Jeffries Vincent (Editor). Handbook Of Public Sociology

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322 Chapter 18

The current crisis in Darfur began in 2003. The Sudanese government

increasingly imposed its political power through local Arab authorities

and by attempting to increase their control over farming and grazing

areas. A variety of rebel groups—including the Justice and Equality Move-

ment and the Sudanese Liberation Army—composed mostly of black

Africans from non-nomadic tribes charge that the government used an

Arab militia, the Janjaweed to attack farmers and villagers who resisted

government attempts to take control of their land. The government ar-

gued that the rebels attacked them first. What is clear however is that

the government responded to the conflict with extensive aerial bombing

and ground attacks supported by the Janjaweed. International NGOs and

eventually the International Criminal Court charged the government-

supported Janjaweed with crimes against humanity—including mass

killings, burning villages, lootings, and systematic rape of the non-Arab,

black population of Darfur. The conflict forced more than two million

people from their homes; several hundred thousand are now living in

refugee camps in neighboring Chad.

In June through August 2004, the World Health Organization (2004)

investigated the conflict in Darfur. It gathered survey data from 3,140 ref-

uges who fled to Internally Displaced Person (IDP) camps inside North and

West Darfur (South Darfur was less fully surveyed). WHO conducted the

surveys with the support of the Sudanese Ministry of Health (WHO/SMH

survey) and focused on respondents’ and their family members’ health,

nutrition, and mortality. The WHO/SMH survey adopted a population or

public health research approach that focused on mortality linked to disease

and nutritional problems inside the displacement camps.

In the same year, both houses of the United States Congress had unani-

mously passed resolutions concluding that genocide was taking place in

Darfur, but had done so on little evidence. In the summer of 2004, Colin

Powell and the U.S. State Department (2004) decided to gather further

information on the crisis and to investigate reports of violent human rights

violations. Several arms of the State Department were involved in collect-

ing the data, including the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and La-

bor, and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Stephanie Frease of the

Coalition of International Justice and Jonathan Howard of the U.S. State

Department led the research. Frease had headed an investigation in the first

Srebrenica genocide case tried at the International Court Tribunal for the

former Yugoslavia (see Hagan 2003), and Howard was a research analyst

with the State Department. Together they developed a survey instrument,

recruited interviewers and interpreters, planned the logistics of conducting

surveys in areas unreachable by normal roads, designed a sampling plan,

moved the research team in and out of the survey locations, and organized

the coding and analyzing of the interviews.

Counting the Deaths in Darfur 323

In July and August of 2004, two groups of interviewers and interpreters

collected data in ten camps and nine settlements across the West Darfur

border in Chad. The groups included area experts, social scientists, lawyers,

and police investigators. The data collection instrument, the Atrocities

Documentation Survey (ADS) included closed and open-ended questions

with inquiries for up to twenty incidents of violence. A systematic random

sample was used to select participants: interviewers randomly selected a

starting point in each camp or settlement and then from within this desig-

nated sector selected every tenth dwelling unit for interview. Interviewers

listed all the adults living in the unit on the survey instrument, and they

chose one adult from the household for a private interview, resulting in the

final 1,136 sampled households.

The ADS asked respondents about violent victimization of their immedi-

ate family at two points in time: in their villages before they fled and dur-

ing their flight. It did not, however, consider deaths in the camps related

to health problems such as diarrhea, cholera, or malnutrition. As a result

of this information, the State Department published an eight-page report

referring to the deaths, rapes, and atrocities that respondents saw or heard

about before fleeing from attacks on their farms and villages. Secretary of

State Colin Powell used the preliminary analyses of these data in his ap-

pearance before the UN Security Council in July and in his testimony on

September 9, 2004, to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He

described to Congress the occurrence of a racially targeted and militarily

unjustified Sudanese sponsored genocide in Darfur. A coordinated White

House statement from President Bush concluded that “genocide has taken

place in Darfur.” This was the first time an American President had rebuked

a sovereign nation by invoking the Geneva Genocide Convention.

