The ChallengeThe United States is confronting complex global problems that require in-depth understanding of national, regional, and local political factions, ethnic rivalries, and other cultural forces that shape events, force conflicts, and create human suffering. Challenges such as narco-terrorism, ethnic conflict, international gangs, cyber threats, pandemic disease, weapons of mass destruction, failed states, and global terrorism, require not just understanding motivations of the actors but also potential repercussions of any actions employed by the U.S. government.
Booz Allen Hamilton’s Socio-Cultural Development Center (SCDC) offers a unique understanding of these challenges. The SCDC is a collaborative, multidisciplinary effort that includes sociologists, anthropologists, economists, psychologists, and scholars from other social science disciplines, as well as technical experts in such areas as geospatial analysis, modeling and simulation, and intelligence analysis.
The Center has developed a formal methodology for assessing communities of interest that are driven by social, ethnic, and cultural beliefs and customs very different from our own. For example, in 2008, SCDC studied the key drivers of instability in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo; our analysis identified six interrelated causal factors.
Following on this work, SCDC studied the strategic communications approach of al Qaeda in Yemen, and identified ways to counter the group's influence using our own communications strategy that reflects insight into the various tribal groups.
More recently, SCDC used a multidisciplinary, multi-sector approach to conduct a study of organized crime's involvement in human trafficking in Mexico, with significant implications for coordination of anti-trafficking operations carried out by government agencies and non-governmental organizations.
Download a PDF version of the case study entitled, "Deciphering Global Complexity: The Booz Allen Socio-Cultural Development Center."
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