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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
First proper review of Kurdish crisis, 1991, 25 Jan 2001
Martin Shaw is, somewhat inexplicably, the first scholar to turn his attention to the Iraqi Civil war of 1991, which began a few days after the end of Operation Desert Storm. Shaw's primary interest is in how civil society -- particularly the press -- "respresents" distant events. This representation is understood as characterization, description, framing and other devises used in lingusitic communication that enable us to develop an understanding about something of which we have no first hand knowledge. Shaw explains this is very important because globalization -- here defined, essentially, as increased propinquity, or contact with one another -- makes distant events "local" and therefore places a new burden on those who represent these events to do so in a manner that is beneficial to society writ large. His choice of focusing primarily (though not exclusively) on the Kurdish exodus, which involved some 2 million people, is noteworthy because it the only substantial work that traces the first two months of the Iraqi Civil War and its aftermath and seeks to determine whether the media may have had an effect on the decisionmaking process of the British executive.The citation and research is excellent. Its primary flaw is that the study overreaches its conclusions. By examining only the media -- and not Parliament, diplomatic communication, and inter-office material at White Hall -- Shaw attributes changes in British policy to the one variable he examines: namely media. While there is reason to suspect the media may have had an impact, such a conclusion cannot be drawn from his approach. On the whole, however, a valuable argument, a highly worthy subject matter, and extremely well cited for use by interested researchers.
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