American Sociological Association 2012
Special Session Proposal for the ASA 2012 Meeting, Denver, CO
Working title for the session: War Crimes: Responsibility, Cultural Representations and Responses
Brief description of the substantive focus: The focus of this session will be a discussion of the different aspects of war crime and genocide studies, from both a cultural and theoretical perspective. Discussions of both participations in war crimes court-martials, analyses of cultural responses to war crimes and genocide, and media analyses to are presented in this special session.
Rationale for inclusion of the topic on the 2012 program: The rational for the inclusion of this topic on the 2012 program is that the area of sociological studies of war crimes is a developing field within sociology. Although a field of forensic sociology and the sociology of deviance does exist, the specific area of the sociology war crimes does not readily exist. This is an attempt to forge this area within sociology and to begin a discussion about the sociology of war crimes within sociology so as to foster a larger and participatory discussion about this very important topic, and especially in lieu of recent military activities in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places around the globe. Our attempts are to connect previous studies on genocide and war with current analyses of war crimes, so as to bridge and legitimize this emerging field of war crime studies.
Recommendation for session organizer: Ryan Ashley Caldwell, Soka University of America, 1 University Drive, Aliso Viejo, CA, 92656, (949) 480-4325, rcaldwell@soka.edu
A list of potential participants:
Ryan Ashley Caldwell, Soka University of America, “The Disappeared: Mothers, War Crimes, and the Disappearance of Jurisprudence”
Stjepan G. Mestrovic, Texas A&M University, “Collective Responsibility and Contemporary War Crimes”
Chad Scott, Texas A&M University, “Camouflaged Transformation: Rethinking Durkheim’s Collective Effervescence to Explain the Experience of the Soldier in a Combat Environment”
Kristi Wilson and Tomas Crowder-Taraborelli, Soka University of America, “Film and Genocide: The search for a workable frame for documenting atrocities”
Keith Kerr, Quinnipiac University, “The Death of the Hero: American War Crimes as Sacrificial Rites”
James Choinard, Texas A&M University, “United States Military Techniques as Authoritarian Simulacra”
Tomás Crowder-Taraborrelli 