s actions, interactions, and thinking. This is the main point of 

departure for the focused emphasis on a qualitative approach advocated here 

to advance SOF cultural engagement research, training, and analysis. All 

societies contain cultural and subcultural groups that form around shared 

and distinct patterns of behavior connoting meaningful differences between 

them. Some may be long lasting, temporary, or intermittent, but all exist as a 

means by which people make their way through their daily and more longterm existence. If one knows or observes the patterns of behavior, over time, 

meaning will follow, and after that, a general understanding and familiarity 

that can lead to knowledge best suited to 

help understand potential future actions. 

If SOF can understand potential future 

actions, they can drastically improve 

efforts to influence the culture groups 

with whom they interact.

With the Malinowski Model, SOF 

can better differentiate the collection of 

groups or populations that make up the 

human domain by deconstructing what 

motivates their behavior. They can also determine what drives their associations with the recognition that these associations can be temporary, as well 

as enduring. SOF must comprehend historic trajectories of these groups and 

consider the power of contemporary forces of technology, the Internet and 

other means of instantaneous connectivity. Basically, there is the need to 

understand context and the forces that shape identity. This is the true value 

of the Malinowski Model described in the following pages.

Even the best-detailed ethnographic data loses value if interpreted primarily through the cognitive biases of the analyst. Recognizing and mitigating the effects of cognitive bias demand a holistic ethic of discovery and 

analysis, which, as will become apparent, is a difficult task. At a minimum, 

If one knows or observes the 

patterns of behavior, over 

time, meaning will follow, and 

after that, a general understanding and familiarity that 

can lead to knowledge best 

suited to help understand 

potential future actions.
17

Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

understanding the source of cognitive bias enables those engaged with foreign populations the means of self-reflection to better capture the reality as 

lived by the population. 

The following chapters lay out the case for a qualitative approach to promote SOF mission success. Chapter 2 introduces the Malinowski Model as 

an example of the kind of field-based methodologies that can serve as a force 

multiplier for many SOF activities. This chapter will introduce the concept 

of TOM as essential to the success of qualitative approaches, but specifically 

the Malinowski Model. 

Chapter 3 provides an exploration of cross-cultural capability that undergirds the Malinowski Model. The success of the Malinowski Model depends 

on developing skill-based competences that are critical components of crosscultural capability that serve to provide a solid learning foundation to support the model. These competences provide the ability to learn and apply 

culture knowledge and developing capability to engage interactional skills 

to sustain, as well as solicit, critical social and cultural reality of those individuals or groups important to mission success. 

Chapter 4 reviews the main research methods SOF can use in the field 

for applied ethnography. The chapter explains the extraordinary value of 

a qualitative approach to SOF missions with the objective of helping SOF 

reveal local population core beliefs. Chapter 4 rounds out the discussion on 

how to reveal a population’s TOM in practice.

Chapter 5 addresses the impact of bias on the Malinowski Model. The 

authors suggest that adopting a qualitative approach and corresponding 

methods requires more than just “training in” another battlefield skill; 

understanding foreign human behavioral complexity first necessitates the 

mitigation of cognitive biases and biases deriving from cultural differences. 

The chapter offers a brief introduction to human cognition through the lens 

of “fast and slow” thinking processes. Biases are an unintended result of 

human thinking, and, in matters of understanding and predicting behavior 

of culturally different others, biases can distort how behavior is interpreted. 

Organizational bias also distorts how foreign populations are perceived based 

on schemas and operating doctrine. The HT and HD schemas are reviewed 

to illustrate how organizational biases limit SOF ability to appreciate local 

population dynamics. 

Chapter 6 identifies the means to assess the effectiveness of the 

Malinowski Model. In social science, reliability and validity are a product 
18

JSOU Report 18-2

of accessing and understanding an authentic representation of social and 

cultural reality of individuals and group, as in the case of SOF, that are 

involved in missions. The chapter explores the limitations of the Malinowski 

Model when it comes to assessing data, while offering ways to provide a 

necessary approach and methods critical to mission success when dealing 

with cross-cultural complexity.

Chapter 7 explores the evolution of DOD and SOF cultural education and 

training. It identifies strategic stages and pivots that have occurred in the last 

half century along with the inconsistent and largely ineffective development 

of a language and cultural program of skills and knowledge. The latest stage 

entails both kinetic, quick strike capability and building partnership capacity (BPC) in critical security areas. The importance of BPC, in addition to 

the recent pivot to COIN, highlight the critical importance of developing a 

more robust qualitative approach. Chapter 7 offers an outline of how SOF 

might produce such a qualitative, ethnographic capability.
19

Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

Chapter 2. A Field-Based Method for SOF

We at NGA used to look for things and know what we were looking for. If we saw a Soviet T-72 tank, we knew we’d find a number 

of its brethren nearby. Now, though, we’re not looking for things. 

Instead, we’re looking for activities or transactions. And we don’t 

know what we’re looking for.18

Malinowski stressed that good anthropology involved “seeing life 

through the eyes of the native”—a goal that can produce dividends 

in cultural understanding, but also one fraught with cognitive pitfalls for 

the observer. The goal is to defuse or mitigate the impacts of cognitive and 

cultural biases. An observer’s existing mental models, or schemas, are influenced both by personal worldviews and experiences and a host of organizational constraints—in the case of SOF, those endemic to military doctrine 

and activities. Many contemporary events resist traditional structured analysis due to the universe of variables influencing group behavior, the pace of 

structural change, the lack of analyst expertise in or experience with foreign 

populations, and the persistent but unconscious cognitive biases intrinsic 

to analysis in the absence of deep social and cultural appreciation. Though 

the U.S. military is now more comfortable acknowledging that the HD is 

crucial and that the U.S. perspective may not capture others’ realities, it has 

struggled to move past its own schemas to better capture the human behavior 

that reflects others’ beliefs, values, and motivations. 

The Malinowski Model serves as both a skillset and toolkit for SOF to 

navigate around the immutable human flaw of cognitive bias and move 

past it through dedicated application of qualitative research methods. In 

this chapter, the authors explore how developing and applying “thinking 

differently” skills as a baseline necessary for understanding, seeing, and 

building a repository of meaningful patterns of behavior can be effective 

in contending with unique, novel or surprising situations in missions and 

operations.19 “Thinking differently” is useful in building a universal social 

or cultural frame that helps gather, interpret and analyze data, and then 

apply it to future relations. 
20

JSOU Report 18-2

Whether in a Special Warfare or humanitarian assistance (HA) context—or even forecasting the impact of a direct action (DA) strike—SOF are 

increasingly filling the roles of social and behavioral scientists responsible for 

building enduring partnerships while always being observant and cognizant 

of patterns of behavior that could aid future interactions. Contemporary 

missions now demand advanced cross-cultural skills and methods for collecting, interpreting, and making sense of social and cultural behavioral 

patterns necessary for identifying potential I&W of future events. For this, 

SOF require skills and tools for discerning a population’s social and cultural reality, the foundation for the Malinowski Model, and the concept 

that underlies efforts to mitigate cognitive and organizational biases. Furthermore, accessing this reality can be attributed to the concept of TOM, 

which is the quality of inferring the intentionality of others. The ability to 

discover another’s TOM advances the notion that humans have developed 

cognitive skills to assign mental states to others and then use those states 

to explain and further infer/predict the actions of others.20 Following this 

train of thought, there is a cognitive capability or competence that assumes 

that the actors under study are “intentional agents.” This assumption then 

allows the observer to interpret another’s thoughts through the expression 

of beliefs, desires, and emotions.21 While Malinowski did not use the term 

TOM, it is a useful concept for interpreting what he meant by “seeing life 

through the eyes of the native.”

The Kula Ring and Malinowski’s Attempt to Explain a 

Theory of Mind (TOM)

One cultural practice of exchange confounded Malinowski, and it was not 

until he became a participant that he fully realized its significance across 

Trobriand Island society. The Kula Ring was a traditional exchange of shell 

beads and necklaces between partners that resided throughout the archipelago. The trinkets carried with them legacies of alliances and partnerships, stories that bonded partners together and offered networks that existed 

across time and space. Periodically, Kula expeditions were launched in seagoing canoes amidst great ritual to other islands and the bead and shell 

necklaces were exchanged and alliances solidified. 

Malinowski, trained in economics, was intrigued by the Kula Ring and 

the economic and ritual experience in which all male Trobriand Islanders 
21

Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

participated through their lifetimes. Much time and ritual was invested 

in the Kula exchange between and during Kula expeditions. However, the 

expeditions carried with them a system of economic barter and exchange 

that occurred during the visits and was 

an integral element to the economic life 

of the archipelago. Malinowski traveled 

on several of these inter-island exchanges. 

Although the Trobrianders were expert 

seamen, each Kula voyage engendered 

risk and Malinowski noticed that ritual 

increased significantly before and during 

these open water voyages. This led 

Malinowski to speculate that one of the functions of religion and associated ritual was to handle the uncertainty of human existence.

Malinowski was convinced that the detached and scientific objectivity 

of an ethnographer promoted an objective and “true” cultural reality—one 

that perhaps eluded the comprehension of the islanders, or the cultural other. 

Malinowski believed that it was difficult for the Islanders to make the connections to the Kula as a functioning and orderly system that was part of a 

larger, integrated society. The islanders could only ascertain those rules and 

rituals that maintained the immediate sustainment of the traditional behaviors. It was up to the ethnographer, given his or her perch and perspective 

and understanding of the science of human behavior, to construct the big 

picture of the functioning society.

The integration of all the details observed, the achievement of a 

sociological synthesis of all the various, relevant symptoms, is the 

task of the Ethnographer ... the Ethnographer has to construct the 

picture of the big institution, very much as the physicist constructs 

his theory from the experimental data, which always have been 

within reach of everybody, but needed a consistent interpretation.22

The example of Malinowski’s explication of how the Kula Ring functioned 

to the participants, as well as to Malinowski, also reinforces the value of 

critical discovery of cultural systems, such as exchange and how it operates 

in the cultural reality of the Trobriand Islanders. Also, this level of understanding sheds light on how exchange is implicated deeply in other elements 

However, the expeditions 

carried with them a system 

of economic barter and exchange that occurred during 

the visits and was an integral 

element to the economic life 

of the archipelago.
22

JSOU Report 18-2

of culture, or as discussed, patterns of behavior. It is not an understatement 

to advance the importance of this understanding to the SOF mission. 

Malinowski’s treatise, The Argonauts of the Western Pacific, is a masterful and critically-acclaimed description and elucidation of Trobriand island 

society and was integral to supporting Malinowski’s theory of the development and workings of human society. His insistence on recreating cultural 

reality inspired by the islanders through ethnography was the blueprint for 

many future anthropological field studies. Malinowski’s classic work contained the first formal primer on ethnography and outlined three essentials 

of fieldwork: 

a. operate under good scientific aims, 

b. live with the natives, and, 

c. use reliable and sound data-gathering techniques.23

Essential to the development of context for Malinowski is the duality of 

fieldwork—observation and participation. The ethnographer operated in a 

living laboratory where the exotic permitted flexibility of research design, 

and promoted the scientific applicability of anthropology and its method. 

Malinowski’s three “fieldstones” for successful ethnography still resonate as a blueprint 

for those who work with and/or in foreign 

cultures and can apply more to those in operations and missions where discerning foreign 

behavior is critical for success. His distinction between description and analysis, and 

the perspective of cultural others and the 

objective view of analysts, resonates well with 

comparable missions of FAOs, attachés, SOF, 

and intelligence professionals. Extrapolating 

and applying a well-informed perspective of others’ TOM, along with its 

correlated behavior, are critical for informing future strategy and operations. Malinowski was primarily concerned with an island culture that was 

connected across the ocean by kinship, trade and alliance, and spirituality, 

organized in their own formalized religion, but his search for meaning in 

patterns of behavior stretched him to apply his considerable local knowledge 

to attempt to answer more universal questions of what it means to be human.

His distinction between 

description and analysis, 

and the perspective of 

cultural others and the 

objective view of analysts, resonates well with 

comparable missions of 

FAOs, attachés, SOF, and 

intelligence professionals.
23

Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

Recognizing Perspective 

That’s the real cultural question. Do I do it through my prism, or did 

I try to understand another prism which will give me more clarity 

and [bring me] closer to truth?24

Malinowski traveled in sea-going canoes across the Trobriand archipelago 

with the Islanders to see first-hand how the exchange of goods and services 

were interwoven with the Kula Ring. There were elaborate ceremonies and 

rituals prior to these open-ocean journeys that Malinowski concluded were 

elaborations of their spirituality. However, when canoes were utilized for 

travel within the Island, or in fishing in the lagoons or close to shore, there 

were no rituals or ceremonies to mark the beginning or end of the trip. After 

taking part in many of the open-ocean journeys as well as those close to 

shore, Malinowski could tease out motivations as well as the meaning of the 

ritual behavior. Certainly, offering magic and appealing to other forms of 

supernatural assistance to make better Kula deals were part of the ceremony. 

But what was more enlightening to Malinowski, and later anthropologists, 

was the fact the ritual only preceded journeys where there was much risk 

and uncertainty associated with open-water crossing. 

Malinowski put himself in a place through his ethnography where he 

could discern meaning from behaviors, and engender an understanding of 

those beliefs, or the lattice of a worldview, that motivated such behaviors 

that would not have been apparent or visible to an outsider. Just as critical 

as place was Malinowski’s ability to intentionally ascertain and share the 

thinking processes of the Islanders, to be able to peer into their reality, while 

also engaging analytical efforts to extract the “meaning” of meaning. 

Humans have evolved their cognition as an interface—an interpretation—

between their surrounding physical, social, and cultural environments, and 

their own agency. This interface is expressed through a lens, or worldview, 

or a set of assumptions which influence perception. “Worldviews are prone 

to stability; they are entrenched in society through formal and informal 

socialization, the power of traditions, ideology, and other mechanisms.”25

The key components are interlocking core beliefs—ideas held to be true by 

both the individual and the group. Beliefs compel individuals and groups 

to act in certain ways so that, if the system of beliefs, reflected in patterns of 

behavior, were more fully known and understood, the understanding would 
24

JSOU Report 18-2

lend itself to forecasting the type of interaction and behavior involved in a 

situation, and how situations would evolve over time. 

To mine the available wealth of core beliefs, SOF must cultivate relationships with cultural gatekeepers to create and sustain flows of information. 

Malinowski was not in the Trobriand Islands as a short-term, transactional 

agent, paying out good will to gain a momentary or fleeting advantage and 

then to leave. Malinowski’s lengthy stay in the field allowed him access to an 

authentic and critically-informed understanding of their social and cultural 

meaning. All through this process, Malinowski had to gain, then sustain, 

partnerships by establishing trust and ensuring rapport through acts of 

reciprocity with the Islanders. As a result, Malinowski was able to access 

Trobriand social and cultural knowledge in an authentic and nuanced way. 

More generally, he discovered the Trobriand worldview. 

Worldviews and beliefs act to define in- and out-groups, or the ‘Us versus 

Them’ dynamics instantiated through the influence of cultural schemas. 

Human groups align with those who look and act similarly and keep those 

different or unfamiliar in abeyance and confined in an interactional space 

defined by at least caution, if not outright hostility. The upshot of this is 

humans consciously and unconsciously discern difference and use it to order 

their interactional environment. 

Group behavioral indicators maintain that separation through deeply 

ingrained behavior referred to as ethnocentrism—the tendency to twist judgment of others in favor of internally followed beliefs [and behavior] and 

against foreign alternatives.26 Ethnocentrism may also be the human way of 

establishing and upholding moral beliefs. Ethnocentrism structures relationships with other groups in deeply profound ways, even if social interaction is 

not cast in the present or reflected in face-to-face interactions. The effects of 

ethnocentric biases in the intelligence process are well understood, but the 

influence of ethnocentrism on daily thinking patterns is rarely addressed 

as it plays out more generally for the analyst.

Tomasello, Carpenter, Call, Behne, and Moll in their TOM suggest that an 

inherent social facet of thinking is cultural cognition—the cognitive ability 

that leads to divining others’ intentions and then aligning them to a shared 

intentionality for future activities.27 “Participation in such activities requires 

not only especially powerful forms of intention reading and cultural learning, but also a unique motivation to share psychological states with others 

and a unique form of cognitive representation for doing so.”28 Enhancing 
25

Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

and sharpening these skills are especially critical for SOF, who work directly 

with others to promote mission success. 

The TOM concept promotes a social and cultural familiarity that allows 

one’s schemas to project a sense of cognitive validity that can apply to others. 

One can intuit the social imperative to strengthen in-group participation 

and understanding cultural schemas, but this also introduces errors in cognition when applying the same schemas to those who are different. It may 

seem intuitive that people can know and possibly forecast the behavior of 

those closest to them (e.g., extended family and friends or work colleagues) 

because familiarity gives them a closer model to hew from. 

In population-centric activities, a major intelligence focus should be discerning social and cultural reality through individual and group perspectives. Beliefs, values, and behaviors of extended kin groups, tribes, ethnicities, 

and even nations different from those of the collector require different and 

necessarily divergent ways of thinking about the 

world. When prompted to think like them and act 

like them, the collector’s own way of viewing the 

world gets in the way when he or she lacks the 

local population’s worldview. Individuals readily, 

and usually unknowingly, remain mired in their 

own conclusions looking for supporting evidence 

and engaging in confirmation bias while ignoring 

contradictions to their first impressions. Individuals pride themselves on their intuitions—“it is hard 

to back track and change opinions.”29 These biases 

interfere with establishing and sustaining critical relationships with foreign 

intelligence sources while bias can extend to strategic (future) analysis.30

Anthropologist Rob Johnston, a CIA analyst and author of an ethnography of the intelligence community, finds failure in intelligence analysis due 

to ethnocentric tendencies and powerful unconscious influence of the analyst’s own “cultural” logic as he or she attempts to align and attribute others’ 

meaning of behavior and actions with personally held beliefs and desires. 

The cognitive process of understanding or even recognizing that 

there are cultural and cognitive differences is not intuitive at all. ... 

This effort often appears doomed to failure, because, “trying to think 

like them” all too often results in applying the logic of one’s own 

When prompted to 

think like them and 

act like them, the 

collector’s own way 

of viewing the world 

gets in the way when 

he or she lacks the 

local population’s 

worldview. 
26

JSOU Report 18-2

culture and experience to try to understand the actions of others, 

without knowing that one is using the logic of one’s own culture.31 

In his book, Johnston provides a personal narrative of how looking 

through the self-confirming “lens” at the events surrounding Tiananmen 

Square certainly influenced his understanding of others’ behavior. There 

were many variables Johnston discussed that could have been indicators to 

what unfolded in Tiananmen Square, but that he missed because of trying 

to “fit” his worldview generally, and more specifically, to chart future events. 

Johnston was also an outsider and, at that time of his life, a college student 

in Beijing. He was in position to apply a qualitative approach and methods, 

the “Malinowski Model,” as he was a participant in local Chinese society, as 

well as an observer. Johnston was thrown for a loop on trying to understand 

the actual events that led up to and unfolded in Tiananmen Square because 

he lacked historical context. 

As a result, he misread the stakeholders and their reaction to the student 

protest, even the students, due to his cognitive inflexibility to think past or 

around his core beliefs. Johnston writes:

My failure to anticipate the way events would actually unfold in 

Tiananmen Square was tied to ethnocentric thinking and a lack of 

accurate and contextual information. Students in the United States 

are encouraged to be politically active, and their protests are often 

seen merely as minor inconveniences that need to be endured. In 

China, however, the protesting students were seen as a direct challenge to political authority and, much more so than in the United 

States, their actions were viewed as an outright conflict between 

the future elite and the current leadership. The protest itself was 

viewed as a violation of a taboo, upsetting the cultural order and 

the stability of society.

As an observer, I missed the cultural context that was necessary 

to view the events as an actual conflict and could not convince 

myself that a violent solution was a possibility. I had discounted the 

hypothesis that violence would occur, because I could not imagine 

it occurring in the United States. This led me to discount raw data 

that would have refuted a hypothesis that the two factions would 

reach a compromise. In addition, at that time, I had no formal 
27

Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

grounding in Chinese studies, nor had I been to China. Thus, I 

had not acquired information that would have helped me create a 

meaningful context for the event.32

This cognitive inflexibility persists and is often discussed. For instance, 

Strategic Landpower: Winning the Clash of Wills, a 2013 white paper written by Army General Raymond Odierno, Marine General Amos, and then 

former USSOCOM Commander Admiral William McRaven,33 echoes Johnston in that “the physical insularity of the U.S. coupled with its egalitarian 

ethic underpins the simplistic idea that other people are like us, or at least 

want to be us.”34 Archer sees the initial perspective or view “grounded in 

expectations stemming from the normal situational behavior learned within 

one’s own culture.”35 Edwards, exploring anthropological fieldwork states, 

“what is required is an ability to suspend what one assumed about a particular group or situation and open oneself up to the possibility that what 

is actually going on is entirely different from what one thought was going 

on.”36 Johnson and Barrett write, “Despite vast information resources and 

exposure to exotic cultures, Americans continue to overemphasize similarity and assume that other social groups have values and aspirations in line 

with their own.”37

The Malinowski Model and Cross-Cultural Competence: 

A Force Multiplier

Cross-cultural competence is the ability to navigate in complex 

interpersonal and cross-cultural situations, interpret or express 

ideas/concepts across worldviews and cultural divides, and to make 

sense of foreign behavior.38

Possessing and using knowledge-based and skill-based interpersonal competencies facilitate successful cross-cultural relationships and promote the 

ability to discern meaningful behavior. They provide context to interpret past 

events and gauge the potentiality of future events or behaviors. There has 

been much research within DOD on identifying core sets of cross-cultural 

competencies (3C) critical for success in DOD missions.39 This study offers 

five competencies for the Malinowski Model that directly relate to the development of cross-cultural communication. 
28

JSOU Report 18-2

To undergird successful “thinking differently” strategies (for collection 

and analysis) implies a sense or state of awareness of and process for comprehending the complex nature of the contemporary multi-actor environment that is or is considered relevant to goals and needs. This awareness 

and process can be referred to as “sense making”—the effort to comprehend 

behavior and events that transpire due to an intersection of behavior and 

agency. Paik and Pirolli define sense making as “active seeking and processing of information to achieve understanding. ... Sense making can include 

engaging processes that seek and filter information while also producing 

schemas that best fit the available data.”40

Sense making works best when features of the problem set include discrete, informal and unbounded issues. Coupled with sense making is the 

quality of mindfulness—a deliberate and continual state of awareness that 

challenges expectations while reflecting on a host of potential alternatives. 

Regarding the current and future global security landscape, sense making 

and its underlying sense of vigilant mindfulness prompts a broader mental 

readiness to consider actions, events and symbols (signs) of threat rather 

than reducing social complexity to a few variables to rationally predict threat 

behavior.41

To account for a variation of perspectives of and approaches to sense 

making, there needs to be some understanding of the different stakeholders that have advanced models to further the 

approach and methods that align with sense 

making. Here the authors have outlined a 

behavioral approach to compensating for 

cognitive and cultural bias. The SOF mission demands confronting bias and opening 

the aperture of perspective to allow a wider 

acceptance of social and cultural knowledge in 

understanding and advancing future behavioral 

possibilities. A behavioral approach allows the 

development of cross-cultural capability to help 

engage the culture groups that are certain to be 

found in mission activities. The point to be made here is that the label ‘sense 

making’ contains complementary approaches and that there are behavioral 

and human interface components involved. 

The SOF mission 

demands confronting 

bias and opening the 

aperture of perspective to allow a wider 

acceptance of social 

and cultural knowledge 

in understanding and 

advancing future behavioral possibilities.
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Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

The SOF mission often requires more than just data and information collection; rather, it often demands behavioral and social skill-based competencies to elicit and analyze local social and cultural knowledge and then to act 

in appropriate ways to influence the population. Developing the behavioral 

end of sense making best serves the force, and cross-cultural competence 

builds that capability.

3C 

3C provides access to sociocultural knowledge that will help in traditional 

and alternative analysis and with sense making. 3C also allows access to 

others’ perspectives to ascertain their intentions and meanings of behavior. 

In the process, it mitigates cognitive and cultural biases due to a greater 

appreciation of the population’s reality. In short, cross-culturally competent 

personnel have a narrower knowledge gap in which to insert their own cultural TOM. Additional competencies can facilitate successful interactions 

across cultural boundaries useful for intelligence professionals who deploy 

or take assignments in foreign countries to engage in collection or work in 

partnership capacity. 

3C is composed of the following skill-based competencies.42

Cultural self-awareness. The cognitive awareness of one’s own worldview and belief and value system, the biases that follow, their influence 

on others, and how to self-regulate when appropriate;

Cultural learning. The skill of learning about one or more cultures 

through observation, reflection, and research, to include the learning 

of “culture-general” concepts43 utilizing learning and data acquisition 

techniques to gain cultural and regional knowledge;

Perspective-taking. The ability to perceive events the way others do and 

understand how other peoples’ cultural values and assumptions affect 

their behavior, paired with the ability to suspend judgment and withhold 

personal or moral judgment until sufficient evidence and/or data becomes 

available.44 This requires insight into others’ thoughts, motivations, and 

concerns and enables understanding of cultural behaviors. Engaging in 

perspective-taking promotes the forecasting of others behavior or reactions within their cultural context. 
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JSOU Report 18-2

Participation/Observation. The use of participation and observation 

skills necessary to elicit the kinds of sociocultural data from culture 

members to help reveal patterns of behavior and 

their TOM.45 Participant-observation (PO) is the 

foundational qualitative research method for cultural studies. More than just a means to directly 

elicit data, successful PO offers a means for creating and sustaining cross-cultural relations while 

also providing an approach to gather and validate 

the TOM of those individuals and groups integral 

to mission success. PO can promote sense making 

and mindfulness, especially when the individual 

encounters foreign or novel cultural behavior that 

surprises or confounds the existing understanding of cultural reality.

