Culture, Crisis and America's War on Terror

Since the infamous events of 9/11, the fear of terrorism and the determination to strike back against it has become a topic of enormous public debate. The 'war on terror' discourse has developed not only through American politics but via other channels including the media, the church, music, novels, films and television, and therefore permeates many aspects of American life. Stuart Croft suggests that the process of this production of knowledge has created a very particular form of common sense which shapes relationships, jokes and even forms of tattoos. Understanding how a social process of crisis can be mapped out and how that process creates assumptions allows policy-making in America's war on terror to be examined from new perspectives. Using IR approaches together with insights from cultural studies, this book develops a dynamic model of crisis which seeks to understand the war on terror as a cultural phenomenon.

Introduction; 1. Disrupting meaning; 2. Deconstructing the second American 9/11; 3. The decisive intervention; 4. The institutionalisation and stabilisation of the policy programme; 5. Acts of resistance to the 'war on terror'; 6. The discourse strikes back; 7. Conclusion.

The 'war on terror' discourse continues to develop as it becomes evident in so many aspects of American life through the media, music, novels, television and film. This 2006 book explores how a social process of crisis can be mapped out and how it might be applied to other cases.

Stuart Croft is Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham. He is the author of Security Studies Today (with Terry Terriff, Lucy James and Patrick Morgan, 1999), The Enlargement of Europe (with John Redmond, G. Wyn Rees and Mark Webber, 1999) and Strategies of Arms Control (1996).