The Textual Mediation of Denial: Congress, Abu Ghraib, and the Construction of an Isolated Incident

Rosso, Jared Del

doi:10.1525/sp.2011.58.2.165

Cited by 19 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Documents, defined broadly to include material and electronic texts and audio‐video materials, also figure in official denial. As I argued in an earlier study on congressional discourse of Abu Ghraib (Del Rosso ), texts may mediate accounts of violence by providing claims makers with representations of that violence. These representations constitute the “facts” to which claims makers hold arguments about the violence accountable.…”

Section: The Social Organization Of Denialmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…The Department of Defense and the U.S. Armed Forces opened investigations into the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody and, in Congress, the House and Senate Armed Services Committees held hearings on Abu Ghraib. The administration of George W. Bush and its supporters in Congress responded by isolating the violence there, arguing that it represented neither U.S. detention operations broadly (Del Rosso ) nor U.S. interrogation policies (Berard ; Brown ; Danner ; Hooks and James Mosher, ). In so doing, the administration largely contained the impact of the resulting scandal.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Textuality and the Social Organization of Denial: Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, and the Meanings of U.S. Interrogation Policies

Rosso¹

2014

Sociological Forum

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Recent studies suggest that denial is a socially organized and culturally mediated process. This article furthers the study of socially organized denial by theorizing and empirically examining the role of texts in official denial. I examine the ways that institutional documents serve as resources for state officials to interpret and typify instances of state violence. To do so, I draw on a qualitative content analysis of 10 U.S. Congressional hearings that focus on the violence against detainees in U.S. custody at Abu Ghraib and Guant anamo. Though comparable acts of violence were committed at both facilities, I show that military officials employed different variants of interpretive denial to account for the two cases. Underlying these variants of denial were different descriptions of the connection between the violence and institutional texts that established authorized interrogation practices. Specifically, military officials causally isolated Abu Ghraib, denying the link between Interrogation Rules of Engagement in Iraq and the violence at the prison. Officials, on the other hand, interpreted the instances of violence at Guant anamo as expressions of lawful, institutionally available interrogation techniques. I conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for the study of denial, interpretive work in organizational contexts, and human rights.

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Section: The Social Organization Of Denialmentioning

confidence: 96%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Textuality and the Social Organization of Denial: Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, and the Meanings of U.S. Interrogation Policies

Rosso¹

2014

Sociological Forum

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“…It is generally only after egregious breeches of shared values when large numbers of Americans become aware of the humanitarian impacts of their government's military policies, such as in the wake of the release of photos and videos of torture and prisoner abuse at the U.S.‐administered Abu Ghraib prison. In such instances, Del Rosso (, ) and Hooks and Mosher () identify and document how officials effectively draw upon a repertoire of strategies of denial to argue that the U.S. government should not be held responsible for systematically violating humanitarian norms. Through these strategies, officials argue that behaviors that might otherwise be regarded as humanitarian crimes were in fact only “isolated incidents” committed by a few “bad apples,” which had nothing to do with U.S. policy or war‐fighting strategies.…”

Section: Us Media Coverage and Official Discourse During The Iraq Warmentioning

confidence: 99%

U.S. sociology and the Iraq War

Bonds

2017

Sociology Compass

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The 2003 U.S. invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq had profound consequences for the people living in that nation. In this essay, I provide a brief overview of the dramatic changes that transpired in Iraq due to the war. I then move on to highlight the contributions U.S. sociologists have made in studies regarding the conflict, based on a review of articles published from 2003-2016 in ten generalist U.S.-based journals. My review shows that while U.S. sociology has made significant contributions to further collective knowledge about American aspects of the Iraq War, U.S.sociologists have paid very little attention to the actual impacts of the invasion and occupation on Iraqi social organizations, Iraqi culture, and on the lives of individual Iraqis. I make the case that these historically significant events deserve more scholarly attention than they have been given so far. I further argue that U.S. sociologists have a special responsibility to document, study, and explain the consequences of their government's behavior when it causes extensive harm to people living in another land.

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“…While work exists on official denial (e.g., Cohen ; Del Rosso ; Welch ) less attention has been paid to the words and experiences of those whose collective silence is a powerful force in allowing the state to commit human rights violations. Our approach, which draws on in‐depth interviews interpreted with knowledge of context, allows for a detailed view of cultural denial in two specific places and moments while also gaining insights through the comparison.…”

Section: State Violence and The Social Organization Of Denialmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In that context, state officials perpetrated actions widely considered to be violations of human rights. Documented humiliation, abuse, and torture against detainees occurred in U.S.‐run prisons abroad (Danner ; Del Rosso ; Rejali ). The Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq became infamous for the sexualized abuse of prisoners by U.S. military personnel.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultures of Denial: Avoiding Knowledge of State Violations of Human Rights in Argentina and the United States

Sutton

Norgaard

2013

Sociological Forum

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Why and how do individuals distance themselves from information about their government's participation in torture and other human rights violations? Such citizen (non)response implicitly legitimates and thus facilitates the continuation of abusive state actions. Drawing on a model of socially organized denial, we explore how sociocultural contexts and practices mediate individuals' avoidance, justification, normalization, silencing, and outright denial of human rights abuses in two sites: Argentina during the last military dictatorship (1976)(1977)(1978)(1979)(1980)(1981)(1982)(1983) and the United States during the "war on terror" post September 11, 2001. The study is based on 40 in-depth interviews with members of diverse civic, religious, community, and political organizations in both countries (20 in each site). Comparing the political circumstances of a dictatorship and an electoral democracy, the analysis shows the roles of patriotic and national security ideologies and practices of silence and talk as organizers of cultures of denial. , and anonymous reviewers.We also thank Elizabeth Doggett and Elmira Alihosseini for their research assistance at different stages of the project. All of the quotes from interviews conducted in Argentina and other sources originally in Spanish were translated to English . 4 See Brysk (1994) on the difficulties of offering an exact count of the number of people "disappeared" during the dictatorship. The National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons, formed right after the military regime ended, estimated at least 8,960 disappearance cases, recognizing that this was a partial list. Human rights organizations have customarily invoked an estimated number of up to 30,000 disappeared.

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The Textual Mediation of Denial: Congress, Abu Ghraib, and the Construction of an Isolated Incident

Cited by 19 publications

References 38 publications

Textuality and the Social Organization of Denial: Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, and the Meanings of U.S. Interrogation Policies

Textuality and the Social Organization of Denial: Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, and the Meanings of U.S. Interrogation Policies

U.S. sociology and the Iraq War

Cultures of Denial: Avoiding Knowledge of State Violations of Human Rights in Argentina and the United States

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