Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the complex relationship between structural violence and cultural death among Yup'ik peoples of western Alsaka over the course of the twentieth century through the lens of impunity to explore how these processes are often understood to be inevitable by the dominant society and among its victims.

Paper long abstract:

Perhaps nowhere have the effects of tuberculosis been more dramatically felt than among the indigneous peoples of rural Alaska. Although tuberculosis had been endemic during the nineteenth century, by mid-twentieth century, during the second wave of Americanization (Oswalt 1990), it had reached such epidemic proportions that one out of every three Alaskan natives was dying of tuberculosis, with Yup'ik people having some of the highest rates of tb anywhere in the world. By the 1950s one out of every thirty Alaskan natives was in a tb sanatorium remaining there for two years or more, mostly outside of Alaska's borders. The epidemic was over by the late 1960s, yet by century's end Yup'ik's had some of the highest suicide rates of anywhere in the United States.

This paper explores the complexity of events and the contradictions that arose in a radically changing social, cultural and political-economic order in rural Alaska from the 1930s to the 1990s to understand how the forces and structures of western scientific knowledge and public health policy contributed to a transfromation of the ways that Yup'ik people have lived and died. Conceptually, the paper examines the intricate relationship between structural violence and cultural death viewed through the lens of impunity to explore how traumatic processes are often understood and enacted upon as though inevitable by the dominant society and among its victims.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes daily expressions of ordinary violence in African cities through field works data. First results seem to show it as an attempt to reorganize reciprocal expectations in the way of strengthening submissiveness or responsability on one side or emancipating on the other side

Paper long abstract:

This paper is focusing on narratives of daily ordinary social violence collected in recent ethnographic field works undertaken in African capital cities (Bamako, Ouagadougou, Kinshasa, Bangui). Although the construction of violence as a recognized social fact was studied from three points of view : the victim (as the narrator of his suffer), the perpetrator (as a commentator of his violent action) and the witnesses (as legitimators of the qualification of the act as being "violence"), the complex relationship between its rational side (an efficient way to obtain something from somebody) its cultural side (a traditional, legitimate or honourable way to behave in such a situation) and its irrational side (a spontaneous way to react) blurred the representations of what local people consider as « violence". Moreover, according to witnesses testimonies violence may bear several meanings: it does express the will to neglect community's norms at the cost of physical or mental suffering of those who are thus wronged, but at the same time it also expresses the will to reorganize assigned reciprocal expectations in the opposite directions of strengthening submissiveness or responsability on one side of the relationship or emancipating and escaping duty on the other side of it. Therefore, I suggest that the analyze of routine situations of ordinary social violence is a very good observation post of the social changes at work. In many cases, violence appears to be a way to stress an identity neglected by the economic, educational and social change taking place. In such a case, it expresses the wish to modify a personal situation perceived as becoming untolerable. And as such it speaks for a kind of conflictuality which find, right or not, no other way to express itself.

In a contemporary African urban context marked by life uncertainties, situations of urban anomy and generalized normative confusion which endanger personal and collective identities, perpetrators of violent actions calls very much for being recognized as the subject and author of one's own life, to be recognized also in one's reciprocal expectations, in one's representations of social life and finally in one's identity. Ordinary daily violence then appears to be a practical mean to statisfy needs as well as to promote claims. But it also operates as a symbolic way to dramatize basic elements of social experience able to attract the so desired social recognition.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will explore a range of motivations for apparently banal acts of violence associated with organized crime, taking into account the collective dynamics of fraternal mafia sodalities.

Paper long abstract:

Calderone (in Arlacchi 1993: 159-160) reports that capomafia Stefano Bontade showed up late for an important meeting. Stepping out of his Porsche Carrera, he asked the others to forgive him for his lateness saying, "I had to change a flat tire, and I had to strangle (inchiaccare) Stefano Giaconia". Michele Greco, present at the meeting, approved, saying that Bontade had done well to get rid of this scum, after which Bontade added, "that cornuto (cuckold) gave me trouble right up to the end. After I killed him, we set his clothes on fire, and while they were burning there was an explosion. It was the bullet in a pen-pistol, caliber 22, that Giaconia carried with him." Someone present made the ironic comment that Giaconia was quite a man of honor, still able to shoot from the grave!

The apparent banality of mafia-related violence is the subject of this proposed paper. Based on ethnographic field work in Sicily, trial proceedings in Palermo and New York, and "justice collaborator" (pentito) depositions, I will explore a range of motivations for acts of violence associated with organized crime, taking into account the collective dynamics of fraternal sodalities such as the mafia cosca, the exclusive "moral hothouse" that insulates and promotes criminal/deviant cultural practices, and the role of emotions - among them, excitement and self-actualization - argued by Katz (1988) and others to play an under-appreciated role in crime.

