The Anthropology of Violent Interaction

Krohn-Hansen, Christian

doi:10.1086/jar.50.4.3630559

Cited by 73 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…At its most basic, violence can be understood as a relationship in which at least one of the parties experiences an illegitimate limitation of his or her agency (Riches 1986;cf. Jackson 1998: 17;Krohn-Hansen 1994;Taussig 1992). It is an experience of being acted upon in a manner that causes bodily, psychological, and/or social harm, moving us beyond the merely interpersonal dimensions of the phenomenon to encompassing the concepts of structural, cultural, and symbolic violence (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992;Galtung 1969Galtung , 1990Jackson 2002).…”

Section: Nervous Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vigilance: On Conflict, Social Invisibility, and Negative Potentiality

Vigh¹

2011

Social Analysis

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This article analyzes the relationship between conflict, social invisibility, and negative potentiality. Taking its empirical point of departure in fieldwork conducted in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and Bissau, Guinea-Bissau, it illuminates the manner in which people orient themselves toward precarious prospects and potentialities. Little attention has been paid to the orientational effects generated by long-term conflict-that is, the way that violence, as an underlying possibility, an imagined oncoming event, influences social life. Moving from the empirical to the theoretical, and from the specific to the general, the article compares two areas of conflict and orientation toward negative potentiality before moving on to a more general discussion of invisibility and potentiality in social life and theory.At a first glance, Belfast and Bissau may not seem like obviously comparable entities. In Belfast, the social and political environment is locked in a conflictual divide separating Protestants from Catholics, the British from the Irish. 4 The city seems fixed in structures of old hatred and fear, and the poorer, more militant areas remain divided. Despite more than 10 years of 'peace' and an economic boom, Belfast is still separated into Protestant and Catholic areas and population groups. The sectors in question are so solidly divided in terms of ethnic, national, political, and religious categories and positions that there is very little movement between them.Much of the opposite is the case in Bissau. Where Belfast gives the impression of being profoundly rigid, regimented, and structured, Bissau appears fluid and emergent. The city is intensely multi-ethnic with a myriad of mixed neighborhoods and a lively inter-ethnic and inter-religious interaction, all packed into a slow and placid everyday life. Politically, however, the city is tumultuous and charged with uncertainty. Caught in a prolonged state of conflict and strife, its inhabitants are acutely attentive to political tension and changes. Instead of presuming that political positions and processes are stable and enduring, they are busy trying to predict how they will change and seeking to identify shadow alliances and new coalitions, as well as possible scenarios and their eventual effects. Although Belfast and Bissau do not share key values, symbols, orders, or historical ties as such, what they do share-what Herzfeld (2001: 263) calls the "feasibility condition" of comparison-is a long-standing circumstance of political trouble and uncertainty. In both cities, conflict has had such prevalence that it is no longer a critical event but instead a critical continuity-a condition, rather than an aberration. Although neither place is currently at war, hatred smolders, and conflict is seen as an underlying constant that can easily re-emerge, creating an understanding of political processes as brittle, delicate, and full of impending disasters.

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Section: Nervous Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vigilance: On Conflict, Social Invisibility, and Negative Potentiality

Vigh¹

2011

Social Analysis

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“…Given the brutality of communal violence, there is a tendency to privilege the voice of the survivors, and in the case of Black Sunday they were Banyoro. However, as Krohn-Hansen (1994) points out, if we are to understand violence as performance, we must shift our attention to the users of violence. The question is, then, who were the Bafuruki perpetrators, and how were they mobilized?…”

Section: We Had To Fight!mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, referring to Riches's (1986) triangle of violence, Krohn-Hansen (1994) suggests that we should not employ the term 'witness' too literally, for in using this word we often refer to society at large. This brings me to a central paradox raised by Black Sunday.…”

Section: Regional Implications Of Black Sundaymentioning

confidence: 99%

Autochthony, Rumor Dynamics, and Communal Violence in Western Ugand

Espeland¹

2011

Social Analysis

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Across Africa, conflicts over land rights are increasingly centered on notions of autochthony. This article analyzes a violent event that took place in 2003 in connection with ethnically biased land redistribution in Western Uganda. Through the concepts of autochthony and communal violence, it analyzes the wider political context, tracing the processes from ethnic conflict to communal violence between autochthonous Banyoro and immigrant Bafuruki ethnic groups. Foregrounding the role of rumors in communal violence, it argues that rumors are not simply a response to conflict. Rather, they are constitutive of the situation, particularly in the formation of common moral imagination and in shaping the direction of social processes between the conflicting parties.

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“…There may be two interrelated reasons for this lack. On the one hand, as Christine Krohn‐Hansen (1994: 367) stresses, anthropological studies of violence tend to focus on the victim's perspective, often ignoring the perpetrators. On the other hand, as I have written elsewhere (Ben‐Ari 2004), in choosing to research the military and militarization, anthropologists enter a politically contested area.…”

Section: War the Military And Violence In Contemporary Anthropologymentioning

confidence: 99%

War, the military and militarization around the globe

Ben‐Ari¹

2008

Social Anthropology

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The Anthropology of Violent Interaction

Cited by 73 publications

References 18 publications

Vigilance: On Conflict, Social Invisibility, and Negative Potentiality

Vigilance: On Conflict, Social Invisibility, and Negative Potentiality

Autochthony, Rumor Dynamics, and Communal Violence in Western Ugand

War, the military and militarization around the globe

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