Documenting Torture: The Social Fate of Suffering
Proposal for Dissertation Research
Jared Del Rosso
Introduction
Torture is neither civilian nor military, nor is it specifically French; it is a plague
infecting our whole era. – Jean-Paul Sartre
Despite global monitoring efforts that reveal the systematic use of torture in
democratic and authoritarian states (Peters 1986:160) and despite current
controversies surrounding its use during America’s Global War on Terror, torture
remains an understudied ‘social problem’ (but see Brown 2005; Einolf 2007;
Gordon 2005; Lazreg 2007 for notable exceptions). Indeed, sociology has failed to
attend to Sartre’s diagnosis of his era - a twentieth-century barely half-made - as
infected by torture. We cannot speak of a sociology of torture and one sociologist of
violence, writing only sixteen years after Sartre’s statement on torture, theorizes it
as one of several kinds of antiquated type of violence, ‘no longer part of the
dominant ceremonial order, although we still find individual cases’ (Collins
1974:436). The relegation of torture to pre-modern societies reinforces popular
beliefs about torture as belonging to historical, cultural, and political ‘others’ (Peters
1986:149; Rejali 2007). Moreover, when the use of torture by democratic states is
imagined as discontinuous with modern sensibilities and social structures, the
urgency and apparent appropriateness of approaching torture with sociological
theories and methods lessens. Against this tendency, this dissertation draws the
interdisciplinary study of torture into conversation with the sociology of social
problems and the sociology of science. Specifically, this study puts the
constructionist approaches of these sub-disciplines to use to examine the processes
by which various institutions document and make claims about torture during
America’s Global War on Terror. This focus is responsive to several major studies of
torture (Cohen 2001; Peters 1986; Rejali 2007; Scarry 1985). These studies share a
concern with contemporary discourse about torture; specifically, they converge on
the observation that the communication of torture must contend with vocabularies
that are poorly suited to articulate the pain caused by contemporary torture.
Though these studies converge on this observation, none of them seek to
systematically examine a historical case of claims-making about torture. Because of
this, we know little about the specific claims-making techniques by which torture is
obscured and even less about the techniques by which torture is socially
acknowledged.
In this dissertation, I intend to address the relative ignorance of sociology to
the phenomena of torture and questions pointed to, but not yet adequately attended
to, by the study of torture. Specifically, I propose a qualitative content analysis. I
will analyze three sets of documents. The first set includes reports and publications
of four human rights organizations that attempted to monitor and publicize these
violations. The organizations under study are Amnesty International (AI), Center
for Constitutional Rights (CCR), Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Physicians for
Human Rights (PHR). Second, I will examine congressional hearings and reports
related to detainment and interrogation policies. The last set of documents is
comprised of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Department of Defense (DoD),
Department of Justice (DoJ), and Department of Army (DA) investigations and
reports of detainment and interrogation policies. These three sets of data document
violence – some of which can be classified as torture. While studying how these
institutions attempt to document violence and argue that acts of violence belong to a
certain category of violence (abuse, mistreatment, torture, etc.), I will pay particular
attention to the varying relationships between these claims about American torture,
the various raw materials (Nichols 1997:324 [emphasis original]) used to construct
claims, and the context of citation (Latour 1987:35) – the range of statements that
the claim acts upon - in which the claim is situated. I am particularly interested in
examining the processes by which these institutions attempt to:
(1) Typify (Best 1995) the violence done to prisoners as a particular kind of
violence,
(2) Determine the scope of the violence done to prisoners,
(3) Explain the violence done to prisoners,
(4) Represent the experience of prisoners’ pain,
(5) Represent the consequences of violence – for victims, their families, and
their communities, those who commit the violence, and any other
relevant bystanders and communities.
The primary objective of this dissertation is to respond to research questions
derived from the literature on torture. These questions are: How do various (and
sometimes competing) institutions document torture? With what evidence do they
support the claims that they are documenting? How do these institutions counter
opposing claims? Finally, how do these institutions come to know, document, give
meaning, acknowledge, and/or cast doubt on the nature of pain caused by
contemporary forms of torture? More generally, this study will represent a
contribution to a social scientific understanding of social responses to torture,
which remains an understudied aspect of torture. Though statements about social
responses to torture abound in major and minor studies of torture, most are
primarily studies of torture as a ‘social fact’ rather than of meaning making
surrounding torture. Stanley Cohen’s (2001) research represents a notable
exception; however, his work is primarily concerned with the denial of torture and
largely overlooks the social processes and rhetorical strategies by which torture is
acknowledged. Moreover, his work is first and foremost a study of social responses
to atrocities, not torture. As such, it does not offer a focused and historically
grounded analysis of social responses of torture.
At the same time, my hope is to contribute to the constructionist study of
social problems. To date, research within the social problems constructionist
framework has ignored the ‘plague infecting our whole era.’ This research, then,
will attempt to bring torture to the sociology of social problems. Additionally, this
research will add to the constructionist toolkit of social problems theory by opening
it to concepts and perspectives associated with the sociology of science, particularly
as done by Bruno Latour. Despite affinities between the approaches (Berbier 2001),
the perspectives have rarely been made to converse with each other (see Johnson
[Latour] 1988 for a hostile attempt at inter-constructionist dialogue between social
problems theory and the sociology of science).
