Violence (School of American Research Advanced Seminar Series) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1930618522 ISBN 13: 9781930618527

Publisher: SAR Press, 2004

Synopsis

Can we understand violence not as evidence of cultural rupture but as a form of cultural expression itself? Ten prominent scholars engage this question across geographies as diverse at their theoretical positions, in cases drawn from fieldwork in Indonesia, Cambodia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, South America, Sri Lanka, Spain, and the United States. This research makes clear that within specific cultures, violent acts are expressions of cultural codes imbued with great meaning for both perpetrator and victim. "Unless the perpetrator's view is part of our own understanding," editor Neil L. Whitehead observes, "how to address the sources of violence will escape us." Covering wide-ranging regimes of violence, these essays examine various aspects of state violence, legitimate and illegitimate forms of violence, the impact of anticipatory violence on daily life, and its effects long after the events themselves have passed. In the marginal spaces of global ethnoscapes, violence becomes a form of cultural affirmation and expression in the face of a loss of "tradition" and dislocations of ethnic communities. This book is dedicated to the memory of BegoOa Aretxaga.

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Review

The book is a stimulating attempt to understand violence in different places, contexts and times. The breadth of explanations on offer is striking, and it deserves reading. It also provides researchers with a useful source of information they cannot afford to ignore. - Egoitz Gago in PEACE, CONFLICT & DEVELOPMENT The volume has much to offer not only to anthropology, but also to other related disciplines. It counters understandings of violence as aberration and contests media-disseminated and popular perceptions about 'the inherent savagery of the non-western world'. Instead, the reader is offered a more nuanced understanding of conflict as cultural expression. The contributors have successfully returned the victim, the victimizer and the violence to the heart of culture. - Atreyee Sen in JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE

Edition details

• Publisher: SAR Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1930618522
• ISBN 13: 9781930618527
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 307
• Editor: Whitehead Neil L.