DOCUMENTING THE DEATHS

One of the factors that influenced Hagan and his colleagues’ professional

and public sociology interest in the Darfur crisis was the variation in esti-

mates of the deaths in the Darfur. In the fall of 2004, WHO used the WHO/

SMH survey described above and estimated that 70,000 people had died in

the seven months since the fighting began (i.e., 10,000 per month).

Although WHO noted that its estimate was solely for camp victims and

did not “detail “deaths due to violent incidents within Darfur communi-

ties” (Nabarro 2004) many supporters of the Sudanese government used

the WHO estimate as evidence that the conflict in Darfur was less extensive

than commonly believed. As a result, many activists and NGOs criticized

the WHO’s estimate. In its final report, the British government’s House of

Commons International Development Committee (2005:11) noted that

324 Chapter 18

“the only deaths which the WHO’s estimates include are those which took

place in the camps for Internally Displaced Persons. . . . Cited without clear

explanations of its limitations, the WHO’s estimate is extremely mislead-

ing.” In February of 2005, Jan Coebergh (a British physician) estimated

approximately 300,000 deaths in the Darfur conflict (Coebergh 2005). One

month later, the United Nations released a new number provided by Jan

Egeland, an emergency relief coordinator. Egeland’s personal observations

of the carnage in Darfur were at odds with the WHO estimate. He calculated

that a death rate of 10,000 people per month had resulted in approximately

180,000 deaths, since the conflict had already lasted more than 18 months

(Reuters 2005). In June of 2005, Eric Reeves (an American activist-scholar)

issued a statement that projected a death toll of 400,000 (Reeves 2005).

As sociological criminologists, Hagan and colleagues also questioned

the WHO estimate. With the help of Stephanie Frease, they obtained ac-

cess to the ADS survey, which for the first time effectively measured deaths

due to violent attacks on Darfur villages. Hagan and colleagues brought a

sociology of law and criminology approach to calculating death estimates,

an orientation that differed considerably from the dominant popula-

tion/public health perspective and its focus on health outcomes. They

noted that diarrhea accounted for most of the deaths documented in the

WHO/SMH survey; deaths due to violence or injury amounted to less than

15 percent. Moreover, the most common violent death in the WHO/SMH

data involved men over the age of 50, who were the least likely to be killed

in violent conflicts. Many of these deaths likely involved people who were

killed in and around the camps, as opposed to deaths that occurred during

attacks on, or flights from the villages. The WHO data also covered only

the time since people arrived at the IDP camps. The WHO estimate is fur-

ther compromised by its classification of missing people as missing data; a

substantial proportion of the people who are missing in a military conflict

likely are dead. Additionally the WHO estimate assumed a constant death

rate for the seven-month period.

Hagan and his colleagues also recognized the limitations of the State

Department’s ADS data. The ADS did not collect data on deaths in the refu-

gee camps and it does not cover the entire conflict. It also over-represents

older and younger age groups, because fighting-age males are more likely

to have been killed before flight to the refugee camps. As well, its use of in-

direct reports from refugees who made it safely to Chad could misrepresent

pre-camp violence.

Hagan and colleagues concluded that a more accurate death estimate

could be obtained by combining the ADS data with the data on deaths due

to disease and malnutrition collected in the WHO/SMH survey. However,

the State Department had not even entered all of the ADS data. As a result,

Hagan and colleagues’ first task was to read through each survey and create

Counting the Deaths in Darfur 325

a data set that enumerated the number of violent deaths per nuclear family.

Using the combined data, they estimated that 396,563 people may have

died or disappeared during the two-year conflict in Darfur. This level of

mortality is more than six times the average crude mortality rate for Africa

and three times the level identified as “elevated” by the U.S. State Depart-

ment. As of mid-2004, the violent attacks and ensuing health problems in

Darfur resulted in approximately 15,000 deaths per month, or about 500

per day. Although this new mortality estimate could exceed the actual num-

ber of deaths, there are at least three reasons why Hagan and colleagues’

estimate may have been conservative: families in which everyone died are

not included in either survey; families who fled deep into Sudan or Chad

are underrepresented in the ADS; and their analysis is limited to the deaths

of nuclear family members.

