For Immediate Release March 3, 2000
Contact:
Alisa Giardinelli
610.690.5717
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Sociologist Analyzes Government Standoffs in New Book
Violating Cultural Taboos, not Criminal Behavior, Triggers Confrontations
Bloody standoffs such as those at Waco and Ruby Ridge are not solely prompted by the government's response to criminal behavior. Rather, a new book by a Swarthmore College sociologist says it is the violation of cultural taboos that ultimately triggers destructive confrontations between authorities and anti-system groups.
In Theorizing the Standoff: Contingency in Action (Cambridge University Press, 2000), Robin Wagner-Pacifici says the American cultural norms most often at the center of such disputes involve family structure and sexuality, religious practice, gun ownership, and territorial jurisdiction.
"I think given how large and heterogeneous the U.S. is, there are certain kinds of things people believe are the glue that holds the country together," she says. "This discreet set of behaviors, as commonplace as they may sound, cohere into something like a social unconsciousness. When individuals or groups do something to subvert that, the usual protocols often give way to the escalation of government force."
Wagner-Pacifici also thinks federal authorities do not learn from past confrontations as they should because they pay less attention to groups outside of the racial or ideological mainstream. "I don't know if FBI or ATF investigators in Waco ever read reports of MOVE or Wounded Knee," she says, "but I highly doubt it. They have too often subscribed to a narrow way of thinking and a selective view of history about these standoff situations. There are connections among these situations, despite the ideological and demographic differences among the groups."
To respond more effectively, Wagner-Pacifici suggests authorities rely more on experts not traditionally consulted in standoff situations. Among those she recommends are religious scholars, community activists, and storytellers. She believes each would bring knowledge, credibility, and the ability to communicate to the scene.
Wagner-Pacifici's work analyzes society's response to violent events, including events identified as terrorist in nature. She also examines the language with which these events are described by the media, the government, and everyday people, and what that reveals about their changing conceptions of terrorism and expectations of events that have taken on the label of "standoff."
Wagner-Pacifici is also the author of The Moro Morality Play: Terrorism and Social Drama (1986) and Discourse and Destruction: the City of Philadelphia vs MOVE (1994), both published by the University of Chicago Press. Theorizing the Standoff is part of the Cambridge Cultural Social Studies Series.
Located near Philadelphia, Swarthmore is a highly selective liberal arts college with an enrollment of 1,400. Swarthmore is ranked the number one liberal arts college in the country by U.S. News & World Report.
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