ABU GRAIB TORTURE CASE

DEAR WRITERS, You may or may not need to use the text. I have provided a link and it contains much of what is in the text, also she posts modules online which those are considered as her lectures. I have pasted the modules to this page as well. In her instructions she mentioned that we should go to pages 114 and 541 to help us with question #5. The concepts on those pages are (pg 114 Focus and Unfocused Interaction) (pg 541 World- Rejecting Movements & Total Institutions). As far as the World- Rejecting Movements and Total Institutions concepts are concerned I am positive that she is making sure that we were focused on every detail provided by our sources; therefore for quesion #5 I was planning to mention the KKK symbols that appeared in the video Abu Ghraib Torture (SBS Dateline) Documentary. The military soldiers put KKK uniforms on the prisoners, and the female military guard was captured in a photo holding a leash that was tied to a prisoner's neck, which she was imitating the Egyptian Goddess Isis. I looked online for the picture of Isis posing in that manner which is actually on Ancient Egyptian monuments but I couldn't locate it. Some of the Prisoners were missing an eye, this represents the all seeing eye on the back of the dollar bill. Prisoners were stacked on top of one another in a pyramid form, and one prisoner's flesh was carved out of his chest area in the shape of a pyramid. I wanted to let her know that I understand these symbols to be ancient ideologies that the KKK uses as an expression of KKK ideology of white supremecy,dominance and control and how the incident of Abu Graib is relative to the concept of World-Rejection Movements and Karl Marx's Class Conflict Theory which Marx's theory surfaced in the last lecture. Since none of the students are as advanced as I am concerning these particular sociological concepts; I am the only one who can actually apply them, which they cannot catch on to the implications of the soldiers. She is already impressed with my approach. Once she sees the application of these sociological concepts which are in our text, in her lectures,and in the details of the video regarding what the military soldiers were suggesting she will be stunned. INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 7TH EDITION ANTHONY GIDDENS/MITCELL DUNEIER/RICHARD P.APPLEBAUM/DEBORAH CARR W. W. NORTON (PUBLISHER) http://www(dot)wwnorton(dot)com/college/soc/conley/welcome.aspx LECTURE MODULES 1-3 ARE BELOW MODULE #1 Lesson Module Goal Students will understand how socialization and resocialization shape an individual's identity, values, beliefs and behavior "HUMAN" NATURE IS THERE SUCH A THING as human nature? It's physiology that prompts you to urinate, but its socialization that tells you where and when to do so. We are largely shaped by interaction with other people, such that without society the human part of human nature would not develop. We can observe this in children raised by animals or denied human contact. What does the phenomenon of “unsocialized” children; tell us about the role of learning in human development? THE \'WHAT AND \'WHERE\' OF RESOCIALIZATION ANOTHER TYPE OF SOCIALIZATION, which often involves being confined against one's will in prisons or mental hospitals, is remobilization--learning a new set of norms, attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviors. The aim of this reconstructive process is to remake an individual's personality by carefully controlling the environment. This process of resocialization takes place in a total institution, a setting which people are isolated from the rest of society and manipulated by an administrative staff. According to Erving Goffman (1961) total institutions have three characteristics: -Physically isolated setting. The institution is cut-off from the rest of society. -Total control. Staff members supervise all aspects of daily life, including where residents (inmates) eat, sleep, and work. -Highly structured. The environment is highly standardized, with institutional food, uniforms, and one set of activities for everyone. -No individual decision-making. Rules and schedules dictate when, where, and how inmates perform their daily routines. THE RESOCIALIZATION PROCESS RESOCIALIZATION is a two-part process. First, the staff breaks down the inmate's existing identity. He or she must surrender personal possessions, including clothing and grooming articles used to maintain a distinctive appearance. Instead, the staff provides standard-issue clothes so that everyone looks alike. New inmates are subjected to “mortifications of self,” or degradation ceremonies. This can include searches, medical examinations, head shaving, fingerprinting, and assignment of a serial number. Once inside the walls, individuals also give up their privacy as guards routinely monitor their living quarters. In the second part of the re-socialization process, the staff tries to build a new self in the inmate through systems of reward and punishments. Total institutions affect people differently. Whereas some inmates are considered “rehabilitated” or “recovered,” others may change little, and still others may become bitter and hostile. Over a long period of time, living in a rigidly controlled environment can leave some institutionalized, without the capacity for independent living. There are 4 steps in the re-socialization process. 1. The first step is to strip the individual of his or her cultural or individual identity. 2. Holding the individual in isolation, away from outside influences is the next step. 3. The third step is to take away individual decision-making. All decisions are made for the individual by the institution. 