Cross-Cultural Communication Competence (4C) 

Adding one more layer to this set of skills—communication—presents a 

deeper set of foundational skills that promote 4C. As a foundational set of 

skills, 4C reduces misunderstandings in social interactions while increasing 

the likelihood of eliciting critical information in culturally diverse environments. These skills are rooted in actions and behaviors that are intentionally 

repeatable and goal-directed during interaction and use appropriate and 

effective communication processes to successfully navigate an intercultural 

encounter. There are five “culture-general” 4C skills that are transferable 

across cultural and linguistic divides: 

1. Leveraging communication style

2. Employing effective interaction skills

3. Active and appreciative listening

4. Managing paralanguage use and perception

5. Decoding nonverbal messages46

These skills are critical to learn and manage especially when the mission 

is dependent on the ability to communicate intent and understand meaning. 

More than just a 

means to directly 

elicit data, successful 

PO offers a means for 

creating and sustaining 

cross-cultural relations 

while also providing 

an approach to gather 

and validate the TOM 

of those individuals 

and groups integral to 

mission success.
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Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

In the qualitative approach, especially in engaging methods that depend 

on extracting socially-based knowledge, the quality of communication is 

connected to the quality of the relationships. 4C is the ability to effectively grasp 

non-verbal and extra-linguistic means of 

communication and to compare across 

cultures.47 Inherent in this competence is 

the act of conveying and understanding 

meaning with people from two or more 

cultures different from one’s own. Cross-cultural communication involves 

a comparison of interactions among people from the same culture to those 

from another culture. This approach to 4C allows for skill and knowledge 

development to better communicate with more than one culture group.

Rich Points

One final note before leaving this section on developing a field method for 

SOF. Michael Agar suggests a good means for accessing foreign culture 

groups’ TOM. As explored earlier, cultures only become “visible” in relation to another culture. In a way, this makes complete sense. People daily 

move through different (sub)cultural affiliations seamlessly within their own 

societies. There is little that strikes a difference between the groups and the 

patterns of behavior they exhibit. For Agar, “global and national histories 

blow through communities like a hurricane. ... in a line attributed to Roy 

D’Andrade, studying culture today is like studying snow in the middle of 

an avalanche.”48

Agar suggests that to make the complexity of a group’s TOM more discernable, one should look for cultural markers, called rich points.49 Agar 

posits the use of rich points as “moments” when the familiarity of similar 

systems confronts those cultural outsiders who are defined by a different 

set of cultural markers and who are unfamiliar with the new contexts and 

situations. These moments are means to start to understand differences. 

For instance, Sands says: “I go from surfer to runner to AARP member and 

adapt to the behaviors necessary to be a member. Intimacy breeds familiarity.”50 Transitions and, as Agar suggests, translations between cultural 

groups do not produce dissimilarity. Yet, the kind of operations SOF engage 

Cross-cultural communication involves a comparison of 

interactions among people 

from the same culture to 

those from another culture.
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JSOU Report 18-2

in produce juxtapositions and fissures between groups where dissimilarity 

can be extreme and meaning difficult to discern. 

In many places SOF deploy, there are myriad (sub)culture groups “that 

feature an array of affiliations based on traditional markers such as ethnicity, 

tribe, clan, religion, language, bounded geography, but also features such as 

extremist groups that form around extremist ideology, political issues/topics, 

and others that are energized through internet/social media.”51 These affiliations, and inclusive patterns of behavior, are then defined by rich points in 

terms of in-group markers or symbols. Markers help define group members 

and are often undetectable to outsiders, but when discerned become a valuable “relational” tool. 

Here is a quick example from one of the authors:

I love to surf and enjoy reading about and teaching evolutionary 

biology. In earlier works, I approached surfing as an expression of 

spirituality and as behavior that invoked a neurobiological response 

that is or universal to religiosity and ritual. I admit to once having a 

Darwin “fish” on the back of my beat-up Mazda pickup surf truck 

along with the required number of surf stickers; I had my cultural 

markers and they captured more generally two cultural groups I 

took membership in: surfers and anthropologists. One day, playing around with designs, I drew a Darwin Fish on a surf board and 

labeled underneath, Praise the Barrel and Worship the Wave. I made 

it into a sticker and pasted it in a conspicuous place on my rolling 

Mazda billboard. I had taken markers that identified me as a surfer 

and an anthropologist/biologist/or one who accepts evolution and 

created a unique marker that drilled down more discretely into a 

cultural group that had an even smaller membership. Naturally 

the sticker promoted conversation as it created dissonance. There 

is a large Christian surfing population in southern California and 

Christian surfers would see the sticker, see the wave, the “fish” and 

read the words and would give me signs of support; other surfers 

not religious would see the sticker, the “fish” with legs and take away 

the intent to be surfing was my religion. There were only a handful 

that connected the meanings of the marker as intended. 

Rich points indicate differences worth pursuing. The more familiar 

with the cultural group, the fewer the rich points emerge. However, the less 
33

Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

familiar with cultural groups, the more numerous and profound the rich 

points are; metaphorically, for the less familiar and uninitiated, the rich 

points come in waves. In a sense, rich points become indicators of difference and the observer’s lack of understanding of meaning about members 

of a cultural group.

Another example of the messiness of culture is the situational assignment of identity markers and the levels of identity that only come to play in 

one context versus another. For instance, one of the most obvious identity 

markers encountered in Afghanistan was a poppy farmer in the southern 

rural part of the country. Yet, the farmer and his behaviors could have also 

been aligned with other markers, such as, and in no priority, a Muslim; 

former Mujahideen of the nine-year war with Russia (which put him at one 

point, as a U.S. ally), of Pashtun ethnicity, more specifically, a rural Pashtun 

in southwest Afghanistan; a Durrani Tribesman; a farmer; a member of the 

Kahn family (and its messages of social respect/land/money); and a Dari 

and Pashto speaker. These are all represented by symbolic or behavioral 

markers, each salient to the person. Understanding the correlation between 

marker, identity, and behavior is based on context of the interaction or can 

be inferred from observation and will help determine interpretation and/or 

inferences of behavior, and ultimately help reveal TOM. 

There is no single list of indicators that will work for every possible set 

of circumstances. A social uprising may be preceded by changes in people’s 

attire in one place, by graffiti in another, and by changes in the place women 

feel safe to go in another. However, there are some commonalities. In social 

science, observers learn some of these and, more importantly, learn to notice 

new ones when in the field. Many with overseas travel and work experience 

already do this intuitively. The challenge is to make this ability more systematic by investing the knowledge it produces into operational and strategic 

planning and execution. 

The key to success is to define a plurality of cultural groups and their 

alliances, to discern TOM and meaning of behavior for each individual or 

group, and their connections with other groups. This plurality significantly 

captures the human domain in high-risk security areas featuring instability, 

insurgency, or environments and cultural groups caught up in extremist/

terrorist activity. The Malinowski Model can be used to identify changes in 

baseline TOM assessments by providing a continuous monitoring of local 

behaviors while also testing initial interpretations through repeated attempts 
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JSOU Report 18-2

to reproduce group intent and meaning of behaviors. This approach also 

highlights changing behaviors and prompts the rich point discovery process 

to probe the reasons for the changes and analyze what the implications might 

mean for future actions and operations. 

Moving forward, the Malinowski Model will 

become increasingly essential for SOF ability to 

perform successfully in the cultural complexity 

encountered in their missions. This performance 

includes the development of cross-cultural competence to promote and sustain relationships and 

partnerships with a host of actors while fostering and applying qualitative methods to discern 

and better analyze sociocultural data useful for 

identifying patterns of behavior and their meaning. The Malinowski Model answers the need for 

deeper understanding of foreign populations’ 

behavior to aid in the discovery of indicators for 

warnings of impending behaviors as the mission 

unfolds. Much of this more advanced need involves gathering and analyzing sociocultural “intelligence” not from secondary or tertiary sources, but 

from one’s own means to develop, invest in, and sustain data sources among 

the culture groups. 

The Malinowski 

Model can be used 

to identify changes in 

baseline TOM assessments by providing a 

continuous monitoring of local behaviors 

while also testing 

initial interpretations 

through repeated attempts to reproduce 

group intent and 

meaning of behaviors.
35

Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

Chapter 3. The Value of a Qualitative 

Approach for SOF

Almost overnight, it seems, MI [military intelligence] analysts have 

gone from templating Soviet motorized rifle divisions to assessing the 

capabilities of clans, tribes, gangs, and militias. The practice of intelligence has evolved from a military science in conventional operations to a military art in COIN. With that change came the challenge 

of learning about different peoples and their environments.52

The Spirit of Malinowski in Helmand

The most compelling example of a qualitative approach suggested in this 

monograph can be discerned from operations involving U.S. Marines 

and British soldiers in Nawa District, Helmand Province, Afghanistan—a 

sparsely populated agricultural region. Cowed into submission by the Taliban, the farmers were distant from the troops, which prevented interactions 

and useable intelligence on the Taliban. In July 2008, sweeping in from the 

air, 800 Marines landed and spread out across the district, setting up about 

two dozen smaller remote bases planted in corn fields, near small villages. 

Over five months of engaging in COIN tactics, the turnabout in relations 

between the Taliban and farmers—and that of U.S.-led forces and the same 

farmers—were night and day. During those initial days, the small Marine 

posts existed as many of the same villages they neighbored: little power, 

just radios, and little need to classify material. Intelligence resources were 

pushed down to the company level and the paramount mission of the bases 

was establishing familiarity with the villagers living nearby. In effect, over 

those five months in Nawa District, many Marines were collectors, not just 

riflemen, and observers of patterns of behavior of villagers and key leaders 

alike. They were collators and preliminary analysts who also produced daily 

written findings, or without too much of a stretch, field notes that chronicled 

stories in the true spirit of Malinowski. 

Eschewing sophisticated data networks, as that capability was ill-supported, the battalion intelligence officer hosted nightly radio “chats” with 

the scattered analysts who read from their notes containing local activity, 
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JSOU Report 18-2

and, perhaps more critically, learning what other analysts were privy to over 

the preceding 24 hours. From the field “daily reports incorporated a wide 

variety of sources: unclassified patrol debriefs; the notes of officers who had 

met with local leaders; the observations of civil affairs officers; and classified HUMINT [human intelligence] reports.”53 The officer amassed all the 

information into one detailed report and from that somewhat lofty perch 

provided back to each analyst questions that lingered through days and 

follow-on questions in response to recent activities. 

Consider this: what each analyst provided was his own narrative that 

tracked social interactions, attributed and interpreted the meanings that 

flowed, and carefully crafted interactions between villagers, farmers, and 

the U.S. military. Consider also that the intelligence officer was compiling 

a meta-narrative of a district’s worth of social interactions and their meanings. While each analyst was in effect charting patterns of behavior in his 

area of influence, the officer was doing the same over the whole district to 

derive a district-level TOM. 

At the start of this five-month endeavor, and as familiarity grew on those 

points of logistical interest that were close to the Marines’ hearts and mission, the terrain was identified and charted; the “location and conditions of 

roads, bridges, mosques, markets, wells, and other key terrain,”54 a sort of 

network of how villages were related and connected. Once charted, this physical infrastructure became set and offered a backdrop for the more important 

assignment of unlocking the perceptions of the farmers, as Marines pushed 

to capture their allegiance. Often, the Marines posed questions to the farmers 

that probed the farmers’ feelings about the insurgents, their feelings of security, an ongoing query about disputes and their resolution in villages, their 

families, their kinship, even their tribe. The Marines were looking specifically 

for wedges, “anchor points” to insert between the Taliban and farmers and 

drive them apart, and wean them from Taliban control. What the Marines 

were getting were patterns of behavior in their responses while being provided updated narratives from each respondent. The Marines were then able 

to overlay those answers with others from the past (captured in their written 

reports) and, consciously or not, start to see patterns of behavior over time. 

The motherlode did not stop there. The Marines could do this with multiple individuals (triangulation), and over time and space, create a shared 

cultural reality for their area, which in effect was not so much geographically-defined as it was interactionally defined by social relationships. Earlier, 
37

Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

identity markers were explored as part of a re-imagining of culture, and in 

these interactions the identity roles assumed by farmers would have become 

explicit and important to discovering the differences in patterns and the 

contextually-based meaning that went along with those patterns. Because 

the Marines not only observed, but also invited themselves into and became 

a part of the daily lives of the villagers, they became active participants. 

In their daily interactions and observations, it became apparent that the 

Taliban power structure was undermining the village elder approach to 

traditional governance. To open the potential for an alternative approach 

to governance that incorporated the traditional and collective power of 

the village leaders, the Marines looked to strengthen ties with the leadership and promote the benefits of stronger ties with the Afghan government 

representatives. 

The battalion commander partnered with the district governor, traveling with him constantly and participating in 

impromptu meetings with citizens to build 

their confidence in Afghan and U.S. security. 

To demonstrate the benefits of working with 

the Afghan government, the battalion facilitated development projects that addressed 

grievances identified through coordinated 

surveys of the populace by Marines and civilian officials. These efforts paid off. The district 

governor persuaded elders to reconstitute a 

traditional council featuring locally selected 

representatives from each sub-district. The 

council served as the primary advisory board to the Afghan government in 

Nawa District.55

Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn et al use Nawa and 

other examples as illustrations of the power of a more responsive intelligence 

network, underscoring the emphasis of an intelligence process that is both 

structured but malleable to conditions and needs on the ground. However, 

just as critical to the success in Nawa and other places was the ability of 

the Marines on the ground to be effective social and cultural “fieldworkers” engaging in an informal cultural research protocol that was systematic 

and formal in many ways; the emphasis on written notes, the participantobservation, the questions that probed and allowed both Marine and villager 

To demonstrate the 

benefits of working with 

the Afghan government, 

the battalion facilitated 

development projects 

that addressed grievances 

identified through coordinated surveys of the 

populace by Marines and 

civilian officials.
38

JSOU Report 18-2

to construct shared social and cultural knowledge and then explore the 

meaning of that knowledge in interactions and observations. The Marines 

composed narratives that allowed their interpretations to be funneled up 

the chain to the deputy commander where it was integrated into a master 

narrative for the district’s TOM.

More interestingly, during their five months of research, the Marines 

were also building a compendium of core beliefs that could provide a deeper 

understanding of group motivation and the culturally-attuned reasons for 

those motivations. Ironic as it may be, this understanding of core beliefs 

becomes the basis for posing questions about past, current, and future behaviors and interests. Just as important, being able to access and understand core 

beliefs allows the right kinds of questions to be asked for framing future military actions. In the traditional intelligence process, this kind of investigative 

discovery, with its emphasis on long-term, intensive, qualitative-based, and 

self-conscious testing of validity, is rarely engaged in or utilized. What drove 

the Marine’s success was the power of the fieldwork and informal research 

design they implemented. Nawa is a perfect example of how to fold ethnographic theory, design, and application across a host of SOF core activities. 

An Overview of the Qualitative Approach

Culture from the Ground Up—Shared patterns of behavior 

Perception is strong and sight is weak. In strategy, it is important 

to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced 

view of close things.56

The idea of culture as a closed, repeating, and stable system muddies the 

waters and limits the hunt for valid interpretation. As Agar suggests, culture 

never is, or was, a static object, but a dynamic set of experiences formed 

around rich point markers. However, the concept of culture has great utility 

if approached from the perspective that humans share distinct categories of 

behavior, such as modes of alliances and social networks, featuring varying 

degrees of the importance attached to kinship, the sense of heritage, norms 

of power sharing, values on and systems of exchange and how wealth is 

conceptualized, the role of religion, and more. 

Americans like to think of culture in terms of familiar categories: religion, politics, economics, social structure, values, customs, music, and other 
39

Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

forms of entertainment. These can be discerned in American society, and, to 

be fair, social scientists and anthropologists are complicit in telling everyone that list of categories matters. Such categories can be useful to a point, 

especially when introducing a systematic and somewhat abstract approach 

for understanding the complexity of human behavior and providing a useful 

lattice to begin investigating the diversity of behavior. However, most people 

have not organized their lives per these categories. Politics and kinship are 

simply not consistently separate things. It is important not to get so trapped 

in typical categories and biases that how things are truly connected are 

overlooked. 

Cross-cutting Processes 

All cultures have approaches, or processes, to events and activities that crosscut domains. For instance, peoples’ social networks are as important as social 

structures, and include components such as family, kin, lineage, clan, tribe, 

and other associations. However, there are universal forms of capital that 

act to connect and anchor networks, such as economic capital (referring to 

money or goods with financial value), human capital (referring to resources 

accruing to an individual through education, effort, innovation or creativity, 

including personality, knowledge, and skills), social capital (referring to the 

value of the resources people can potentially access by virtue of their social 

network ties), and symbolic capital (referring to the resources accruing to 

an individual through honor, prestige, and recognition).57 Groups of people 

mobilize deeply held aspects of core beliefs and values for their own purposes 

and construct ideas about individual and group identity that influence what 

alliances they make and how they react to outside influence.58 Every group 

relies on narratives and themes that say something important about how 

the group sees the world and itself to reinforce who those comprising it are. 

These show up in art, literature, media, speeches, myths, etc., and can be 

hard for the military to see. Unfortunately, they are often the most important 

aspects of culture for security purposes.

Core Beliefs

At the heart of identity, what motivate and sustain group formation, are sets 

of cultural core beliefs (and values that result from these beliefs). They are 

intrinsic to individual motivation as well as group behavior. Beliefs are ideas 
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JSOU Report 18-2

about the world that are held to be true by the believer. A belief is a “simple 

proposition, conscious or unconscious, inferred from what a person says or 

does.”59 Stemming from a lifetime of experience, core beliefs are underlying 

and foundational assumptions based on empirically-driven experiences of 

one’s reality. They are held firmly and are resistant to change. Core beliefs are 

manifested in reinforced patterns of thought and behavior “defined by our 

various assumptions and expectations, as well as our ideas about the way the 

world works, collected over time.”60 These truths become set in belief systems 

and act to connect people together. To the authors, social and cultural core 

beliefs are ideas that individuals or groups hold to be true and natural and 

can include, but are not limited to, knowledge concerning: identification of 

members of a cultural group across space; the dynamic nature of identity 

formation given the interactional, strategic and operational context; the 

meaning and location of sacred and cultural spaces; causality and the relationship to ideology and the influence of agency on members’ future behaviors; authority and the concept of right and wrong; the meaning of exchange; 

the meaning and value of success; and the nature of health and consequences 

of ill health, among others. Operating at the fault lines of perception, SOF 

often must navigate through or around local core beliefs that constitute the 

groups’ social and cultural reality. If a belief system says X is true, then SOF 

working in that environment must address X and manage the discordant 

cognitive and cultural biases resulting from their own perspectives of reality. 

Research on cultural modeling suggests that cultural behavioral schemas 

are underpinned by core beliefs and act as motivational forces for individual 

and group behavior, as cultural schemas are the result of a lifetime of socialization and experience and are prone to stability and endurance despite environmental changes. Core beliefs act to motivate behavior through schema 

model activation, so grasping the meaning of these core beliefs can provide 

a roadmap for designing appropriate influence activities for larger populations or even local subgroups. Consistent with the complex international 

and transnational security landscape, core beliefs often become a response 

to external stress and uncertainty, often found in radical change inherent in 

terrorism, insurgency/COIN, and instability. Core beliefs become “pressed 

into service, reformulated to resolve cultural, social, and biological crises ...

[or] mending or reconciling ruptures between past and present, and between 

old and new worlds.”61
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Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

A recent body of multidisciplinary research on sacred values details how 

a type of value can promote terrorism or terrorist acts and, alternatively, be 

used to understand terrorism.62 The notion of sacred values can be looked at 

in two ways: (a) as a construct, a preference that resists material scale, and 

(b) a process where the sense of “sacred” is applied to this preference that 

may or may not be grounded in a religious context. This “sacredization” is 

set in motion via any number of reasons. It has been suggested people generate sacred values by embedding the value, or belief preference into religious 

ritual. Conflict between cultural groups enhances the importance of these 

values, “the intensity of participation in religious ritual and perceived threat 

to the group lead people to transform otherwise mundane and secular phenomenon into protected or sacred values.”63

This study suggests that sacred values represent just a subset of a larger 

set of beliefs, (cultural core beliefs, or core beliefs for this study) and values 

that with greater clarity can be useful in forming an understanding of sets 

of assumptions and behaviors about cultural groups that are active in the 

interactions and observed behaviors of culture actors. Core beliefs are ideas 

that form how people see themselves, their neighbors, the groups they belong 

to, groups that make up their world, as delineated by cultural markers, and 

the future and can include such ideas as causality, group members’ relationship to the cosmos, the nature of beauty, sense of family, the value of life, the 

nature of exchange, identity formation, sources of truth, and many others. 

Sacred values offer valuable insight into how values are enshrined in 

religiosity and transcend everyday behavior, the process of negotiation, and 

the influence of sacred values on what is negotiated, and perhaps even understanding how terrorists become terrorists. The lessons of COIN, however, 

indicate that there is greater need to understand the genesis and meaning of a 

larger array of cultural behavior of the many cultural sub-groups from their 

own perspectives. For instance, “Current AFRICOM missions are largely 

based on cooperative relationships and many of their programs emphasize the training of local participants.”64 Specific to conditions of high risk, 

knowing core beliefs and values of the cultural groups can provide insight 

into what motivates behavior and can provide knowledge significant to low 

density missions critical to influencing the behavior of those cultural groups. 

Getting at these core beliefs and their meanings can be facilitated through 

observation of different cultural expressions, such as ritual, myth, narrative, 

art, or more fundamental social processes such as the nature of kinship 
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JSOU Report 18-2

relationships, the cultural meaning carried in exchange, the relationship 

between heritage and the physical landscape, and many other forms. Eliciting these expressions and their meanings can be accomplished through a 

variety of methods. The approach advocated in this monograph borrows 

from Agar’s concept of languaculture—the notion that culture and language 

are inseparable and language consists of a host of knowledge sets about 

the speaker and his or her culture. This includes a person’s biography; the 

nature of the situation he or she is in; perspectives on history, politics, ideology, traditions, rituals; and much more in addition to the more mundane 

language components, such as grammar and vocabulary.65 Fieldwork involving focused participant-observation and language familiarity can elucidate 

these expressions and meanings. Eliciting and understanding languacultural 

elements depend on ethnographic skills and methods utilized in social science fieldwork,66 such as those employed by many Human Terrain Teams. 

SOF can develop these skills in culture and language programs. Engaging 

cross-cultural competence (mitigating powerful cultural biases and making 

sense of complex and surprising or even disturbing behavior) or thinking 

differently, is critical to ascertaining fidelity of cultural reality of those cultural groups.67

Application of core belief understanding and motivation of behavior can 

help meet mission requirements in a variety of cultural environments. It is 

clear that core beliefs affect and motivate behavior, which impacts strategic, 

operational and tactical planning including specific mission types, training, 

MISO, influence and public diplomacy, and conflict resolution. Influence 

efforts may range from overt to clandestine, and as experience in COIN 

seems to indicate, those in cultural groups will shift their behavioral patterns in response to that influence. Several approaches to “Phase 0”/“Left 

of Bang”68 activities are too narrowly prescribed to be of much use during 

adversity; people mobilize around narratives or ideas that are different than 

those predicted. Low density missions established for influence or data collection depend on intimate and extended interactions within the human 

domain and would benefit greatly from leveraging core belief understanding. That understanding is only valid and accurate to context, location and 

factoring in the influence of other actors in the human domain. The search 

for core beliefs is useful when analyzed in the context of local groups and 

considering those transnational actors as savvy and creative beings who will 

change their strategies if they feel efforts are impeding them or subverting/
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Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

corrupting their message or traditions. This “left of influence” approach 

will impact the effectiveness of military operations in a myriad of foreign 

environments, including critical pre-engagement periods.

Core beliefs, and identities that coalesce around them, are often coopted by groups to mobilize segments of a population to create change, for 

instance through civil disobedience or even violent insurgent and terrorist 

tactics. Mobilization is “the process of how people’s attention, conversation, and behavior start to crystallize around 

some element or marker of identity.”69 Mobilization intensity and behavior often depend on 

how viscerally core beliefs compel individuals 

and groups to action. Conflict can oftentimes 

involve group members drawing ethnic or 

racial distinctions that create difference in the 

adversary where during periods of peace these 

distinctions made little difference in interactions between the groups. On the precipice 

of conflict, mobilization can be an indicator 

of danger, “if people start to talk about their 

problems in terms of ethnic differences and to emphasize their own ethnic 

identity, it may lead to their simplifying a complex problem and blaming 

it on another group. It becomes easier and easier to simplify, to blame, and 

then to think about doing harm.”70

Rwanda: A Brief Case Study in Mobilization71

This process of mobilization can be seen in the racial and ethnic history 

of colonialization and afterwards in Rwanda.72 Prior to colonization, relations between ethnic groups in the area were peaceful and featured identities that were socially accepted and had been for centuries. Periods of first 

German, then Belgian colonialism drew sharp distinctions between the two 

major ethnic groups, the majority Hutus and the minority Tutsis in terms of 

ethnic and racial characteristics. The Tutsis were favored by the colonizers, 

and while colonial powers maintained control and those distinctions were 

favored, the elevated status of the Tutsis were more or less institutionalized in 

Rwandan society. With independence, Hutus became the governing power. 

Toward the end of Belgian rule, and chaffing at the more severe inequality, 

Conflict can oftentimes 

involve group members drawing ethnic or 

racial distinctions that 

create difference in the 

adversary where during 

periods of peace these 

distinctions made little 

difference in interactions 

between the groups.
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JSOU Report 18-2

Hutus began to mobilize around the very same racial distinctions the Belgian 

colonizers attributed to the Tutsis. It is important to understand salient identities and how people can mobilize, or take collective action, around them in 

specific contexts for particular purposes. For example, the Hutu elite used 

identity factors that included racial attributes to separate ‘us’ from ‘them.’ 

People can use identities to dehumanize others in conflict, while justifying 

abhorrent actions. 

A 30-year period of episodic off and on conflict ensued against Tutsis who 

had fled the country and formed a resistance army. Tensions can simmer for 

centuries without surfacing or spinning into conflict and actual violence. 

