Dr. Michael Blain has served four terms as Chair of the Department of Sociology at Boise State University. He has a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Colorado in Boulder, and first came to Boise State as a visiting professor in 1981. His earlier degrees include a B.A. and an M.A. in Psychology, both from California State University in Sacramento. In addition to teaching, Dr. Blain has engaged in research on the politics of violence, war and peace, and terrorism for more than three decades. He has published articles and chapters in some of the leading theory journals and books in his field, including The Psychoanalytic Review, Symbolic Interaction, and Theory and Society. A compilation of his articles on political violence has been published as 'The Sociology of Terrorism: Studies in Power, Subjection, and Victimage Ritual'. Dr. Blain has also been involved in policy research in Idaho. As a member of the steering committee of the Snake River Alliance in the 1980s, he produced two influential reports on cancer in populations adjacent to the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory (with Carl Johnson, M.D.) and Hanford Nuclear Reservation. He and Charles Etlinger coauthored a six-part series on Idaho’s power structure for The Idaho Statesman. Dr. Blain has been an active member of professional associations including the Pacific Sociological Association, where he has served on the Council, as a session organizer, and as co-editor of the Association's newsletter, The Pacific Sociologist.
Articles
The Politics of Victimage: Power and Subjection in a US Anti-Gay Campaign, Critical Discourse Studies (2005)
This paper articulates a genealogical approach to critical discourse analysis derived from Michel Foucault and...
Power, War, and Melodrama in the Discourses of Political Movements, Theory and Society (1994)
This article outlines an interpretive-analytic for the study of how discourse functions in sociopolitical movements....
Rhetorical Practice in an Anti-Nuclear Weapons Campaign, Peace & Change (1991)
This article presents a rhetorical analysis of peace activists' discursive practices in a victorious campaign...
Power and Practice in Peace Movement Discourse, Research in Social Movements, Conflicts, and Change (1989)
Books
Power, Discourse and Victimage Ritual in the War on Terror, Faculty Authored Books (2012)
Blending concepts from 'dramatism' such as 'victimage ritual' with Foucault's approach to modern power and...
The Sociology of Terrorism: Studies in Power, Subjection, and Victimage Ritual, Faculty Authored Books (2009)
This book is a compilation of previously published studies on the role of culture and...
The Politics of Death [dissertation]: A Sociological Analysis of Revolutionary Communication (1974)
This dissertation reports the results of a sociological analysis of the narrative form and functions...
Contributions to Books
On the Genealogy of Terrorism, Interrogating the War on Terror: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (2007)
This chapter offers a genealogy of the concept of terrorism and a critique of the...
Group Defamation and the Holocaust, Group Defamation and Freedom of Speech (1995)
The issue of the Germans and National Socialism, Hitler and the Nazi regime, and their...
Presentations
Power/Knowledge and Victimage Ritual in the Global War on Terrorism, International Sociological Association (2010)
This paper reports the results of an analysis of the roles of the human sciences...