Liberal and Conservative Multiculturalism after September 11

2007

Abstract: The current approach to the war on terror is largely ineffective. Central to this approach are negative sanctions against actual and potential terrorists coupled with attempts to spread liberal democracy through war, occupation, and reconstruction. We argue that negative sanctions are unsuccessful and in many cases counter productive in reducing terrorism. Further, we postulate that efforts to impose liberal democracy in weak and failed states via occupation and reconstruction have in large part failed.

American Anthropologist Journal of the American Anthropological Association, 2002

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Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 2004

This essay critiques the main responses to 9/11 by US intellectuals and analyzes how these reactions reinforced a determined ignorance of the consequences of US economic, foreign, and military policy and a further depoliticization of the culture in general. As a class, faculty have the resources-material and intellectual-to make a serious contribution to progressive political and social change in the world. They need to start putting those resources to work.

2008

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The changes in America since the attacks of 9/11 have included some unfortunate developments. I briefly discuss twelve: less tolerance for dissent,

2005

Sociological Forum, 2008

Drawing inspiration from the work of Robin M. Williams Jr., I map out the complexities of ethnic and racial relations in the contemporary United States by focusing on the impacts of 9 ⁄ 11-particularly in relation to immigration policy. Because the attackers entered the country through regular immigration channels (i.e., as foreign students) the U.S. government has introduced policies to enhance border security, restrict immigration, increase the surveillance of immigrant populations, and more actively enforce immigration policy. These national-security-related immigration policies, however, are exacerbating existing tensions and producing new sets of ethnic and racialized conflicts in the United States. In this article, I first provide an overview of the key national-security-related immigration policies that were passed in the wake of September 11, 2001. Then, I review some of the recent sociological literature, as well as draw from my own preliminary research in the State of New Jersey, to illustrate the social impacts of these policies on ethnic and racial relations. I conclude with an outline of the ways the sociology of ethnic and racial relations specifically, as well as other subfields of the discipline, might approach analyses of social conflict in the contemporary United States, post-September 11.

2016

9/11 was a watershed moment in history in more ways than one. It occasioned the resurgence and even creation of many rigid and reductive binaries: West vs. East, “us” vs. “them”, good vs. evil, Christianity vs. Islam, Western modernity vs. Muslim medievalism, multiculturalism vs. assimilation, democracy vs. Islamic Terror, secularism vs. religious fundamentalism, and so on and so forth. The most important fallout of 9/11 in the USA was the deep polarisation it created within mainstream American society. The lay American suddenly found themselves forced to take a stand on things that never used to occupy their minds as they chased the American Dream, like their country’s foreign policy, immigration policy, national security and its stand on issues of importance in international geopolitics. Literature and popular culture contributed significantly to bolstering or attenuating the dominant 9/11 rhetoric in the public imagination. Writers of fiction after 9/11 too had to traverse this minefield, as they tried, mostly in vain, to not fall into the trap of discourse and counter-discourse. This paper analyses how post-9/11 fiction has engaged with neo-Orientalist stereotypes, Manichaean myths and representations of alterity perpetrated in the wake of September 11, how it handled burning topics like terrorism, Islamophobia, assimilation, multiculturalism, nationalism and xenophobia, and whether it functioned as a conduit or a barrier to totalizing and dichotomizing post-9/11 frames, through a close reading and critique of a significant post-9/11 novel that directly confronts the politics of American culture after 9/11—Amy Waldman’s The Submission (2011

Social Justice Research, 2009

Political orientation and political attitudes were measured in two independent adult samples. One sample was taken several months before the terrorist attacks on 9/11/01; the other, shortly after. Liberal and conservative participants alike reported more conservative attitudes following 9/11/01 than before. This conservative shift was strongest on two items with the greatest relevance to 9/11/01: George W. Bush and Increasing Military Spending. Marginally significant conservative shifts were observed on two other items (Conservatives, Socialized Medicine), and the direction of change on eight of eight items was in a conservative direction. These results provide support for the motivated social cognition model of conservatism over predictions derived from terror management theory (e.g., .