Even through the colonial period, tension may have smoldered below the 

surface and reinforced by the status and privilege accorded to the Tutsis, 

violence and ultimately conflict was managed by the existing power structure. However, independence brought a radical change to that structure and 

shortly thereafter, 300,000 Tutsis fled in the face of Hutu nationalism. These 

exiles formed an opposition—the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF)—which 

periodically would strike back into Rwanda. Over the next three decades, 

Rwanda experienced unrest and the violent retaliation against Tutsis living 

in Rwanda by the Hutus would follow after each incursion by RPF rebels. 

A power sharing agreement was reached in 1993 between Hutus and 

Tutsis following a civil war and ceasefire. Tensions remained high with 

scattered violence despite public acceptance of the agreement. Mobilization 

can be a first step toward violence if a leader and/or leadership, in the case 

of the Hutus, accentuated patriotism as a means to overcome discrimination against them. This eventual path to conflict was solidified as people 

were led to believe that options for redressing human security deficiencies 

or inequalities were exhausted. However, before the agreement could take 

effect, the Hutu government was plotting to maintain its hold on the government. A variety of methods engaged by official and unofficial sources 

served to mobilize Hutu emotions and whip up hatred and hysteria against 

the Tutsis. The 1994 plane crash that claimed the sitting president, a Hutu, 

was the final catalyst that precipitated five months of genocide against the 

Tutsis. Eventually, the Tutsi-led resistance army defeated the Hutus and 

reconciliation was reached. Determining the role of race and/or ethnicity 

in conflict is just a first step to understanding why it is occurring. A more 

faithful representation of reasons leading to conflict requires determining 
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Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

what has prompted mobilization in the face of past periods of history where 

groups did manage relations.

Cultural Interfaces

Accessing and identifying core beliefs involves mediating cultural interfaces 

that exist in transactional spaces between two or more cultural groups; some 

defined by state, tribal area, language group, and 

some defined by relations fostered by the internet 

and social media that cross-cut these more traditional cultural boundaries. Cultural boundaries in the human domain are partial and fuzzy. 

Rich points emerge in the cultural interface where 

meaning of behavior is missed or not understood 

and become portals into defining and comprehending unique “cultural” behaviors. This interface is not a clash of opposites, but a layered and 

entangled interactive space where culture groups 

that come together and is different than either of the individual culture 

groups. So, in effect, the experience is novel to each. To operationalize the 

Malinowski Model ethic,

What is needed is a reconsideration of a different conceptualization 

of the cross-cultural space, not as a clash of opposites and differences but as a layered and very complex entanglement of concepts, 

theories and sets of meanings of a knowledge system ... (and) should 

be primarily about bringing them into conversation ... in order to 

negotiate a new set of meanings and reinterpretation of meanings.73 

Being able to decipher that cross-cultural space demands the use of rich 

points that can accelerate accuracy of understanding and the ability to better 

comprehend past, contemporary and future behaviors. Core beliefs can be 

subsumed within a variety of cultural expressions such as folklore, narrative, 

relationships, ritual, and others. These are often beyond the knowledge or 

access of those military and civilian personnel on the ground. 

Culture benefits only if one can accurately reflect the interactive environment. Core beliefs were introduced as meaningful and powerful representations as foundational ideas held to be true that can compel individuals and 

Rich points emerge in 

the cultural interface 

where meaning of 

behavior is missed or 

not understood and 

become portals into 

defining and comprehending unique 

“cultural” behaviors.
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JSOU Report 18-2

groups to act. However, care and consideration must also be given when 

conceptualizing labeling/bounding human interactions and activities within 

a discrete “unit.” This labeling brings its own set of analytic and perceptual 

biases. In the remaining chapters, this study will explore the nature of qualitative methods to access such foundational elements as core beliefs. 

The Qualitative Approach: Revealing Core Beliefs

We need a powerful mode of argumentation, a mode that ensures we 

can represent our representations in credible ways. In such worlds, 

a systematic argument enjoys a star-spangled legitimacy. We need 

a way to argue what we know based on the process by which we 

came to know it. That’s what I seek, not as the only possible representation our field can offer, but as an essential lever to try and 

move the world.74

Integral to a qualitative approach, and the Malinowski Model advanced 

in this monograph, is that the process of discovery also includes, besides 

investigation and analysis, interpretation of the observation to identify patterns of behavior (relationships) and to make sense of the meaning of that 

behavior. Human behavior spins on the underlying belief and value systems 

of individuals and culture groups. Core beliefs have been identified to frame 

cultural expressions such as kinship/family, exchange, governance, and more. 

Yet, retrieving those foundational beliefs or “truths” depends on an effort 

and design that considers collecting, interpreting and analyzing a variety of 

data and experiences to secure insights in and advance understanding of a 

larger reality or components of that reality in a “natural setting.” More generally, this approach, referred to as a qualitative approach seeks to understand 

phenomena in context-specific settings, such as “real world setting [where] 

the researcher does not attempt to manipulate the phenomenon of interest 

... [and the] phenomenon of interest unfolds naturally.”75

On the other hand, the quantitative approach engages through systematic 

empirical methods an investigation of observable and repeatable events, 

actions, relationships, and behaviors. The analysis of these phenomena 

attempts to arrive at causal determination, prediction, and generalizability. 

Quantitatively-derived data, such as surveys and other means to gather sociocultural “Big Data” involved in sociocultural analysis can provide context 

for the more intimate and local qualitative approach. The Malinowski Model 
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Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

advocates the need to ferret out core beliefs and offers a broader appreciation 

for cultural reality of those in natural social and cultural settings. Obviously, 

in this natural setting, there is difficulty in 

producing findings based on “statistical 

procedures or other means of quantification.”76 Considering that social and cultural 

knowledge is in part constructed in the 

relationships that form in SOF’ everyday 

operations, the quantitative approach does 

not take into account “the many interaction 

effects that take place in social settings.”77

Perhaps the most important element of a 

qualitative approach is that inquiry and discovery should lead to “illumination, understanding, and extrapolation to similar situations.”78 Reliance on 

Big Data only to describe patterns and trends at a macro-level does not do 

justice to the local variations on any larger theme, and may in fact, distort 

or hide patterns and behaviors of the local population (see figure 3).

Quantitatively-derived data, 

such as surveys and other 

means to gather sociocultural “Big Data” involved 

in sociocultural analysis 

can provide context for the 

more intimate and local 

qualitative approach.

Behaviors

Patterns/Trends

Core Beliefs

Quantitative

Methods

Quantitative

Methods

Surveys/

Big Data

Rich

Points

Figure 3. Conceptual depiction of the general utility 

quantitative and qualitative approaches.
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JSOU Report 18-2

As discussed regarding messages of identity, the meaning of those knowledge expressions are based on a social and culturally-situated context. In 

other words, knowing and being able to represent a social and cultural reality 

of others is, as Malinowski surmised, critical to understanding group actions 

and activities. For SOF, entrance to this reality could be through questions 

asked or considered during their time spent with culture groups, such as 

how people make sense of their everyday lives and identify specific strategies people use in making sense of their world.79 Even more generally, the 

meaning that comes from knowledge construction is derived from questions 

that start with “why,” “how,” and “what.” These questions entail canvassing 

complex knowledge from the people with whom SOF associate to reveal 

certain attributes or life experiences—knowledge about their experience and 

the contexts influencing their relations to others, behavioral choices, and 

attitudes. These are the kinds of questions that can be answered by qualitative approaches to research. 

Characteristics of Qualitative Research

In general terms, qualitative research is person-oriented rather than variableoriented. It involves investigation that is firmly set in the observation of 

and meaning derived from social interactions and relationships of an individual or group, and not inquiry that considers the expression of variables 

as the level of social intimacy he investigator and investigation gets to the 

individual or group. Finally, qualitative research implies a focus on depth, 

rather than breadth, of the population. The general goal of any qualitative 

research is understanding of social and/or cultural phenomenon, and the 

orientation of research is motivated by methods geared toward discovery. 

General goals80 revolve around: 

• Exploration. What kinds of behaviors or phenomenon are present 

and how are they related? 

• Description. What do behaviors look like when observed or described? 

What do the meanings of behaviors describe in terms provided by 

those who exhibit behaviors or are familiar with them? What are 

descriptions of materials, actions, activities, and associated meanings?

• Comparison. How do behaviors, meanings, and identities compare 

with individuals, groups, or context? 
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Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

• Model Testing. For SOF, model testing can refer to: How do patterns of behavior and activities conform to existing social and cultural 

understanding or experience? 

More to the point, qualitative research uses subjective data to extract 

meanings, concepts, definitions, characteristics, metaphors, symbols, and 

descriptions of things that are held by or reflective of a society, tribe, culture group, village, an extended family, or an individual and other associations. The discovery process occurs within the context of relationships, 

location, or activity or action, at a specific point in time or extended over 

time. Finally, discovery is not usually limited or narrowly defined to groups 

or phenomenon; the more holistic in scope and in knowledge objectives, the 

more opportunity to discover additional connections or relationships that 

carry meaning and motivation.

“Just So Stories”

You may have heard the world is made up of atoms and molecules, 

but it’s really made up of stories. When you sit with an individual 

that’s been here, you can give quantitative data a qualitative overlay.81 

In a dusty Afghan village with sun blazing, an exchange between an 

American military sergeant and an Afghan elder illuminates the power of 

narrative to help understand actions “in the moment” while also interweaving the message of how Afghans “see” their landscape.82 It is a far different 

perspective and reality than the American soldier is aware of. The elder is 

asked to help locate nearby Taliban. Says the elder: 

The Taliban are over there—not far away. I would like to tell [the 

Americans] a story. In our country, we grow wheat and we have ants. 

There is no way we can stop the little ants from stealing the wheat. 

There are so many little ants it is almost impossible to stop them. 

I’ve told this story to help the Americans understand the situation 

in Afghanistan.83

The interpreter chooses not to translate the parable and instead offers 

that the Afghan is “telling stories.” This feeds the already impatient soldier’s 

estimation of the elder and Afghans in general and the exchange between 

the two quickly results in a failed objective. If the interpreter had translated 

word for word the story, one wonders about the outcome. Given the sergeant’s 
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JSOU Report 18-2

already set perception of Afghans, he would not have been impressed by the 

story telling and/or would be confounded by the elder’s perspective; in this 

parable, he was confronted with a rich point; a dissimilarity that begs cultural excavation. The sergeant suffers through frames of his own reality that 

limit his ability to comprehend, let alone use the parable then or later to benefit the mission. The Afghan, through his story, was for a moment seizing the 

cultural interface that existed in that cross-cultural space between them and 

exerting power through his knowledge over the “chaos that surrounds him.” 

Writes Vanessa Gazari, author of the exposé on the HTS, Tender Soldier:

Knowing how to read stories separates Afghans from the people 

known in Dari as haraji, outsiders, namely everyone else. The Afghan 

is saying something crucial about the inseparability of insurgents 

from everyone else, and about the dangers of fighting in the weeds, 

where bullets can strike the wrong targets, like pesticides that kill 

the very crops they’re designed to protect.84 

The story may not reveal immediate data that is useful to locating insurgents, but offers an in-depth understanding of what the world looks like to 

a people with a long history caught up in a contested space where insurgents 

and counterinsurgents dramatically impact their well-being, their sense of 

tradition, and more importantly their cultural identity. The story’s value is 

based on several factors: the context, the relationship, the telling, and the 

validity of that story to reveal motivations useful in determining future 

behavior, all dependent on intimacy of interaction. 

People orient themselves in their lives through stories they tell involving 

family, friends, and those that populate the wider cultural world around 

them, as well as their experiences. Paul Durrenberger calls these accounts 

“just so stories,”—stories meaningful and intimate to the people who recount 

them, but not as meaningful to others, who may not share the experience in 

the story but can understand the thread of the story. 

Whatever else these stories are, they are cultural artifacts, just as 

much as a 1965 Chevy, a hand axe, or an episode of Days of Our 

Lives. If we want to learn about a culture, we study its artifacts, 

especially the ones that say something about social relations and 

the culture itself.85
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Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

Listening to and telling stories is a human trait used for thousands of 

years to entertain, educate, relay myths, and pass down important cultural 

information from generation to generation. Translating these stories that 

are meaningful to a wider audience is of primary concern to extracting 

“messages” which house “patterns or themes,” that are relevant to how the 

wider world is designed, constructed, and maintained. Yet in daily lives, the 

everyday drama is associated with village life, or a Shura, a wedding, the 

account of an argument with a kin member, a feud between two families, 

the death of relative and the funeral, the raid that captured teenage girls in 

a rural Nigerian village, and the list goes on and on. These are stories too 

and they are filled with actors that circle in and out of social interactions 

that SOF must navigate and often take part in to advance their mission, but 

more generally to observe to continue to build a repository of information 

and advance with more probability local theories for how individuals and 

groups will act given future conditions and actions. In general, just so stories, 

as James Spradley writes, are “concerned with meaning of actions and events 

to the people we seek to understand.”86

In essence, ethnographers are after meaning of behavior, of symbols, 

artifacts in both kinds of knowledge and expressed through interpretations.87 

Cultural knowledge then forms the basis of interpretation for group members 

and the ethnographer, or for SOF of meaning inherent in behavior, actions, 

and words. Often interpretations of behavior and symbols will vary widely 

between individuals even within a group, not to say between distinct culture 

groups. Identifying areas where interpretations widely diverge can be mediated by Agar’s process of utilizing rich points and Durrenberger’s concept 

of just so stories to hone in on differences and then offer ways to minimize 

the divergence. 

Ethnography, thus, as Durrenberger and Agar, and many other ethnographers have discovered, is the entrance to the cultural knowledge necessary to 

interpret and leverage just so stories. Social and cultural knowledge is essential to live, work, and be a part of a culture group, including kinship groups, 

religious affiliations, governing groups, and other “identity markers.”88 This 

knowledge then becomes the repository of guidelines on how to act, how to 

think, how to believe, etc., in accordance with a group’s expectations. There 

are basically two kinds of knowledge that are useful in explicating, understanding and interacting within someone or some group’s social and cultural 

reality. Explicit knowledge is readily identified, accessed and communicated 
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JSOU Report 18-2

through cultural records, such as, “words, numbers, codes, mathematical and 

scientific formulae, and musical notations. ... and is the knowledge found 

in books, on the web, and other visual and oral means.”89 More specifically 

to understanding social and cultural reality, explicit knowledge can also be 

observable in members of a group or larger society and all members are fully 

aware of aspects of explicit knowledge such as standards of right and wrong, 

typical behavior patterns, technology, etc.90 Social and cultural knowledge 

considers rules and behaviors that guide the nature of social interactions and 

identify rules that govern positions people take and act on, such as rules of 

kinship associations, the social and cultural rules of leadership councils, an 

honor code, and many more. These are seldom written down by the culture 

group that SOF interacts with, but members are “explicitly” aware of them 

through socialization and other social and cultural learning experiences. 

On the other hand, implicit cultural knowledge most often lies below 

one’s consciousness and a person is not aware of how his or her behavior is 

being shaped and influenced by this knowledge, “the assumptions and premises underlying behavior and thought.”91 This kind of knowledge governs how 

group members reflect notions of personal space, rules of social interaction, 

cues to look for to gauge trustworthiness, and others. SOF benefit from 

being somewhat culturally fluent in both sets of this knowledge for obvious 

reasons—they are critical to understand and engage in gaining deeper access 

into the social web of interactions, while also discerning critical pieces of 

interconnected information to further understanding. Minimizing the effect 

of interpretation, and reducing the “cultural” space which is what most ethnographers are after, the alignment of interpretations of cultural reality, the 

more knowledge shared, the less likely interpretation will differ.

To understand the gravity of meaning, interpretations must be based 

on inference—inference of the meaning that is based on both explicit and 

implicit knowledge. This is the critical stage of any successful ethnography. 

How good are the inferences one can draw from what people do—their 

behavior; things people make and use—their cultural artifacts; and what 

people say—their words taken from a variety of spoken (or read) messages. 

Geertz frames this distinction as notions of thick and thin description. Thick 

refers to the meaning behind behavior and its symbolic import in society or 

between communicators, and is composed of facts but also of commentary, 

interpretation, and interpretations of those comments and interpretations.92 

Geertz used the wink as an example of thick and thin. The actual wink would 
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Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

be classified as thin description because it is merely a biological response, 

while the wink from a thick description perspective is looked at as a sign 

which bears cultural as well as contextual meanings as an interpersonal 

communication. 

The success of aligning inference to meaning rests on the ability to reason 

from evidence (perception) and premises (assumption) that is part of the 

process of interpretation. In effect, at the beginning stages, an inference is 

like a hypothesis that through fieldwork is tested repeatedly until there is a 

certainty between ethnographer and culture members that cultural meaning is functionally shared. To move from inference and understanding of 

cultural reality to being able to utilize that reality across the scope of SOF 

missions, it is useful to examine the role and perspective of the ethnographer 

as “insider versus outsider” in respect to the nature of the data collected. 

The Perspectives of Emic and Etic and the Nature of 

Ethnographic Data 

Perspective and interpretation is critical in ethnography. The role of an ethnographer as has been discussed earlier is a dichotomy, or one of insider/outsider trying to get inside “the head” to elicit meaning, but staying detached 

to allow an objectivity to consider meaning from that of the cultural “other” 

and the interpretations of that meaning beyond the cultural other. “This 

dichotomy references the ability to get at mind, intent, and emotion of 

others while still being capable of applying that perspective more generally 

in broader, comparative and methodological terms.”93

One of the critical components of cross-cultural competence is perspective-taking, and the linguistically-derived concepts of emic and etic (from 

phonemic and phonetic) are used to describe the inside/outside roles. Phoneme refers to a distinct unit of sound and a phonetic unit represents the 

signs and symbols that are attached to the sound and give it meaning. Pike 

borrowed on this distinction and applied the label emic to refer to inside a 

system while etic refers to outside a system. In Pike’s formulation, an “etic 

viewpoint studies behaviors as from outside of a particular system [culture] while emic viewpoint results from studying behavior as from inside 

the system.”94 Both emic and etic views are idealized states; an emic perspective strives to represent a system of core beliefs and TOM, or more 

generally, a cultural reality from the mind of an individual who is also a 
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JSOU Report 18-2

member of several culture groups. The etic perspective is useful to draw 

comparisons across a culture group or between culture groups based on an 

external “standard.”95 In other words, certain elements of the etic perspective are consistent with the quantitative approach with which the military is 

highly comfortable, while the emic perspective is consistent with a qualitative 

approach represented here by the Malinowski Model. However, consistent 

with qualitative methods, such as those presented in this monograph, qualitative researchers can utilize both emic and etic approaches without the use 

of quantitative data.

One important distinction is to take the emic perspective and utilize it 

for further means, most likely to inform an etic perspective, while the local 

individual is not motivated to comparatively explore his or her world from 

an etic perspective. 

The emic perspective becomes “localized” in a larger process with 

an end goal much different than an insider’s need to be solely proficient to live within that culture. The outsider must not only be 

at a proficient level, but also to translate that proficiency into data 

useable in an etic formulation. A cultural aptitude will always be a 

barometer of truthfulness and validity of perspective.96

If the SOF member is a cultural native or has spent sufficient time in that 

culture, that may act to “bias” that insider perspective and undermine the 

validity of its utility. The ideal of pulling an insider’s view also is affected by 

the cultural other’s self-understanding “that are often culturally and historically-bound.”97 In other words, in pulling the insider viewpoint the ethnographer is not privy to the socialization of the group experience that influences 

the cultural other. On the flip side, the idealized etic perspective “is a neutral 

rendering of the observer, stripped of ethnocentrism, any Western bias or 

political or social agendas. It also assumes that levels of interpretation have 

been reconciled within the observer.”98 The etic standard, however, is very 

rarely ever achieved without the tools and commitment to self-reflection.

Further complications develop the “deeper” one gets in familiarity with 

culture groups. Cultural reality is framed by core beliefs and as such, it also 

reflects a “public representation” of meaning. That is why it is critical for 

SOF to be part of that public “space” and those who make up that public 

web of interactions. Interpretation of meaning involves squaring individual 

representations and meanings that may be divergent with a goal that may 
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Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

involve building a collective interpretation through a collage of members. In 

other words, it is important to expose others’ 

reality, as well as make sure it is also authentic and tracks with those who are represented 

in interactions. Individuals will express perspectives that differ slightly or perhaps more 

definitively with others who are part of that 

culture group or identity. By triangulation, 

the more perspectives mined, the more valid 

the data-inspired interpretations stand in 

for validating cultural reality to those being 

interviewed. What comes back to SOF is a 

multilayered narrative that considers an amalgamation of different views 

of reality through just so stories, including the author as compiler of all the 

perspectives gathered. 

For SOF to consider only an etic view risks missing deeper and more 

useful explanations for the reasons why a culture member thinks and acts 

the way he or she does. The end state does not end at inferences of multiple 

cultural realities. Marvin Harris considers the role of that insider’s perspective useful only if it provides a generalized theory that can speak to needs 

and illuminate an array and motivator of behaviors.99 On the other hand, 

considering only an emic perspective results in verifying indigenous substantiations and what they might mean by beliefs or actions. This leaves SOF 

short of more useful explanations for why cultural insiders act or think the 

way they do. Aiming for a more general understanding beyond just description of what motivates behavior is critical. The end goal is to understand 

what generates and motivates cultural actors, and an emic-only “bias” of 

description versus more general comparative analysis may hinder that effort.

The Malinowski Model and perspective-taking ethic require both an emic 

and etic approach. The need to consider “voice”—the “insider” or “native” 

perspective—is important if the assumption is that perspective-taking is 

a critical skill-based competency to support a more relevant intelligence 

process “on the ground.” Moving from the specific emic to the general etic, 

the analysis should not be limited to what culture members say or think—it 

should seek to explore the issue from a range of analytical lenses. A HTS 

social scientist explored that limitation when he concluded the goal of eliciting information from strangers in the Afghan countryside was not the 

Interpretation of meaning involves squaring 

individual representations 

and meanings that may 

be divergent with a goal 

that may involve building 

a collective interpretation through a collage of 

members.
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JSOU Report 18-2

type of culturally-informed, emic/etic infused knowledge that was the result 

of fully-engaged ethnography that produced rich and “thick” description 

capable of yielding prediction, but allowed for the enlargement and depth of 

the universe of how knowledge is created and talked about.100 For example, 

poppy in Afghanistan was a symbolic paradox that existed between an emic 

perspective of its utility to local villagers and critical to their economy and 

the strategic perspective of what that poppy meant to funding the Taliban 

over time. An emic perspective could have better informed policy making 

through local example.

So, why are emic and etic concepts valuable to SOF? This framing of perspective should reiterate the need to think differently about how to approach 

and consider access to core beliefs and cultural reality of individuals and 

culture groups. The Malinowski Model 

necessitates eliciting data with an emic perspective in mind while recognizing the utility 

of data must be aggregated to enable an etic 

perspective. This approach would combine an 

insider’s cultural reality and a more objective 

comparative view of that reality. “For example, it has been argued that an emic approach 

serves best in exploratory research, whereas 

an etic approach serves best in testing hypotheses.”101 Managing the emic and 

etic perspectives helps mitigate the array of cognitive and cultural biases that 

inhibit data elicitation and distort the “analysis” of core beliefs, rich points, 

just so stories, and ultimately TOM. 

Additionally, based on the public construction of social and cultural 

knowledge, an emic perspective allows entrance into a variety of cultural 

realities critical to SOF during daily interaction while an etic approach allows 

a more general understanding of a common cultural reality to fit culture 

groups/identify markers and provides a foundation to consider future events. 

Finally, engaging this two-step approach can aid the entrance to and involvement in the social web of relationships in and across culture groups. 

Though this may seem to be a behavior unconsciously adopted when 

interacting with others from a shared cultural reality, the introduction of 

cultural dissimilarity and risk-filled ambiguity invite bias into the information-gathering process. A heads-on approach acknowledging the influence 

of these factors on cognition is important. By promoting a process which is 

The Malinowski Model 

necessitates eliciting data 

with an emic perspective 

in mind while recognizing 

the utility of data must be 

aggregated to enable an 

etic perspective.
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Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

deliberate and qualitatively-rigorous, it is possible to generate more nuanced 

and effective understanding of not just the evolving construction of cultural 

reality but how that reality strategically relates to the mission and, more 

generally, intelligence gathering.

As demonstrated by its intuitive application by the U.S. Marines in Nawa, 

Helmand, ethnography has extraordinary value for SOF for populationcentric missions. Ethnography consists of several 

different applied research methods, each with critical skills that can be taught in the schoolhouses 

to elicit the just so stories, cultural rich points, 

and emic and etic distinctions, and that enable 

analysts and operators to move from culturally 

specific encounters to culturally generalizable 

insight. Over the course of a career and multiple 

deployments regardless of the region, SOF will 

benefit from the Malinowski Model’s approach 

to discerning social and cultural knowledge. The 

most difficult aspects of the Malinowski Model are (a) simply appreciating the value of a qualitative approach with respect to the more accepted 

quantitative approach, and (b) becoming comfortable with the vocabulary 

associated with a qualitative approach. In the next chapter, the Malinowski 

Model is brought to life as an applied ethnographic tool. Chapter Four provides a brief survey of qualitative, ethnographic research methods, and the 

Malinowski Model’s application to SOF core activities will become clearer.

Over the course of a 

career and multiple 

deployments regardless of the region, 

SOF will benefit 

from the Malinowski 

Model’s approach to 

discerning social and 

cultural knowledge. 

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Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

Chapter 4. Applied SOF Ethnography

“Applied” Ethnography and Methods

An applied research perspective has matured in social and behavioral 

sciences, especially anthropology, over the last generation of the disciplines. Applied anthropology is the application of knowledge, method, and 

theoretical approaches to address the more pressing global and societal issues 

and problems that affect communities today.102 Ethnography has been a critical method to this perspective in domains where its textured, multilayered 

view and access to cultural reality can best inform responses by governments, the public, and private or charitable organizations. These domains 

include the environment (drought, floods, earthquakes, etc. where the most 

affected are people living on the margins or in unstable or conflict-ridden 

regions) education, the aging, health and medicine, nutrition, and even business and marketing. Indeed, many of these areas of concern involve working with many of the same marginalized and peripheral populations and 

cultures with whom SOF work today. The Malinowski Model is an example 

of this applied perspective and can feature an array of qualitative methods, 

of which ethnography plays a central role. As explored already, developing 

and advancing cross-cultural capabilities, such as cross-cultural competence 

and cross-cultural communication competence, are critical to be successful 

in applying qualitative methods. 

