Pre-Internet Networked Operations theme issue for American Behavioral Scientist
American Behavioral Scientist (ABS), is a peer-reviewed journal and published fourteen times a year. It provides in-depth perspectives on intriguing contemporary topics throughout the social and behavioral sciences. Each issue is guest edited. For more information about American Behavioral Scientist see https://journals.sagepub.com/home/abs
We are surveying 1960-70s military operations including but not limited to, COINTELPRO (US); CHAOS (US); CORDS & Phoenix (Vietnam); Condor (in South America); ORDEN (El Salvador); Jakarta (Indonesia) and OBAN (Brazil) for a theme issue of American Behavioral Scientist entitled, "Pre-Internet Networked Operations". These operations networked societies prior to the advent of the Internet. Potential areas of focus include: the communication equipment that supported these operations, from how evident or non-evident they were; to their staffing and hardware; the use and purpose of the operations; the operations' contributions to social and financial inequality and political polarization in the populations they monitored; and works that pertain to the theoretical or methodological approaches applied to the findings.
This survey focuses on military networked operations that linked and fueled certain economic policies, ways of life, and worldviews that are normalized today (neoliberalism, various polarizations, surveillance and datafication, etc.). Research touches on many aspects of the pre-history of the Internet, during the Cold War, and involves a variety of contexts. In depth analysis is welcome, however authors should prioritize making the operations understandable and easier to compare with other operations if possible. This may represent the first time these networked operations have been described and compared in one source, which will be a helpful, historical-comparative, resource for media scholars, media users and social scientists worldwide. We are especially interested in information on the following: what role interactive computers and non-evident, wireless networks (e.g., radios, satellite communications, sonar, radar, microwave networks along the railroads, microwave towers, listening posts, teletype machines) played in the program; who used the networks and for what purpose; how visible these communication systems were to the civilian population; and whether civilians knew they were being surveilled; and in general terms, how did the program contrbute to local financial inequality and political polarization.
Contributors are working on some operations and more are welcome!
Authors who want to collaborate on, author, or co-author, essays about COINTELPRO in the US, Phoenix in Vietnam, and ORDEN in EL Salvador, are encouraged to participate.
Lead editor Noel Packard
and
Dr. Bradley Simpson, Associate Professor of History and Asian American Studies at University of Connecticut (history.uconn.edu/person/bradley-simpson) .He is author of Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and U.S.-Indonesian Relations, 1960-1968 (Stanford 2008) which chronicles how U.S. anti-Communist assistance in Indonesia helped bend the government and civilian population towards neoliberal economic policies while neutralizing most of the members of the Indonesian Communist Party. He is re-visiting, and re-thinking, the history, political and legal ramifications of what US foreign relations and international politics refer to as, 'self-determination' of countries and has books in progress. They are entitled, 'The First Right: Self-Determination and the Transformation of post-1941 International Relations'; Indonesia's New Order and the U.S. and the World Community, 1966-1998 and The Routledge History of Human Rights co-authored with Jen Quataert. He is founder and director of a project of the National Security Archive to declassify U.S. government documents about Indonesia and East Timor during the reign of General Suharto (1966-1998).
If interested, please submit an abstract of 500 words or less in English and a bio-statement to Noel Packard at: npac825@aucklanduni.ac.nz. or through the CFP abstract portal.
Tentative Timeline:
Deadline for submission of new abstracts open until the final deadline of 1 October, 2025.
Target publication timeline for paper publication - December 2025 and into early 2026.
For more information, please send questions and abstracts to:
Noel Packard PhD, BA Honors, MA, MPA, BA & MRSNZ
(pronounced Noelle she/her from birth)
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6589-3362
Email: npac825@aucklanduni.ac.nz
"Exploiting and Neutralising the ‘Communist Threat’ for the Privatised Internet” [Doctoral thesis, University of Auckland, New Zealand]. https://www.proquest.com/docview/3078283235
Sociology of Memory: Papers from the Spectrum (Ed) Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Noel Packard