Literature Review
Jean-Paul Sartre opens his introduction to Henri Alleg’s memoir of torture
with these two paragraphs:
In 1932, in the Rue Lauriston (the Gestapo headquarters in
Paris). Frenchmen were screaming in agony and pain: all France
could hear them. In those days, the outcome of the war was uncertain
and we did not want to think about the future. Only one thing seemed
impossible in any circumstances: that one day men should be made to
scream by those acting in our name.
There is no such word as impossible: in 1958, in Algiers,
people are tortured regularly and systematically. Everyone from M.
Lacoste (Minister Resident for Algeria) to the farmers in Aveyron,
knows this is so, but almost no one talks of it. At most, a few thin
voices trickle through the silence. France is almost as mute as during
the Occupation, but then she had the excuse of being gagged. (1958:
13, 14)
A half-century after the publication of The Question, Americans speak of torture, but
the malleability of language and meaning are used, often cynically, to cast doubt on
the suffering of detainees. The Bush Administration’s reconstruction of torture was
narrow enough to authorize President Bush’s statement that the United States does
not torture. Its new definition stated that “physical pain amounting to torture must
be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury such as
organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death” (Greenberg and Dratel
2005:xiii). But the problem of communicating torture exceeds President George W.
Bush, his cabinet, their lawyers, and a few dozen memoranda. In this section of my
proposal, I review three major obstacles to the successful communication of torture
– ambiguity about the definition of torture, rhetorical strategies of denial, and the
privacy of pain.
Defining Torture
The United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman,
and Degrading Treatment and Punishment defines torture as
any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is
intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him
or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or
a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or
intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on
discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at
the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or
other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or
suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.
Sociologist Christopher J. Einolf has pointed to the problematic status of this
definition for sociology, as well as law. To the former, the definition is problematic
because it “rests on modern, Western standards of morality and law” and so “it is
not useful in a cross-cultural, historical study of torture” (2007:102). Einolf argues
that “the legal definition is also problematic in that it makes the motives of the
person inflicting the ‘severe pain and suffering’ essential to the definition of torture”
and “motive may be impossible to determine in many historical cases” (2007:102103).
Einolf argues for a more narrowly written definition of torture, “leaving out
questions of morality or motive” (2007:103). In so doing, he follows the lead of
Edward Peters and Darius Rejali, both of whom identify the ambiguity surrounding
definitions of torture as one of the major obstacles to research of it, as well as social
responses to it. Both also argue for a redefinition of torture. Peters and Rejali are
particularly critical of the tendency of Western critics of oppression to continually
expand the definition of torture to include more and more forms of suffering.
(Peters refers to this as the “sentimental” vocabulary of torture (1985:150-151).)
When stretched to include all forms of social suffering, “torture” is both diluted and
relativized.1
Einolf, Peters, and Rejali are all primarily concerned with redefining torture
so as to produce a coherent analytical object. Their studies are not primarily
constructionist in orientation. Thus, none of their works include a systematic study
of how social actors categorize acts of violence as torture or as some other form of
violence. In studying how various institutions typify the violence done during
detainment and interrogation during the global war on terror, this dissertation
takes up this task.
1 Peters writes, “It is difficult for people who use the term for anything that seems
synonymous with cruelty to carry much conviction when they use it for something close to its
original meaning” (1985:152), while Rejali observes, “[a]ny human activity is probably torture to
someone, and a word that potentially characterizes every human experience is likely to be very
slippery indeed” (2007:38).
Rhetorical Strategies of Denial
Those concerned with documenting torture must contend with historically
effective rhetorical strategies of denial. Speaking of torture through euphemism is
one such strategy. Rejali, for instance, warns of accepting the euphemisms
employed during the War on Terror to name various techniques employed against
the detained: “One might well remember that other states notorious for torture also
did not refer to their interrogation methods as torture. The Nazis used the
expression ‘sharpened interrogation’ and the French in Algeria insisted on the
expression ‘pushed interrogation’” (2007:358). In her study of French torture in
Algiers, Marnia Lazreg argues that euphemism has the effect of containing torture
“by sinking it below the level of consciousness” (2008:112).
In addition to euphemism, Stanley Cohen provides several useful concepts
for understanding the rhetoric of denial. According to Cohen, official denial of
torture is likely to take at least one of three forms: literal denial, interpretive denial,
and implicatory denial; sometimes, these are employed in sequence: “if one strategy
does not work, the next is tried” (2001:103).
(1) Literal denial – Literal denial involves the claim that “nothing happened.”
Cohen views these as most effectively employed by authoritarian regimes, who
operate “without accountability and insulated from external scrutiny” (2001:104).
However, this strategy can also be employed by democracies, as Cohen and others
have observed (Cohen 2001; Rejali 2007). According to Cohen, this strategy
typically involves challenges to the veracity of those accusing a government or
regime of wrong-doing (2001:116).