Consistent with their professional sociology orientation, John and col-

leagues wrote a scholarly article on their research and submitted it to the

premier journal in criminology (Hagan, Rymond-Richmond, and Parker

2005). Acting as public sociologists, they also issued a joint press release

with the NGO Coalition for International Justice in Washington, DC. The

press release emphasized that the death count was an estimate, but that it

was based on the best available data. It called for governments to condemn

the genocide and encouraged them and the United Nations to take steps to

stop the Sudanese government.

Although Hagan and colleagues’ estimate improved upon earlier counts,

it was limited by the previously mentioned problems with the WHO/SMH

and ADS data sets. Hagan and colleagues addressed these limitations in

subsequent estimates. They first combined data from the WHO/SMH survey

with data collected by the French human rights group, Médecins Sans Fron-

tières (MSF, or Doctors Without Borders). MSF surveyed 3,175 respondents

between April and June 2004 in IDP camps in the state of West Darfur (see

Depoortere et al. 2004). The MSF survey asked respondents about health

issues, but expanded their inquiry to include questions about the numbers

and causes of deaths in their household in the past six months, including

the time before they fled their villages, as well as the time after they arrived

at the camps. MSF reported that violence caused 68 to 93 percent of deaths

respectively during these two periods.

Combining the WHO and MSF data, Hagan and colleagues calculated

that between 170,000 and 255,000 deaths had occurred in Darfur over

31 months. In a further elaboration of their findings, they combined the

WHO/SMH survey with the ADS and suggested a death toll of no lower

than 200,000 and as high as 400,000. Hoping to increase the diversity of

the publics to whom they spoke, Hagan and colleagues published their new

estimate in Science (Hagan and Palloni 2006). Science’s estimated reader-

ship is one million people.

326 Chapter 18

Hagan and colleagues’ initial and later estimates were notably higher than

the number derived from the WHO report. They also contradicted another

influential estimate: the U.S. government’s 2005 perspective on Darfur. The

winds of change in U.S. policy were first evident in a press conference in

Sudan given by Robert Zoellick, deputy to the Secretary of State Condoleezza

Rice. In the briefing in Khartoum, Zoellick rejected the mortality estimates

of hundreds of thousands and instead reported a new State Department esti-

mate of as few as 60,000 deaths and at most 146,000. Reversing Powell, Zoel-

lick also now declined to use the term “genocide” in reference to Darfur.

The State Department was ambiguous about the origins of its new es-

timate but eventually it revealed details. The new estimate involved an

outsourcing of primary responsibility to the Centre for Research on the

Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), a research program located in the

School of Public Health of the Université Catholique de Louvain in Brus-

sels. The State Department’s new estimate drew from CRED’s reports on

Darfur, reports conducted with U.S. funding and the joint participation of

a State Department employee. Both drew heavily on the population health

approach and the WHO/SMH data, and ignored the ADS.

PROBLEMS AND PITFALLS OF PUBLIC SOCIOLOGY

A review of various publics’ response to Hagan and colleagues’ estimates on

Darfur deaths highlight one of the many difficulties that Burawoy underes-

timates in his call for public sociology. Burawoy assumes an objective truth

is attainable through a Gramscian-informed process that involves working

with various publics. Thus, he argues (2005b:429) that “truth can only be

elaborated in dialogue with agents themselves who are endowed with ‘good

sense’ within their common sense.” Burawoy (2005b:431) realizes the

“dangers of romanticizing civil society,” yet he maintains that publics’ in-

sights provide roadmaps for public sociologists who will help “excavate and

elaborate” them. Burawoy emphasizes that public sociologists also bring

useful information and ways of knowing to their relationships with publics.

He recognizes that the ideas of public sociologists may contrast with those

championed by a public or publics, but he envisions a willingness of both

sides to participate in a conversation of “communicative action” in which

each learns from the other, negotiates and moves toward a consensual view:

according to Burawoy (2005a:16), “with public sociology, knowledge is

based on consensus between sociologists and their publics.”

The diversity in various publics’ reactions to Hagan and colleagues’ origi-

nal estimate is testimony to the multiplicity of publics and their power to

interpret the contributions of public sociologists. Several prominent com-

mentators on Darfur responded positively to the estimate, including Nicho-

Counting the Deaths in Darfur 327

las Kristof, author of several New York Times articles that chastised Western

governments for ignoring Darfur. Save Darfur, an alliance of over 180 faith-

based, advocacy, and humanitarian organizations, also praised the estimate

and used it extensively in advertisements in the U.S. and British press and in

television spots. As well, many media sources stopped reporting the earlier

WHO and shifted their death estimate from tens of thousands to hundreds

of thousands.

