Dissertation Defense: Kathy Crewe - A Social-Interactive Discourse Analysis Of The Public Debate Behind Decision by the AU and UN

Dissertation Defense: Kathy Crewe

Interpretation Of A Decision: A Social-Interactive Discourse Analysis Of The Public Debate Behind Decision-Making Of The United Nations And African Union In Darfur And Implications For Future Responses

April 16th
11:00am - 1:00pm
Conference Room 5183

Prof. Sara Cobb (Chair)

As the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) prepares to reduce its presence in Sudan, criticism of the force’s effectiveness as a tool of intervention has come to the fore (Sengupta & Gettleman, 2014). UNAMID’s perceived failure in the absence of more effective diplomatic and political solutions raises questions about how peacekeeping became the biggest tool in the international community’s toolbox in response to the Darfur conflict (Raghavan, 2014). This dissertation explores claims that the “subordination of peacemaking to peacekeeping” in Darfur was driven in part by a western advocacy campaign, which set the international narrative for the crisis (Flint, 2010; De Waal, forthcoming). It uses an interpretive method of social-interactive discourse analysis—and innovates a framework to examine narrative complexity—to assess how one argumentative storyline came to dominate the discursive space in the public debate around Darfur and implications for future responses.