4 Re-socialization is the last step. This involved teaching the individual a new set of values, beliefs and norms. These cultural attributes form the basis for the person\'s new identity. MODULE #2 LESSON MODULE GOAL Students will: Be able to identify the basic elements of social structure, and understand how various elements of the social structure affect our world view, social interactions, and individual choices. SOCIAL INTERACTION & SOCIAL STRUCTURE The quite of a summer Sunday morning in Palo Alto, California, was shattered by a screeching squad car siren as police swept through the city picking up college students in a surprise mass arrest. Each suspect was charged with a felony, warned of his constitutional rights, spread-eagle against the car, searched, Hand-cuffed and carted off in the back seat of the squad car to the police station for booking. After being fingerprinted and having identification forms prepared for his “jacket” (central information file), each prison was left isolated in a detention cell to wonder what he had done to get himself in this mess. After a while, he was blindfolded and transported to the “Stanford County Prison.” Here he began the induction process of becoming a prisoner—stripped naked, skin searched, deloused, and issues a uniform, bedding, soap and a towel. By late afternoon when nine such arrests had been completed, these youthful “first offenders” sat in dazed silence on the cots in their barren cells. These men were part of a very unusual kind of prison, and experimental or mock prison, created by social psychologists for the purpose of intensively studying the effect of imprisonment upon volunteer research subjects. When we planned our two-week-long simulation of prison life, we were primarily concerned about understanding the process by which people adapt to the novel and alien environment in which those called “prisoners” lose their liberty, civil rights, independence and privacy, while those called the “guards” gain social power by accepting the responsibility for controlling and managing the lives of their dependent charges… Our final sample of participants (10 prisoners and 11 guards) were selected from over 75 volunteers recruited through ads in the city and campus newspapers…Half were randomly assigned to role-play being guards, the others to be prisoners. Thus, there were no measurable differences between the guards and the prisoners at the start of this experiment… At the end of only six days we had to close down our mock prison because what we saw was frightening. It was no longer apparent to most of the subjects (or to us) where reality ended and their roles began. The majority had indeed become prisoners or guards, no longer able to clearly differentiate between role playing and self. There were dramatic changes in virtually every aspect of their behavior, thinking and feeling. In less than a week the experience of imprisonment undid (temporarily) a lifetime of learning; human values were suspended, self-concepts were challenged and the ugliest, most base, pathological side of human nature surfaced. We were horrified because we saw some boys (guards) treat others as if they were despicable animals, taking pleasure in cruelty, while other boys (prisoners) become servile, dehumanized robots who though only of escape, of their own individual survival, and of their mounting hatred for guards.” (Zimbardo et al, 1974: 61-63; Zimbardo 1972: 4). IN THIS STUDY directed and described by social psychologist Philip Zimbardo, college students adopted the patterns of social interaction expected of guards and prisoners when they were plaedin a mock prison. Sociologists use the term social interaction to refer to the ways in which people respond to one another, whether face to face or over the telephone or on the computer. In the mock prison, social interactions between guards and prisoners were highly impersonal. The guards addressed the prisoners by number rather name, and they wore reflective sunglasses that made eye contact impossible. As in may real-life prisons, the simulated prison at Stanford University had a social structure in which guards held virtually total control over prisoners. The term social structure refers to the way in which a society is organized into predictable relationships. The social structure of Zimbardo's mock prison influenced how guards and prisoners interacted. Zimbardo and his colleagues (2003: 456) note that it was a real prison “in the minds of the jailers and their captives.” His simulated prison experiment, first conducted over 30 years ago, has subsequently been repeated (with similar findings) both in the United States and other countries. Zimbardo's experiment took on new relevance in 2004, in the wake of shocking revelations of prisoner abuse at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib military facility in Iraq. Graphic photos showed U.S. soldiers humiliating naked Iraqi prisoners and threatening to attack them with police dogs. The structure of the wartime prison, coupled with intense pressure on military intelligence officers to secure information regarding terrorist plots, contributed to the breakdown in the guard's behavior. But Zimbardo himself noted that the guard's depraved conduct could have been predicted simply on the basis of his research (Zarembo 2004; Zimbardo 2004, 2005). Two concepts of social interaction and social structure are central to sociological study. They are closed related to socialization (see Chapter 4), the process through which people learn the attitudes, values, and behaviors appropriate to their culture. When the students in Zimbardo's experiment entered the mock prison, they began a process of resocialization. In that process, they adjusted to a new social structure and learned new rules for social interaction. SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND OPPRESSION The philosopher Marilyn Frye uses the metaphor of a bird cage to illustrate the concept of social structure. She says if you look closely at only one wire in a cage, you cannot see the other wires. You might wonder why the bird within does not fly away. Only when you step back and see the whole cage instead of a single wire do you understand why the bird does not escape. Frye writes: It is perfectly obvious that the