Other commentators took an opposite view. Alex de Waal, another

frequent commentator on the Darfur situation (and fellow of the Global

Equity Initiative at Harvard University and program director at the So-

cial Science Research Council), said the initial estimate was too high

(de Waal 2007). David Hoile (a research professor at the University of

Nyala in Darfur and head of the Sudanese government funded European-

Sudanese Public Affairs Council) and Sam Dealey (in a New York Times

Op-Ed piece) dismissed the estimates as “exaggerations” (BBC 2007),

while Deborati Guha-Sapir (director, Centre for Research on Epidemi-

ology of Disasters, University of Louvain School of Public Health) de-

scribed Hagan et al.’s first estimate as “sensational” (Guha-Sapir 2005).

Although Eric Reeves applauded Hagan and colleagues’ initial estimate,

he chastised them for the lower “floor estimate” they reported in Science.

Reeves (2006) argued that “Hagan and Palloni have failed, despite their

professed goal of alerting the world to a severe under-reporting of human

mortality in Darfur.”

The responses to Hagan and colleagues’ estimates underscore several

sociologists concerns about Burawoy’s calls for public sociology. Richard

Ericson (2005:371) notes that Burawoy’s position ignores the common

experience that “a public constituency will [often] only accept sociological

analysis that accords with its own criteria of what the world looks like.”

Charles Tittle (2004:1643) echoes this sentiment: “publics rarely want to

find the ‘truth’ in the sense of looking at the full array of positive and nega-

tive evidence.”

Ericson also argues (2005:366) that the consensus that Burawoy envi-

sions often occurs only when sociologists are willing to compromise their

research. Tittle (2004:1640) makes a similar point: “Advocates seem to

think that what is “socially just” is clear and easily agreed upon among

people with good will or sociological training. Actually, almost every social

issue involves moral dilemmas, not moral clarity.” Furthermore, there is no

a priori justification for assuming that any consensus reached by sociolo-

gists and a public or publics necessarily reflects the discovery of the “truth”

that is supposed to animate public sociology (Holmwood 2007; Calhoun

2005). Indeed, Lynn Smith-Lovin (2007:129) worries that “[t]o the public

sociologist, truth value is not empirical . . . but is established through the

consensus that is formed as a result of a dialogue with a public.”

328 Chapter 18

THE ELUSIVENESS OF CONSENSUS AMONG

SCHOLARS IN THE PUBLIC ARENA

Burawoy’s calls for public sociology also provide few directions on how

to achieve consensus even among social scientists. He clearly recognizes

power differences and divisions both between and within the disciplines

(e.g., economics’ and political science’s domination over sociology and

professional sociology’s position atop the sociological hierarchy). Nonethe-

less, he suggests that sociology’s grounding in civil society, and the greater

access to “truth” that it bestows, will provide sociology with a power-base

in its interactions with scholars from other disciplines who are also partici-

pating in the conversation with a public or publics.

Yet Burawoy does not provide any compelling evidence of other disci-

plines’ newfound respect for sociology, and he does not offer any concrete

suggestions on how to convince them that sociological insights should be

elevated above those provided by their practitioners. Instead, Burawoy ap-

pears to agree with Lauder, Brown, and Halsey’s (2004) thesis that socio-

logical contributions will become influential because of their relevance, the

strength of their evidence, the architecture of their theories, and their ability

to connect structure and agency.

In the Darfur case, Hagan and colleagues’ sociological criminology

perspective clashed with other orientations and it did not achieve the as-

cendancy that Burawoy presumes is due sociology. The conflict between

orientations is reflected in the opinions expressed in a 2006 United States

Government Accountability Office (USGAO) report on the deaths in Dar-

fur. The USGAO wanted to make a definitive statement on the number of

deaths. It chose to review and analyze six mortality estimates, including

those prepared by Hagan and colleagues, and it consulted with 14 experts

in “epidemiology, demography, and statistics.” According to the report, the

experts had the highest overall confidence in the lower mortality estimates

provided by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters

(CRED) and had a slightly lower level of confidence in Robert Zoellick’s

estimate, which was based on research conducted by the State’s Bureau of

Intelligence and Research (SBIR).

