Kapferer, Bruce (2002) The World Trade Center and global crisis: some critical perspectives. Social Analysis, 46 (1). pp. 92-94.

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Abstract

The World Trade Center disaster is an event of such significance that it exhausts interpretation. This is not because of the enormity of the event in itself. Numerous humanly caused destructions of just the last hundred years dwarf it in scale, and the attention now addressed to it may over the next year appear disproportionate. But events are never significant in the imagination of human beings independently of the way they are socially constructed into significance in the context of the social, political and cultural forces that somehow are articulated through a particular event, and thrown into relief by its occurrence. Undoubtedly, much of the significance that attaches to the World Trade Center catastrophe relates to the character of the conflict it defines, and the several paradoxes the event gathers up in its prism: of the strong against the weak, the powerful as victims, the cycle of revenge, the generalization of suffering, the vulnerability of technological potency, and so on. In many ways, the World Trade Center horror was an event waiting to happen, and when it occurred the event itself became a catalyst and impetus for the changing and redirection of global realities. This forum was in the making before the World Trade Center destruction had happened, and as part of a new regular feature in Social Analysis.

Item ID:	13676
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	1558-5727
Keywords:	globalisation; September 11; social theory
Additional Information:	This author also edited this issue of the journal.
Date Deposited:	04 Mar 2013 22:49
FoR Codes:	16 STUDIES IN HUMAN SOCIETY > 1601 Anthropology > 160104 Social and Cultural Anthropology @ 100%
SEO Codes:	97 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 970116 Expanding Knowledge through Studies of Human Society @ 100%
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