Monday, February 06, 2006
Williams to deliver "How to Build a War" at Central Library
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The Evansville Chapter of Veterans for Peace will present a lecture by Steven Williams, assistant professor of sociology, at 7 p.m. Thursday, February 23, in Browning Meeting Room B at Central Library. Williams’ topic is “How to Build a War: The Post 9/11 Construction of Inevitability.” He presented on the same topic as part of the Liberal Arts Faculty Colloquiua, a free lecture series featuring faculty research in the College of Liberal Arts, in fall 2005. “In the post 9/11 climate, we launched ourselves on this supposed war on terror,” Williams said. “The idea is to make us safe from global terrorism, and I’m curious about how the mission to keep us safe from terrorism became the mission to affect regime change in Iraq. “How was that sense of immediacy and inevitability constructed for us? Before this process went into effect, nobody was talking about going to war in Iraq, and yet somehow, right before our eyes, this sense of inevitability was constructed for us so that people were saying, ‘of course we must go.’ How did that happen in a relatively short period of time?” Williams said he will try to avoid discussion about whether it was right to go to war. “People have very strong opinions about it. It’s an emotional topic. This is not about the morality of going to war, or whether we should have. It’s about the process by which we become mobilized for war as a society.” His lecture will include discussion of the relationship between social solidarity and mobilizing for war; the relationship between the government and the media in the construction of inevitability; and the concept of what ideological bias might exist in media. Williams holds a Ph.D. from Carleton University, and an M.A. and B.A. from University of Alberta. A discussion will follow the program. For more information, contact Gary May, associate professor of social work, at 812/465-1694. |
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