Humanitarian-military collaboration: Social and cultural aspects of interoperability

This chapter explores how cultural factors affect the ability of military and humanitarian actors to work together to achieve common goals and how cultural factors affect work with local populations. It elaborates the distinction between horizontal interoperability and vertical interoperability, the former focused on the organizational cultural factors affecting humanitarian and military groups, the latter focusing on their relations with local communities. It goes on to explore the usefulness of cultural model analysis for understanding both horizontal and vertical interoperability and discusses the ways in which power affects these relationships. The chapter argues that cultural awareness must be based on understandings of culture that are generative rather than trait-based and static.