Applied anthropology is typically research or issues-based and is often 

fielded through academia or non-profits; the practice of anthropology is an 

effort that utilizes people trained in anthropological skills and knowledge 

outside of academia for “practical” purposes.”103 Practicing anthropologists 

generally work in public service and government agencies, such as the DOD, 

and though a growing legion of them work in market-based and private 

industry, many work in community and international development agencies 

such as USAID, World Bank, United Nations agencies, and international 

nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).104 Many of these organizations 

have worked closely with, or are associated with DOD, and SOF in missions 

in humanitarian assistance/disaster relief activities in addition to the more 

prominent environmental, human rights, and health and food-deprivation 
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issue areas. It is not surprising that anthropologists who worked in the HTS 

program were aligned with the applied ethnographic methods. HTS members worked in the same cross-cultural space as many of the international 

governmental organizations and NGOs and have the need for similar, if not 

identical, cross-cultural capability.

The ability to interact with individuals and culture groups helps increase 

understanding of local behavior. This capability can also assist with identifying core beliefs and building a robust mode of cultural reality to provide 

greater clarity to potential future behavior. The applied ethnographer builds 

relationships with stakeholders in local communities to help seed and implement programs that lead to self-governance and self-determination. The 

Malinowski Model correlates well to the mission of organizations like Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as conventional forces supporting efforts beyond the wire during COIN operations. 

Although Kedia and van Willigen write that it is “through advocacy that 

anthropologists build long-term, collaborative relationships with communities”105 the work of SOF to aid local populations and provincial and national 

security efforts depends on also establishing trust and dependability. 

In their advise and assist roles, SOF, like applied ethnographers, implement, monitor and assess the efficacy of collaborative efforts between personnel and local groups. “From this work, the ethnographer gains a level 

of intimacy with the program or project and is therefore able to contribute 

alternate models or develop intervention strategies aimed at altering behavior.”106 Applied ethnographers work toward solution-oriented ends since their 

fieldwork is designed to support, aid, or further a program, goal, or community-based need. At the foundation of applied ethnography is an intense 

and self-directed method of participant-observation. Like Malinowski, the 

efforts of SOF are at least semi-autonomous in mission and operations. 

Discovery through observation and inquiry is critical for SOF to affect 

mission goals and promote influence in real-time, and adapt to unexpected 

events during missions. The pace of military operations certainly demand 

an accelerated framework for ethnographically-derived data elicitation and 

analysis. Ethnographic methods with utility to SOF include participantobservation, focus groups, rapid ethnographic assessment efforts and a 

social justice-inspired participatory ethnography. SOF missions are such that 

elements of each can be useful approaches to gaining, understanding and 

applying core beliefs and elucidating cultural realities. However, elements 
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Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

of rapid assessment and participatory ethnography can be extremely useful 

to meet accelerated timelines for engagement with a variety of stakeholders, 

and to promote collaborative approaches to 

security end-states. 

Qualitative Methods

Traditionally, anthropologists gathered 

their data at their leisure through their participation and observation. The image of 

Malinowski sitting on the verandah of his 

thatched hut while the Trobriand afternoon 

drifted by is appealing, yet at the same time out of step with the contemporary pace of applied work. Faster turnaround and restrictions on the intensity of fieldwork necessitates modification of current methodology, if not 

the birth of new fieldwork methods altogether. Even though ethnographic 

methods have increased in diversity, adapting to the new cultural and social 

landscapes, the essentials of a century of participant-observation107 still are 

foundational as are the stories that make up the fabric of cultural knowledge 

for both cultural members and ethnographers. 

The first method described is participant-observation, which is the primary qualitative research method that provides in depth access to individual 

cultural realities. A partner of this method is interviewing key informant(s), 

also referred to as “gatekeepers.” The introduction to and trust of the gatekeepers is established through extended periods of interaction. Key leader 

engagements offer additional opportunities to capture different perspectives 

from those in leadership positions. Participation and observation allow the 

ethnographer checks and balances on what has been told, ensuring another 

filter of validity. 

Participant-Observation (PO)

Immersing in the local area and culture groups is the hallmark of participant-observation. The term expresses the duality of the roles, observer and 

participant. The experience of participant allows access to “insider” knowledge as the ethnographer is part of the construction of that knowledge, 

while observation requires a certain distance or detachment to consider 

Ethnographic methods 

with utility to SOF include 

participant-observation, 

focus groups, rapid ethnographic assessment efforts 

and a social justice-inspired 

participatory ethnography.
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JSOU Report 18-2

the meaning and cultural reality to then understand how SOF efforts fit in 

that cultural reality. 

Essential to both academic and applied ethnography is the relationship between ethnographer and cultural members. This critical 

relationship is dependent on the development of trust, good intentions and, more importantly, a sense of collaboration between the 

ethnographer and those involved in the study or research project. 

Whereas traditional anthropology was used to elucidate an umbrellalike theory of human behavior, ethnography in support of social 

issues and concern for human suffering relies on the development 

of collaboration to be used to address issues.108 

The method leads the participant-observer in SOF to a subjective role 

as a participant using the knowledge through that personal investment to 

gain further access and interaction within the group. This is reminiscent of 

classic SOF Access, Placement, and Rapport activities expressed through 

civil affairs units, amplified as well with MISO activities through integrated 

operations. This study suggests that there is much to gain by providing a 

theoretically-informed qualitative approach and application that can advance 

SOF method and outcome. 

With genuine access and placement, SOF stand to earn additional knowledge of local dynamics.109 Interpreting the meaning of that knowledge and 

applying it to a deeper understanding also requires the participant observer 

to be objective and attentive to recording context, interactions, and intentions to those active in discovery. Besides observation, other methods include 

natural conversations, interviews of various sorts, checklists, questionnaires, 

and unobtrusive methods.110 These are critical elements not often used in 

collection of atmospherics, but are essential to expanding what could be 

insightful and useful information. 

As noted earlier, core beliefs underlie patterns of behavior. Participantobservation and other ethnographic methods are most effective in settings 

that enable the access to “organized routines of behavior” and set the stage 

for “establishing rapport within a community and learning to act in such a 

way as to blend into the community so that its members will act naturally, 

then removing oneself from the setting or community to immerse oneself 

in the data to understand what is going on and be able to write about it.”111 
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Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

SOF relevant knowledge is accessed through social relationships involving 

the ethnographer and local groups. 

The tools and skills of an effective participant-observer are keen observational skills, being adept at writing descriptive and informational field 

notes (an essential skill as a primary repository for data), cross-cultural 

competence (including cross-cultural communication), effective interviewing techniques for an appreciation of culture-general knowledge, and the 

patience of Job, among others. 

As a final word on applied ethnography, the method engages both the ethnographer and the gatekeeper from the local population or cultural subgroup 

in a highly interactive, socially in-depth, frequent interaction. Eliciting the 

kinds of information necessary requires that both sides enter a trust-based 

negotiation; the ethnographer realizes that if the relationship goes south, so 

does the faucet of data from that individual, and interactions with people 

around the gatekeeper will likely diminish or just as impactful, information 

provided may not be truthful or accurate. In high risk environments and 

missions, this can prove to be deadly. There are ways to triangulate data to 

check for authenticity and social and cultural accuracy between gatekeepers 

and observation, but if trust is compromised, its effect may extend beyond 

the inaccuracy of the data. 

Focus Groups (FG)

Focus groups can help shed light on cultural behaviors and practices that 

could potentially be useful in assessing products or exploring the need for 

a future product or service. Focus groups (FG) are a collection of culturally 

knowledgeable members of equal or about equal status who agree to reveal 

their knowledge base under the direction or guidance of an interviewer 

posing specific questions or topics of experience.112 Successful focus groups 

feature a give-and-take of opinion, perceptions, and perspectives which can 

become a dynamic consensus of commonalities on topics. FG can also provide a forum for cultural members with a range of opinions and beliefs on 

topics and issues to provide their input to determine the similarity or diversity of viewpoints and to validate them through the triangulation method 

(different individuals providing similar viewpoints) leading to corroboration. When dealing in applied, neighborhood or community-based research, 
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focus groups provide essential needs assessment with an evaluation of the 

program’s or project’s social and cultural impacts.113

Rapid Assessment Procedure (RAP)114 

RAP produces “sufficiently rich understandings of the insider’s perspective 

for the design of additional research for initiating activities that should be 

started promptly.”115 Rapid assessment response, engaged from one to six 

weeks, tackles issues or problems characteristic of the developing world or 

countries at risk of failing. RAP is often applied to crisis situations such as 

disease epidemics, environmental disaster, or hunger. RAP is particularly 

suited for SOF since such areas often lacking stability and security are prone 

to insurgency or are a terrorist safe haven, and attract large-scale migrations 

of groups seeking safety from insecurity. 

The operational environment where RAP takes place in practice is often 

similar to where SOF deploy and could therefore aid SOF in their missions 

to consider solutions or approaches to addressing immediate issues. RAP 

involves multidisciplinary teams of 

technical/scientific and social science 

researchers that focus on the need for 

accelerated collection of data. RAP 

teams explain reasons for crises and 

emergencies and strive to locate solutions to remedy the causes. They also 

forecast how to integrate the technical remedy in a locally appropriate context, recognizing “there exists the surrounding and as well interfacing cultural facets that are essential for delivery of health service, acceptance of 

crop or medication that may not be understood as being part of the problem 

and solution.”116

Methods of participant-observation, such as informal and ad-hoc conversations, interviews with local gatekeepers, and observations of behaviors 

and practices augment quantifiably-based information. Data gathering may 

also involve sociocultural data sets useful to SOF, such as census, soil morphology, climate averages, and so on to create not just a population-based 

“social and cultural map,” but also to provide a holistic cultural reality and 

understanding of behaviors and practices which can inform the viability of 

solutions and, consequently, the range of feasible options. Even though time 

RAP involves multidisciplinary 

teams of technical/scientific 

and social science researchers 

that focus on the need for accelerated collection of data.
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Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

constraints diminish the development of critical and familiar relationships 

with foreign populations, in crisis conditions commonality of purpose promotes its own set of relationship accelerators that augment the data gathering 

experience. RAP as an approach, and an attitude, is an effective evaluation 

technique for quickly evaluating a population’s sense of reality, for identifying mid-course corrections in activities, and for determining the direction 

of follow-on and enduring efforts. 

Participatory Research (PR)

PR perhaps can offer the most benefit and value to SOF in environments 

where interagency programs and projects such as those found in counterinsurgencies are critical to mission objectives. PR has been tied to an overall 

program of social justice, one that features improvement of quality of life 

for many disadvantaged and marginalized peoples. In one aspect, it informs 

policy development and implementation invigorated “democratically” to 

include those who will be affected most by the policy, that is those “who have 

been previously neglected or perceived as merely passive beneficiaries or 

objects of policy research.”117 COIN operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan 

featured environments, conditions, and populations with the characteristics of those most benefited by PR including ethnic, tribal, or other culture 

groups living in both marginal communities and developed countries. The 

DOD response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa was an example of this 

approach, as specific endeavors by military and civilian personnel aided 

developmental efforts to build a more sustained effort against Ebola. 

An example of PR is that of Participatory Action Research (PAR)–not to 

be confused with RAP described above. Advocacy for populations is at the 

heart of PR, but PAR considers the ethnographer as an active participant in 

research projects that, through impacting policy revision or development, 

promote a better quality of life for the underrepresented. At the heart of PAR 

are ethnographers helping empower communities through education, civil 

action, and data discovery to better improve conditions. 

Another example of PR is participatory mapping (PM) where cultural 

data is translated by locals in collaboration with applied ethnographers into 

a geospatial format. PM has “roots in participant-observation and collaborative research [and] represents the fullest involvement of local people who 

are trained to do research or applied work with the researcher, facilitator, 
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or team.”118 In a review of PM projects in the Amazonian region in South 

America, local gate keepers were utilized to develop and distribute surveys, 

interview local landowners and residents on land use, and help coordinate 

the development of community maps of cultural and subsistence areas of 

significance. “Much of the research was utilized by the indigenous peoples 

to help in management of lands, local empowerment through recognition of 

territorial boundaries in response to encroaching agriculture, and providing 

a repository (database) of spatial resources, to name a few.”119

The U.S. mission Operation Observant Compass in Uganda to hunt 

Joseph Kony, the head of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), provides an 

application of PM. Green Berets have worked with the local inhabitants who 

reside in the jungle infested “area of operations ... the size of California” 

to develop a map that is usable by U.S. personnel in their operations.120 The 

U.S. commanding officer admitted that one of the most difficult elements 

of the mission is simply navigating from point A to B. “Out here, the roads 

exist only on a map,” the commander said.121

The cultural knowledge of natural terrain is embedded in the view of 

the local people and is tied to their own recognition of the terrain and the 

natural features which they contend with when, traveling; how and where 

they travel, the impact or influence of their own belief system on acceptable 

trails and paths, who they visit when they travel and other considerations. 

The SF personnel elicit the cultural knowledge that holds this information 

from defectors, which turn out to be mostly children. “Their accounts contain locations such as ‘the camp near the bee’s nest in the hollow tree trunk,’ 

or ‘the river crossing near the old pile of bones,’ per a U.S. intelligence officer 

with direct knowledge of the operation.” Overlaying the locals’ “cultural 

topography” onto known GPS markers then “enabled U.S. Special Operations Command Africa to build a map of the world, as seen through the 

eyes of an LRA child soldier.”122 This produced a living dynamic geological 

and spatial rendering of the critical landscape, but one that was the product 

of a child LRA soldier and how they saw their entire universe. “The result 

enabled the Green Berets to anticipate LRA movements. Commanders have 

used this knowledge to carry out operations that have sharply reduced the 

remnants of the LRA.”123
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Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

Provincial Reconstruction Teams—Application of 

Applied Ethnography 

Until a few years ago, no one in the US military would have believed 

that instead of dropping bombs and engaging in fierce combat, it 

would one day be drilling wells, directing traffic, building schools 

and organizing local elections—and that it would be doing all of 

these things not after but in the middle of a war. Finally, no one 

would have imagined that these civilian tools would end up being 

described as the most-effective weapons on the road to victory.124

There is a decade worth of programs and efforts that were infiltrated 

with informal qualitative approaches in OEF and OIF that had varying 

degrees of success (or failures depending on the perspective of the one offering the assessment). PRTs perhaps provide the best allegory to some of the 

approaches considered in applied ethnography to include PO, RAP, and elements of PAR. PRTs were project-oriented efforts that combined military and 

civilian personnel who basically delivered COIN to local populations in the 

form of human security and quality of life development and reconstruction 

endeavors to extend the reach and influence of the nascent Afghan government. As Field Manual (FM) 3-24 notes, “PRTs were conceived to extend 

the reach and enhance the legitimacy of the central government into the 

provinces of Afghanistan at a time when most assistance was limited to the 

nation’s capital.” At the height of their operations, there were twenty-six 

100-member teams, 12 of which were U.S.-led while the others were led by 

NATO-led International Security Assistance Forces members. 

PRT missions primarily revolved around four key concepts supporting COIN tasks: 1) engage key government, military, tribal, village, and 

religious leaders in the provinces regarding local development priorities; 

2) build the relationship between the local tribal and regional governments and the Afghan national government; 3) promote the development 

of Afghan security through the development of the Afghan national military; and, 4) bring humanitarian aid and assistance when needed. A former 

state department diplomat who worked on PRT teams described the effort 

as “basically bottom-up diplomacy, bottom-up development, bottom-up 

counterinsurgency.”125
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PRTs were examples of the kind of efforts that General Flynn et al inferred 

were necessary to stave off conflict. Through acting as a clearinghouse for 

most COIN activity in the provinces, PRTs consolidated efforts by the DOD, 

Department of State, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and even the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to build 

schools and roads, upgrade or in many cases build infrastructure, dig wells, 

install sewer lines, and implement other community projects. “PRTs represented a less costly venture than standing battalions and brigades and 

could attend to the population security needs more aggressively and with a 

greater reach of expertise.”126 Due to this coordination, and on-the-ground 

efforts, PRT members spent considerable time beyond the wire in pursuit of 

the developmental and reconstruction mission. Given the emphasis of the 

military on developing intelligence on insurgents and supporting counterterrorism, PRTs also acted as “eyes and ears” for policymakers and rear echelons 

to include brigade commanders providing on the ground assessments and 

working reflections on sociocultural developments characterized as “rapidly 

morphing multiple insurgencies.”127

PRTs have been called a “mixed” bag of success and failures for internal 

reasons, as well as a strategic miscalculation on the time and effort to do 

COIN “right.”128 Some of those failures can be traced to a deficit of crosscultural capability in PRTs, especially amongst the military personnel. 

PRTs operate on a very fluid and culturally complex landscape. They 

more than occasionally misread actions and activities occurring 

on the ground producing incomplete awareness and an inability to 

predict future events. In addition, Afghan organizations and agencies and their civil service component are not very advanced and are 

shot through with corruption issues. Military personnel make up 

most of the PRTs, creating experience-drain with the 12–18-month 

deployment cycle of the military. That, coupled with constantly 

evolving, and not always in a good way, Afghan governance and a 

society adapting to/or generating new insurgency efforts, has hampered PRT progress and overall the success of COIN.129

PRTs engaged in the same kind of projects usually associated with solution-oriented applied ethnography, for some of the same goals and for the 

advocacy of the local culture groups. Their programs considered multiagency partners, featured time-constrained environments and confronted 
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Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

many of the same issues that affect human security in other regions of the 

world. Yet the PRT mission and goals extended beyond personnel rotations, 

so losing PRT staff with local and organic knowledge reduced overall effectiveness of the efforts as circumstances evolved over time. COIN in the end 

was a military-led and driven mission, so PRTs served quite well as intelligence collectors and collators, even though predictive capability was limited 

at least to the kind of structured intelligence process that was in place at the 

time. 

General Flynn et al provide an example of this conflation of data need 

and project success in OEF.

Development officials earn goodwill through small-scale but quick 

irrigation projects in one district, while officials in a neighboring 

district see little public enthusiasm as they proceed with an expensive but slowly developing road construction project. Policymakers 

in Europe and the United States need the “nitty-gritty” details of 

these projects to detect the reasons for their different outcomes and 

to assess whether similar patterns exist with projects elsewhere in 

the province. In short, strategy is about making difficult choices 

with limited people, money and time. The information necessary 

to guide major policy choices, for better or for worse, resides at the 

grassroots level.130

It is safe to assume that given the kind of knowledge and skills endemic 

to a qualitative approach, application of thinking differently and a full range 

of cross-cultural capabilities, PRT efforts would have been more successful. 

This of course is based on anecdotal and lessons learned data, since there are 

no metrics or other formal programs of assessment developed to measure 

the success of PRTs. However, even though PRTs were phased out in 2014, 

and there have been no efforts to duplicate them in other regions where U.S. 

personnel are deployed, the same type of developmental and reconstruction 

work continues to be done by other USG agencies and NGOs in these same 

sectors and SOF will directly or indirectly be part of those efforts. PRTs 

provide a model that reflects the importance of applied ethnography to these 

kinds of missions.
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Discussion

Ethnographic fieldwork offers advantages not available to a desk-bound 

intelligence professional or even a limited time-of-duration collector. From 

a tactical perspective, time in the field immersed as an insider with opportunity to participate and observe can promote more faithful renderings 

of cultural reality through eliciting data from 

cultural members. Extended interactions and 

being able to participate in cultural events and 

activities can promote a deeper cultural understanding and social and cultural adeptness with 

local populations. The emic/etic distinction 

applies most readily to collectors and fieldworkers. However, there is a plethora of open source 

material accessible to those not in the field—

much of it first and third persona narrative that 

can be quite effective for discerning an emic or 

insider’s perspective and can add a social and cultural fidelity to operations. 

This distinction should also be a consideration of analysts and other professionals as they work toward doing perspective-taking and applying cultural 

sense making to elicit meaning of foreign cultural behavior. 

SOF missions need a functioning cross-cultural capability to navigate 

complexity, understand and analyze behaviors to benefit future strategy and 

missions, and advance local and on-the-ground intelligence to other DOD 

and U.S. organizations. In other words, efforts to date to understand local 

culture groups and their behavior have been concentrated at the operational 

“etic” level at the expense of the tactical “emic” level. It is at this emic level 

where excavating local meaning from behaviors and activities can distinguish potential threat from normal social and cultural discourse and mitigate the risk of mission failure. This cross-cultural capability is immature 

in existing SOF capability and lacking in SOF preparation, especially in the 

learning programs. 

It is equally important that SOF become adept at building relationships 

with the appropriate gatekeepers for collecting information, understanding 

the relationships and alliances that weave in and out of the areas, asking 

the right kind of questions, and engaging in the right observational skills to 

recognize patterns of social and cultural behavior that exist in expressions 

Extended interactions 

and being able to 

participate in cultural 

events and activities 

can promote a deeper 

cultural understanding 

and social and cultural 

adeptness with local 

populations.
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Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

such as kinship, exchange, that can provide evidence for motivation. It is 

important to realize that gatekeepers—those individuals chosen or serendipitously selected to solicit information—come in all shapes and sizes and 

it is usually the local farmers, shopkeepers, or others who have a unique and 

telling perspective or view on local events and individuals. Often, it is important to engage gatekeepers across the span of different groups or identities 

in a local area, class, family/lineage, tribe, occupation, etc. Focusing only 

on key leaders (KL) will distort the cultural reality being accessed and offer 

limited understanding and meaning of local behavior.

Applied anthropology and ethnography feature a host of techniques to 

explore common knowledge and skill sets including observation, interviewing, taking useful field notes, elements of thinking differently, and a command of the understanding of how cultural systems operate. These skills 

require a cross-cultural capability that earn access to data through successful social interactions such as by engaging critical perspective-taking and 

cultural self-awareness, looking for rich points, and applying sense making 

to excavate patterns of behavior and meaning in observation and narrative. 

Finally, managing the emic/etic perspective of the applied ethnographer can 

produce significant social and cultural understanding through identifying 

core beliefs and eventually a consequential model of cultural reality. These 

skills form the foundation for success in applied ethnography, just as crosscultural capability can be said to be critical to the different SOF missions. 

In fact, the skills of applied ethnography are critical for navigating gray 

zone activities and hybrid warfare where local perceptions and dynamics 

constitute the basis for activities short of war. SOF certainly have experience 

in these arenas, but lack the theory and proper training to apply them to 

the fullest utility to include building an authentic representation of social 

and cultural reality.

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Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

Chapter 5. Thinking and Bias: The Legacy 

of Human Cognition

After conducting more than 400 interrogations, as well as working 

with Iraqi informants, I’ve had the opportunity to see the enemy 

as he is, a human being with a range of motivations, loyalties and 

ideologies. I discovered the enemy isn’t crazy or immoral, or twisted, 

though his reasoning may be alien to the Western understanding 

of sanity and morality.131 

Previously the concept of cognitive schemas was briefly introduced. In 

this chapter, they are explained along with how they drive misunderstanding and misinterpretation when uncritically accepted. The impact of 

popular “population-centric” military approaches to understanding groups, 

namely the HT and HD concepts, are reviewed to illustrate the subtle but 

important influences on how SOF think about and interact with foreign 

populations.

Schemas represent related patterns of thought that are a result of the 

makeup of the cognitive system, which is updated as the mind incorporates 

new knowledge or information. Schemas are “knowledge structures that 

guide interpretations, inferences, expectations, and attention.”132 Schemas act 

to interpret incoming information and expand and/or create new schemas to 

handle novel or surprising foreign behavior. Schemas are interrelated, can be 

redundant in function, and can process across the breadth of incoming information same or similar behavior, events, and activities. There are schemas 

for a variety of knowledge sets. Examples include schemas that correspond 

to archetypes, social roles and social knowledge, worldviews, and cultural 

understanding that enable “individuals to make sense of their experiences.”133

Schemas pervade the military—in fact the military could not function 

without them given the scale of campaigns, the pressures associated with 

time, and the need to limit the risks to which the force is exposed. These 

schemas are most clearly associated with basic training, doctrine, analytical 

tools, and planning processes. Unfortunately, schemas also create cognitive biases and blinders when they become ends unto themselves instead 

of a means to an end. This monograph likewise suggests a new schema for 
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cultural understanding.134 The Malinowski Model is critical to making sense 

of foreign cultural behavior, but its utility is also self-consciously bounded; 

the veracity of the Malinowski Model rests 

on awareness of the influence of schemas 

and the implicit biases that are carried with 

them. 