(2) Interpretive denial – It is difficult to deny that anything happened given
“greater international visibility and transparency” (2001:105); it is also difficult to
deny that anything happened if compelling evidence indisputability documents that
something happened. Interpretive denial involves a denial of the particular
interpretive framework through which critics of a government or regime view the
documented atrocity.
No, what happened was not really torture, genocide or extra-judicial
killing, but something else. The harm is cognitively reframed and then
reallocated to a different, less pejorative class of event. (2001:106)
Interestingly, Cohen argues that the legal frameworks through which atrocities –
particularly torture – are understood often facilitate interpretive denial. (Cohen
does not cite Peters’ argument that a narrow legal definition of torture prevents
denial, but he is implicitly countering this argument.) Describing law as a “’plastic
medium’” (Cohen 2001:106), Cohen argues that debating ‘whether a particular
method of interrogation is ‘acceptable’ rather than ‘ill-treatment’, or ‘ill-treatment’
rather than ‘torture’, is no different from disputes in an ordinary trial about
manslaughter rather than first-degree murder.’ (2001:106). However, interpretive
denial cynically uses this plasticity to define an atrocity as a lesser type of crime.
(3) Implicatory denial - Implicatory denial does not dispute that atrocity
happened, nor does it necessarily dispute the interpretive frame through which that
atrocity is understood. Instead, implicatory denial involves the argument that what
happened is justified (2001:109). Cohen identifies several rhetorical strategies by
which a government or regime accomplishes implicatory denial. These include
righteousness – the argument that “alternative sets of values can, under certain
circumstances (or in regard to certain people), override universals” - such as human
rights standards; necessity; denial of the victim – typically by “displacing blame on
those who are harmed” (2001:110); and contextualization and uniqueness – accusing
“critics of not knowing, understanding or mentioning the context in which the
violations took place” (2001:111).
As noted above, I am interested in studying the social processes by which
torture is given a name. I am particularly interested in examining the social
processes by which interpretive frames are constructed, as well as the social
processes by which the scope of torture is documented and responsibility
apportioned. Finally, I will pay particular attention to whether these strategies of
denial are present in the various documents under study or if those documenting
torture appear aware of them and, thus, attempt to construct arguments that
counter these strategies.
The Privacy of Pain
In an influential analysis of torture, Elaine Scarry concerns herself with the
gap between a speaker-in-pain and a listener-without-pain; this gap is largely a
product of the fact that pain is private, without “referential content” outside of
consciousness (Scarry 1986:5). The “inexpressibility of pain” (1986:3) has political
consequences – namely that “the failure to express pain” or the failure to
understand expressed pain as referring back to the body of the person suffering,
“will always work to allow its appropriation and conflation with debased forms of
power” (1986:14).
Scarry studies torture as one type of “debased forms of power.”
Within the physical events of torture, the torturer ‘has’ nothing: he has only
an absence, the absence of pain. In order to experience his distance from the
prisoner in terms of ‘having,’ their physical distance is translated into a
verbal distance: the absence of pain is a presence of world; the presence of
pain is the absence of world. Across this set of inversions pain becomes
power. The direct equation, ‘the larger the prisoner’s pain, the larger the
torturer’s world’ is mediated by the middle term, ‘the prisoner’s absence of
world’: the larger the prisoner’s pain (the smaller the prisoner’s world and
therefore, by comparison) the larger the torturer’s world. (Scarry
1985:36,37)
Language plays a central role in Scarry’s analysis. First, Scarry illustrates how the
torturer destroys the world of the tortured by turning objects such as culture, social
institutions, shelter and everyday objects, and the victim’s body into weapons,
symbols of the torturer and his regimes agency and power. Scarry then shows that
the destruction of the victim’s language and sounds is pursued and achieved during
torture. According to Scarry this is significant because ‘a human being inhabits,
humanizes, and makes his own space much larger than that occupied by his body
alone.’ The practices by which this happens are several. Interrogators may
appropriate the recorded or written confessions of the victims, force the victim to
speak and singing during torture, and, often in combination with forced speaking,
force the cessation of screams. Additionally, torture often involves the
weaponization of sounds and language, as cries and calls of others – whether
authentic or fabricated by the torturers – come to torment the detained.
Recently, Darius Rejali has taken up Scarry’s analysis of language and torture
to offer a timely critique of the diverse practices of contemporary torture that aim to
leave no mark on the body of the tortured. Alternatively referring to these practices
as stealth torture, covert torture, and clean torture, Rejali challenges Scarry,
claiming that pain is neither necessary, nor sufficient for torture to destroy the
world of the tortured (Rejali 2007:441). Instead of emphasizing ‘the gap between
the brain and the tongue’ (2007:443), Rejali shows that torture, particularly in its
covert or stealth forms, positions the inexpressibility of pain in the ‘gap between
speakers and their communities’ (2007:443). Specifically, stealth torture denies
pain ‘a home in the body,’ ‘tangling victims and their communities in doubts,
uncertainties, and illusions’ (2007:443).