Paper short abstract:

It is the substance of blood and its metaphorical power to express sexual violence that is at the heart of this paper. It aims at listening attentively to this metaphoric language which is often called ‘silence’, because it is considered too general and metaphoric to describe the actual experience. In contrast, I argue that anthropologists lack an adequate research apparatus to investigate these metaphoric expressions rather than that women raped are unable to express themselves adequately.

Paper long abstract:

Women in the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe frequently narrate their experiences with sexual violence in a metaphoric language in which blood is a key symbol. They explain that they could not verbalise their painful rape experiences at first, but that they spoke blood instead, which they threw up like big balls or trickled from the corner of their mouths as a narrating voice.

In the local idiom, blood vomiting is commonly perceived as a sign of bewitchment. This allows Guadeloupian women to speak publicly about sexual violence, because they accuse other women of witchcraft - usually women who are part of the family but are not blood related - to have manipulated the spirits of dead men by speaking a curse over their bloodstained sanitary towel. At night, these manipulated spirits of dead men penetrate their houses and rape them repeatedly, just as during slavery, when European men haunted African women as they 'invisibly' forced entrance in their cabins to rape them.

It is the substance of blood and its metaphorical power to express sexual violence that is at the heart of this paper. Based on longitudinal multi-sited fieldwork in one extended Guadeloupian family, it aims at listening attentively to this metaphoric language which is often called 'silence', because it is considered too general and metaphoric to describe the actual experience (Das 1997). In contrast, I argue that anthropologists lack an adequate research apparatus to investigate these metaphoric expressions rather than that women raped are unable to express themselves adequately.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing upon fieldwork in a pro-Kurdish community at the Turkish-Iranian border, this paper aims at exploring different narratives of violent events in Eastern Turkey.

Paper long abstract:

For more than two decades there has been an armed conflict between the Kurdish Workers' Party PKK and the Turkish military in Eastern Turkey. After the guerilla (PKK) announced a one-sided ceasefire in 1999 (which it renounced in 2001), the community I will describe here returned to a post-war 'normality'. The area is still highly militarized, but contrary to several other towns in the area, the situation has been very calm with hardly any violent incidents between the warring parties since 1999.

This paper will focus on the few occasions, where violence occurred: On one hand, the (accidental) assassination of a Kurdish guard, and the capture and torture of several PKK sympathizers by Turkish military forces, and the assassination of two village guards by the guerilla on the other hand.

Depending on the perpetrator, i.e. the military forces or the guerilla, these events are recounted in very different forms. Violence committed by the military is mentioned within a public discourse. The violent event is retold in extreme detail and positioned in space, thus proving the accuracy of the tale. Violence supposedly conducted by the guerilla is mystified, retold and reinterpreted. Such narratives are mostly covered with an aura of myth and adopt the form of folk tales. There is no similar public discourse, rather a public silence, and detailed knowledge of such an event is highly restricted and openly disguised.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes impunity in contemporary Guatemala through the prism of language. Through the comparison of popular and official narratives, I suggest there is a lexicon of victim precipitation that is a legacy of past state violence in which popular and official narratives are mutually constituted.

Paper long abstract:

Since the signing of the peace accords in 1996 ended 36 years of internal armed conflict ultimately recognized as genocide, the Guatemalan judicial system has been forced to confront and at least partially prosecute some significant human rights cases including the army-ordered assassinations of anthropologist Myrna Mack and Bishop Juan Gerardi. While material authors of each murder have been prosecuted, the intellectual authors remain unnamed and at-large. Add to these incomplete cases, the hundreds of rural massacres from the early 1980s that have now been filed in the courts with forensic evidence as well as recent high profile cases of corruption, organized crime, drug-trafficking and thousands of homicides, the end result is an overwhelmed judicial system still in the process of adapting to new laws and procedures promulgated in the 1990s to move Guatemala away from a vertical system of secretive justice. One might suggest that the culture of terror that produced genocide in Guatemala in the 1980s has become a culture of impunity in "peacetime." Impunity is grounded in a lexicon of victim precipitation and reinforced by the inefficiency of the judicial system that has failed to overcome the formalism of past authoritarian regimes that privileged procedures over the facts of the case. This paper explores contemporary human rights violations through the prism of language. I compare and contrast the narratives of victims, survivors, prosecutors, police, forensic investigators, politicians, and human rights activists with the written representation of their experiences in the popular press, investigative reports and legal proceedings.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the long term consequences of the terrorist attack on School no. 1 in Beslan, Russia, focusing on the social conflicts that emerged in the aftermath of the tragedy, and the formation of political activist groups and their quest for truth and justice.