There are, however, less obvious conclusions suggested by the report.

A careful read suggests important qualifications about the high level of

agreement and the rejection of Hagan and colleagues’ original estimate.

The experts’ high degree of confidence in the CRED and SBIR estimates oc-

curred even though neither group clearly identified the surveys they used

in calculating their estimates. Indeed, the USGAO (2006:2) reports that the

SBIR “declined to speak with us or provide additional information, limiting

the experts’ ability to fully understand [the] State’s methods of analysis.”

Counting the Deaths in Darfur 329

Furthermore, the USGAO (2006:3) reports that it could not replicate the

SBIR estimate.

Although the USGAO consulted with 14 experts, only 10 agreed that

Hagan and colleagues’ initial estimate was high. A footnote in the report

reveals that one expert actually insisted on the plausibility of the initial es-

timate. Although Hagan and Palloni’s “floor estimate” in Science appeared

several months before the publication of the GAO report, it is not included

in the review. As well, Hagan and colleagues met several times with rep-

resentatives of the State Department to explain their origin and later esti-

mates. None of this material was included in the USGAO report; instead, it

focused on estimates that were made available on the internet and which

were not vetted by professional peers.

The two studies viewed most favorably by the report both adopt a public

health approach and make extensive use of health and nutrition surveys.

Meanwhile, the panel of experts was dominated if not exclusively popu-

lated by professionals in the public health and nutrition traditions. Thus,

the experts consulted by the USGAO were not convinced of the validity of

conclusions from Hagan and colleagues’ research and its use of an orienta-

tion that challenged the one with which they were more familiar; indeed,

three of the experts believe that the lower mortality estimates were all too

high. This disciplinary entrenchment seriously curtailed the efficacy of

Hagan and colleagues’ foray into public sociology.

Hagan and colleagues’ experiences suggest that Burawoy’s presumption

of a consensus among scholars who do public sociology under-theorizes

the politics of knowledge production (Holmwood 2007). As Vaughan

(2006:355) notes, “[l]ocalism—the pattern of relations among and be-

tween academic disciplines and universities—is central to understanding

the formulation and dissemination of ideas.” Stacey (2004) highlights one

area of contestation in her comments on public sociology. She argues that

acceptance of sociologists’ contributions is not a function of the merits of

their arguments; instead, sociological contributions are often valued only

when they can be transformed into frameworks that are consistent with

those of more powerful interests. As a result, sociological contributions

are often used to support rather than challenge dominant orientations. As

Craig Calhoun (2005) notes, Burawoy clearly appreciates Bourdieu’s argu-

ments about scholarly fields, but he underemphasizes how field dynamics

make it difficult for sociologists to achieve agreement, let alone reach a

consensus with scholars from other disciplines.

Collins (2007) makes a related point in her discussion of Burawoy’s

four-cell typology for sociology. Although Burawoy underscores that it is

an ideal-type framework, his writings suggest the possibility of equality be-

tween the four types. Yet, creating a bigger more equitable space for a hith-

erto underemphasized orientation—such as public sociology—typically

330 Chapter 18

requires the other, historically dominant orientations cede some of their

power and authority. Burawoy underestimates the willingness of scholars

to relinquish their privileged positions. In his comment on public sociol-

ogy, Nielsen (2004) reminds us that sociologists have often tried to silence,

marginalize, or discredit the research of other sociologists with whom they

disagree (also see Best 2003). Likewise, Tittle (2004:1642) charges that so-

ciologists are often just as guilty as other academics of “trying to promote

our ideas (a form of ideology) in the guise of superior knowledge.” Thus, it

is not surprising that scholars from other disciplines would do the same. As

Bourdieu’s analysis suggests, intellectuals form a strong group whose ideas

often dictate how the group perceives an issue. These divisions are not eas-

ily put aside, regardless of each group’s desire to pursue moral issues.