Despite their differences, Scarry and Rejali both hold out the possibility that
communal responses to torture will affirm the pain of the victim as one way of
undoing torture’s effects. In her otherwise bleak chapter, Scarry writes of various
efforts to communicate with victims of torture, especially those of Amnesty
International,
…to restore to each person tortured his or her voice, to use language to let
pain give an accurate account of itself, to present regimes that torture with a
deluge of letters and telegrams, a deluge of voices speaking on behalf of,
voices speaking in the voice of, the person silenced, these acts that return to
the prisoner his most elemental political ground as well as his psychic
content and density are finally almost physiological in their power of
alteration. […] By holding that world in place, or by giving the pain a place in
the world, sympathy lessens the power of sickness and pain, counteracts the
force with which a person in great pain or sickness can be swallowed alive by
the body. (Scarry 1985:50)
Rejali promotes something akin to a political literacy of torture, in which political
communities – which themselves must be produced – ‘learn to hear torture victims
and read their bodies’ (Rejali 2007:31).
In their solutions to the inexpressibility of pain, both Scarry and Rejali
recognize the need for political communities to develop a language that can
accurately describe, acknowledge, and, then, respond to the pain caused by
contemporary torture. Neither, though, engages in a systematic study of how
communities hear victims of torture, read their bodies, and speak of their suffering
This dissertation takes up this task – examining how three communities have
documented and represented the suffering caused by torture.
Constructionist Foundations
The issues studied in this dissertation address broad concerns from the
social study of violence and torture. However, this study examines these
substantive issues by studying the social processes by which violence becomes
meaningful within particular discourses. As such, this study is indebted to the
constructionist perspectives of social problems theory and the constructionist
approach proposed by sociologist of science Bruno Latour.
The constructionist approach to the study of social problems privileges the
activities of claimsmakers – ‘individuals or groups making assertions of grievances
and claims with respect to some putative condition’ (Spector and Kitsuse 1973:146)
as the appropriate object of social problems research. Typification refers to part of
the claimsmaking process - that process by which ‘claimsmakers characterize a
problem's nature,’ argue ‘that a problem is best understood from a particular
perspective,’ and, given that perspective, ‘locate the problem's causes and
recommend a solution’ (Best 1995:8-9). Part of the process of typification is the
transformation of various ‘raw materials’ to produce typifying examples (Nichols
1997:324 [emphasis original]) of the problems.
This research takes up several issues relevant to the constructionist
approach to the study of social problems. As noted above, I am interested in the
interpretive frameworks through which the violence done in Guantanamo Bay,
Afghanistan, and Iraqi prisons is understood Additionally, I will examine how
competing characterizations of this violence determine the scope of violence and
distribute accountability for it. Finally, I will examine what "raw materials" – types
of evidence that particular types of violent acts did or did not occur - are used in the
construction of these various accounts. I am particularly interested in examining
whether (and how) these discourses attempt to transform pain into usable evidence
to support or counter claims.
In addition to social problems theory, I have found it helpful to draw from the
work of sociologist of science and technology Bruno Latour. Latour has argued that
the fate of any claim – whether it is ignored, disputed, or turned into a fact – is
collective. ‘By itself a given sentence is neither a fact nor a fiction; it is made so by
others, later on’ (Latour 1987:25 [emphasis original]). Given this, Latour is drawn to
what we might call the social life of statements; he is particularly interested in the
ways that statements are modified – either strengthened and made ‘solid enough to
render some other consequences necessary’ or weakened by leading ‘a
statement…towards its conditions of production and explain detail why it is sold or
weak’ (1986:23). Latour illustrates these modalities (the former is called positive
and the latter negative) with an example from Cold War politics.
(1) New Soviet missiles aimed against Minutemen silos are accurate to
100 metres.
(2) Since [new Soviet missiles are accurate within 100 metres] this
means that Minutemen are not safe any more, and this is the main
reason why the MX weapon system is necessary.
(3) Advocates of the MX in the Pentagon cleverly leak information
contending that [new Soviet missiles are accurate within 100
metres]
[…]
(4) The undercover agent 009 in Novosibirsk whispered to the
housemaid before dying that he had heard in bars that some
officers thought that some of these [missiles] in ideal test
conditions might [have an accuracy] somewhere between [100]
and 1000] metres or this is at least how the report came to
Washington. (Latour 1987:22)
Statement (2) is an example of a positive modality. It does not contest the validity of
statement (1) and, more importantly, builds statement (1) into a second statement.
Statements (3) and (4) do not build statement (1) into a second statement; instead,
they move statement (1) back to its origin and dispute its validity. As I am
particularly interested in studying how competing claims about violence are
weakened or strengthened within several discourses, I will pay particular attention
to this process.
In his analysis of scientific articles, Latour shows that ‘one text acts on others
to make them more in keeping with its claims’ (1987:35); he refers to this as the
‘context of citation’ (1987:35 [emphasis original]). In conducting my
summer research of Review of Department of Defense Detention and Interrogation
Operations, a congressional hearing, I have found it useful to pay attention to the
ways that the claim that the photographs taken at Abu Ghraib prison show
idiosyncratic behavior and isolated incidents is built-up and strengthened, so as to
anticipate dissent and control the moves of potential objectors (Latour 1987:57), by
associating or disassociating the claim with subsidiary statements (if not
indisputable facts) gathered in a range of reports and investigations done at Abu
Ghraib prison. In other words, these subsidiary statements constitute the context of
citation in which a claim about the photographs is constructed. I intend to study
this process as well.