There is a rather extensive understanding 

of the effect of bias on human cognition over 

the last 50 years since being identified and 

defined by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in 1974.135 Human cognition features a 

group of mental processes that include attention, memory, producing and understanding language, learning, reasoning, problem 

solving, and decision making. Cognition 

includes accessing and making sense of incoming information. Making 

inferences about that information leads to forming and sustaining beliefs 

about the state of the surrounding social, cultural and natural environments; 

in other words, how one thinks affects what one thinks about. Thinking is 

also the bedrock of analysis with the mind basically forming a collection of 

integrated mental models shaped by socialization, collective and individual 

worldviews, professional imperatives, and cross-cultural experience. These 

schemas form and are reinforced by a system of beliefs that contextualize 

meaning and guide individuals’ and groups’ cultural behavior.136

Fast and Slow

The evolutionary development of the human mind is based on an efficient 

application of schemas. Having to access and then quickly sort through a 

torrent of information that could lead to either survival or death promoted 

the evolution of a human capacity to make sense of this information to better 

predict outcomes—critically important in environments where threats to 

human ancestors, both overt and covert, are embedded in nature.137 This is 

still the case especially for SOF in a very culturally complex landscape rich 

in threats. Being aware of the influence of and purposefully managing the 

selection of appropriate schemas is important for many contexts SOF will 

find themselves in, less so for others. Kahneman casts thinking, or cognition, 

The Malinowski Model is 

critical to making sense of 

foreign cultural behavior, 

but its utility is also selfconsciously bounded; the 

veracity of the Malinowski 

Model rests on awareness of the influence of 

schemas and the implicit 

biases that are carried with 

them.
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in the frame of two systems.138 System 1 is a fast operating, almost automatic, 

system that generates impressions and feelings and uses these to construct 

accurate schemas and utilize predictive capability in familiar environments 

with little overt thinking effort or voluntary control. System 2 is the slower, 

reasoned, and attention-focusing system that attends to mental activities 

that demand complex computations. It is often associated with the subjective 

experience of agency, choice, and concentration.139 Slow thinking develops 

and reinforces an individual’s beliefs and provides deliberate choices based 

on what System 1 generates.140 System 1 works in a space where input aligns 

with existing schemas and judgment of input is needed quickly. The outcome 

of System 1 thinking is to define and focus possible options to a singular 

path. System 2 works best when there is a complex and/or novel space and 

the possibilities of judgment are based on innovative perspectives.141

The intrinsic and foundational effect of TOM and its implications are 

profound for working with foreign populations. Cognition, and its inherent 

ethnocentrism, often satisfies the cognitive imperative to “think like them” 

by drawing on personally-developed, established schemas sustained by the 

evolutionary need to align, predict, and create shared intentions. System 1 

matters during DA and combat missions, which have as an ever-present variable, high threat environments. System 2 is intrinsic to an array of missions, 

such as FID, UW, VSO, CA, and MISO. In fact, the case can be made that it 

is intrinsic to operations and policy formation, but SOF are rarely educated 

or trained in making System 2 more relevant and supportive of the skills 

necessary for facilitating a successful qualitative approach.

Unintended consequences of fast and slow thinking occur when novel or 

new information activate the schemata, and System 1 automatically assimilates the sensory input into existing schemas. In new, novel, or unfamiliar 

environments and situations, there will be a torrent of new information. 

Having as much understanding of the social and cultural systems at play 

can help parse some of that information into existing schemas. Sands argues 

that a foundation of culture-general knowledge can act as an accelerant to 

understanding as that knowledge is transferable across culture groups.142 

Based on a series of cognitive actions or behaviors, the interpretation, meaning and relevance of the information and its application as knowledge toward 

understanding future behavior can be skewed. This is generally referred 

to as bias, and is a result of an error in System 1 processing. The causes of 

skewing include ignoring or forgetting input, the recentness of a schemata’s 
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activation, expectation on what is or will be experienced, and the confidence 

in the schema. Sometimes, even when System 2 activates to aid in processing 

the complexity of incoming information, these biases often go undetected 

or uncorrected. System 1 errors, discarding what could be relevant information because it does not align with schemas, is a very real danger and leads 

to the formation and sustainment of biases, “systematic errors in specified 

situations.”143 Often, if the input does not align at all or there are holes in 

the sequence of information, existing schemas will be applied to complete 

the processing. The effects of cognitive bias are discussed in the next section 

and later in this chapter. 

Cognitive Bias

Cognitive biases are just tools, useful in the right contexts, harmful 

in others. They’re the only tools we’ve got, and they’re even pretty 

good at what they’re meant to do. We might as well get familiar 

with them and even appreciate that we at least have some ability to 

process the universe with our mysterious brains.144

Cognitive biases are psychological tendencies that cause the human brain 

to draw incorrect conclusions.145 They are the result of how human cognition 

evolved; thus, they are consequences of a powerful legacy built into human 

DNA. Some researchers suggest there are over 100 different cognitive biases—

and that might be on the low side.146 Such biases can be considered a form of 

“cognitive shortcut,” often based upon rules of thumb, and include errors in 

statistical judgment, social attribution, and memory.147

Biases are not inherently negative; rather, they are tools to advance cognitive efficiency. To try to eliminate them works 

against a person’s cognitive “wiring” and their 

essential roles. However, people can attempt to 

mitigate or manage their unintended consequences 

in environments and situations where they can do 

more harm than good. 

Biases impact several areas of how the military 

and civilian intelligence organizations process 

and analyze data. Bias impacts the reliability and 

authenticity, or the utility, of socially or culturally qualitative “gathered” 

data and experience. It also affects the success of cross-culturally navigating 

Bias impacts the 

reliability and 

authenticity, or the 

utility, of socially or 

culturally qualitative 

“gathered” data and 

experience.
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behavioral complexity and biases related to probability determination or 

prediction. Finally, decision making can significantly affect the use of the 

scientific method which is deliberately designed to minimize such bias from 

any one observer.148

With the skills of the Malinowski Model, SOF stand to have even more 

relevance to the intelligence process. The next few sections draw distinctions 

between intelligence analysis and the Malinowski Model, and offer a means 

to prevent to the extent possible the cognitive and cultural bias inherent in a 

structured analytical approach. Four areas of human cognition are notable 

in the environments in which SOF operate: information overload, deficit of 

meaning, the need to act fast, and how to know what needs to be remembered for later (following categories adapted from Benson, 2016).149 Success 

in making sense of these environments depends on SOF having to integrate 

themselves into ongoing local social interactions. These interactions are 

governed or guided by core beliefs and framed by a cultural reality often 

foreign to SOF personnel. Being able to access beliefs depends on methods 

pioneered by Malinowski and adapted and expanded on in contemporary 

qualitative approaches. All four contain a slew of biases that affect cognitive 

performance. 

1. Information overload. The need to filter out extraneous data; prone 

to confirmation bias.

2. Deficit of meaning. Parsing behavioral complexity in limited experience leading to gap-filling with existing personal schemas; finding 

narrative in limited data; stereotyping/generalizing; projecting thinking onto others, and extending current mindset and assumptions into 

the future and past.

3. Speed of action. Analysis is constrained by the time facing analysis 

and the need for a solution regardless of the amount and kind of 

information. When new information is made available, people need 

to do their best to assess their ability to affect the situation; confidence 

in ability to effect change; focus on the immediate and relatable vice 

the distant and complex; drive to complete existing acts that carry 

investment of time and resources; simplification of options that seem 

to have complete support versus incomplete/ambiguous support.
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4. Memory prioritization. Culling through information to retain what 

is expected to have utility in the future, favor generalizing over specifics due to attention restrictions maintaining active or easily recalled 

memory; storage of information due to kind and impact of experience; editing of memory post-experience; discard specifics to favor 

generalities.

These areas play significantly in social and cultural environments that 

are fluid, often defying behavior expected from mental schemas. Prediction 

is one such intelligence schema that is often at odds with the local realities 

that make a qualitative approach necessary. 

Prediction

To the extent that you can find ways where you’re making predictions, there’s no substitute for testing yourself on real-world situations that you don’t know the answer to in advance.150

We must become more comfortable with probability and uncertainty.151

Nate Silver says it best when he writes that humans have always had a “prediction problem”152—the uncertainty and complexity of the global environment makes prediction today more of a problem. Humans are not very good 

at it, and, instead of prediction being an objective assertion of the future, 

Silver states, “we can never make perfectly objective predictions. The will 

always be tainted by our subjective reality.”153 Accepting human subjectivity, while still striving for a mediated and nuanced objectivity is necessary 

to get us the best possible outcome that passes as a prediction is all we can 

hope for.”154

There are significant limits to prediction in the social realm, as it must 

factor in the dynamics of the diverse array of ethnic, tribal, and other culture 

groups that often express dramatically different belief and value systems 

from those of the analysts. Kahneman writes to the shortcomings of prediction and suggests there are two types of prediction. The first considers 

empirically-derived calculations and very detailed analyses of outcomes 

that range across finite and similar occurrences. These kinds of analyses 

produce a clear measurable relationship between variables such as calculations of fuel usage for planes based on mission-type. This type of prediction 

involves an almost plug-and-play procedure as the knowledge and the mental 
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calculations are easily retrievable, and problems that draw on the experience 

and expertise found in familiar and repeated situations (and embedded in 

known schemas) and accessible through the fast thinking apparatus which 

can promote a more accurate prediction.155

The second type of prediction overloads System 1 with variables and situations that defy quick or simple associations to solution. This type of prediction is problematic when it considers human behavior in operations—it 

contains a lot of social and cultural “noise” at first. Initial attempts to discern 

patterns for prediction produces information that may not be sufficient for 

understanding let alone analysis. Attempting prediction based on expert 

intuition, also called thin-slicing by Malcom Gladwell,156 threatens to muddy 

already-murky waters and exacerbates the types of inherent biases discussed 

above. Intuition is the result of how fast thinking relies on schemas to process 

and assimilate large amounts of incoming information. If a small number 

of familiar schemas exist in the patterns of knowledge and behaviors (thin 

slice), then people unconsciously make quick decisions based on minimal 

amounts of information (intuition).157 The slow thinking system offers a 

means to disrupt the potential for flawed prediction while maintaining the 

integrity of the intuition that is applicable to promoting successful analysis. 

Can striving for prediction support the kinds of actions necessary for 

SOF? This question is pertinent considering that many factors inherently 

a part of human behavior reflect a dynamism and potential to change in 

complex environments. Organizations oftentimes lack credible or theoretically-informed understanding of those environments, while also lacking a 

program to develop critical methods to solicit and interpret sociocultural 

data to inform analysis and provide assumptions critical in mission success. 

It is not just identifying patterns, themes, or trends; it includes identifying 

and assessing what patterns and themes are significant in context. Even more 

so, SOF need to know how to use that knowledge to better construct social 

and cultural reality that can serve to ground future missions/operations in 

a critically-informed understanding.

The development of thinking strategies that help mitigate cognitive biases 

while promoting knowledge and skill-based competencies in deeper social, 

cultural and behavioral understanding and behavioral data elicitation can 

add significantly to future missions. These strategies and methods need to 

be applied in, as Kahneman and Silver suggest, perhaps the most realistic 

approach: mitigate “biased, intuitive forecasts and predictions without also 
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discouraging, delaying or even eliminating the intuitive insights that true 

expertise provides.”158 The key is to deconstruct the myth of intuition as a 

power and replace it instead with a pursuit for valid cues based on searching 

for repeated or regular patterns of social and cultural meaning. 

Approaching intuition as a skill that requires training, repetition, and 

humility will help alleviate its shortcomings in activities requiring deep 

sociocultural appreciation. In a sense, given the nature of intelligence analysis and the impulse for prediction and forecasting, the accuracy that may 

have been implied in more conventional analysis in the past may be more 

difficult to achieve and even harder to measure when applied to the contemporary and foreseeable threat environment. Humans are built to predict, but 

their cognition has built in tendencies that threaten the utility of prediction 

as it applies to human behavior. 

Moreover, there are also organizational and mission-centric biases that 

percolate through how the “humanness” is defined, measured, and forecasted. Labels, such as HT and HD reflect the deeper influence of mental 

schemas on how involvement and end states are 

conceptualized and cultural reality perceived. 

The next section briefly explores the bias inherent in the choice of labels and the constructs 

used to approach, define, and describe the social 

and cultural complexity engaged in by SOF. In 

fairness to these attempts, awareness of importance of complexity—and what it means—has 

been steadily evolving. However, the labels 

“Human Terrain,” “Human Domain,” and “gray 

zone” show a lack of understanding of how 

social and cultural systems operate. Inherent in the process of understanding is being able to use qualitative methods to extract information critical 

to this understanding for the benefit of an overall strategic goal.

The HT and HD Schemas

We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to 

organize it in this way—an agreement that holds throughout our 

speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language.159

Labels, such as HT and 

HD reflect the deeper 

influence of mental 

schemas on how 

involvement and end 

states are conceptualized and cultural reality 

perceived.
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Adapting to a population-centric approach in OEF and OIF requires 

an informed and bias-free way of grasping the human element in how SOF 

addresses cultural complexity. The use of concepts such as HT and HD may 

have provided a sense of familiarity from which to operate, but those concepts also carried with them a legacy of conventionality and operational and 

cultural bias which created unintended consequences in terms of limiting 

development of more grounded policy, doctrine, and strategy and limited 

the development of a broader culture learning effort.

The DOD has characterized, classified, labeled, and parsed the cultural 

complexity that is encountered in deployments through the lens of mission 

and operations. This has created a focus that impacts the success of building 

and sustaining enduring relationships critical for methods of discovery and 

application of social and cultural knowledge—short term span of operations, 

and short term attention, lack of primary attention to cultivating relationships necessary for knowledge elicitation, etc. From a military standpoint, 

that is what should be done. However, the current direction of partnership 

building is incorporating knowledge and skills that support components 

of IW, COIN, UW, FID, and less conventional warfare. Since a large focus 

of military involvement with the cultural other may not involve warfare, 

conflict or conventional missions, the DOD has difficulty interpreting the 

human element through existing perspectives. This restricts and limits the 

understanding of how human behavior is conceptualized and the development of an accurate and authentic cultural reality of others. In other words, 

labeling, defining, and describing the human element and behavior through 

traditional military means using concepts developed for military action 

affects the bias of military organizational goals and the essence of success.

Two schemas, HT and HD, reveal this effect and provide an example of 

the inherent power and danger that labels and approaches used in SOF policy 

and doctrine effect how reality is conceptualized and acted on. HT, and later 

HD, were artificially rendered as spheres of human events, activities and 

interactions as a terrain or domain, as if the free agency of actors and their 

intentions can be translated and bounded within a distinct spatial rendering, 

matching other physical or virtual spaces. Often, intent and need of organizations is a limiting factor on how useful a concept is and can be. This can be 

seen in the use of the label of HT, but also more generally in application of 

labels that are borrowed from the operational culture of an organization. The 

use of HT greatly influenced the development of culture learning programs, 
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directing focus to its military application and less to understanding important aspects of human behavior that have enduring, positive impact on the 

operation beyond immediate return on learning investment. 

HT

U.S. Army General David Petraeus, in his Senate confirmation hearing noted 

that in Afghanistan, as in Iraq, “the key terrain is the human terrain.” He and 

other military leaders believed that without that understanding and that hold 

on it, “we continue to be confused by the complexities of their culture, faith 

and society; oblivious to their desires, grievances and opinions; distracted 

by the lies and distortions of our enemies; and blind to opportunities to 

enhance our reputation.”160

Faced with the need to address a less conventional mission in Iraq, the 

DOD had to contextualize an unfamiliar environment to thousands of U.S. 

and coalition troops. General Petraeus introduced the concept of HT into 

the lexicon of COIN as a trope to capture the human element in layman’s 

terms for the military. Early references to the Human Terrain are found in a 

report by the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee in 1968 about 

the perceived threat of the Black Panthers and other militant groups—a time 

when U.S. agencies were grasping for a way to link population control back to 

their efforts to engage in domestic COIN against such groups. “Traditional 

guerrilla warfare ... [is] carried out by irregular forces, which just about 

always dispose of inferior weapons and logistical support in general, but 

which possess the ability to seize and retain the initiative through a superior 

control of the human terrain.”161

A 1972 publication latched on to HT about social control and urban guerillas, specifically Latin American insurgents. “[T]he failure of the rural 

guerrillas to enlist large-scale peasant backing in most areas also showed up 

in their distorted view of the political potential of the peasantry and their 

failure to study the human terrain.”162 Air Force Colonel Ralph Peters resurfaced the term in 2000 in “The Human Terrain of Urban Operations,” where 

he linked HT to a city’s “human architecture ... the people, armed and dangerous, watching for exploitable opportunities, or begging to be protected, 

who will determine the success or failure of the intervention.” Adopting a 

perspective not rested in any pertinent cultural theory, Peters referred to 

an array of social components of cities, “‘hierarchical,’ ‘multicultural,’ and 
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‘tribal’” and then operationalized that human element as being the focus of 

military missions “in urban operations is never a presidential palace or a 

television studio or a bridge or a barracks. It is always human.”163

Peters catalyzed a term and perspective that carried with it meaning that 

included social control, mission perspective, conquest of land and peoples, 

as if one could capture, hold, or win the HT as one could capture and control an enemy force and presupposes the vagaries and complexity of human 

behavior can be “mapped.” The human population became an element of the 

land to be controlled, which can be siloed into “cultures” that populate the 

terrain with confidence that these groups are monolithic and distinct. HT 

became a meme, a trope, in a time before the concept of “viral” took off. By 

the time General Petraeus tapped into it, this trope was riddled with biases 

that would influence the perspective of people while reflecting on the U.S. 

military negatively in the eyes of academics and others with populationcentric expertise outside of the military. Anthropologist Roberto Gonzalez, 

a fierce critic of the military’s COIN efforts, suggested: 

The unusual juxtaposition of words portrays people as geographic 

space to be conquered—human beings as territory to be captured, as 

flesh-and-blood terra nullius. ... Human terrain is often contrasted 

with geophysical terrain—a familiar concept for senior officers 

trained for conventional warfare against the Soviets. It implies 

that 21st-century warriors will fight ‘population-centric’ wars ... ; 

therefore, the key to successful warfare is the control of people.164

The use of HT carried with it implicit and overt biases that are tied up 

in the linguistic use and the residue of its origins. By attaching the concept of “human” to that of terrain, and the order of how the two words are 

connected, human becomes a modifier to the concept that still retains the 

centrality of the overall meaning. The use of the HT heavily influences the 

perceptions by those casting such understanding over the groups of people 

and individuals in the mission space. It ultimately reduces the focus on 

behavior to location and only those behaviors that connect to the mission, 

diverting attention away from the importance of beliefs and cultural expressions of those behaviors that are not seen to be critical to the mission, yet that 

actively influence that society. The legacy of the term carries with it military 

associations and actions that can easily work against trying to establish partnerships. For many, HT was a space to be battled over and won; physical and 
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social control does not invite active and voluntary association. “Taking and 

holding the Human Terrain is the essential prerequisite for ultimate success 

in Afghanistan, as it was in Iraq. This battle for control of and support from 

a contested population can only be won if we understand the Afghan people, 

whose cooperation, trust and support we are trying to secure.”165 The less 

deterministic expression that qualified this approach, “winning the hearts 

and minds” still carried with it the sense of battle. Additionally, as Gonzalez 

wrote, for those groups that are the subject of actions within COIN, FID, and 

UW, to be considered terrain promotes an imperial or colonial perspective. 

HD 

The demise of COIN in the central focus of U.S. military policy, doctrine, 

and strategy has taken the emphasis away from lessons establishing the primary importance of knowing the ethnic, tribal, and cultural makeup of the 

local population. The critical understanding of the intricate web of beliefs 

and values and the cultural expression of those across the population is also 

disappearing from learning programs. This has led to a reframing of the 

relationship between the population and mission. Emphasizing the relationship and its importance in the two critical general missions of partnership 

building and quick strike capability, there was a shift from HT to HD, from 

a specific application to strategy and operations to one that emphasized and 

seeded the importance to the underlying foundation of how military goes 

to war, as one of the critical objectives to control or dominate for victory or 

success. The HD joined air, space, land, sea, and cyber as critical environments to securing military objectives, specifically the physical, cultural, and 

social environments that exist within a conflict. 

One of the earliest uses of HD was in a 2013 seminal white paper, “Landpower Strategy: Clash of Wills,” written by Army General Raymond Odierno, 

Marine General Amos, and then USSOCOM Commander Admiral William 

McRaven. The paper announced the importance of a population-centric 

approach to warfare while tying it to the importance of geography, anchoring it in those services that are active in securing the land domain, and then 

back to terrain, or Domain—key terrain that needs to be dominated in order 

to achieve success.166 Retaining the connection to terrain, the definition of 

HD expanded to include a swath of “environments,” while also cross-cutting 

the other key domains. “The domain does not coincide or align neatly with 
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spatial boundaries defined by geopolitical, physical or environmental variables; one cannot draw absolute boundaries around the human domain.”167

The concept of HD became integral to the reemergence of SOF as the 

primary combat force, as well as the spear tip for any IW activity. SOCOM 

Commander Admiral McRaven opened up the aperture on the HD by defining it as “the totality of the physical, cultural, psychological, and social environments that influence human behavior to the extent that the success of 

any military operation or campaign depends on the application of unique 

capabilities that are designed to influence, fight, and win in the populationcentric conflicts.”168 In 2015, SOF released a detailed position paper on “Operating in the Human Domain,” which did not feature an actual definition 

for human domain but did attribute properties that reflected the human 

elements: “the social, cultural, physical, informational, and psychological 

elements that influence human behavior.”169

The reconceptualizing of human involvement from terrain to domain 

attempted to move the emphasis from one couched in a direct connection to 

contested land to a broader trope of the importance to the overall domains 

of mission success. Yet, the attempt to align it with concepts that have distinct physical boundaries obscures the difficulty in doing the same for a 

perspective that is often reflected in human behavior that cannot be easily 

reproduced with physical or observable properties, where the human domain 

still carries the legacy of space. “For as much as the position that the HD 

is more reflective of the human role in the equation of mission, its analogy 

is to a concept that has as its predecessor in the notion of space.170 The SOF 

perspective of HD continues this alignment: “Yet SOF, following the Army’s 

lead, is attempting to apply the physical domains’ constructs to this social 

domain. The human domain implies the ‘social’ realm: a dominion of nonvisible abstractions that, although mostly falling outside of ‘the scientific’ are 

nonetheless real, if real means to have an effect on others.”171 This perspective 

also alludes to a difficulty in the translation of the concept to an already 

existing framework comprised mostly of physical and geographical boundaries. In addition, the recasting of HD as a critical space continues the implicit 

bias toward conventional elements and approaches in policy, doctrine, and 

strategy. Other views suggest a more overt expression of this bias in relation to the theme of the failure of COIN, necessitating a return to essential 

warfighting capabilities. “The Human Domain inadvertently obscures the 

negative lessons learned from ten years of conflict, thereby shifting focus 
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from making the right investment choices on Doctrine, Organization, Training, Material, Logistics, Personnel and Facilities. ... The ‘Human Domain’ 

is an invalid term and it is not equal to the other domains used in the joint 

lexicon.”172

A final inference about the use of HD also suggests in this concept that 

learning necessary for “success” in the HD can be accomplished through 

existing military learning programs with association to other military learning objectives. “Approaching the physical domain in more of an objective 

and logical manner may work, but approaching the social realm without 

relying more on multiple viewpoints and critical and creative thinking is a 

recipe for disaster.”173

Recently the schema of the gray zone has been utilized to help define 

space and condition where most of SOF’ overall mission will take place. 

The gray zone is an attempt to capture or define the boundaries of action 

and behavior of others that must be considered and then acted on through 

a range of gray zone operations. The need to apply the concepts of space and 

boundaries to the gray zone and the ambiguity and cultural complexity of 

the concept again tasks military policy and doctrine writers and leaders and 

operators alike in conceptualizing what the gray zone represents. Attempts 

to define the gray zone reflect the continued uncomfortable relationship 

that the U.S. military has with ambiguity of mission and outcome in many 

of their non-kinetic operations. It also signals the 

lack of social, cultural, and behavioral theory and 

application, and the inadvertent and overt limitation that policy and doctrine have downstream in 

terms of preparation and learning about populations, cultures and behavior.

Existing schemas operate to fit meaning of 

behavior into existing mental categories influenced by a host of variables inherent to DOD and 

SOF approaches. Redefining schemas do not necessarily negate the organizational or individual 

biases that exist when conceptualizing or trying to operationalize efforts 

concerning understanding or the lack of appropriate understanding. These 

attempts to characterize the human element invoke cognitive and cultural 

biases that effect categorization of appropriate behaviors across peoples and 

populations.174

The gray zone is an 

attempt to capture or 

define the boundaries 

of action and behavior of others that must 

be considered and 

then acted on through 

a range of gray zone 

operations.
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Beyond the pitfalls of capturing human behavior in concepts that are 

not grounded in theory, applying the intent and utility of the Malinowski 

Model in this “new” mission concept can help alleviate the natural biases of 

organizations while providing the appropriate knowledge and skills necessary for centering perspective on missions and operations that have been 

identified as activities in the gray zone. 

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Chapter 6. Notes on the Limitations of 

the Malinowski Model 

The Bias of Privilege

As much as Malinowski and other golden age anthropologists tried to 

make the study of human culture the science of human culture, the 

anthropologist became a confounding variable in that equation, or perhaps, 

the bias of the anthropologist emerged as a critical enabler of agency and 

agenda. Upon Malinowski’s death in 1942, a diary was discovered in his 

papers. His widow kept the diary and a decade later two more diaries showed 

up in office papers from London. His wife stored all three away, and a decade 

or more later during a visit to Malinowski’s publisher, she spoke of them and 

the publisher went ahead and translated all three. In 1966, after much soul 

searching, she published A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term, and forever 

altered the perception and perspective of the ethnographer.175

In the diary that spanned his fieldwork, not intentionally authored for 

public release, Malinowski’s non-scientific side was laid bare and feelings and 

emotions of his work, the islanders, and even his family back in Europe were 

put to paper. The words captured vivid passages of a man alone, away from 

family and friends, missing his fiancé, battling frequent periods of depression, and all too often sickly from tropical diseases. Passages starkly present 

Malinowski’s feelings of superiority over the Islanders and their perceived 

lack of intelligence. Frustrations with the pace of fieldwork and the perception of the Islanders as lethargic and lazy permeated his prose. Malinowski’s 

Argonauts is classic, devoid of any personal reflection or intimacy tinting 

the description and analysis, but lying beneath his veneer of objectivity is 

a fieldworker caught in the vice of cultural and cross-cultural interactions 

that obviously clashed with Malinowski’s own cultural beliefs and values and 

produced a diary full of bias, stereotyping, and racism. The publication of the 

diary unleashed a tsunami of critique against the early iconic anthropologists 

and laid bare and visible the researcher’s bias of privilege and culture that 

forced the discipline to confront the impact of the researcher on any sense 

of scientific objectivity that was offered up. 
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Malinowski’s diary is evidence of personal biases that can influence both 

cultural interactions and the observer’s ability to adequately validate cultural 

reality of the “other.” Upon its first publication in 1967, the diary was referred 

to as a “revealing, egocentric, obsessional document” by one reviewer and by 

another as a “gross, tiresome” diary that showed Malinowski as a “crabbed, 

self-preoccupied, hypochondriacally narcissist whose fellow-feeling for the 

people he lived with was limited in the extreme.”176 Yet, just two decades 

later, the diary was seen as a “backstage masterpiece of anthropology” and 

a “crucial document in the history of anthropology.”177 Filtering out those 

biases is critical to building an authentic and valid cultural reality and useful 

understanding of the social and cultural behavior of others. While Argonauts 

appears to be devoid of Malinowski’s feelings (evident in his diary), research 

suggests that bias can unconsciously influence or even block off avenues of 

inquiry and restrict an expanded exploration of behavior. Malinowski, as a 

giant in anthropology research, was as impacted and influenced by biases 

that all people, including SOF, bring with 

them in deployments and assignments. 