bird is surrounded by a network of systematically related barriers, no one of which would be the least hindrance to its flight, but all of which, by their relations to each other, are as confining as the solid walls of a dungeon. It is now possible to grasp one reason why oppression can be hard to see and recognize. One can study the elements of an oppressive structure with great care and some good will without seeing or being able to understand that one is looking at a cage and that there are people there who are caged, whose motion and mobility are restricted, whose lives are shaped and reduced (Frye 1998: 4-5). Frye's analysis focuses on oppressive social structures that confine and exploit people. Oppression and social structure are not the same thing, although many people find existing social structures oppressive. Just as a birdcage is a network of wires, society is a network of social structure, both micro and macro. SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS ALL SOCITIES need certain things to survive. As shown in table 5.1, social institutions are designed to meet those needs. Table 5.1 BASIC SOCIETAL NEEDS AND SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS SOCIAL NEEDS SOCIETAL NEEDS 1. Have a continuing supply of new members , 2. Socialize new members, 3. Deal with members' sickness and health issues 4. Select members for certain jobs and tasks 5. Create knowledge 6. Control its members 7. Defend against its enemies 8. Produce and exchange goods and services. 9. Promote social unity and the search for higher meanings SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 1. Family 2. Family, education, religion 3. Medicine 4. Education, labor market 5. Science, religion 6. Law enforcement, judicial system, religion 7. Government, military 8. Economic system 9. Education, religion, politics Figure 5.2 shows the relationship between statuses, roles, groups, social networks, and institutions. Together they make up the social structure. Figure 5.2 Examples of Institutional Constellations of Statuses, Roles, Groups, Social Networks, and Organizations - Social Institutions Law - Statuses Police officer, notary, attorney, judge, citizen - Social Roles Enforce the law, resolve disputes, punish lawbreakers - Groups Within the police department: traffic cops,vice cops,SWAT - Informal Social Networks U.S. First Responders Association; Police Pulse— a Facebook-type site on the worldwide web - Formal Organizations web Law firms, courts, police departments MODULE #3 LESSON MODULE GOAL Students will: Understand how various elements of the social structure—social networks and organizational models--affect different societies, groups and individuals. SOCIAL NETWORKS & INEQUALITY PEOPLE TEND TO form in-groups with which they identify, they use reference groups to evaluate their attitudes and behavior, and they interact in social networks. Our in-groups, reference groups, and social networks are likely to consist of people whose backgrounds are similar to our own. This means that, for most of us, just as social inequality is built into society, so it is built into our own relationships. One consequence of is that we, too, tend to perpetuate social inequality. Consider social networks and jobs. Suppose that an outstanding job—great pay, interesting work, and opportunity for advancement—has just opened up where you work. Whom will you tell? Most likely it will be someone you know, someone for whom you would like to do a favor. And most likely your important social network is made up of people who look much like yourself—especially in terms of race, age, and social class. This tends to keep good jobs moving the direction of people who have characteristics similar to those of the people already in the organization. Our social networks, then, are an essential part of social inequality. They both reflect the inequality that characterizes our society and they help to perpetuate it. One result is the “old boy network,” white men who are established in an organization. As they learn of opportunities (jobs, investments, real estate development, and so on), they share this information with their networks. This helps keep opportunities and good jobs flowing to people who have characteristics similar to their own. Those who benefit from this information, in turn, reciprocate with similar information when they learn of it. This perpetuates the “old boys” control and locks out other from opportunities—people who have different characteristics, women and minorities. To overcome this barrier, women and minorities do networking. They develop and use their own social networks, usually for career advancement. Hoping to establish a circle of acquaintances who will prove valuable to them, like the “good old boys'” they, too, go to parties, join clubs, churches, synagogues, and political parties. African-American leaders cultivate a network of African- American leaders, and women cultivate a network of women. Their networks are not limited to people like themselves, but, like the white men, their networks tend to center around people who look like them. The network of African-American leaders is so tight that one-fifth of the entire national African-American leadership are personal acquaintances. Add some “friends of a friend,” and three-fourths of the entire leadership belong to the same network (Taylor 1992). Women who reach top positions end up in a circle so tight that the term “new girl” network is now being used, especially in the field of law. Remembering those who helped them and sympathetic to those who are trying to get ahead, these women tend to steer their business to other women. Like the “good old boys” who preceded them, the new insiders also justify their exclusionary practices (Jacobs 1997). For Your Consideration The principles that tend to perpetuate social inequality are clear. They do not depend on gender or race-ethnicity. Just as white men do, women and minorities tend favor people who look like them. What