Research Design
This dissertation will involve a qualitative content analysis of publications
and reports written by selected human rights organizations during the war on
terror. I will first discuss the types of primary sources analyzed in this study and
then discuss the analytic approach of the study.
Data
Data used in this study will be collected from human rights organizations
reports and publications, congressional hearings, and FBI, DoD, DoJ, and DA reports
and investigations. These documents, which are listed in the appendix, are available
as .pdf and/or .html files online. They total approximately 5,776 pages; however, I
do not intend to code all 5,776 pages. First, I believe that this number overestimates the total number of pages in these documents. For instance, Review of
Department of Defense Detention and Interrogation Operations, a congressional
hearing, is, alone, 1,480 pages in length; however, this document contains only
about 350 pages of statements, questions, and responses by senators and witnesses.
Approximately 1,100 pages are added documents, such as reports and newspaper
articles, some of which are already part of the third set of data used in this study.
Additionally, I intend to read all data before beginning coding; when doing this, I
hope to produce a sample of these documents of approximately 2,000-2,750 pages
by removing from the study parts of or entire documents unrelated to the topics
studied in this dissertation.
My reasons for selecting these forms of data are several. First, these three
sets of documents all have to do with the reporting and documentation of violence –
some of which can be classified as torture. The increase in monitoring of torture is
one of the motives for contemporary democracies that torture to “invest in less
visible and hence harder to document, techniques” (2007:43). Significantly, many of
these “less visible and hence harder to document” techniques – such as sleep
deprivation, stress position, and water torture – have been employed during the war
on terror. Those who would investigate, document, and/or monitor contemporary
torture must confront the “doubts, uncertainties, and illusions” in which
contemporary torture tangles “victims and their communities” (Rejali 2007:443).
This confrontation is particularly important to those who would oppose torture. In
fact, some major studies of torture during the war on terror seek not only to
document that human rights violations occurred, but that the human rights
violations they have studied do, in fact, constitute torture. A prime example of this
is PHR’s Broken Laws, Broken Lives.
At the same time, these categories of data represent institutions with varying
organizational proximity to the politicians who shaped American policies of
interrogation and detainment during the War on Terror. Closest to these politicians
are the individuals tasked with compiling FBI, DoD, DoJ, and DA reports and
investigations. The individuals who lead these investigations are appointed and,
frequently, the scope of the studies are established by high-ranking officials within
each department, some of whom (e.g. Donald Rumsfeld, General Ricardo Sanchez)
produced or signed memoranda and other documents that influenced military
practices of detainment and interrogation during the war on terror. These studies
have been criticized by those with greater distance from the executive branch for
actively seeking to produce a ‘bad apples’ framework for understanding American
use of torture and for typifying the violence as abuse, rather than torture. I expect
to observe the construction of this frame within many of these investigations;
however, I will leave this study open to emergent codes and themes within all data
sources.
I expect that the congressional hearings will likely involve more
controversial and, thus, contested claims about the scope, nature, and causes of
torture during the war on terror. This is largely because Congress is tasked with
oversight of the executive branch and because it can engage in partisan politics.
Additionally, controversies about claims tend to be heightened during hearings, as
they involve interrogative sequences, which "tend to lead up to arguments and
counterarguments" (Lynch and Bogard 1995:148). In addition to tempering
consensus about claims, I expect that these aspects of hearings, as well as the fact
that they are made up of individual speakers who may choose to represent a range
of perspectives, will result in discourse about torture steeped (stylistically) in
subjectivity. Conversely, I expect the investigations and reports produced both by
the executive branch and the human rights groups will more frequently state their
claims in the detached style of objectivity.
Finally, human rights groups have considerable distance from the executive
branch and the American military due to their political independence. They also
have a commitment to monitoring and publicizing instances of human rights abuses.
I expect to find consensus within this discourse and claims that torture, rather than
abuse or mistreatment, occurred.
While the claims made within human rights investigations and executive
branch investigations may seem like foregone conclusions, I intend to keep this
study open to emergent themes. More importantly, the primary objective of this
study is to study the processes by which these claims are constructed, including the
types of evidence mobilized to support them and the set of additional statements
and citations made relevant to the claims.
Analytic Approach
The questions that this dissertation raises are well-suited for a qualitative
content analysis. (I am not ruling out the necessity of quantifying codes; however,
my concerns in this dissertation are primarily qualitative in nature). Constructionist
researchers engaged in similar research have also effectively used a qualitative
approach to content analysis (Jerolmack 2008; Johnson 1995; Malone, Boyd, and
Bero 2000; Mulcahy 1995). Such an approach to content analysis allows for the
collection of "numerical and narrative data" without "forcing the latter into
predefined categories" (Altheid 1987: 68).
