Sociology Colloquium, 1/25/2022
Racial Dimensions of US Post-9/11: Counterterrorism and the Conflict in Burkina Faso
Dr. Stephanie Savell, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University
As part of its post-9/11 military operations, the United States provides counterterrorism “training and assistance” to dozens of countries, many of them in Africa. Through the case of Burkina Faso, Dr. Stephanie Savell examines the profound costs of so-called assistance for other nations in waging their own “wars on terror.”
The US has provided counterterrorism funding and training to Burkina Faso, a landlocked country in the West African Sahel, since 2009, but it was only several years later that the country began to experience militant violence linked to what local people call “jihadism.” US counterterrorism in Burkina Faso, and Africa more generally, manifest racism through tropes about the need to extend central government authority to what the US military calls “under governed spaces” – that is, the state peripheries that are home to minority Muslim ethnic groups, among others.
Dr. Savell parses the racialized dimensions of the current conflict in Burkina Faso and the US role in it and argues that US-supported counterterrorism has fed insecurity, intensifying militant violence by fueling resentment against government injustices. Stephanie Savell is an anthropologist of militarism, security, and civic engagement, focused particularly on the US post-9/11 wars and on militarized policing in Rio de Janeiro favelas.
See poster on this link.
January 25, 2022
Tuesday, 12–1:30pm
Zoom Meeting
Meeting ID: 953 7709 9688
Passcode: 308552
If you cannot join with video, you can connect to the Zoom session via phone: 1–346–248–7799