Paper long abstract:

On September 1 2004 a group of (mainly) Chechen and Ingush terrorists seized School no. 1 in the small town of Beslan in the Russian republic of North Ossetia-Alanya. More than 1200 schoolchildren, teachers and parents were kept as hostages in the hot, crowded gym for three days. When a bomb exploded in the gym on September 3, Russian special forces stormed the building. Over 330 people, including 186 children, were killed during the siege.

In the paper, which is based on a three month long fieldwork in Beslan, I discuss the long term consequences of the terrorist attack. Naturally, individuals were affected psychologically and physically, but the community as a whole was affected as well. As one former hostage put it: "Instead of becoming like a big family, which indeed we should have become after something like this, people grew further apart from each other and became more hostile and evil.". Using the meaning and works of words as an analytical tool, I examine the social life of grief and anger among former hostages and non-hostages in Beslan.

I will also devout some time to discuss the reputation and motivation of the political groups (Mothers of Beslan, Voice of Beslan) that were formed in the aftermath of the tragedy. These groups openly criticise the government and demand objective investigation of the terrorist act. This is quite unique in Putin's Russia, where open political protest is becoming an increasingly rare phenomenon.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes political violence in post-civil war Lebanon (1989–2007). The paper addresses two main questions: how prevalent was political violence in post-civil war Lebanon; and what made Lebanon vulnerable to new outbreaks of political violence?

Paper long abstract:

This paper analyzes political violence in post-civil war Lebanon (1989-2007). The paper addresses two main questions: how prevalent was political violence in post-civil war Lebanon; and what made Lebanon vulnerable to new outbreaks of political violence? While the Lebanese civil war (1975-90) has been thoroughly studied, the post-war period has not. The Taif peace agreement ended the war (1989), but the country did not escape new outbreaks of violence. Political violence ("the use or threat of violence for political ends") did not end but continued in different forms throughout the post-war period. Overt violence against civilians was low, but political leaders and journalists were killed with impunity. Targeted assassinations intensified during the transitional period from war to peace (1989-91), and peaked after the murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005. From 1989 to the present, about 30 attacks killed and maimed politicians and journalists in addition to innocent bystanders. This confirms the assumption that post-war states are indeed vulnerable to continued or new violence. However, there is no consensus as to why this is the case: institutional failure ("weak state"), socio-cultural traits ("culture of violence") and the "legacies of war and peace" are all used to account for continued violence in "post-war states". The paper concludes by examining these perspectives against findings from Lebanon for a more nuanced understanding of "post-war violence".

Paper short abstract:

This study focuses on the discursive conjunctions of space, violence, insecurity, and fear. It is aimed at reconstructing individual narratives of fear, private conceptualizations of violence threats, and the practices of counteracting violence in everyday life in Recife.

Paper long abstract:

Greater Recife is recognized as the most dangerous urban area in Brazil. The capital of Pernambuco, which has the highest murder and favelization rates in the country, has been often described as the city of violence and fear. Middle classes in Recife, with the support from the public authorities turn the whole districts into gated areas. As a consequence Recife consists of the two separated cities - the violent favelas and the militarized gated settlements.

The aim of this paper is not, however, to research the phenomenon of gated communities. The areas of organizing space, such as walling the land will be regarded here only as one of the strategies of coping with fear of violence in urban space. This study focuses on the discursive conjunctions of space, violence, insecurity, and fear . The paper comments on the problems of living with violence in Recife with regard to Michel de Certeau´s theory of everyday life. The author brings the view on various strategies and tactics of coping with the fear of violence employed by the inhabitants of Recife - both middle classes and favela dwellers. The study reports on the results of the analysis of 30 in-depth interviews conducted in Recife with three groups of interviewees: inhabitants of gated settlements, favela dwellers and institutional experts. The research was aimed at reconstructing individual narratives of insecurity, private conceptualizations of the threats, and the practices of counteracting violence in everyday life.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will focus on dominant discursive strategies Israeli soldiers use when giving account of their daily tasks and operational activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. I will try to show in what (discursive) ways these soldiers make sense of their violent surroundings and actions.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will focus on the dominant discursive strategies that Israeli soldiers use when giving account of their daily tasks and operational activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). The occupation itself and the presence of the soldiers in the OPT require soldiers to carry out nightly arrests, to man checkpoints and to patrol Palestinian towns and villages. During these constabulary tasks, they are constantly confronted with the "other": the Palestinian. These meetings have a high potential to lead to violent interactions, either verbal or physical. This paper deals with the way soldiers give account of such "violent meetings" and their military practises in general. I will try to show what discursive strategies soldiers use to explain, legitimize or justify their behaviour and thus how they make sense of their actions. Dominant themes in the discourse of soldiers, such as a focus on professionalism or ideology, will be filtered out and discussed in more detail. Furthermore, I will show how these strategies can be traced back to Israeli society and the way it perceives its soldiers and the military in general, as such strategies are socially constructed and not individual.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates narratives of violence by focusing on the different temporalities they employ. It argues that ideas such as justice, ethics and politics, as well as violence are constituted temporally and a careful attention to the construction of such ideas gives us new ways to explore the difference between violence and non-violence, conflict and peace.