Data analysis will involve several steps typical to qualitative research
(Creswell 2003:191).
Step 1: Organizing and Preparing the Data for Analysis in NVivo. Most of the
data used in this study can be found online. Data available online will be
downloaded and, when possible, copy-and-pasted from .pdfs to text files. This step
will also involve formatting the data to ensure ease of reading, as well as coding the
data with context variables – such as the date of creation, date of publication, and
the author of the data.
Step 2: Familiarizing Myself with the Data. Before coding data, I will read and
memo on the data. I will pay particular attention to potential codes and themes in
the data, using these within Step 3. During this time, I will also organize the data
into a tentative coding order, based, primarily, on the relevance of the data to the
various questions this dissertation raises.
Step 3: Coding. Data coding will be an iterative process, during which time
passages will be coded then clustered and recoded. I will, of course, memo on codes
and the data as I go. Within the bounds of the questions this dissertation raises,
codes and themes will primarily emerge from the data; in other words, though I
enter this research process with general concerns that will orient my attention
towards some parts of the data at the expense of others, I will not enter this
research with pre-determined codes or themes.
Step 4: Clustering Codes into Themes. Step 4 will begin during the recoding
phase of Step 3, but will continue after the data has been recoded. Themes will be
generated across the several categories of data; however, I will be attentive to
differences within and across categories, as well as differences in themes over time.
Step 5: Representing the Data. As noted above, I may quantify some words,
codes, or themes for to represent their occurrences in charts and figures. However,
this way of representing the data will be employed if – and only if – it furthers the
qualitative project of this study. More likely, the themes that will serve as the basis
of the interpretation of the data will be represented by interesting, significant, and
representative passages. Finally, if possible and, again, if it furthers the qualitative
project of this study, I may produce diagrams as representations of the themes.
Step 6: Interpreting the Data. My interpretation of the data will be (1) always
in relation to the literature on the social study of violence and torture and (2)
always with an eye toward the fate of themes present in the data over time.
Working Bibliography
1988. Picturing Power: Visual Depiction and Social Relations. Edited by Gordon Fyfe
and John Law. New York, NY: Routledge,
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Appendix I: Tentative Outline
(All current titles are working titles.)
Documenting Torture: The Social Fate of Suffering
(1) Introduction
a. Claims-making and the study of torture
b. Description of study
(2) Chapter 1 : Categorizing violence
(3) Chapter 2 : Explaining violence
(4) Chapter 3 : Representing Torture
(5) Chapter 4 : Representing the Consequences of Torture
(6) Conclusion
(7) Notes
(8) References
(9) Appendix I: Research Design
(10)
Appendix II: Documentary Data
Appendix II: Tentative Timeline
(1) January 14 2009 : Dissertation Proposal Defended
(2) January – February 2009 : Steps 1 & 2
a. Organize, prepare, and read data
b. Memo
c. Draft Appendix II
(3) March 2009 – June 2009 : Steps 3 & 4
a. Code, Recode, Cluster Codes
b. Memo
c. Draft Introduction, part (a) & Appendix I
(4) July 2009 – August 2009 : Steps 5 & 6
a. Produce Representations & Interpret Data
b. Submit Chapter 1 & Appendixes to Committee
(5) September 2009 – October 2009
a. Write Chapter 2
b. Submit Chapter 2 to Committee
(6) November 2010 – December 2010
a. Write Chapter 3
b. Submit Chapter 3 to Committee
(7) January 2010 – February 2010
a. Write Chapter 4, Introduction, & Conclusion
b. Submit Chapter 4, Introduction, & Conclusion to Committee
(8) March 2010 – April 2010
a. Rewrite(s) & resubmissions
(9) May 2010
a. Defend Dissertation
Appendix III: Documentary Sources
(1) Human Rights Organizations
Approximately 2,496 pages
Amnesty International
Approximately 1,110 pages
2008
Amnesty International. May 20, 2008. USA: Where is the accountability? Health
concern as charges against Mohamed al-Qahtani dismissed. (15 pages)
Amnesty International. Security and Human Rights. (54 pages)
Amnesty International. August 5, 2008. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Guantánamo:
Any and all interrogation tapes must be preserved. ( 3 pages)
Amnesty International. August 15, 2008. USA: Military judge hears allegations of illtreatment of teenager at Bagram and Guantánamo. (5 pages)
Amnesty International. Remedy and accountability still absent Mohammed Jawad
subjected to cruel and inhuman treatment in Guantánamo, military judge finds.
(9 pages)
Amnesty International. United States of America: From Ill-Treatment to Unfair Trial
.– 72 pages
2007
Amnesty International. 21 December 2007. Unlawful detentions must end, not be
transferred. (html format – unknown pages)
Amnesty International. Cruel and inhuman: Conditions of isolation for detainees at
Guantánamo Bay. (34 pages)
Amnesty International. March 15, 2007. All allegations of torture must be investigated.
(2 pages.)