Earlier, a host of built-in biases, including 

cognitive, social, and cultural biases, were 

considered and an approach to defuse and 

mitigate them was offered. Malinowski 

utilized his diary to accomplish some 

aspects of bias mitigation by diverting it 

to an alternative expression. “Thinking differently” promotes management of biases; 

diarying might be an effective mechanism. The importance of documenting 

the field experience will be returned to later. 

It is critical to distinguish between promoting the management of bias, 

especially social and cultural bias, and that of pressuring SOF personnel to 

deny core beliefs or questioning what many would consider human rights. 

One of the authors through his career with the DOD interviewed many 

military personnel who struggled with the sharp differences between belief 

systems and behavior among Iraqi and Afghan culture groups and what they 

considered to be American belief systems. There have also been narratives 

in publications that starkly have painted behaviors, such as the treatment of 

females, the adoption of adolescent males as concubines and honor killings 

among others that have led to at least divided approaches to missions. It is 

Malinowski, as a giant in 

anthropology research, was 

as impacted and influenced 

by biases that all people, 

including SOF, bring with 

them in deployments and 

assignments.
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the contention of this monograph that a precursor to limiting the social and 

cultural dissonance that is experienced in extended deployments by SOF is 

the development of the cross-cultural capability and the application of the 

Malinowski Model during missions. In effect, this suite of knowledge sets 

and skill-based competencies enable SOF to develop a deeper understanding of why and how these behaviors exist and their meaning in the cultural 

system overall. This approach suggests the notion of cultural relativism—a 

bedrock assumption necessary for the social scientist to consider differences between culture groups—in a way that accounts for the differences as 

a search for meaning. 

Rosado suggests engaging disparity and extreme differences through 

inquiry while prompting working toward a common or necessary goal.178 

Kottack contends that moral judgements cannot be ignored, but confronting those that seem contrary head on through discovery of origins can also 

mediate belief and value conflict through understanding179 while searching 

for understanding and reason for behavior. In addition, and germane to SOF 

and the Malinowski Model, this process can operate to promote further 

interactions with the culture and its members while seeking understanding.

In this sense, many engage cultural relativism beyond the original utility 

of straining away the tendencies of humans to apply their own worldviews to 

dissimilar behavior to understand meaning to those that practice that behavior. However, relativism when viewed as a process can reveal much about 

motivation for behavior and cultural coherency of behavioral patterns.180

From the perch of over a century later, Malinowski’s groundbreaking 

work introduced understanding, method, and universality that are still 

critical components of anthropology, and at a broader level, the social science research process. Malinowski spent almost four years living with and 

learning about a group of seafaring people that inhabited a series of islands 

in Melanesia. He pioneered an investigative method that went beyond the 

collection of secondary and tertiary accounts of travelers and traders to build 

a systematic and formalized process that not just developed a comprehensive 

understanding of Trobriand culture, as much as culture was conceptualized 

by a universal model of the human condition. From the same perch, the 

influence of the researcher/fieldworker on the investigative enterprise is now 

accepted as an element to be considered and, in some cases, has become a 

central focus of method and product. 
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Malinowski’s research and writing, as well as the effect of his own cultural influences and bias, offer valuable lessons and directions to SOF as 

their missions and operations now take place in more turbulent and complex 

world. Like Malinowski, SOF need to better understand and make sense of 

foreign cultural behaviors, offer a more theoretically-informed and qualitative methodology to elicit culturally relevant information, and then provide 

a relevant analysis of meaningful patterns of behavior to consider potential 

future behavior in known situations as well as in unknown situations. The 

next section will introduce the underlying theoretical and methodological 

assumptions of a qualitative approach and its direct application to ethnography. Critical to this section is the acceptance that this kind of immersive, 

field-based approach is a valid and useful approach to accessing core beliefs 

that aid in developing cultural reality, necessary to contextualize information 

for further utility to future operations and intelligence needs. 

The Issue of Validity and Reliability: Breaking Down the Bias 

of Positivism

Military and intelligence analysis revolves around heuristics, use of experience to help drive toward conclusions, and a structured process that depends 

on the systematic, empirical (objective) examination of natural world phenomenon. There is far more comfort in the belief that there is a fundamental 

connection between the event or behavior and empirical observation if it is 

a quantifiable measurement. In a sense, if it can be measured as a statistic, 

it must exist beyond the reality of the individual observing it and hold true 

for actions or events given similar circumstances. Two concepts apply to 

assessing the veracity of both quantitative and qualitative research, yet the 

meaning of each differs with the approach utilized and the use of results.

Reliability and Validity in Quantitative Research

In quantitative research, the accuracy and reliability of findings is critical 

to the use of those findings to predict future events. Validity refers to the 

extent to which the phenomenon is accurately measured, or the correctness 

of the findings, and reliability considers the accuracy of the instrument used 

to measure the results, “the extent to which a research instrument consistently has the same results if it is used in the same situation on repeated 

occasions.”181
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A simple example of validity and reliability is an alarm clock that 

rings at 7:00 each morning, but is set for 6:30. It is very reliable (it 

consistently rings the same time each day), but is not valid (it is not 

ringing at the desired time). It’s important to consider validity and 

reliability of the data collection tools (instruments) when either 

conducting or critiquing research.182

When it comes to applying a quantitative approach to social science 

research, one is after the measurement of human behavior, “using measurement instruments to observe human behavior. The measurement of human 

behavior belongs to the widely-accepted positivist view, or empiric analytic 

approach, to discern reality.”183

In social science discovery, the investigation of phenomenon being 

observed—human behavior—does not occur in laboratories or usually in 

tightly controlled environments. As it applies to sociocultural analysis, measures of employment or education levels are indices that represent observation of behavior. The measure itself represents, for instance, how many 

surveyed people in that population indicated they had a certain level of 

education. It also measures that population at a snapshot in time, when the 

survey was taken and tabulated. When applying validity, is that breakdown 

in education level an accurate representation of that population and was the 

method or instrument used reliable, or the right tool to give you an accurate 

assessment? If the survey was “built” right and administered correctly, if 

the survey was given to enough people to be considered a significant sample 

size, and other methodological “ifs,” then more or less, the percentages or 

even raw numbers can be suggested with some level of certainty to be an 

accurate assessment of that population. What can be done with that measure is limited based on the focused nature of the discovery, and as seen in 

sociocultural analysis, that measure can be used to help paint a snap shot 

view of variables. In concert with other variables and measures, a statistic can 

provide a relatively informative picture of a population, but the measures do 

not allow inference to a host of attitudes and feelings, and meanings derived 

from the measure for those who have specific education level, i.e. high school 

vs. bachelors vs. doctorate vs. law degree, degree granting institution, i.e. 

non-profit vs. for-profit, community college vs. Ivy League, vocation-based 

vs. liberal arts; all of these distinctions offer further information about the 

respondent, but these measures as description also reflect the bias of the 
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investigator and the effect of his or her worldview. Perhaps, to the population 

being investigated, education level is not important or useful. 

A qualitative approach to the population and the very specific education 

level probes meaning and behaviors around that measure. Questions consider what the education level means to those who have or not have it, what 

opportunities the education provides, whether the meaning of that education has changed, if the respondents are satisfied with their education, the 

effort and resources it would take to get to that level, what that education 

will provide, and more. The answers to these questions might likely differ 

substantially, or not, depending on who is asked, and the connection and 

meaning of that education level with other variables such as poverty levels, 

or perhaps even religion. Observation and answers to these questions do 

not result in measures, but meaning. This approach is based on a different 

interpretation of validity and reliability. The information gleaned can be 

very useful in finding out feelings, attitudes, and motivations of individuals 

and groups, and core beliefs that can provide a deeper understanding and 

appreciation of relationships, meanings, and potential future behaviors. 

Reliability and Validity in Qualitative Research 

Determining the utility and accuracy of qualitative research considers a 

different approach than employed in quantitative research; namely that 

quantitative research produces empirical, measurable outcomes to arrive at 

a conclusion, and any statements regarding the acceptability of the results 

or the methods used refer directly to the measures. The nature of qualitative research by now should reflect the absence of statistics or mathematical 

expressions, hence attempts to consider the soundness or fit of data produced 

in the discovery process cannot rely on similar assessment criteria. 

This inability to apply similar standards to qualitative research typically bias against the use and perceived utility of this approach in military 

and intelligence processes and analysis. “Qualitative research is frequently 

criticized for lacking scientific rigor with poor justification of the methods 

adopted, lack of transparency in the analytical procedures and the findings 

being merely a collection of personal opinions subject to researcher bias.”184 

In fact, there even is disagreement within disciplines that primarily engage 

in qualitative research if attempting to fit such concepts as validity and reliability is appropriate, “Although the tests and measures used to establish the 
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validity and reliability of quantitative research cannot be applied to qualitative research, there are ongoing debates about whether terms such as validity, reliability and generalizability are appropriate to evaluate qualitative 

research.”185

Yet, there still needs to be evaluative criteria for assessing the “quality” 

of the research, and the applicability and generalizability of the data derived 

from observation and interactive means, such as interviewing, beyond the 

specific context. As the concepts of reliability and validity reveal characteristics of the research and findings in a quantitative approach, appropriating the 

intent of the concept continue to reflect the same concern, “in the broadest 

context these terms are applicable.”186

In qualitative research, validity refers to both methods used and accuracy 

of findings, “to the integrity and application of the methods undertaken and 

the precision in which the findings accurately reflect the data.”187 Reliability 

offers an evaluation of the regularity of research approach, or the consistency 

of analytical approach and methods.188 Concern is more based on issues of 

transparency of method and the ability of multiple researchers approaching 

similar findings. More specifically, validity of research considers credibility 

and transferability, while reliability reflects the dependability of the results 

given other circumstances. Internal validity is represented by characteristics 

of the findings to those researchers not involved in that research event, and 

as well to the participants providing a litmus test on how well the findings 

reflect their reality “to the believability and trustworthiness of the findings. 

This depends more on the richness of the data gathered than on the quantity 

of data.”189 External validity references the ability of others to transfer the 

results to other contexts and populations, more specifically, the generalizability across situations, contexts and groups.190 Reliability focuses on the 

dependability of the findings and greater consistency reflects greater legitimacy of the research and methodology used.191 Lastly, the influence of bias 

on the researcher and the findings is always a concern. “Researchers bring 

their own unique perspectives to the research process and data interpretation can be somewhat subjective in qualitative research.”192 When research 

is conducted by others, corroboration of findings, given that all researchers 

bring unique perspectives based on personal history and experience, certainly speaks to the minimal effect of bias. 

A critical methodological approach that promises greater reliability and 

validity is triangulation. In a quantitative approach, research findings across 
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investigators are validated when at least one additional researcher repeats 

the findings at a different time or attempt. Qualitative studies do not feature the same type of replication as laboratory-based social science research 

because qualitative research occurs in natural, everyday settings, which will 

always contain unique features often unreproducible in a second setting, or 

even in the same setting at a different point in time. Triangulation offers an 

approach and process that minimizes potential influence of research, cognitive and cultural bias.193 By engaging an array of investigators, methods, and 

respondents the limitations of a study conducted by one researcher is relaxed. 

By combining multiple observers, theories, methods, and empirical materials, researchers can hope to overcome the weakness or 

intrinsic biases and the problems that come from single-method, 

single-observer, single-theory studies. Often the purpose of triangulation in specific contexts is to obtain confirmation of findings 

through convergence of different perspectives. The point at which 

the perspectives converge is seen to represent reality.194

In field-based qualitative research, triangulation can be eliciting data 

from different respondents based on a similar observation and interview 

protocol, context and questions asked. For SOF, their missions and operations engage a range of stakeholders that represent groups and organizations. 

Opportunities exist where informal observation and opportunistic periods 

of conversation can promote triangulation. To borrow the metaphor of triangulation when used in surveying, the more perspectives and attitudes (and 

core beliefs) that are known (points, elevations, etc.), the more authentically 

accurate the composite cultural reality is accessible and retrievable (geological points leading to an unknown locations). The value of a qualitative 

approach extends beyond accessing and understanding core beliefs and formulating TOM, and has great utility when referring to the SOF personnel’s 

own worldview. 

A Cautionary Note on Validity and Reliability in 

Qualitative Research

As in any research approach, there exists potential to produce faulty or 

imperfect findings due to any number of theoretical, methodological, or 

researcher-induced problems. For qualitative research, many of the issues 
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that could ultimately affect results are related to method and involve data 

exchange as well as mitigating and/or managing existing researcher bias. 

For those that revolve around data exchange, issues such as sampling and 

proper instrumentation (to include proper 

and frequent “field notes” and accurate thematic coding of interview texts as examples), 

response bias and preparation of respondents, 

leading inquiry to overly influence responses, 

difficulty in accurately communicating with 

respondents due to language barriers and/or 

interpretation equivalence, and others require 

active awareness of their impact on the accuracy of data retrieved. Other issues may lie in 

the knowledge and field experience of the researcher such as not fully operationalizing elements of culture active or visible in observations and the social 

exchange of data; there may be problems with making the conceptual leap 

from understanding a culture-general approach, and those cultural universals, to applying them to understand how those elements are configured and 

expressed in the cultural reality. Another issue may result from researchers 

not fully engaging cross-cultural skill-based competencies to effectively build 

and sustain the relationships with stakeholders and respondents necessary 

to maintain access to individuals and groups for data elicitation. One issue 

that relates to field-based methods is the awareness and management of the 

emic/etic cultural perspective used by the researcher.

In an approach and method that pushes active engagement with data 

sources and a reflexivity of how the researcher impacts and influences meanings that emerge in social interaction and even active participation, the utility of its findings and use in developing strategy and future actions in SOF 

missions can be a critical enabler to mission success. Results can as well be 

an authentic conduit of critical cultural information and understanding 

“up the chain” to the benefit of intelligence needs. The implication of the 

Malinowski Model is that SOF can engage elements of a qualitative approach 

and research/method to promote a fuller understanding of those groups that 

are part of mission and operations by accessing core beliefs and ultimately 

developing an appreciation for their cultural reality. Knowing this reality 

serves multiple missions and organizations. First and foremost is a foundation of understanding in which current and future actions, strategies and 

For qualitative research, 

many of the issues that 

could ultimately affect 

results are related to 

method and involve data 

exchange as well as mitigating and/or managing 

existing researcher bias.
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end states of the SOF mission that involve local culture groups can be built 

on and around. Additionally, this fuller understanding of these groups can 

be communicated in various ways to organizations that work in same locales 

with same culture groups. 

Finally, an underlying premise of this chapter, and monograph, is that 

social and cultural reality exists in multiple versions and are held by different individuals and culture groups, to include SOF. Each are authentic 

and true to the holder and hold the key to understanding the power of core 

beliefs and their influence on behavior. Validity of the realities is based on 

how accurate that reality is to the individual or group and how much of each 

reality is captured through qualitative methods, to include bias mitigation, 

perspective-taking, motivation to observe, and participate, accurate notetaking and reflective analysis. Perhaps of all the components that feed into a 

cross-cultural capability, the most important is the skill to consider multiple 

realities and track back and forth between emic and etic perspectives of all 

actors. In this case validity is not tied to a single perspective, nor is there 

just one reality that is valid across all realities. To achieve effective influence 

in securing mission goals, one needs to consider how those goals can be 

achieved by bending existing realities to a common end state. It may also 

be often that mission goals resist rigid adherence and instead must be open 

to flexibility and interpretation as one becomes familiar with other realities; 

in this case, validity becomes the most accurate barometer to measure how 

well that is being accomplished. 
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Chapter 7. Developing a Sustainable 

Learning Program for Qualitative 

Approach and Methods

Let me begin with ethnographic encounters. Simply put: in the 

conduct of our research, we meet people. We talk with them, we ask 

them questions, we listen to their stories and we watch what they 

do. In so far as we are deemed competent and capable, we join in.195

The classic anthropologists-turned-ethnographers approached their first 

fieldwork experience as a rite of passage. From one perspective, fieldwork for the anthropologists certainly bore out many of the same experiences 

that confront SOF as they began their careers abroad. There were no “methods” courses for early ethnographers like Malinowski, Evans-Pritchard, and 

Margaret Mead; there were hardly anthropology departments in existence 

in the early 1900s! As is now apparent, fieldwork progresses at a gradual and 

measured pace due to establishing trust and familiarity with those involved 

in the research. Nevertheless, this pace can be punctuated with periods where 

actions or activities act to accelerate, hasten, or even retard progress. 

Clifford Geertz relays his experience of arriving in the Bali village where 

he was to do his fieldwork and enduring distant and aloof villagers for a 

time.196 Cockfighting was an enormously popular pastime for males, but also 

outlawed by the Balinese government. Rural villages far from the daily reach 

of the government were the sites of cockfighting events that featured most 

villagers betting large amounts of money. Cockfights were often raided by 

government authorities. Not long after arriving in the village, Geertz and his 

wife were attending a cockfight and government authorities raided it. Instead 

of opting to stay and likely get out of any punishment due to his privilege 

as a guest of the government, they chose to scatter with the rest of the villagers and evade capture. They took refuge in a villager’s home and avoided 

the dragnet. Geertz wrote after that episode, the villagers responded to him 

differently and conversation between Geertz and villagers was no longer 

forced. His fleeing of authorities and his behavior indicated a willingness to 

participate, and share the consequences, of village life. 
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Often, it is not so much the training to be an ethnographer that leads to 

success, it is utilizing moments like Geertz’s to establish a lasting and trusting relationship with those who are a part of fieldwork. That is why most 

academic ethnographic fieldwork is long-term and involves a commitment 

to patience, trust, and hard work. On the other hand, much applied ethnography, due to the nature of its utility to confront time-sensitive and issuebased problems, operates at a pace that precludes years of fieldwork. Instead, 

success reflects a balancing of acquiring necessary data to help understand 

and determine a course of action. Often that data should come with the 

assistance of the local population, while also building an adequate sense 

of patterns of social and cultural behavior that reveal understanding about 

how to best implement solutions to the problem within the confines of the 

local culture. In these cases, active participation and collaboration of the 

ethnographer found in RAP and PR methods, as well as a deep experience 

in past fieldwork, can be a catalyst for success.

All of this to say that effectively using a qualitative approach requires a 

mixture of knowledge and skills that come from a learning program and 

process that:

• is guided by educators and mentors and is self-paced;

• marshals a sense of theory of a qualitative approach and related methods, and practical application of it;

• is seeded by a fundamental knowledge of cultural systems and the 

ability to use that lattice to discern patterns of behavior;

• develops cross-cultural communication skills most useful for 

discovery;

• allows for experiential learning to improve cross-cultural capability 

and skills critical in a qualitative approach; and,

• promotes “thinking differently strategies” critical to effective use of 

a qualitative approach.

This chapter outlines a learning program that can promote this capability given the current SOF language and culture learning approach. It is 

acknowledged that the intended result is not to remake SOF into applied 

ethnographers, or even anthropologists. It is instead to provide a knowledge 

and skill set that can be utilized to better understand and act in cross-cultural complexity and promote more effective recognition of a cultural reality that allows for better collection, analysis and development of a potential 
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repository of likely future behaviors and occurrences. Doing good ethnography does not mean you must be an ethnographer by trade; good ethnography can inform and provide a better comprehension of social and cultural 

factors necessary to finding the best solution for mission success. Engaging 

a qualitative approach can also provide a foundation based on an authentic 

cultural reality to build a new or refine future strategy. In RAP and PR, the 

reason for ethnography is to provide a better assessment of a problem by 

examining the social and cultural variables and reality(ies) of culture groups 

impacted by human or natural causation and discovering first, how culture 

groups are affected by the impact and then how culture can best be used 

to help promote a solution. The use of applied ethnography in PRTs and in 

Nawa, Afghanistan, offered a fitting example of how this type of discovery 

and ongoing application of results can play an important role in mission success. Applied ethnography offers keys to the development of qualitative skills.

Learning

Sands assessed SOF language, region, and culture programs and found it 

to be asymmetrically skewed to language and lacking adequate region and 

culture emphasis.197 He suggested a reformulation of intent and curriculum 

to one that considers braiding language and culture elements over the length 

of the class, introducing a blended delivery through a centralizing learning 

management system, allowing for a multidisciplinary cadre of faculty, to 

include language, social science experts, and instructional designers. He 

also in this monograph and elsewhere pushed for an assessment program 

that relies on performance exhibited in instruction based on three critical measures, language proficiency, culture and region general and specific 

knowledge, and cross-cultural interaction.198 This entire learning program is 

designed to introduce and advance cross-cultural capability that reflect an 

array of thinking, learning, communicating, and application of knowledge 

and skill-based competencies that must be synergized together in crosscultural complexity to provide the greatest utility. It is equally important 

that learning programs address promoting these essential components of 

cross-cultural capability synergistically so that there is ample opportunity 

to create synergy and learning reinforcement within an across the major 

emphases of language, region and culture.199
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To be an effective ethnographer, as this study has advanced, building a 

deep cross-cultural capability is critical, and one that builds on the kind of 

linked braided language, region and culture advanced for SOF. Think of this 

overall primary and advanced development as building a car. 

Culture-general: The Chassis

The first stage includes a strong foundational sense of common cultural 

universals that reflect and are expressed by similar patterns of behavior, 

such as kinship/family, exchange, governance, and gender. This is referred 

to as culture-general. Gaining this knowledge set is like putting together the 

chassis of the car: it gives one a lattice to start to frame up cultural understanding. Yet, even more foundational to the metal and steel that frame up 

the chassis are the screws and bolts and other connective material that hold 

and gird up and give form to the chassis and the different “patterns” identified as the chassis is put together, such as the steering system, the doors, the 

wheels, the transmission, and others. These elements are the core beliefs and 

patterns that motivate behavior that can be seen in these universal systems. 

At this level of development, the chassis can accept most any style of car, 

within reason. It in effect is transferable across style. This knowledge set is 

mostly deficient, or done superficially, in LREC learning programs across the 

DOD. For SOF, a truly expeditionary force, the LREC learning program does 

not include and develop culture-general skills to any level of competence.

Culture Specific: The Model & Make

Usually, the type of culture learning provided in a language program is 

information (knowledge) that is specific to a language-speaking group 

or culture-group, or relates directly to a national identity. Providing this 

narrow slice of information, or the model and make of a car, without a good 

understanding of culture-general, or the chassis, can do more harm than 

good in preparing for cross-cultural complexity. The complexity reflects 

the dynamic and ever-changing social and cultural landscape that revolves 

more on culture groups that are driven by identity markers and the potential of more than one language, which describes many of the regions and 

areas into which SOF deploy. Providing culture-specific information on 

elements such as kinship or exchange does little to explain how and why 

that system may work in certain circumstances or how behavior within 
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the cultural expression can change. Perhaps more importantly, culture as a 

system is holistic and integrated across cultural expressions. In other words, 

to grasp any feature of culture one must also consider how features interact 

and influence others’ expressions and their behaviors while also drawing 

information about how those elements work as a unit. For example, when 

considering the effect of the different cultural components across the breadth 

of behaviors, religion in Iraq was important as an identity marker but also 

was actively involved in influencing kinship and family, exchange, gender, 

governance and more. Culture-specific carries greater utility when added to 

an existing understanding of how systems operate universally. Dependence 

on culture-specific in LREC programs, such as typical SOF programs, also 

carries with it (besides a stunted utility in preparing for missions) reliance 

on language instructors who act as culture experts; many of the instructors’ 

lack understanding of culture-general, and have limited exposure to a location or region across time and space.

Cross-Cultural Competence: Automobile Computer 

As introduced in this monograph, there are four essential bias-mitigating, 

skill-based competencies important for operating in cross-cultural complexity. Together they provide critical enablers to successfully engage in a 

qualitative approach: cultural learning (expressed through culture-general 

and specific), cultural self-awareness, perspective-taking, and observation. 

3C is not a standalone course in SOF LREC; rather, it must be interwoven in 

language and culture curriculum to have the most learning potential. There 

have been preliminary efforts in this direction, but unfortunately most of the 

work in 3C in a military context has been spent on developing behavioral 

tests and assessment measures and has not included resources to promote 

effective learning content.

4C features a general and specific approach as it relates to nonverbal 

communication channels and expression. Understanding how messages 

travel along such communicative paths such as kinesics (body language), 

proxemics (spatial messages), and others, is essential in relationship building, but also in grasping meaning from non-linguistic communication. As 

in culture-general, understanding how cross-cultural communication works 

is important before applying a cross-cultural communication-specific frame 
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of understanding. Of all elements of cross-cultural capability, 4C is the least 

understood and covered in LREC learning programs.

