<p>Uppsatsen analyserar begreppet tortyr. Utifrån detta bedöms huruvida händelserna på Abu Ghraib i Irak 2003 ska anses vara tortyr i juridisk mening och vad USA:s juridiska skyldigheter är i detta sammanhang.</p>

Uppsatsen analyserar begreppet tortyr. Utifrån detta bedöms huruvida händelserna på Abu Ghraib i Irak 2003 ska anses vara tortyr i juridisk mening och vad USA:s juridiska skyldigheter är i detta sammanhang.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-14T13:27:08Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 1527242 bytes, checksum: ad700da8b5fd903662f0c678f99cc480 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-07-04 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / The objective of this dissertation is to delineate the trajectory of a sociology of evil through a critique of the concept as it appears in philosophical works, the social psychology of Stanley Milgram and Phillip Zimbardo, and the sociological approaches of Zygmunt Bauman and Jeffrey Alexander. Thus, evil will be considered as a socially constructed object, which contains a generative capacity of symbolically classifying social reality and human actions through formative relations of subjects and communities. This rereading of evil as a sociological object is fundamentally based on the dispositional action theory of Pierre Bourdieu, especially in regards to its concepts of habitus and social libido. As such, evil as an empirical problem will be considered through an analysis of the photographs taken by American soldiers in 2003 at the Abu Ghraib military prison in Iraq. / O presente trabalho busca mapear o caminho de construção de uma sociologia do mal através de uma crítica às construções prévias desse objeto na filosofia, na psicologia social de Stanley Milgram e Phillip Zimbardo e nas abordagens sociológicas de Zygmunt Bauman e Jeffrey Alexander. Dessa forma, serão discutidas as questões relacionadas ao mal como objeto socialmente construído e que contém a capacidade generativa de classificar simbolicamente a realidade social e as ações humanas a partir das relações de formação dos sujeitos e das coletividades. Essa releitura do mal como objeto sociológico será substancialmente informada pela teoria disposicional da ação de Pierre Bourdieu, através dos seus conceitos de habitus e libido social. Para tanto, o trabalho de construção do mal como problema empírico será feito através da análise das fotografias produzidas por soldados americanos na prisão militar de Abu Ghraib no Iraque no ano de 2003.

Thesis advisor: Marc Landy / This thesis serves to clarify and concretize the controversy surrounding the debate on torture as it pertains to the War on Terror during the Bush Administration years. It argues that policy and rhetoric decisions made at the top of the political food chain contributed to the instances of abuse and torture that occurred in the various arenas of the war (i.e. Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo, and CIA “black sites”). Such an argument is made through an analysis of what defines interrogation and torture, what techniques were in fact authorized, what factors went into determining which techniques to use, and what influence these techniques had on abuses that occurred. This thesis concludes with policy updates based on lessons learned and briefly addresses the efforts made by the Obama Administration in regards to torture, interrogation, and terrorism. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science Honors Program. / Discipline: College Honors Program. / Discipline: Political Science Honors.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

This work is a textual analysis of selected documentary films whose common theme is the inevitable discrepancy between the realities of the Vietnam and the 2003 Iraq War from the perspectives of the veterans and soldiers, and the assumed reality that is constructed in the media. It is at this point that the inextricable link between documentary cinema and reality proved fundamental to the developing discourse of the entire study ahead. Since the manner in which the world is both transformed and depicted strongly depends upon the tools available to the director, the technological innovations and the emergence of portable cameras, by granting the documentary filmmaker flexibility, irreversibly solidified this link between non-fictional act of narrating and its approach and proximity to reality. Four works that are picked among a large body of documentary films are Winter Soldier (1972) directed by Winter Collective; Gunner Palace (2004) directed by Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker; Full Battle Rattle (2008) directed by Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss and finally Standard Operating Procedure (2008) directed by Errol Morris. Even though the films are historically ordered, this study's concern is to be systematic thematically than chronologically. In the course of these analyses, discussions of notions like reality and truth, the relations of the makers of the films, the camera and editing process to the subjects of the films, will naturally emerge, as will issues related to the political and social roles of documentary cinema.

This thesis is a critical assessment of the role of photography in representing suffering and death. Drawing on the images of torture from the Abu Ghraib prison, I argue that the ways in which things become visible structure our affective and ethical dispositions, with crucial implications for our ability to attend to the suffering of others. In the first chapter, I examine the political importance of photography in its capacity to differentially represent vulnerable lives. In the second chapter, I illustrate the ways in which the prison photographs made visible the violent exploitation of Iraqi civilians, contrary to the official narrative of liberation offered by the Bush Administration. Finally, in the third chapter, following Judith Butler, I implicate the viewers of images of suffering in order to illustrate their roles in perpetuating norms of visibility, as an opening to the consideration of lives which remain unseen. I conclude that photographs open an important reflective space for considering the differential distribution of vulnerability.

Assignment (MPhil)--University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / Bibliography. Also available via the Internet.

The United States military has an enormous presence in American society. Not only is the military currently engaged in two wars, one in Iraq and another in Afghanistan, but it also employs hundreds of thousands of people in work within US borders and overseas. As a function of its size and prominence in American society, it participates in discourse with American society and apart from it. This thesis investigates and describes the US military in terms of two spheres of discourse, an external and internal. Through three case studies-featuring the Patriot missile system, the America's Army video game, and the scandal of prisoner treatment at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq-it will be shown that not only does the military·engage in corresponding public facing and introspective discourse, but that the external and internal discourses can also exert dominance over each other.

This dissertation is guided by three central questions: Why did the Abu Ghraib photographs fail to generate widespread opposition to the Iraq War among U.S. citizens? How did U.S. political leaders, news media, and entertainment media rhetorically manage the impact of the violence at Abu Ghraib? Finally, what can the tortures at Abu Ghraib tell us about commitment to national identity and justifications for violence? I argue that the primary rhetorical, ideological work of national violence against a foreign other is to create and protect national identification that deflects potential critique of national policy and discourages alternative allegiances (e.g., those of race and class). In support of this argument, I analyze four sets of texts surrounding the scandal. First, I analyze the Abu Ghraib photographs. These photographs, revealing torture of Iraqi detainees by U.S. troops, posed a serious challenge to American national identity and the prevailing rationale for war: namely, that the U.S. would liberate Iraqis from a torturous dictator and the threat of terrorism. The remaining types of discourse, then, can be seen as rhetorical attempts at damage control, containing and softening the edges of the visual records of violence against an enemy Other. For example, the second set of discourses I examine contains the legal memoranda outlining U.S. "coercive interrogation practices" dating back to September 2001. I compare these documents to the political speeches made by public officials during the 2004 presidential campaign. These texts, I argue, provide insight into the Abu Ghraib scandal's political context and illustrate how the scandal was ultimately managed by the Bush administration as a matter of private authority and prerogative rather than public accountability. Third, I explore mainstream media reports concerning Abu Ghraib in order to come to a better understanding of how violence is framed for public consumption. And finally, I analyze depictions of the torture within the popular television series 24. Because 24's plotline deals with issues of torture and terrorist threat, I argue that it can help us better understand both the social climate in which the Abu Ghraib scandal emerged and our current climate in which torture is still very much an issue. / text