IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v171y2016icp1-8.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Standardizing psycho-medical torture during the War on Terror: Why it happened, how it happened, and why it didn't work

Author

Listed:
  • Balfe, Myles

Abstract

After 9/11/2001 the United States launched a global War on Terror. As part of this War, terrorism suspects were detained by the U.S. military and by the C.I.A. It is now widely recognized that the United States tortured a number of these detainees in the context of its ‘enhanced interrogation’ programme. This article examines how and why U.S. organizations developed standards that allowed healthcare professionals to become involved in torture; why the standards developed by U.S. security institutions failed to control the actions of enhanced interrogation personnel on the ground; and what the role of standards were in stopping the enhanced interrogation initiative. The article concludes by discussing the general lessons that the enhanced interrogation programme has for social science research on standards, namely that individuals can experience ambivalence when caught between competing organizational and professional standards and that it might be inherently difficult to successfully enact certain protocols when these relate to deviant or destructive acts.

Suggested Citation

  • Balfe, Myles, 2016. "Standardizing psycho-medical torture during the War on Terror: Why it happened, how it happened, and why it didn't work," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 1-8.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:171:y:2016:i:c:p:1-8
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.11.014
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953616306232
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.11.014?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Timmermans, Stefan & Almeling, Rene, 2009. "Objectification, standardization, and commodification in health care: A conceptual readjustment," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 21-27, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Martimianakis, Maria Athina (Tina) & Hafferty, Frederic W., 2013. "The world as the new local clinic: A critical analysis of three discourses of global medical competency," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 31-38.
    2. Brüggemann, Jelmer & Persson, Alma & Wijma, Barbro, 2019. "Understanding and preventing situations of abuse in health care – Navigation work in a Swedish palliative care setting," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 222(C), pages 52-58.
    3. Ihlebæk, Hanna Marie, 2021. "Time to care - An ethnographic study of how temporal structuring affects caring relationships in clinical nursing," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 287(C).
    4. Ezell, Jerel M. & Walters, Suzan & Friedman, Samuel R. & Bolinski, Rebecca & Jenkins, Wiley D. & Schneider, John & Link, Bruce & Pho, Mai T., 2021. "Stigmatize the use, not the user? Attitudes on opioid use, drug injection, treatment, and overdose prevention in rural communities," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 268(C).
    5. Per Magnus Mæhle & Ingrid Kristine Small Hanto & Sigbjørn Smeland, 2020. "Practicing Integrated Care Pathways in Norwegian Hospitals: Coordination through Industrialized Standardization, Value Chains, and Quality Management or an Organizational Equivalent to Improvised Jazz," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(24), pages 1-32, December.
    6. Kreuzer, Maria & Cado, Vesna & Raïes, Karine, 2020. "Moments of care: How interpersonal interactions contribute to luxury experiences of healthcare consumers," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 482-490.
    7. Simpson, Bob & Khatri, Rekha & Ravindran, Deapica & Udalagama, Tharindi, 2015. "Pharmaceuticalisation and ethical review in South Asia: Issues of scope and authority for practitioners and policy makers," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 247-254.
    8. Vale, Mira D. & Perkins, Denise White, 2022. "Discuss and remember: Clinician strategies for integrating social determinants of health in patient records and care," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 315(C).
    9. Yeung, Karen & Dixon-Woods, Mary, 2010. "Design-based regulation and patient safety: A regulatory studies perspective," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 71(3), pages 502-509, August.
    10. James Faulconbridge & Noel Cass & John Connaughton, 2018. "How market standards affect building design: The case of low energy design in commercial offices," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 50(3), pages 627-650, May.
    11. Anna Wernhart & Susanne Gahbauer & Daniela Haluza, 2019. "eHealth and telemedicine: Practices and beliefs among healthcare professionals and medical students at a medical university," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(2), pages 1-13, February.
    12. Natasha Marie Kriznik & Guillaume Lamé & Mary Dixon-Woods, 2019. "Challenges in making standardisation work in healthcare: lessons from a qualitative interview study of a line-labelling policy in a UK region," Post-Print hal-02383789, HAL.
    13. Kristín Björnsdóttir, 2014. "The place of standardisation in home care practice: an ethnographic study," Journal of Clinical Nursing, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 23(9-10), pages 1411-1420, May.
    14. Norman, Armando H. & Russell, Andrew J. & Merli, Claudia, 2016. "The Quality and Outcomes Framework: Body commodification in UK general practice," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 170(C), pages 77-86.
    15. Hartman, Anna E. & Coslor, Erica, 2019. "Earning while giving: Rhetorical strategies for navigating multiple institutional logics in reproductive commodification," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 405-419.
    16. Reilley, Jacob & Pflueger, Dane & Huber, Christian, 2024. "A typology of evaluative health platforms: Commercial interests and their implications for patient voice," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 350(C).
    17. Bromley, Elizabeth, 2012. "Building patient-centeredness: Hospital design as an interpretive act," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 75(6), pages 1057-1066.
    18. Allen, Davina, 2024. "Why is hospital discharge so difficult? Reconsidering patient trajectories in theory and practice: Insights from an ethnographic study of transitions in hip fracture care," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 347(C).
    19. Nicholls, Stuart G., 2013. "Standards and classification: A perspective on the ‘obesity epidemic’," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 9-15.
    20. Pedersen, Kirstine Zinck & Roelsgaard Obling, Anne, 2020. "‘It's all about time’: Temporal effects of cancer pathway introduction in treatment and care," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 246(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:171:y:2016:i:c:p:1-8. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.