Amnesty International. March 23, 2007. Military commissions, like CSRTs, threaten to
whitewash detainee abuse. 23 March 2007. (3 pages)
Amnesty International. November 9, 2007. Slippery slopes and the politics of torture. (6
pages)
2006
Amnesty International. Amnesty International’s campaign to stop torture and ill
treatment in the ‘war on terror.’ (4 pages)
Amnesty International. Terror and Counter-Terror. (16 pages)
Amnesty International. US Obligation Under the Convention with Respect to Detainees
in the Context of the “War on Terror.” (70 pages.)
Amnesty International. Memorandum to the US Government on the report of the UN
Committee Against Torture and the question of closing Guantánamo. (38 pages)
Amnesty International. Below the radar: Secret flights to torture and ‘disappearance.’
(43 pages.)
Amnesty International. Beyond Abu Ghraib: detention and torture in Iraq. (50 pages)
Amnesty International. May 19, 2006. UN Committee Against Torture condemns US
detention policies, calls for change. (2 pages)
Amnesty International. The Rendition of Khaled el-Masri: Macedonia / Germany / USA.
(6 pages)
Amnesty International. August, 11 2006. No impunity for war crimes US administration
seeking to amend the War Crimes Act. (4 pages)
Amnesty International. September 20, 2006. Rendition – torture – trial? The case of
Guantánamo detainee Mohamedou Ould Slahi. (11 pages)
Amnesty International. September 29, 2006. Rubber stamping violations in the “war on
terror”: Congress fails human rights. (3 pages)
Amnesty International. Guantánamo: Torture and other ill-treatment. (5 pages)
2005
Amnesty International. General Information Leaflet: Torture and Ill Treatment in the
'war on terror.' (unknown pages)
Amnesty International. USA: Torture and secret detention: Testimony of the
'disappeared' in the 'war on terror.' (unknown pages)
Amnesty International. cruel. inhuman. degrades us all. stop torture and ill-treatment in
the ‘war on terror.’ (24 pages)
Amnesty International. Days of adverse hardship in US detention camps - Testimony of
Guantánamo detainee Jumah al-Dossari. (29 pages)
Amnesty International. Amnesty International/Reprieve conference: Torture doesn’t stop
terror -- torture is Terror. (1 page)
Amnesty International. Close Guantánamo and disclose the rest. (2 pages)
Amnesty International. Response to the proposed “Interrogations Procedures Act.” (3
pages)
Amnesty International. Open letter to US Senators as they prepare to vote on the
nomination of Alberto Gonzales for Attorney General. (3 pages)
Amnesty International. Human rights not hollow words: An appeal to President George
W. Bush on the occasion of his re-inauguration. (20 pages)
Amnesty International. Secret detention CASE SHEET 3. (4 pages)
Amnesty International. US detentions in Afghanistan: an aide-mémoire for continued
action. (18 pages)
Amnesty International. Secret detention and torture CASE SHEET 1. (3 pages)
Amnesty International. Guantánamo and beyond: The continuing pursuit of unchecked
executive power. (164 pages)
2004
Amnesty International. Human Dignity Denied. (202 pages)
Amnesty International. An Open Letter to President George W. Bush. (6 pages)
2003
Amnesty International.
Amnesty International.
Amnesty International.
Amnesty International.
We Don’t Torture People in America. (2 pages)
The Pain Merchants. (85 pages)
The Threat of a Bad Apple. (60 pages)
International Standards for All. (3 pages)
2002
Amnesty International. Beyond the Law Update to Amnesty International’s April
Memorandum to the US Government on the rights of detainees held in US custody
in Guantánamo Bay and other locations. (9 pages)
Amnesty International. Treatment of prisoners in Afghanistan and Guantánamo
Bay undermines human rights. Memorandum to the US government. (2 pages)
2001
Amnesty International. Amnesty International's recommendations to the Security
Council in relation to the Council's response to the 11 September 2001 attacks on
the United States of America. (2 pages)
Amnesty International. Memorandum to the US Attorney General Amnesty
International’s concerns relating to the post 11 September investigations. (23
pages)
Amnesty International. Pursuing Justice, Not Revenge : Amnesty International’s position
on bringing to justice those responsible for the crimes of 11 September and for
abuses committed in Afghanistan. (5 pages)
Amnesty International. Apologists for torture must be challenged. (2 pages)
Amnesty International. Letter from Amnesty International Secretary General to
President George W. Bush: Attacks of 11 September 2001. (2 pages)
Amnesty International. USA: Amnesty International appalled at devastating attacks
against civilians. (1 page)
Amnesty International. Justice, not revenge, must prevail. (1 page)
Center for Constitutional Rights
Approximately 415 pages.
Center for Constitutional Rights. Guantanamo and Its Aftermath. November 2008.
(136 pages)
Center for Constitutional Rights. The Story of Maher Arar: Rendition to Torture. (12
pages)
Center for Constitutional Rights. Off the Record : US Responsibility for Encorced
Disappearances in the “War on Terror.” (24 pages)
Center for Constitutional Rights. Guantanmo Bay : Six Years Later. (4 pages)
Center for Constitutional Rights. Composite statement: Detention in Afghanistan and
Guantanamo Bay: Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Rhuhel Ahmed. (115 pages)
Center for Constitutional Rights. Ten Refugees Indefinitely Detained in Guantanamo.