suggestions do you have for breaking this cycle? They key must center on creating diversity in social networks. “McDonaldizing” the World Ray Kroc, Mickey D's founder, applied assembly line procedures developed by Henry Ford to the preparation and service of food. McDonald's now operates more than 30,000 restaurants in the United States and around the world. Japan has more than 2,400 Golden Arches, and the world's largest McDonald's is located in China's capital of Beijing. McDonald's is far more than a restaurant chain; it's a symbol of U.S. culture. Even more importantly, the organizational principles that underlie McDonald's are coming to dominate our entire society. Our culture is becoming “McDonaldized”—we model many aspects of our life after this fast-food model: Parents buy toys at worldwide chain stores like Toys R Us; we drive to Jiffy Lube for a ten-minute oil change; face-to-face communication is being replaced more and more by e-mail, voice mail, and instant messaging; more vacations take the form of resorts and tour packages; television presents the news in the form of ten-second sound bites; college admissions officers size up students they have never met by their GPA and SAT scores; and professors evaluate students with tests mass-produced for them by publishing companies. The list goes on and on. What do all these developments have in common? According to George Ritzer (1993), the McDonalization of society rests on four organizational principles: efficiency, calculability, predictability (uniformity), and control. As a result of this business model, our daily lives are becoming rationalized, driven by efficiency and cost effectiveness. BELOW ARE THE EXACT CASE STUDY INSTRUCTIONS FROM THE PROFESSOR, NAME OF CASE STUDY: THE ABU GHRAIB TORTURE CASE INSTRUCTIONS: In 2005 when the media made public horrifying images of Iraqi prisoners being degraded and abused—some naked and on their knees inches from barking dogs, some wearing hoods and restrained in painful, grotesque positions, some forced to lie atop a pile of other naked prisons—with grinning American soldiers looking on, many commentators (and military officials) sought to explain the abuses as a case of “bad apples” among otherwise good soldiers. Bad apples don't just arise out of nowhere, however, nor are people inherently malicious or brutal by nature. So what happened? Watch the Abu Ghraib Torture (SBS Dateline) Documentary, then you try to figure it out. Use Sociological concepts and research presented in chapters 5, 6 and 7 of your text to help explain what happened at Abu Ghraib, the U.S.-run prison in Iraq. The questions below can serve as your guide: QUESTION #1 What was the lesson learned from Zimbardo's (1971) Stanford Prison experiment about the influence of social roles on an individual's behavior? How do findings from this study help you explain the torture of prisoners in Iraq? Learn more about this famous study by watching the Quite Rage: The Stanford Experiment Documentary Or review slides of the study on Professor Zimbardo\'s website QUESTION #2 What was the lesson learned from Solomon Asch\'s (1952) line comparison experiment about the power of peer group influence on individual behavior? How do findings from this study help you explain the abusive behavior of U.S. soldiers towards prisoners in Iraq? QUESTION #3 What was the lesson learned from Janis's (1972, 1989) study about groupthink during decision-making? How do findings from this study help you explain the moral judgment of abusive soldiers at Abu Ghraib? QUESTION #4 What was the lesson learned from Stanley Migram\'s (1963) research about peoples' obedience to authority? How do findings from this study help you explain the torture of prisoners in Iraq? QUESTION #5 What does the broken windows theory (Wilson & Kelling 1982) tell you about how the surrounding environment or social context shapes individual behavior? Specifically, how did the circumstances of the times, and conditions within the prison—a total institution (see text pp. 114, 541; and Virtual Lecture 4), influence the behavior of U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib? How did the social context contribute to the development of informal social cues (norms) at the prison that would likely be considered deviant beyond the prison walls? And how did these unofficial social norms likely shape soldiers' perceptions of deviance in ways that allowed such inhumane acts? QUESTION #6 How did ingroup-outgroup dynamics factor into the torture? Inside the Abu Ghraid Prison which group was considered the “ingroup” and which group was considered the “outgroup”? How are outgroup members generally treated by ingroup members and why? What does your text tell you about ingroup-outgroup dynamics in chapter 6? What did you learn from the Farmingville Case Study about the treatment of outsiders by the local ingroup? Tip: I've noticed that students who earn the highest scores on this assignment have summarized the lessons learned from each of the above studies or theories before applying them to the Abu Ghraib case study. Note: Since the purpose of the Abu Ghraib Case Study (like all of the case studies) is to give you an opportunity to demonstrate that you understand and can accurately apply/use sociological concepts and research, then you must indicate which concept or research lesson you are using. Otherwise, I can't fairly evaluate your work. In other words, the name of the study and/or theory you're applying should appear in the body of your paper THESE ARE ALL OF THE INSTRUCTIONS, P. S. MY PROFESSOR DOESN\'T REQUIRE A TITLE PAGE. SHE JUST ASK THAT WE STATE THE NAME OF THE CASE STUDY @ THE TOP OF THE PAGE AND QUESTIONS SHOULD BE NUMBERED AND ANSWERED IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER AND THAT WE MAY USE OTHER SOURCES OF INFORMATION BESIDES THE TEXT. I\'m thinking that you will need two pages for the six questions. Should you have any questions or concerns feel free to contact me. Thank You Sincerely,