Language

Language has always been the long pole in the tent for preparing SOF for 

overseas assignments. It remains the driver in LREC training and is the 

reason language learning receives learning space in training and readiness, 

budget, and attention. Of course, language is an important enabler to all 

facets of methods and analysis in a qualitative approach. However, the level 

of language proficiency now expected from existing SOF LREC learning is 

inadequate to assist in any meaningful way other than promoting initial 

relationship building and preliminary collection efforts. It is not out of the 

question that at least some elements of method can be accomplished by 

interpretation/translation, especially if there is a time constraint attached to 

a specific project. However, it must also be recognized that English is a lingua 

franca, a bridge language “used as a means of communication between populations speaking vernaculars that are not mutually intelligible”200 and the 

most widely-spoken lingua franca in history.201 Many of the areas where SOF 

deploy will have culture-groups who have some English-speaking capability. Establishing gatekeepers to help identify core beliefs and build cultural 

realities early on and throughout fieldwork usually takes the ability to speak 

the same language. Having English as a common lingua franca (ELF) does 

not negate the linguistic and cultural variability in meaning and expression 

which stems from distinct social and cultural backgrounds. In addition, 

there is evidence that supports the real time development of linguistic and 

cultural forms, practices and reference frames that develop in actual social 

and cultural interactions, 

not as a priori defined categories, but as adaptive and emergent 

resources which are negotiated and context dependent. Therefore, 

ELF needs to move beyond the traditionally conceived target language—target culture relationship to incorporate an awareness of 

dynamic hybrid cultures and the skills to successfully negotiate 

them.202

Language familiarity offers benefits to a qualitative approach, but perhaps 

a communicative familiarity is more important, and this can be expressed in 
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different ways. Currently, SOF language proficiency goals attained through 

the Q-Course is 1+ on the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI). There is much 

discussion concerning language testing in the DOD and in SOF, the kind of 

test employed, Defense Language Proficiency Test (DLPT) versus OPI, the 

use of a standardized test developed for modalities not utilized by SOF in 

the field, the accuracy of an oral interview and the generalizability to performance, and the reflection of test content to what SOF will be exposed to 

in the field.203 Extended stays in the “field,” or, in the case of SOF, supporting 

missions and operations obviously promotes greater language acquisition, 

or on the flipside, a need to collect and analyze social and cultural data will 

force an increased use of the language. What is certain is that linguistically 

and/or culturally relevant communication methods are critical for success 

in qualitative methodology. 

However, beyond a set of knowledge and skill-based competencies, the 

Malinowski Model also reflects an attitude of persistence and patience, a 

drive to learn about others and an “operational’ ethic that articulates with 

mission objectives and goals. As it pertains to ethics, always a sticky wicket, 

SOF, more than other DOD populations, must approach interactions with 

local groups to understand their cultural reality and identify appropriate 

behaviors to not just forecast future behaviors, but use those interactions to 

gain and build influence. In this case, ethics becomes a way to guide interactions along a path that can include future cooperation, and the goal of influence. The example of Nawa offers a model of how relationships developed 

and were sustained by these overarching goals.

Qualitative Approach and Methods

Thus far, this chapter has provided a brief overview of cross-cultural capability that, to some extent, exists within current SOF LREC learning efforts; 

obviously, some elements are more represented and integrated than others. 

A learning program in qualitative methods would depend on additions to or 

an entirely new curriculum on some aspects of theory and a more detailed 

review of qualitative collection and analysis methods. Regarding an applied 

methods program in higher education, social science departments usually 

have a theory course designed to explore past and contemporary theories of 

social and cultural behavior and a methods course (or two) on qualitative 

methods. The methods of training and education may involve survey and 
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questionnaire development, focus groups and interviewing, and an introduction to thematic analysis. An additional course or element of instruction 

would include curriculum on ethnographic methods. 

There are singular courses in aspects of cross-cultural capability across 

the DOD. One of the authors (Sands) designed and developed the first culture-general course for the United States Air Force and the Community 

College of the Air Force (CCAF), a variation continues at the time of this 

publication. An additional course on cross-cultural communications is also 

offered through CCAF. JSOU currently offers an undergraduate variant of 

this course (which includes a 2–3-hour module on ethnographic field methods) and the Marines offer an online learning program, Region, Culture 

and Language Familiarization Course (RCLF) that also features lessons on 

culture and region general and specific knowledge. There may be other dedicated learning efforts, unknown to the authors in the DOD, that advance 

aspects of cross-cultural capability, but what more likely is available are 

elements of cross-cultural capability that are offered as part of larger curriculum in PME courses. How well-designed, accurate and effective these efforts 

are, in part, based on the expertise in theory, application and instructional 

design expertise engaged in development and delivery would be a useful 

research project.

A soon to be available primer on culture-general offers professional military personnel, including educators and trainers a lesson on the concepts of 

“culture” the authors believe are critical to mission success. Authors Fosher 

and Mackenzie in Culture General Guidebook for Military Professionals write: 

We have written this guidebook for you, the military professional, 

to deepen your understanding of this area. In it we capture and 

attempt to make accessible what contemporary social science says 

about culture, the experiences of our military colleagues, some of 

our own experiences, and those of civilian colleagues. As much as 

possible, we have written this guidebook so that you can look at 

sections independently of one another rather than needing to move 

linearly from beginning to end.204

Sands has developed a distance learning course, complete with an array of 

media and case studies that reflects a culture-general approach and is available as professional education or for credit college credit, “Operationalizing 

Culture: Thinking Differently about Behavior in the Human Domain.”205 
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The course has reached different populations within the DOD, and similar 

to Culture General Guidebook for Military Professionals, offers universal elements of “culture” to consider in all facets of military operations.

Developing an effective learning program that advances the level and 

depth of learning necessary for Malinowski Model, or other qualitative 

approaches depends on intentional design and opportunity. Carving out 

the space and time in a learning program as well as engaging appropriate 

expertise is critical. Given the time allowed or available for all LREC learning 

in the Qualifying School and sustainment opportunities, providing a full 

curriculum on theory and methods would be difficult to engineer, unless 

the benefit of this learning could be shown to increase mission effectiveness. 

Developing a pilot learning program, complete with learning objectivities, 

content and some initial efforts at assessment, could be advanced and then 

offered through JSOU, the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare 

Center and School or other such SOF schoolhouses to “test” the viability of 

a pilot. Topics of the course could include observation techniques, interviewing, field notes, thematic analysis and a practicum. 

Currently, Army SOF features 28 weeks of LREC learning in their 

Q-Course (24 weeks are language centric with some instruction on culture 

folded in and four weeks are devoted to regional expertise). An innovative LREC learning program was advanced for SOF featuring a centralizing learning management system, a multi-disciplinary cadre and a blended 

residential/distance learning delivery. Evidence suggests that language 

proficiency increases with a more diverse and equally represented LREC 

curriculum. Redesigning the current LREC curriculum could create space 

to include inserting learning objectives and content that advance methods. The remaining SOF services, services—the SEALs, the United States 

Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command, and the Air Force Special Operations Command—feature a similar language-centric approach, 

although the LREC component of Army special operations forces' Q-school 

is the longest in terms of duration and objectives. Elements of cross-cultural 

capability are considered to varying degrees and levels across SOF, although 

curriculum and instructional effort for non-language elements are minimal. 

Instructional delivery is primarily residential and there is little effort to 

create the linkages of knowledge and skills across components of crosscultural capability. 
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A qualitative theory and methods learning program could become part 

of the LREC model advanced by Sands with some reorganization and extension of course in terms of duration. Sands’ SOF LREC model has shown 

increased learning in language proficiency when cross-cultural components 

are braided, while having the added benefit of introducing critical culturegeneral and specific knowledge and cross-cultural competence and crosscultural communication skills. The extended LREC course would seed an 

introduction to theory and methods and then offer potential follow-on development of skills through a blended approach of distance learning/self-paced 

and guided mentoring. A follow-on language sustainment program currently 

exists in SOF and offers learning space and a learning platform that could 

be utilized for advancing a qualitative approach.

One of the primary points of this monograph is that current and future 

national defense and security missions should involve a much deeper understanding of how culture as a system works and how best that understanding 

can be utilized through a qualitative approach to further mission success. 

Currently, the DOD lacks expertise in terms of human resources with theoretically-informed knowledge and skills and methods; HTS was an attempt 

to close this gap, but in the end, was untenable. Training a Ph.D. who can 

win bar fights currently may not be an option (but SOF could consider pilot 

programs to offer advanced learning in culture and qualitative approaches 

to mid-career senior enlisted to organically seed some of this capability 

now). One of the authors is adjunct faculty at Norwich University’s online 

degree program, Strategic Studies and Defense Analysis, focused on providing opportunity to SOF senior enlisted to get their bachelor’s degree. A 

partnership with higher education could be designed to build in capability 

and provide a four-year or advanced degree. What is suggested is that SOF 

need to consider best how to conceptualize an approach that encompasses 

the intent of this monograph. If leveraging the private sector is not viable, 

then the best of all possible worlds is to begin to develop that capability 

organically. 
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Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

Chapter 8. Conclusion

I’m an inveterate fox and not a hedgehog, so I always think you 

should try everything.206

This monograph presented a case for infusing a qualitative approach 

and related research methods and offered a concept of applied SOF 

ethnography to improve the ability of SOF to navigate the future operating 

environment. Malinowski, one of the first anthropologists and ethnographers, modeled an approach and method for SOF to consider. 

SOF, with frequent and extended deployments in local environments, 

must serve many different mission functions. One of these functions is as onthe-ground collector of relevant data (e.g., social and cultural data). Another 

function is on-the-ground analyst of such data to better inform future goals 

and strategies, while also being able to distill their analysis for better intelligence needed “up the chain.” SOF must consider the effects of cognitive 

biases inherent in collection, analysis, and prediction as their operations, 

and behaviors, impact directly with those from 

local areas and groups in social and cultural 

interactions. But more importantly, SOF should 

consider the effects of cultural bias on all facets 

of their mission. 

A model for revealing a population’s TOM 

was advanced in this monograph based on 

Bronislaw Malinowski’s approach and methods utilized in his fieldwork in the Trobriand 

Islands. The model consists of three aspects: (a) 

the methods utilized in ethnography; (b) the 

attitude of the participant-observer that promotes a cognitive approach to cross-cultural 

competence, and (c) a process of ongoing hypothesis testing through crosscultural communication to determine validity, reliability and authenticity 

of the perceived social and cultural reality. To explore this model in depth, 

a number of concepts were considered.

SOF must consider 

the effects of cognitive biases inherent in 

collection, analysis, and 

prediction as their operations, and behaviors, 

impact directly with 

those from local areas 

and groups in social 

and cultural interactions.
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JSOU Report 18-2

“Thinking differently” was introduced as an option to manage the profound intended and unintended consequences of cultural bias on cognition, 

and therefore for SOF, the need to mitigate, or at least manage, the effect 

of cultural and social biases. Thinking differently features the development 

of skill-based, cross-cultural competencies that enable the management of 

cultural biases. 3C is a key enabler of cross-cultural capability and is foundational to a successful qualitative approach. SOF currently, as most DOD 

populations, do not contain curriculum or assessment in 3C in their LREC 

learning program. 

How culture as a concept is appropriated and applied by SOF influences an array of needs, to include development of policy and strategy, mission-focus, and learning efforts. The fidelity of that concept and how it is 

operationalized today plays heavily in explaining the nature of local social 

interactions, identity markers, and the meaning of social and cultural knowledge and behaviors, among other critical areas that can affect mission and 

operations. Cultural knowledge is represented, and in many cases actualized, 

in social interactions and relationships and is heavily dependent on context 

and having a solid understanding of the cultural realities that comprise the 

local populations. Rich points were advanced to identify intersections where 

meaning between individuals or between groups do not align. Formulating 

cultural reality is dependent on explicating core beliefs of a people. Core 

beliefs were identified as ideas held to be true and natural and endemic to a 

culture group. These beliefs are a repository of influential cultural knowledge 

that consider foundational truths such as right and wrong, what is life, causal 

agency, good health, and many other basal and influential notions that frame 

and motivate individual and group behavior. Core beliefs frame up cultural 

reality and can be discovered through narrative, stories and everyday social 

interactions and aid in promoting a deeper and more useful understanding 

of meaning and behavior. 

A qualitative approach was cast as a process of discovery to investigate, 

collect, analyze and interpret observations (and participation) of socially and 

culturally-derived phenomena, including words, texts, narratives, and behavior to identify patterns of behavior (relationships) and make sense of the 

meaning of that behavior. Qualitative research methods are used to access 

cultural knowledge that can be observed through actions and is generated 

in interpersonal interactions and relationships. The validity and reliability 

of such data, different from that associated with quantitative analysis, offers 
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Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

a means to authenticate interpretations of perspectives and thus a generalizability of results beyond data sources. 

Ethnography, one such method, promotes in-depth and extended “fieldwork” to access core beliefs and build cultural realities. Just so stories, 

cultural narratives, are one way of explicating core beliefs. In the process, 

meaningful patterns of behavior can be identified and made useful to understanding and the locating social and cultural channels to advance mission 

goals and objectives. Implications of the duality of an emic/etic perspective (insider/outsider) was explored and managing this divide can assist 

in moving from a locally-specific set of core beliefs and cultural reality to 

an understanding that can be generalized across culture groups. Applied 

ethnography was offered as an approach and set of methods that offers the 

most utility to SOF. Participant-observation, Rapid Assessment Process, 

and Participatory Ethnography were described as methods most useful to 

SOF. Two examples from OIF and OEF, PRTs and a specific multi-month 

mission in southern Afghanistan of how elements of applied ethnography 

were employed to the benefit of mission. The last chapter offered some suggestions on how a qualitative-approach and method could be folded into the 

SOF LRC learning program.

There has been a plethora of recent publications and op-eds that have 

indicated that the gray zone requires a radical departure from traditional 

military planning and operations. This realization is a starting point, but so 

far, actual approaches and programs either are not offered or do not consider 

a critical social or cultural science endeavor that can pay dividends to mission success. It must also be stressed that building in a capability like this 

cannot be switched on and made to produce results immediately; this apparent approach by DOD to meet it by a variety of means, academics, learning 

technology, civilians on the battlefield, etc. has stunted institutional efforts 

to develop a more robust LRC learning program that would be critical for 

the approach and methods offered in this monograph. In the end, there is no 

shortcut to knowing, learning, and applying culture; the last decade, time 

and time again, has shown this to be the case. 

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Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

Acronyms

BPC building partner capacity

CA civil affairs

CCAF Community College of the Air Force

COIN counterinsurgency

3C Cross-Cultural Competencies

4C Cross-Cultural Communication Competence

DA direct action

DLPT Defense Language Proficiency Test

DOD Department of Defense

ELF English as a Lingua Franca

FAO foreign area officer

FG focus groups

FID foreign internal defense

HA humanitarian assistance

HD Human Domain

HT Human Terrain

HTS Human Terrain System

I&W indications and warnings 

IW irregular warfare

JC-HAMO Joint Concept for Human Aspects of Military Operations

KL key leaders

LRA Lord’s Resistance Army
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JSOU Report 18-2

LREC Language, Regional Expertise, and Culture

MISO Military Information Support Operations

NGO nongovernmental organization

OEF Operation Enduring Freedom

OIF Operation Iraqi Freedom

OPI Oral Proficiency Interview

PAR Participatory Action Research

PM Participatory Mapping

PO Participant-Observation

PR Participatory Research

PRT Provincial Reconstruction Teams

RAP Rapid Assessment Procedure

RCLF Region, Culture and Language Familiarization Course

RPF Rwanda Patriotic Front

SF special forces

SOF Special Operations Forces

TOM Theory of Mind

USAID United States Agency for International Development

USDA Department of Agriculture

U.S. SOF United States Special Operations Forces

VSO Village Stability Operations
115

Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

Endnotes

1. David C. Ellis and James Sisco, “Chapter Five, Through the Eyes of the Population: Establishing the SCA Baseline for RSI,” in Socio-Cultural Analysis with the 

RSI Paradigm, ed., Charles Ehlschlaeger (White Volume, 2014), 45, accessed at: 

http://nsiteam.com/social/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Socio-Cultural-Analysiswith-the-Reconnaisance-Surveillance-and-Intelligence-Paradigm.pdf.

2. Ibid.

3. Michael Waltz in Kris Osborn, “Green Beret: U.S. Fighting 100 Year War,” The 

National Interest, 12 January 2017, accessed at: http://nationalinterest.org/blog/

the-buzz/green-beret-us-fighting-100-year-war-19029. 

4. Bronislaw Malinowski in “Bronislaw Malinowski’s Quotes and Sayings,” in 

Inspiring Quotes.us, accessed at: http://www.inspiringquotes.us/author/7621-

bronislaw-malinowski.

5. United States Special Operations Command, “Special Operations Forces Operating 

Concept,” Capstone Concept for Joint Operations, 01 February 2016, http://nsiteam.

com/social/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/SOF-Operating-Concept-v1-0_020116-

Final.pdf. 

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. Nathan Bos and Jason Spitaletta, “Chapter 1: Introduction” in Nathan Bos ed., 

Human Factors Considerations of Undergrounds in Insurgencies (United States 

Army Special Operations and John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, National Security Analysis Department, 25 January 2013), 1.

9. James R. Clapper, Statement for the Record Worldwide Threat Assessment of 

the U.S. Intelligence Community Senate Armed Services Committee, 9 February 2016, 6, accessed at: https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/SASC_Unclassified_2016_ATA_SFR_FINAL.pdf

10. “Bronislaw Malinowski: Off the Veranda,” part of the Strangers Abroad series 

(1985; Films Media Group).

11. Bronislaw Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (New York, NY: Dutton 

Press, 1965).

12. Ibid, 25. 

13. Robert G. Sands, Assessing SOF LRC Needs: Leveraging Digital and LRC Learning to 

Reroute the “Roadmap” from Human Terrain to Human Domain (Tampa, FL: JSOU 

Press, 2016), accessed at: http://jsou.libguides.com/ld.php?content_id=23664662; 

Robert G. Sands and Pieter DeVisser, “Narrowing the LREC Assessment Focus by 

Opening the Aperture: A Critical Look at the Status of LREC Assessment Design 

& Development in the Department of Defense,” Special Topics Issue: Journal of 
116

JSOU Report 18-2

Culture, Language and International Security, 2 (2), 2015, accessed at: http://iscl.

norwich.edu/special-issue.

14. Robert G. Sands, “Thinking Differently: Unlocking the Human Domain in Support 

of the 21st Century Intelligence Mission,” Small Wars Journal, 20 August, 2013, 

accessed at: http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/thinking-differently-unlockingthe-human-domain-in-support-of-the-21st-century-intelligence, and Sands and 

Thomas J. Haines, “Promoting Cross-Cultural Competence in Intelligence Professionals: A new perspective on alternative analysis and the intelligence process,” 

Small Wars Journal, 25 April 2013, accessed at: http://smallwarsjournal.com/

jrnl/art/promoting-cross-cultural-competence-in-intelligence-professionals.

15. Personal communication, Kerry Fosher, 2015.

16. Michael Agar, “Culture: Can You Take it Anywhere?” International Journal of 

Qualitative Methods, 5 (2): 1–12, 2006.

17. Robert G. Sands, “Language and Culture Note #1 On the Gray Zone and the 

Space Between War and Peace.” Small Wars Journal, 7 May 2017, accessed at: 

http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/language-culture-note-1-on-the-gray-zoneand-the-space-between-war-and-peace.

18. Gary Treverton in D.T. Moore, Sensemaking: A Structure for an Intelligence 

Revolution (Washington, D.C.: National Defense Intelligence College, 2011), ix.

19. For a more in-depth treatment of thinking differently and 3C in intelligence 

analysis, see Robert G. Sands, “Thinking Differently, and Sands and Thomas J. 

Haines, “Promoting Cross-Cultural Competence in Intelligence Professionals: 

A new perspective on alternative analysis and the intelligence process,” Small 

Wars Journal, 25 April 2013, accessed at: http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/

promoting-cross-cultural-competence-in-intelligence-professionals. 

20. Simon Baron-Cohen, “Austism and ‘Theory of Mind,’” eds. James Hartley and 

Alan Braithwaite, The Applied Psychologist (Open University Press, 2001), 181.

21. Sands, “Thinking Differently.”

22. Bronislaw Malinowski, Diary in the Strictest Sense of the Term (Palo Alto: Stanford 

University Press, 1985), 83–84.

23. Ibid. 

24. Anthony Zinni in Louise J. Rasmussen and Winston Sieck, “7 mental habits of 

highly effective warrior diplomats: Strategies for developing and practicing crosscultural expertise in the military,” Military Review (March–April 2012), 72.

25. Ibid.

26. Sands, “Thinking Differently.”

27. Ibid.

28. M. Tomasello, M. Carpenter, J. Call, T. Behne, and H. Moll, “Understanding 

and sharing intentions: the origins of cultural cognition,” in Behavior and Brain 

Sciences 28 (5), (2005): 675–735.
117

Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

29. Chip Scholz, “Scholz on Leadership,” 26 July 2012, accessed 25 September 

2012 at: http://www.chipscholz.com/2012/07/19/meetings-do-we-thin-sliceaccurately-in-two-seconds. 

30. Eric Garland, “Peak Intel: How so called strategic intelligence actually makes 

us dumber,” The Atlantic Magazine (5 April 2012), accessed at: http://www.

theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/04/peak-intel-how-so-calledstrategic-intelligence-actually-makes-us-dumber/255413/.

31. Robert Johnston, Analytical Culture in the US Intelligence Community (Washington, D.C.: Center for the Study of Intelligence, 16 March 2007), 75, accessed at: 

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/

books-and-monographs/analytic-culture-in-the-u-s-intelligence-community/

analytic_culture_report.pdf

32. Ibid.

33. Raymond Odierno, John Ramos, and William McRaven, “Strategic Landpower 

Task Force: Winning the clash of wills,” Department of Defense, 2013; accessed 

at: http://www.tradoc.army.mil/FrontPageContent/Docs/Strategic%20Landpower%20White%20Paper.pdf.

34. Buster Benson, “Cognitive bias cheat sheet: Because thinking is hard,” Better 

Humans (1 September 2016), accessed at: https://betterhumans.coach.me/

cognitive-bias-cheat-sheet-55a472476b18#.5xn5uc98w.

35. C.M. Archer in Louise Rasmussen, Winston Siek and Joyce Osland, “Using 

Cultural Models of Decision Making to Develop and Assess Cultural Sensemaking Competence,” eds. Dylan Schmorrow and Denise Nicholson, Advances in 

Cross-Cultural Decision-Making (CRC Press, 2010), 68. 

36. David B. Edwards, “Counterinsurgency as a Cultural System,” Small Wars 

Journal (27 December 2010), accessed at: smallwarsjournal.com/blog/journal/

docs-temp/630-edwards.pdf.

37. J. L. Johnson and M.T. Berrett, “Cultural Topography: A New Research Tool for 

Intelligence Analysis.” Studies in Intelligence. 55 (2), 2011, 2, accessed at: www.

cia.gov/library/center-for-thestudy-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/

studies/vol.-55-no.-2/cultural-topography-a-newresearch-tool-for-intelligenceanalysis.html. 

38. Sands and Haines, “Promoting Cross-Cultural Competence in Intelligence 

Professionals: A new perspective on alternative analysis and the intelligence 

process.” 

39. For updated research and application of 3C, see Jessica A. Gallus, Melissa C. 

Gouge, Emily Antolic, Kerry Fosher, Victoria Jasperro, Stephanie Coleman, Brian 

Selmeski, and Jennifer Klafehn, Cross-Cultural Competence in the Department of 

Defense (Ft. Belvoir, VA: Army Research Institute, Behavioral and Social Sciences, 

Special Report 71, April 2014) and Robert G. Sands and Allison Greene-Sands, 

Cross-Cultural Competence for a 21st Century Military: Culture, the Flipside of 

the COIN (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014). 
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40. J. Paik and P. Pirolli, “Cognitive Biases in a Geospatial Intelligence Analysis 

Task: An ACT-R Model,” presentation in the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive 

Science Society, Sapporo, Japan, 1–4 August 2012, 2168, accessed at http://www.

parc.com/publication/2908/cognitive-biases-in-a-geospatial-in.

41. W. Fishbein and G. Treverton, “Rethinking ‘Alternative Analysis’ to Address 

Transnational Threats,” The Sherman Kent Center Occasional Papers, 3 (2), 2004. 

42. Adapted from Robert G. Sands, “3C, the Flipside of COIN,” in R. Greene Sands 

and A. Greene-Sands, eds. Cross-Cultural Competence for a 21st Century Military: Culture, the Flipside of the COIN (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014); 

Robert G. Sands and Thomas J. Haines, “Promoting Cross-Cultural Competence 

in Intelligence Professionals: A new perspective on alternative analysis and the 

intelligence process,” in Small Wars Journal, 25 April 2013, http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/promoting-cross-cultural-competence-in-intelligenceprofessionals, and Robert G. Sands and Pieter Devisser, “Narrowing the LREC 

Assessment Focus by Opening the Aperture: A Critical Look at the Status of 

LREC Assessment Design & Development in the Department of Defense,” Special 

Topics Issue: Journal of Culture, Language and International Security, 2 (2), 2015, 

23, http://iscl.norwich.edu/special-issue. 

43. Ibid, 2. 

44. Ibid.

45. Robert G. Sands, “Cultural Relativism and the Convergence of Ethnography and 

Cross-Cultural Competence,” Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin (January/

March 2012), 13–18.

46. See Lauren Mackenzie, “Strategic Enablers: How Intercultural Communication 

Skills Advance Micro-Level International Security,” in Journal of Culture, Language & International Security, 1 (1): 2014, 85–96.

47. Sands and Devisser, “Narrowing the LREC Assessment Focus by Opening the 

Aperture: A Critical Look at the Status of LREC Assessment Design & Development in the Department of Defense,” 2.

48. Michael Agar, The Professional Stranger: An Informal Introduction to Ethnography

(Emerald Group Publishing: Bingly, 1996), 11.

49. Ibid. 

50. Robert G. Sands, “Human Terrain, Human Domain and the Gray Zone,” presentation at the Essentials of LRC Learning, a second workshop in LRC learning, Workshop Director and co-presenter, National Foreign Language Center, 

University of Maryland, 29 September 2016, http://www.languaculture.org/

workshop. 

51. Robert G. Sands, “Culture Clash,” Journal of Culture, Language and International 

Security, 2 (1), (2015), 25, accessed at: http://iscl.norwich.edu/jclis-summer-2015. 