Paper long abstract:

The ongoing war between the Turkish Army and the Kurdish guerilla group PKK has drastic affects on the geography and identity of people living in the South East Turkey. While displacement, murders and torture are the more visible aspects of this war, impoverishment and the difficulty of cultural reproduction are its less debated consequences. This paper argues that for people who live in the region the criteria used to differentiate violence from non-violence is not the use of guns as much as how events can be given meaning within different temporalities.

Based on narrative accounts, this paper explores the different temporalities employed to explain the experience of conflict. I argue that in the narratives of Kurdish people two different temporalities are at work. On the one hand, a mythic temporality constructs PKK and the state as the good and evil fighting an ahistorical battle. In such a temporality PKK is closely linked to communal identity and yet, is also alienated from daily temporality, hence from intervention and politics. Stories of resistance and heroism mystify violence yet, also make it intelligible and acceptable. On the other hand, the temporality of everyday reveals both Kurdish organizations and the state as accountable actors. Here, discourses of poverty, interest and conspiracy are employed and a space is opened up from which violence can be narrated as an embodied experience. I claim that a careful attention to narratives of violence question our basic assumptions about politics, ethics and justice and forces us to critically engage with the liberal underpinnings of social science thinking.

Paper short abstract:

The paper focuses on the narration of refuge and uprooting in the context of the discourses surrounding African asylum claimants staying in Israel. In the paper I describe the different voices which participate and operate within the discourses regarding refugees, discussing how one narrative of violence interacts with another

Paper long abstract:

The paper focuses on the narration of refuge and uprooting in the context of the discourses surrounding African asylum claimants staying in Israel. Since 2006 an increasing number of African asylum claimants crossed the southern border of Israel with Egypt and entered Israel. Many of the refugees who arrived in Israel originate from Sudan, including the region of Darfur, but also from other African countries such as Eritrea. In the absence of domestic legislation concerning asylum, the African refugees meet the authorities (including the military and the municipalities), as well as the public confused and indecisive. On the one hand, while human rights organizations and the refugees themselves draw on the Holocaust as the fundamental reason for Israel's moral obligation towards refugees, especially in light of violent events such as genocide and mass murder, the Palestinian right to return and experience of uprooting remains a disturbing unresolved issue in the moral discourse concerning refugees.

In the paper I describe the different voices which participate and operate within the discourses regarding refugees, discussing how one narrative of violence interacts with another. I explore this interaction both as a political construction but also as an element which construe individual narratives. The paper is based on my research which is currently in progress, and includes activist research in human rights organizations, shelters in Tel Aviv, as well as observations of public events and material available through the media.

Paper short abstract:

The paper examines how genocidal processes against the Kurds in Iraq (Anfal Campaign and the poison gas attack on Halabja) are narrated in different discourses in the Kurdish diasporas. It will be examined how ‘Anfal’ is part of the discourse of a ‘victim diaspora’ of Iraqi and Turkish Kurdish diasporic actors. It will be shown who Halabja is narrated within the different ethno-national discourses and how persons who were directly concerned (survivors of Halabja, Partisans) narrate their experiences and deal with the situation today.

Paper long abstract:

During the ‚Operation Anfal' in Iraq in 1887 / 1988 about 180 000 Kurds were murdered, 4500 villages destroyed and masses deported. This campaign started already in 1983 when 8000 male members of the Barzani tribe were deported and 'disappeared'. In the last years excavation of mass graves bear out that these men were murdered in mass camps in the South of Iraq. In 1987 genocidal priming was enforced and the Iraqi government started to use poison gas against Kurds. In March 1988 the region around Halabja was attacked with conventional and chemical weapons killing 5000 civilians of Halabja and injuring 7000 persons in one day. Until today, families are confronted with mass murder and 'unquiet death'of family members who were deported and never returned. This paper tries to examine the long term consequences of these genocidal processes on the narrations in Diaspora communities. How is the following generation narrating Anfal? How far have these discourses enforced the creation of Kurdish Diaspora identities? How are individuals dealing with these different forms of violence, e.g. when they are informed about the fate of 'dissapeared' family members? How are refugees still affected psychologically and physically dealing with their experiences? What forms of violence are excluded from these diasporic national narrations, e.g. the role of jash (Kurdish collaborators with the Iraqi regime). Focusing on violence against women during Anfal, it will be discussed why crimes against women and resulting mental illnesses are taboo topics even in Diaspora.