Jayyusi2007
| Jayyusi2007 | |
|---|---|
| BibType | ARTICLE |
| Key | Jayyusi2007 |
| Author(s) | Lena Jayyusi |
| Title | Between Saying and showing: making and contesting truth claims in the media |
| Editor(s) | |
| Tag(s) | EMCA, Ethnomethodology, Truth Claims, Media |
| Publisher | |
| Year | 2007 |
| Language | |
| City | |
| Month | |
| Journal | Ethnographic Studies |
| Volume | 9 |
| Number | |
| Pages | 19–43 |
| URL | Link |
| DOI | |
| ISBN | |
| Organization | |
| Institution | |
| School | |
| Type | |
| Edition | |
| Series | |
| Howpublished | |
| Book title | |
| Chapter | |
Abstract
The death of civilians is a morally accountable matter. Already, in talking of 'civilians' (or in the identification of a population as a group of 'civilians'), there is an embedded contrast with 'non-civilians' which may in situ implicate a number of possible further categories: 'combatants', 'soldiers', 'the military', 'terrorists' etc. In other words, two discourse frames – 'war/violence' and 'ordinary life' – are simultaneously involved. In this mapping, a variety of trajectories for the categorization and location of persons in this environment become available as morally implicative matters. 'Death' is always significant, in any language, any culture, and any population. It may be mitigated, justified, excused, and attached differentially to various categories of person, settings, and contingencies, but it can never generically be ignored. It is always accountable. When attached to specific populations/categories in particular sorts of circumstances it can, in occasioned ways, be dismissed, but such 'dismissal' is accomplished, and the modes and methods by which it is so accomplished (or which otherwise ground a justification or excuse for the deaths) may remain themselves irremediably accountable in various ways by different parties. Such accountability and accounting cannot be absolutely foreclosed, and may in some other location or time be pressed, pursued and made relevant by the same or other agents.
This paper will address the truth claims made and pursued about both the identity and the numbers of deaths in the context of particular 'moments' of that war, a matter that had every relationship to the possible characterization of the war itself, and those who declared and waged it. The paper addresses this through the claims made both by media reports, and about them, as the actual 'facts', 'truths', and 'outcomes' of the war and its conduct were (indeed still are) fiercely debated. In the process, a number of issues relating to intelligibility, visibility and the moral order will be raised.
Notes
