Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Were the American military campaigns after 9/11 (Afghanistan, Iraq) acts of revenge for the harm inflicted by the terrorists of al Qaeda? Was the North (or at least some states in it) taking revenge on Southern states due to the outrage of 9/11 and the difficulty in punishing al Qaeda directly? This paper seeks to conceptualize the notion of revenge in international politics, explore the vengeful elements in the War on Terror, and account for historical changes in the revenge motive in international politics.Revenge ? ?the attempt, at some cost or risk to oneself, to impose suffering upon those who have made one suffer, because they have made one suffer? (Elster, 1990:862) ? was an explicit and recurrent motivation for war during much of human history. Furthermore, revenge was a legitimate motivation for war and rulers actually prided themselves in taking revenge on their enemies. Ancient historians such as Herodotus, Thucydides, and Polybius highlight these aspects of revenge in motivating wars. Revenge motivated war in the Middle Ages too, within Christendom and between Christians and Muslims. In fact, revenge was an important motive for war well into the 20th century. Yet despite the persistence of the revenge motive in international politics, we wish to highlight four points or tendencies in the evolution of this motive, and account for the variance in these dimensions across historical periods and cases. First, as time went by, states stopped openly professing that they seek revenge for previous harms or injustices. Moreover, states even deny that they were motivated by revenge. Second, the ferocity of interstate revenge diminished: in most current instances in international politics that could be said to entail revengeful elements, states at least try to distinguish between innocents and combatants and they argue that their forceful response was proportional to the harm they suffered. Such distinctions and restraints barely existed until late in the eighteenth century, when states openly declared that they inflict greater harms on aggressors because they deserve to be severely punished. Third, it also seems that the range of harms and insults that provoke the desire for revenge shrank. And finally, the willingness to exact revenge and harbor designs for revenge over long periods diminished considerably in modern interstate relations. In a sense, states are much more forgiving than they were in the past.We account for the transformation and change in the revenge motive through demonstrating the centrality of practicing revenge in ?cultures of honor?. Such cultures often lack strong institutionalization of violence. In a culture of honor revenge serves a functional need of establishing a reputation for credible deterrence. But it also acquires a life of its own that actors feel a strong emotional need to satisfy. On the other hand, the more the international system moved away from patterns that characterize cultures of honor and became more institutionalized in terms of norms of conduct in the sphere of organized violence and basic state rights (e.g., the right to sovereignty), revenge turned less functional and was morally delegitimized. This delegitimization of revenge influences the four dimensions of revenge we discuss here: admission in taking revenge, revenge?s intensity, reasons that warrant revenge, and the duration of revenge campaigns.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Despite (or perhaps because of) the ubquitous influence of law and legality upon individuals' lives, a recurrent motif in narrative crime fictions is that extra-legal revenge can overide formal legality as a means of achieving justice. This pattern can be illustrated in a variety of literary crime genres: the classic detective tale (Doyle, A Study in Scarlet), the courtroom drama (Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird), and the police procedure narrative (Lehahne, Mystic River). This paper will be an analytical overview (1) of the circumstances that make justice problematical in these texts and (2)the extra-legal means that these texts use to achieve outcomes that seem more or less just in imaginative terms.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Part of a larger project looking at relationship of communist ideology, class and demise of state-socialism in the USSR, the paper explores the role of ideology in making social classes in the country claiming to be eradicating class differences.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Theorists have distinguished between irrational and rational forms of violence. The exercise or threat of irrational violence is backward looking and norm or emotion driven. It is often associated with revenge and retribution. Rational violence on the other hand is characterized as future oriented and instrumental. It is often associated with deterrence, compellence, or coercion. The former is bound up with honor, masculinity, and identity while the latter is strategic, cool headed, and calculating. This paper will problematize such dichotomies, suggesting a reconceptualization of Israeli-Palestinian interactions within the framework of the politics of punishment. Contrary to the tendency to frame violence as primarily a spoiler problem, it will argue a central element of the intractability of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict lies in the punitive nature of the central parties' strategic interaction. The logic of punishment incorporates an irrational dimension in so far as it is predicated on inflicting pain, suffering, or deprivation in response to a past offense deemed unacceptable yet also a rational one in so far as it aims to discipline its target, modifying future behavior and providing an example to others. The paper will trace the role of the logic of punishment in Israeli and Palestinian strategic repertoires, including during the peace process, which include Israeli use of house demolitions, targeted assassinations, forced deportations, supply blockades, and more mundane daily humiliations and Palestinian use of suicide bombing and rocket attacks. The paper will examine why, in this case, the logic of punishment not only fails to elicit intended changes in the behavior of its target, but actually exacerbates enmity. In the Israeli-Palestinian context each side interprets punishment as persecution, even as sadism, and as a confirmation of the unreasonableness of the other. As such the politics of punishment must be abandoned in the pursuit of a negotiated peace. Instead a more empathetic understanding of adversary identity and perception is the necessary foundation for the emergence of a productive strategic dynamic.

Publication Type: Internal Paper
Abstract: This paper explores the social construction of Traveler’s Diarrhea (TD) through an analysis of the rhetoric of accepted scientific discourse regarding its treatment and prevention. As an artifact of cultural study, TD is a phenomenon located at the intersection of American and Mexican cultures, one that has far reaching consequences for U.S.-Mexican relations, local tourist economies in Mexico, and U.S. healthcare.

In order to avoid TD, tourists to Mexico (and other destinations) receive advice from physicians, travel agencies, the C.D.C., the W.H.O., and others about not consuming produce, tap water, or drinks with ice made from tap water. However, despite these precautions, the illness persists, even in people who have claimed to follow the regulations. Science is, as yet, unable to provide a full explanation of this condition, perhaps because it has not taken into account the cultural factors that play a role in shaping this illness.

Traveler’s Diarrhea is also called “Montezuma’s Revenge.” This nickname, after the Aztec emperor Moctezuma, posits it in a cause and effect relationship with the conquest of Mexico by the Spanish, giving agency to the illness. This name also attributes a negative agency to the indigenous people of Mexico, whose lack of hygiene is blamed for transmitting bacteria to the tourists. Through a problematic logic of guilt inherent in the name “Montezuma’s Revenge” to designate TD, the poverty of hotel and restaurant employees in Mexico becomes their weapon against the colonizers.

The intersection of the fields of the medical humanities and food studies produce the following questions for analysis: What is the logic and consequences of medical advice that prohibits eating the food of “the other”? Many travelers report that they rigorously follow the accepted dietary advice but that they still get sick. Underlying all of the scientific data on the illness, is there a rational argument to be made for avoiding local fruits and vegetables? Or is this a form of “food racism,” brought on by xenophobia and fears of contamination by the “other”? What is the effect on the local agricultural economy when tourists refuse to eat local produce? Does every patient who reportedly suffers from TD truly have a bacterial infection? Or is the diarrhea and sometimes vomiting the result of too many Tecates and tequila shots? Scientific data reveals that not everyone who complains of TD is actually suffering from a bacterial infection. In fact, one study done in a Mexican hotel concludes that the illness is psychosomatic and a phenomenon associated primarily with American tourists. Has TD become a label for the physical manifestations of American anxieties over contact with the abject “other” to the South? Has it become an embodiment of America’s fears related to traveling outside of our borders, causing travelers to exhibit a stress-induced colitis?

In conclusion, this paper argues that theories and methodologies in American studies can shed light on our understanding of this illness by revealing the social factors that construct it.