Although Burawoy recognizes the threats, he suggests that awareness

will help overcome them. Yet, widely divergent orientations, assumptions,

ways of knowing and seeing, as well as the structure of the academy and the

desire to protect ones’ scholarly terrain undermine the consensus that Bura-

woy imagines. In her reflections on public sociology, Juliet Schor (Burawoy

et al. 2004:123) provides a personal example of attacks on her research on

over-worked Americans. In their reports to the media, several academics

claimed that Schor’s results were “illegitimate” and that she “cooked” her

analysis. Schor quickly realized that her “professional credibility” had little

currency in the media or among various publics who welcomed the claims

of her critics when they coincided with their own beliefs (also see Stacey

2004).

THE POWER OF THE STATE

The U.S. government’s response to Darfur reflects a third complication in

doing public sociology. As noted earlier, the U.S. State Department under

the direction of Colin Powell initiated the Atrocities Documentation Survey

(ADS) that served as the backbone of Hagan and colleagues’ estimates of

the number of deaths in Darfur. It was also the basis for Colin Powell’s and

President Bush’s 2004 pronouncements that genocide was taking place in

Sudan. Yet, Robert Zoellick’s lower estimate in 2005 confirmed that the ad-

ministration had abandoned the ADS and mortality estimates based upon

it. Instead it supported a much lower outsourced estimate that focused on

disease and malnutrition rather than violence.

Several people have speculated about the reasons for the change in the

State Department’s position on Darfur. The Los Angeles Times reported

that, prior to the new estimate, the CIA flew to Washington the Sudanese

government intelligence chief, Major General Salah Abdallah Gosh. Major

General Gosh reported that Sudan had “a strong partnership with the CIA”

Counting the Deaths in Darfur 331

even though in 2004 Congress cited Gosh as a key agent in the killings in

Darfur (Silverstein 2005). As well, Gosh was rumored to be among the

top Sudanese officials on a UN list of people responsible for allowing the

attacks in Darfur. Shortly after Gosh’s visit, the State Department issued a

report stating that Sudan is a “strong partner in the war on terror.” Secretary

Rice also met with Sudan’s foreign minister and promised to review her

government’s position on economic sanctions. The Sudanese government

simultaneously established a public relations contract with a Washington-

based lobbying firm, a direct violation of an Executive Order (#13067)

that prohibits U.S. companies from doing business with Sudan. (The U.S.

Congress forced an end to this deal in February 2006.)

The U.S. government’s “flip-flop” on the Darfur crisis, and its rejection

of the findings from a study it initiated, underscores its limited interest in

sociology’s contributions; it also highlights its capacity to ignore voices

that are inconsistent with its objectives. Tittle (2004) draws attention to

this problem in his comment on public sociology. He cites as an example

legislators’ dismissal of social science evidence on the ineffectiveness of the

death penalty as a deterrent, before casting their vote to reinstate capital

punishment. He notes (2004:1642), “The record is clear in showing that

the legislators did not regard sociologists or criminologists as scientists, did

not believe their research, and most of all, did not trust their motives in

interpreting accumulated research and setting forth its implications.”

Wallerstein (2007:169) reminds us about the difficulties in working with

governments in his comment on public sociology: “[p]olitical authorities

are never happy if intellectuals offer them reasoned resistance and are sel-

dom happy if intellectuals decline to support them in what they consider

fundamental issues of value and policy.” In the Darfur crisis, the State

Department’s final position was to attack research that documented a real-

ity that differed from the one it preferred in its pursuit of a global war on

terror.

THE UNCERTAINTY OF THE MEDIA

Burawoy clearly recognizes states’ power to reinterpret and reject sociologi-

cal contributions that contradict their agendas; yet he implies that political

influence operates less powerfully when sociologists interact with various

publics. In his response to Stacey’s (2004) claim that it is difficult for pub-

lic sociology to escape from dominant, more powerful voices, Burawoy

(2004:1610) argues that this problem applies “less to public sociology than

to policy sociology in which the sociologist cedes the discursive terrain to

her client.” Yet, as Ericson (2005:365) notes, “Sociology does not translate

easily into the discourses and practices of other institutions. . . . Sociological