(23 pages)
Center for Constitutional Rights. Declaration of Gitanjali S. Gutierrez, Esq., Lawyer for
Mohammed al Qahtani. 10 pages.
Center for Constitutional Rights. Faces of Guantanamo. (10 pages.)
Center for Constitutional Rights. Guantanamos Refugees. (26 pages)
Center for Constitutional Rights. Report on Torture and Cruel, Inhuman, and
Degrading Treatment of Prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (55 pages)
Human Rights Watch
Approximately 653 pages
Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, Human Rights First, and Human Rights
Watch. 2006. By the Numbers: Findings of the Detainee Abuse and
Accountability Project. Approximately 31 pages.
Human Rights Watch. June 2008. Locked Up Alone Detention Conditions and Mental
Health at Guantanamo. Approximately 57 pages.
Human Rights Watch. April 2008. Double Jeopardy: CIA Renditions to Jordan.
Approximately 39 pages.
Human Rights Watch. September 2008. Ill-Fated Homecomings: A Tunisian Case
Study of Guantanamo Repatriations. Approximately 48 pages.
Human Rights Watch. August 2002. PRESUMPTION OF GUILT: Human Rights Abuses
of Post-September 11 Detainees. Approximately 99 pages.
Human Rights Watch. June 2004. The Road to Abu Ghraib. Approximately 37 pages.
Human Rights Watch. March 2004. “Enduring Freedom”: Abuses by U.S. Forces in
Afghanistan. Approximaty 62 pages.
Human Rights Watch. April 2005. Getting Away with Torture? Command
Responsibility for the U.S. Abuse of Detainees. Approximately 95 pages.
Human Rights Watch. September 2005. Leadership Failure: Firsthand Accounts of
Torture of Iraqi Detainees by the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division.
Approximately 30 pages.
Human Rights Watch. July 2006. “No Blood, No Foul”: Soldiers’ Accounts of
Detainee Abuse in Iraq. Approximately 55 pages.
Human Rights Watch. February 2007. Ghost Prisoner: Two Years in Secret CIA
Detention. Approximately 50 pages.
Human Rights Watch. March 2007. The “Stamp of Guantanamo”: The Story of Seven
Men Betrayed by Russia’s Diplomatic Assurances to the United States.
Approximately 50 pages.
Physicians for Human Rights
Approximately 318 pages
Physicians for Human Rights. 2005. Break Them Down: Systematic Use of
Psychological Torture by US Forces. Approximately 131 pages.
Physicians for Human Rights. June 2008. Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical
Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and Its Impact. Approximately 130
pages.
Physicians for Human Rights and Human Rights Watch. August 2007. Leave No
Marks: Enhanced Interrogation Techniques and the Risk of Criminality.
Approximately 57 pages.
(2) Congressional Hearings
Approximately 1,909 pages
Committee on Armed Services and Subcommittee on Personnel of the Committee on
Armed Services. United States Senate – One Hundred Ninth Congress. March
10; July 13, 14, 2005. Review of Department of Defense Detention and
Interrogation Policy and Operations in the Global War on Terrorism. (268
pages)
Senate Armed Services Committee. One Hundred Eighth Congress. May 7, 11, 19;
July 22; September 9, 2004. Review of Departemnt of Defense Detention and
Interrogation Operatins. (1480 pages)
Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties of the Committee
on the Judiciary. House of Representatives – One Hundred Tenth Congress.
November 8, 2007. Torture and the Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment
of Detainees: The Effectiveness and Consequences of ‘Enhanced’
Interrogation. (72 pages)
Committee on Foreign Relations. One Hundred Tenth Congress. July 26, 2007.
Extraordinary Rendition, Extraterritorial Detention and Treatment of
Detainees: Restoring our Moral Credibility and Strengthening our Diplomatic
Standing. (67 pages.)
Senate Armed Services Committee. 12 December 2008. Senate Armed Services Committee
Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody. (19 pages)
(3) DoD, DoJ, DoA investigations and reports
Approximately 1,371 pages
Department of Defense. “Executive Summary: The Church Report.” (21 pages)
Investigation of Intelligence Activities At Abu Ghraib. (177 pages)
U.S. Department of Justice. Review of the FBI's Involvement in and Observations of
Detainee Interrogations in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq, Special
Report. (438 pages.)
Department of Defense. November 8, 2004. Article 15-6 Investigation of CJOTF-AP
and 5th SF Group Detention Operations. (75 pages)
Department of the Army. Detainees Operation Inspection. (321 pages.)
Office of the Inspector Genderal of the Department of Defense. Review of DoD-Directed
Investigations of Detainee Abuse. (131 pages)
Investigation into FBI Allegations of Detainee Abuse at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
Detention Facility. (29 pages)
Article 15-6 Investigation of the 800th Military Police Brigade. (53 pages.)
Department of Defense. Final Report of the Independent Panel to Review DoD
Detention Operations. (126 pages)
Total – Approximately 5,776 pages