Under Fire 1: The Organization and Representation of Violence

by Akbar Ahmed, Asef Bayat, John Armitage

Through a series of discussions about an array of issues--battle simulation techniques and news programming, democracy and violence, the privatization of the military and militarized bodies--Jordan Crandall explores the organization and representation of contemporary armed conflict. Moderated by Crandall, Under Fire 1 is a compilation of a series of dialogues that occurred online from January 25 through April 19, 2004 between artists, political scientists, critics, activists and journalists around the central theme.

Paperback

First published March 1, 2005

About the author

Akbar Salahuddin Ahmed, is a Pakistani-American academic, author, poet, playwright, filmmaker and former diplomat. He currently holds the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies and is Professor of International Relations at the American University in Washington, D.C.Immediately prior, he taught at Princeton University as served as a Visiting Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He also taught at Harvard University and was a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Anthropology. Ahmed was the First Chair of Middle East and Islamic Studies at the US Naval Academy, Annapolis, and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. In 2004 Ahmed was named District of Columbia Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. A former Pakistani High Commissioner to the UK and Ireland, Ahmed was a member of the Civil Service of Pakistan and served as Political Agent in South Waziristan Agency and Commissioner in Baluchistan. He also served as the Iqbal Fellow (Chair of Pakistan Studies) at the University of Cambridge. An anthropologist and scholar of Islam. He completed his MA at Cambridge University and received his PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. He has been called "the world's leading authority on contemporary Islam" by the BBC.