52. Dan Zeytoonian, “Intelligent Design: COIN Operations and Intelligence Collection and Analysis, September-October 2006,” in Military Review, accessed at: 

http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/milreview/zeytoonian.pdf. 
119

Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

53. Matt Pottinger, Michael T. Flynn, and Paul D. Batchelor, “Fixing Intel: A Blueprint 

for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan,” Center for New American 

Security (January 2010), 14, accessed at: https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.cnas.

org/documents/AfghanIntel_Flynn_Jan2010_code507_voices.pdf. 

54. Ibid, 14.

55. Ibid.

56. Miyamoto Musashi in Catherine, “Useful Quotes when Conducting Qualitative Research,” in Reflections of Good Qualitative Research, 28 February 2011, 

accessed at: http://reflectionsofgoodqualitativeresearch.blogspot.com/2011/02/

useful-quotes-when-conducting.html. 

57. Pierre Bourdieu, “The forms of capital” in J. Richardson, ed., Handbook of 

Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (New York, Greenwood, 

1986), 241–258. 

58. See 2017 conference on culture and mobilization, “Cultural Mobilization: Cultural Consciousness-raising and National Movements in Europe and the World,” 

organized by SPIN (Study Platform on Interlocking Nationalisms, www.spinnet.

eu) in cooperation with NISE (Antwerp) and ASEN (London), accessed at: https://

networks.h-net.org/node/20292/discussions/174394/cultural-mobilization-cultural-consciousness-raising-and-national; see also Akshay Mangla, “Mobilizing 

Culture for Public Action: Community Participation and Child Rights in Rural 

Uttar Pradesh,” Harvard Business School, Working Paper 14-100, 11 April 2014, 

accessed at: http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/14-100_1a2e4f26-

88c4-4740-a0b0-38915aca2712.pdf.

59. Lena Robinson, “Beliefs, Values, and Intercultural Communication,” eds. Sheila 

Barrett Carol Komaromy, Martin Robb, and Anita Rogers, Communication, 

Relationships and Care: A Reader (London, Routledge, 2013), 110, accessed at: 

http://www.open.edu/openlearn/ocw/pluginfile.php/618856/mod_resource/

content/1/k205_1readerchap12.

60. Michael J. Formica, “Core Truths, Core Beliefs and Obstacles to Progress, Pt. 2,” 

Psychology Today, August 30, 2008, accessed at: https://www.psychologytoday.

com/blog/enlightened-living/200808/core-truths-core-beliefs-and-obstaclesprogress-pt-2.

61. Mary Hufford, “American Folklife: A Commonwealth of Cultures,” in ed, Simon 

J. Bronner, Folk Nation: Folklore in the Creation of American Tradition (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2002), 242.

62. Scott Atran, Talking to the Enemy. Religion, Brotherhood, and the (Un) Making of 

Terrorists (New York, NY: Harper Collins, 2010); and, “Black and White and Red 

All Over: How the hyperkinetic media is breeding a new generation of terrorists,” 

Foreign Policy (22 April 2013), accessed at: http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/04/22/

black-and-white-and-red-all-over. J. Ginges, Scott Atran, D. Medin, and K. 

Shikaki, “Sacred Bounds on Rational Resolution of Violent Political Conflict,” 

Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 104 (16), 2006: 7357–7360; H. 

Matfess, “Are We Pivoting to Africa Rather Than Asia?” in The Atlantic, 6 October 
120

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2013, accessed at: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/

are-we-pivoting-to-africa-rather-than-asia/280318/.

63. Hammad Sheikh, Jeremy Ginges, Alin Coman, and Scott Atran, “Religion, group 

threat and sacred values,” Judgment and Decision Making, 7 (2) (March 2012), 

110–118, accessed at: http://journal.sjdm.org/12/12305/jdm12305.html.

64. Matfess,“Are We Pivoting to Africa Rather Than Asia?” 

65. Michael Agar, Language Shock: Understanding the Culture of Conversation (New 

York, NY: William Morrow, 1996), and Agar, “Culture.”

66. Sands, “Cultural Relativism.” 

67. Sands and Haines, “Promoting Cross-Cultural Competence in Intelligence 

Professionals: A new perspective on alternative analysis and the intelligence 

process,” and Sands, “Thinking Differently.”

68. Michael T. Flynn, James Sisco and David C. Ellis, “‘Left of Bang’: The Value of 

Sociocultural Analysis in Today’s Environment,” Prism 3 (4), 13–21.

69. Kerry Fosher and Lauren McKenzie, Culture-General Guidebook for Military 

Professionals (Center for Advanced Operational Culture Learning; Marine Corps 

University, March 2017), 39. 

70. Ibid.

71. See Module Four, “Identity” in the course “Operationalizing Culture: Thinking 

Differently about Behavior in the Human Domain,” Norwich University, accessed 

at: https://online.norwich.edu/continuing-education/operationalizing-culture. 

There are many books written on the Rwandan genocide, see the following for 

an in-depth analysis of the Rwandan genocide: Gerard Prunier. Africa’s World 

War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe 

(London: Oxford University Press, April 2011); Roméo Dallaire. Shake Hands with 

the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda (Da Capo Press; Reprint edition 

(21 December 2004); Scott Straus, The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War 

in Rwanda (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1 edition, 17 July 2008).

72. This case study is taken from Module Four, “Identity” in the course 

“Operationalizing Culture: Thinking Differently about Behavior in the Human 

Domain.” Norwich University, accessed at: https://online.norwich.edu/

continuing-education/operationalizing-culture.

73. M. Nakata, “Indigenous Australian Studies and Higher Education,” The Wentworth Lectures, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander 

Studies, 2004.

74. Michael Agar, “Schon Wieder? Science in Linguistic Anthropology,” Anthropology News, January 37 (1), (1996) 13.r.

75. M. Q. Patton, M. Q, Qualitative Evaluation and Research Methods (3rd ed.) 

(Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2002), 39.

76. A. Strauss and J. Corbin, Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1990), 17.
121

Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

77. L.J. Cronbach, “Beyond the two disciplines of scientific psychology,” American 

Psychologist, 30 (2), 1975, 116-127.

78. M. C. Hoepfl, “Choosing qualitative research: A primer for technology education 

researchers,” Journal of Technology Education, 9 (1), (1997), 47–63, accessed at: 

http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JTE/v9n1/pdf/hoepfl.pdf.

79. Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber, The Practice of Qualitative Research: Engaging Students 

in the Research Process, 3rd Edition (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 

2016).

80. Gery Ryan, “What Are Standards of Rigor for Qualitative Research?” RAND 

Corporation, accessed at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265498024_

Standards_for_Rigor_in_Qualitative_Inquiry.

81. William Turner in Qualitative Quotes, accessed at: https://www.brainyquote.

com/quotes/keywords/qualitative.html.

82. This narrative is taken from the short film by John D. McHue, “Lost in Translation,” The Guardian, 12 June 2008, accessed at: https://www.theguardian.com/

world/video/2008/jun/11/afghanistan.johndmchugh.

83. Ibid.

84. Vanessa Garza, The Tender Soldier (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, August 

2014).

85. Paul E. Durrenberger, “Are Ethnographies ‘Just-So’ Stories?” in C.R. Ember, M. 

Ember and P.N. Pergrine, eds, Discovering Anthropology: Researchers at Work 

(Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2007), 74–82.

86. Spradley in Durrenberger, “Are Ethnographies ‘Just-So’ Stories?”

87. Clifford Geertz, in The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York, NY: 

Basic Books, 1973), 3–32. Perhaps first considered the power of interpretation in 

the ethnographic process. He posited that ethnography really was a collection of 

interpretations about social and cultural reality represented by those that were the 

object of attention of the ethnographer. Most texts or manuals on ethnography 

now consider the process of interpretation as part of how ethnography is done. 

See, for example, Robert R. Sands, Sport Ethnography (Champaign, IL: Human 

Kinetics Press, 2001), or Margaret D. LeCompte and Jean J. Schensul. Analysis 

and Interpretation of Ethnographic Data: A Mixed Methods Approach (Walnut 

Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press, 2012). 

88. Agar, “Culture.”

89. Knowledge Café, “Explicit Knowledge,” accessed at: http://www.knowledgemanagement-cafe.com/explicit-knowledge.

90. Connie McNeely, “Understanding Culture in a Changing World: A Sociological 

Perspective,” Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, 4 (1) (1996), 2–11.

91. Ibid.

92. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures. 

93. Sands, “Thinking Differently.”
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94. Kenneth Pike in R.T. McCutcheon, “Theoretical Background: Insides, Outsides, and 

the Scholar of Religion,” in R.T. McCutcheon, ed., The Insider/Outsider Problem in 

the Study of Religion (London: Cassell Academic, 1999), accessed at: http://www2.

kenyon.edu/Depts/Religion/Fac/Adler/Reln101/McCutcheon%20-%2.

95. Morris in McCutcheon, “Theoretical Background: Insides, Outsides, and the 

Scholar of Religion.”

96. Sands, “Thinking Differently.”

97. M.W. Morris, K. Leung, D. Ames, and B. Lickel, “Views from Inside and Outside: Integrating Emic and Etic Insights about Culture and Justice Judgment,” 

Academy of Management Review 24 (4), 1999, 782.

98. Sands, “Thinking Differently.”

99. Marvin Harris, Cultural materialism: The struggle for a science of culture (New 

York, NY: Random House, 1979).

100. Williams in Sands, “Thinking Differently.”

101. Greenfield in Morris et al, “Views from Inside and Outside”, 783.

102. Alexander M. Ervin, Applied Anthropology: Tools and Perspectives for Contemporary Practice (Boston, MA: Pearson: 2005).

103. Ibid, 4. 

104. Ibid.

105. S. Kedia and J. van Willigen, “Applied Anthropology: Context for Domains of 

Application,” in S. Kedia and J. van Willigen, eds., Applied Anthropology: Domains 

of Application (New York, NY: Praeger 30 October 2005), 2.

106. Robert R. Sands, “Ethnography in Support of Capturing the User Experience in 

Sport Practice,” in A. Cereijo-Roibas, E. Stamatakis, K. Black (eds) Social Design 

of Sport (London: Ashgate, 2011), 242.

107. See the following how-to manuals and publications for doing ethnography: D. 

Fetterman, Ethnography: Step by Step (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2009); Robert 

R. Sands, Sport Ethnography (Champaign, IL,: Human Kinetics, 2002); Sands, 

“Ethnography in Support of Capturing the User Experience in Sport Practice,” 

242; Robert R. Sands, “Ethical Ethnography: Epistemology and the Ethics of Good 

Intentions,” in Kevin Young, ed., Tribal Play: Sport Subcultures and Countercultures -Volume IV of Research in the Sociology of Sport (Elsevier Press, 2008); P. 

Kutsche, Field Ethnography: A Manual for Doing Cultural Anthropology (Upper 

Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1998); B. Russell, Research Methods in Anthropology: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches (Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira, 

2001); James Spradley, The Ethnographic Interview (New York, NY: Harcourt, 

Brace and Janovich, 1979); and, Participant Observation (New York, NY: Holt, 

Rinehart and Winston, 1980). 

108. Sands, Ethnography in Support of Capturing the User Experience,” 242. 

109. Ashley Crossman, “Understanding Participant Observation Research,” About Education, 

accessed at: http://sociology.about.com/od/Research/a/Participant-Observation.html.
123

Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

110. Russell Bernard in Barbara B. Kawulich, “Participant Observation as a Data Collection Method,” in Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 6 (2), 2005, 43, accessed 

at: http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/viewArticle/466/996. 

111. Ibid.

112. Michael Agar and J. MacDonald, “Focus Groups and Ethnography,” in Human 

Organization 54 (1), 1995, 78–87; A.M. Ervin (2005), Applied Anthropology: Tools 

and Perspectives for Contemporary Practice, Second Edition (Boston: Pearson/

Allyn and Bacon); Agar and MacDonald, “Focus Groups and Ethnography;” Satish 

Kedia and John Van Willigen, Applied Anthropology (New York: Praeger, 2005; 

R. A. Krueger., Focus Groups: A Practical Guide for Applied Research (Newbury 

Park, CA: Sage, 1988).

113. Ervin, Applied Anthropology: Tools and Perspectives for Contemporary Practice, 176. 

114. J. Beebe, Rapid Assessment Process: An Introduction (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira, 

2001), and “Basic Concepts and Techniques of Rapid Appraisal,” in J. McDonald, 

ed., The Applied Anthropology Reader (Boston: Allyn & Bacon/Longman, 2002), 

70–87; Ervin, 2005; S. Scrimshaw and E. Hurtado, Rapid Assessment Procedures 

for Nutrition and Primary Health Care: Anthropological Approaches to Improving Programme Effectiveness (Los Angeles: U.C.L.A. Latin American Center 

Publications, 1987).

115. Beebe, Rapid Assessment Process: An Introduction, 99.

116. Sands, “Ethnography in Support of Capturing the User Experience,” 255.

117. Ervin, “Applied Anthropology, 219.”

118. P.H. Herlihy and G. Knapp, “Maps of, by, and for the Peoples of Latin America,” 

Human Organization 62 (4), (2003): 303–14.

119. Sands, “Ethnography in Support of Capturing the User Experience,” 254.

120. Mac William Bishop, “Inside the Green Berets’ Hunt for Wanted Warlord Joseph 

Kony,” NBC News (6 March 6, 2017), accessed at: http://www.nbcnews.com/

news/world/inside-green-berets-hunt-warlord-joseph-kony-n726076.

121. Ibid.

122. Ibid.

123. Ibid.

124. Ullrich Fichtner, “Civilized Warriors: The US Army Learns from its Mistakes 

in Iraq,” Spiegel Online, 18 December 2006, accessed at: http://www.spiegel.de/

international/spiegel/civilized-warriors-the-us-army-learns-from-its-mistakesin-iraq-a-455165.html.

125. Robert G. Sands, “COIN and Beyond,” in R. Greene Sands and A. Greene-Sands 

eds., Cross-Cultural Competence for a 21st Century Military: Culture, the Flipside 

of the COIN (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014), 87. 

126. Ibid, 86.

127. R. Kemp, “Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Eastern Afghanistan: Utility 

as a Strategic Counterinsurgency Tool,” Military Review (Sept/Oct), 2001, 30, 
124

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accessed at: http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/

MilitaryReview_20111031_art007.pdf.

128. See the following for critique of Provincial Reconstruction Teams: I.D. Westerman, “Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan: An Examination of the 

Problems Integrating the Military, Political and Developmental Dimensions with 

Reference to the US Experience in Vietnam,” in Small Wars Journal, 5 October 

2008, accessed at: http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/provincial-reconstruction-in-afghanistan; R. Martin, R. “Revisiting Afghanistan’s Reconstruction 

Teams,” NPR Weekend Edition, 7 April 2013, accessed at: http://www.npr.

org/2013/04/07/176482780/revisiting-afghanistans-reconstruction-teams; and 

Kemp, 2010.

129. Sands, “COIN and Beyond,” 85.

130. Michael Flynn, J. Sisco, an D. C. Ellis, “Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making 

intelligence relevant in Afghanistan,” Center for New American Security, 

January 2010, 4-25, accessed at: https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/

fixing-intel-a-blueprint-for-making-intelligence-relevant. 

131. J.E. McCullough, “Knowing thy Enemy,” TIME, 7 May 2013, accessed at: http://

nation.time.com/2013/05/07/knowing-thy-enemy/.

132. Graesser and Nakamura in Rentch et al, Conceptualizing Multicultural Perspective Taking Skills, 21. 

133. Ibid.

134. J.R. Rentsch, I. Mot, and Allison Abbe, Identifying the core content and structure of a schema for cultural understanding (ADA501597, Arlington, VA: Army 

Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, 2009). 

135. Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, “Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics 

and Biases,” in Science, New Series, 185 (4157), (27 September 1974): 1124–1131.

136. J.R. Rentch, A. Gunderson, and G.F. Goodwin, and Allison Abbe, G.F. and Allison Abbe, Conceptualizing Multicultural Perspective Taking Skills (ADA475106, 

Knoxville, TN: Organizational Research Group, LLC, 2007); R.J. Heuer, Psychology 

of Intelligence Analysis (Washington, D.C.: Center for the Study of Intelligence, 

1999); D.H. Harris and V.A. Spiker, “Critical Thinking Skills for Intelligence 

Analysis,” in I.L Nunes, ed., Ergonomics – A Systems Approach (InTech, 2012), 

209-232 accessed at: http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs/35820/InTech-Critical_

thinking_skills_for_intelligence_analysis.pdf.

137. Nate Silver, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some 

Don’t (New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2012), 12.

138. Daniel Kahneman, “Maps of Bounded Rationality: Psychology for Behavioral 

Economics,” in The American Economic Review, 93 (5), 2003, 1449-1475, and Fast 

and Slow Thinking (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011).

139. Kahneman, Fast and Slow Thinking. 

140. F. J. Babetski, “Book review, ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow.’” Studies in Intelligence, 

56 (2), 1–4, 2012.
125

Greene Sands and Arakelian: A Qualitative Approach 

141. Harris & Striker, “Critical Thinking Skills,” 211.

142. Sands, Assessing SOF LRC Needs: Leveraging Digital and LRC Learning to Reroute 

the “Roadmap” from Human Terrain to Human Domain. 

143. Kahneman in Babeski, “Book review, ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow,’” 2.

144. Buster Benson, “Cognitive bias cheat sheet: Because thinking is hard,” Better 

Humans, 1 September 2016, accessed at: https://betterhumans.coach.me/

cognitive-bias-cheat-sheet-55a472476b18#.5xn5uc98w.

145. Eric Fernandez, “A Visual Study Guide to Cognitive Biases,” 18 December 2016, 

accessed at: http://www.nowandfutures.com/large/Cognitive-Biases-A-VisualStudy-Guide-by-the-Royal-Society-of-Account-Planning.pdf.

146. Ibid. Wikipedia offers a list of over 170 cognitive biases and although Wikipedia 

is not usually referenced as a voice of authority, the sheer number offers a reinforcement of how the concept has grown in importance in a variety of social, 

natural and physical sciences and application to an array of social and cultural 

environments and interactions.

147. Fernandez, “A Visual Study Guide to Cognitive Biases.”

148. Science Daily, Cognitive Bias, 18 December 2016, accessed at: https://www.

sciencedaily.com/terms/cognitive_bias.html.

149. Benson, “Cognitive bias cheat sheet.” 

150. “Nate Silver Quotes,” Brainy Quotes, accessed at: https://www.brainyquote.com/

quotes/authors/n/nate_silver.html.

151. Ibid.

152. Silver, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don’t, 13.

153. Ibid, 12.

154. Ibid, 15.

155. Kahneman in Babeski, “Book review, ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow,” 3. 

156. Malcom Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (New York, 

NY: Back Bay Books, 2007). 

157. Ibid.

158. Babeski, “Book review, ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow,’” 3.

159. Benjamin Worf in Rob Johnson, Analytic Culture in the U.S. Intelligence Community; An Ethnographic Study (Washington, D.C.: Central Intelligence Agency, 

2005), accessed at: https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/analytic-culture-in-the-u-sintelligence-community/chapter_6_culture.html.

160. Andrew Garfield, “Understanding the Human Terrain: Key to Success in Afghanistan,” Small Wars Journal, 16 July 2010, accessed at: http://smallwarsjournal.

com/blog/understanding-the-human-terrain-key-to-success-in-afghanistan.
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161. U.S. House Unamerican Activities 1968, 62 in Roberto Gonzalez, “A Phoenix Rising,” Z Magazine, 28 April 2008, accessed at: https://zcomm.org/

zmagazine/a-phoenix-rising-by-roberto-j-gonz-lez/.

162. Roberto Gonzalez, “‘Human terrain;’ Past, present and future applications,” 

Anthropology Today, 24 (1) February 2008, 23, accessed at: https://sites.google.

com/site/concernedanthropologists/ht-at-gonzalez.pdf.

163. Ralph Peters in Gonzalez, “A Phoenix Rising,” 23.

164. Gonzalez, “‘Human terrain.’” 

165. Garfield, “Understanding the Human Terrain: Key to Success in Afghanistan.” 

166. Raymond Odierno, James Amos and William McRaven, “Strategic Landpower 

Task Force: Winning the clash of wills” (White Paper), Washington, D.C.: 

Department of Defense, 2013, accessed at: http://www.tradoc.army.mil/FrontPageContent/Docs/Strategic%20Landpower%20White%20Paper.pdf. 

167. Sands, “Thinking Differently.”

168. Claudette Roulo, “McRaven: Success in Human Domain Fundamental to Special 

Ops,” in U.S. Department of Defense, American Foreign Press Service, 5 June 2013, 

accessed at: http://archive.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=120219.

169. Special Operations Forces White Paper, “Operating in the Human Domain,” 3 

August 2015, accessed at: https://community.apan.org/cfs-file/__key/telligentevolution-components-attachments/01-9016-00-00-00-12-34-44/USSOCOMConcept_5F00_Operating-in-the-Human-Domain-3-Aug-2015.pdf.

170. Robert Sands, “Human Terrain, Human Domain and the Gray Zone,” presentation 

at the Essentials of LRC Learning, a second workshop in LRC learning, National 

Foreign Language Center, University of Maryland, 29 September 2016, http://

www.languaculture.org/workshop.

171. Grant Martin, “The Sublime: The Paradox of the 7th Warfighting Function,” 

Small Wars Journal (25 November 2013), accessed at: http://smallwarsjournal.

com/print/14965?page=1.

172. Roy F. Douglas, Pursuing the Human Domain Risks Reinvesting on the Basics 

(Army War College: Carlisle Barracks, March 2013), accessed at http://oai.dtic.

mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA589406.

173. Ibid.

174. Robert Greene Sands, “Language & Culture Note #1: On the Gray Zone and 

the Space Between War and Peace.” Small Wars Journal (7 May 2017), accessed 

at: http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/language-culture-note-1-on-the-grayzone-and-the-space-between-war-and-peace.

175. See Sands, Sport Ethnography, and Bronislaw Malinowski, A Diary in its Strict 

Sense of the Term (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989).

176. Book synopsis of Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term (Stanford University Press), 

accessed at: http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=2891.

177. Ibid.
127

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178. Robert Greene Sands, “Cultural Relativism and the Convergence of Ethnography 

and Cross-Cultural Competence,” Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin

(January/March 2012), 13–18.

179. Ibid.

180. Ibid, 15.

181. Roberta Heale and Alison Twycross, “Validity and reliability in quantitative 

studies,” Evidence Based Nursing, 18, 2015, 66–67, accessed at: http://ebn.bmj.

com/content/18/3/66.full.

182. Ibid.

183. Ellen A. Drost, “Validity and Reliability in Social Science Research,” in Education 

Research and Perspectives, 38 (1), 2012), 105, accessed at: http://www.erpjournal.

net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/ERPV38-1.-Drost-E.-2011.-Validity-and-Reliability-in-Social-Science-Research.pdf.

184. Helen Noble and Joanna Smith, “Issues of validity and reliability in qualitative 

research,” in Evidence Based Nursing, 18, 2015, 34-35, accessed at http://ebn.bmj.

com/content/18/2/34.full. 

185. Ibid.

186. Ibid.

187. Ibid.

188. Ibid.

189. Center for Innovation in Research and Teaching, “Establishing Validity in Qualitative Research,” in Grand Canyon University, accessed at: https://cirt.gcu.edu/

research/developmentresources/research_ready/qualitative/validity.

190. Ibid.

191. Ibid.

192. Ibid.

193. Sabina Yeasmin and Khan Ferdousour Rahman, “‘Triangulation” Research Method 

as the Tool of Social Science Research,” in BUP JOURNAL 1 (1), 2012, 155.

194. Alexander Jakob, “On the Triangulation of Quantitative and Qualitative Data 

in Typological Social Research: Reflections on a Typology of Conceptualizing 

‘Uncertainty’ in the Context of Employment Biographies,” in Forum: Qualitative 

Social Research, 2 (1), 2001; Number 1; Jackob in Yeasmin and Ferdousour, 2012, 

157. 

195. Tim Ingold, “That’s enough about ethnography!” in Journal of Ethnographic 

Theory, 4 (1), No. 1, 2014, accessed at: http://www.haujournal.org/index.php/

hau/article/view/hau4.1.021/665.

196. See Geertz recount this story in his classic work, “Deep Play: Notes on a Balinese 

Cockfight,” in his Interpretations of Culture.

197. Sands, Assessing SOF LRC Needs.

198. Sands 2016, and Sands and Devisser, 2015.
128

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199. Robert G. Sands, “Language and Culture in the Department of Defense: Synergizing complimentary instruction and building LREC competency,” in 

Small Wars Journal, 8 March 2013, accessed at http://smallwarsjournal.com/

jrnl/art/language-and-culture-in-the-department-of-defense-synergizingcomplimentary-instruction-and. 

200. Salikoko Sangol Mufwene, “Lingua Franca,” in Encyclopedia Britannica, 27 

March 2008, accessed at: https://www.britannica.com/topic/lingua-franca.

201. Laura Marsh, “Tongues Twisted,” in New Republic, 17 November 2010, accessed 

at: https://newrepublic.com/article/78774/tongues-twisted.

202. Will Baker, “The Cultures of English as a Lingua Franca,” Tesol Quarterly, 

43 (4), December 2009, 567, accessed at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/

doi/10.1002/j.1545-7249.2009.tb00187.x/epdf.

203. Sands and DeVisser, “Narrowing the LREC Assessment Focus by Opening the 

Aperture: A Critical Look at the Status of LREC Assessment Design & Development in the Department of Defense.” 

204. Fosher and Mackenzie, Culture-General Guidebook for Military Professionals, 8–9. 

205. Robert G. Sands, “We Built a Culture MOOC ... for Soldiers Everywhere 

(and Marines, and Airmen, and USAID personnel and others),” Small Wars 

Journal, 27 June 2014, accessed at: http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/webuilt-a-culture-mooc%E2%80%A6for-soldiers-everywhere-and-marines-andairmen-and-us-aid-personnel.

206. Clifford Geertz, “Clifford Geertz Quotes,” Brainy Quotes, accessed at: https://

www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/c/clifford_geertz.html.