Three Styles in the Study of Violence

This is a postprint (accepted manuscript) version of the article published in Reviews in Anthropology 37:1-19. The final version of the article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00938150701829525 (login required to access content). The version made available in Digital Common was supplied by the author.Accepted Manuscripttru

Gendered endings: Narratives of male and female suicides in the South African Lowveld

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11013-012-9258-y. Copyright @ Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012.Durkheim’s classical theory of suicide rates being a negative index of social solidarity downplays the salience of gendered concerns in suicide. But gendered inequalities have had a negative impact: worldwide significantly more men than women perpetrate fatal suicides. Drawing on narratives of 52 fatal suicides in Bushbuckridge, South Africa, this article suggests that Bourdieu’s concepts of ‘symbolic violence’ and ‘masculine domination’ provide a more appropriate framework for understanding this paradox. I show that the thwarting of investments in dominant masculine positions have been the major precursor to suicides by men. Men tended to take their own lives as a means of escape. By contrast, women perpetrated suicide to protest against the miserable consequences of being dominated by men. However, contra the assumption of Bourdieu’s concept of ‘habitus’, the narrators of suicide stories did reflect critically upon gender constructs

Bodies of emotion: rethinking culture and emotion through Southeast Asia

Feelings are not substances to be discovered in our blood but social practices organized by stories that we both enact and tell. michelle rosaldo 1984:14

Ethics, empathy and fear in research on violent conflict

The discussion of ethics in the social sciences focuses on ‘doing no harm’ and ‘giving back’ to research participants, but does not explore the challenges of empathy and fear in research with participants in political violence and war. Drawing on 180 in-depth interviews on the Georgian-Abkhaz war of 1992-1993 collected over eight months between 2010 and 2013 primarily in Abkhazia, but also Georgia and Russia, I argue that researchers can come to empathize with some but fear other participants in past and present violence. These emotional responses can influence researchers’ ability to probe and interpret interviews and respondents’ ability to surpass strong positions to explore dilemmas of participation in violence. By empathizing with not only ‘victims’ and ‘non-fighters’ as I had expected based on my pre-existing moral-conceptual categories, but also participants in the war, I found that individuals adopted multiple overlapping roles and shifted between these roles in the changing conditions of violence. In contrast, failing to empathize with and fearing those who continued to participate in violence at the time of my interviews limited my ability to fully appreciate the complexity of their participation, but shed light on the context of violence in contemporary Abkhazia. This analysis shows that reflection on the role of empathy and fear in shaping our interactions with research participants can help advance our understanding of participation in violence and this difficult research context

La disciplina delle emozioni tra introspezione e performance: pratiche e discorsi del controllo a Toraja (Indonesia)

La letteratura antropologica sulle emozioni relativa alle società dell’Indonesia e dell’area più vasta che comprende il Sudest asiatico e il Pacifico sembra convergere sull’enfasi attribuita alla questione del controllo emozionale3. Gli antropologi che hanno lavorato in quest’area sono stati inevitabilmente affascinati dalla compostezza e dall’assenza di espressione diretta dei sentimenti dimostrata nel comportamento quotidiano delle persone che cercavano di comprendere (Anderson 1966, p. 129; Belo 1935 [1970]; Bateson, Mead 1942; Bonokamsi 1972; Connors 1979; Errington 1984, 1983; Geertz 1958, 1960,1966, 1983; Geertz 1961, 1959; Just 1991; Hollan 1988; Hollan, Wellenkamp 1994, 1996; Keeler 1987; Wellenkamp 1984, 1988b; Wikan 1989)