“The Discursive Construction of Afghan Women in US
Political Discourse” studies how women’s rights in Afghanistan are used in
American policymaking as tools of argument to advance their policy agendas. I
am studying the ways in which policymakers use women’s rights to support their
arguments and denigrate their opponents. To answer this question, I read
transcripts from the Senate and House of Representatives and analyzed them
according to grounded theory. This means that I was pulling out quotes that
mentioned Afghan women and categorizing them according to the purpose they
served. As I got deeper into my sources, I was able to expand my categories
into subgenres and find connections between them. I documented all of these
processes in theory memos, which are the equivalent of field notes in a
discourse analysis.
I became interested in this project when thinking about the
nature of moral and humanitarian issues in political debate, specifically how
humanitarian issues are linked to policy, and how anyone opposed to those
policies can then be branded anti-humanitarian. To examine how this phenomenon
occurs I chose to examine one humanitarian issue’s trajectory in political
debates.
In the long-term I hope to apply what I found in my
research to raising the level conscientiousness in foreign policymaking. While
consideration of women’s rights in constructing foreign policy is undeniably
important and necessary, my findings indicate that the US may be failing to do
so in a way that is responsible and constructive.
