Visible Wars & Invisible Girls, Shadow Industries, and the Politics of Not-Knowing

Girls constitute invisible casualties of war. This is an invisibility that is actively constructed by those who enact this violence, or who benefit from it in some way; it is an invisibility that takes on cultural dynamics when a dearth of statistics, accounts, and accountability perpetuate a tradition of "not-seeing" these forms of violence in the world. If silence is political, "not-knowing" is at the core of power and its abuses. In-depth ethnographic explorations of girl's lives on the frontlines demonstrate that they constitute a considerable percentage of war's victims. But this article shows the violence they face is far greater than traditional definitions of war indicate. Girls are at risk of being raped, maimed and killed in torture and battles. But as well, they are often subjected to violence within their own communities. Some of this violence is organized: international profiteering, for example, reaps billions of dollars of profits by forcing girls in warzones into illegal labor and sex industries. These analyses raise the question of the very definitions and distinctions between war and peace, of the power and profit that adheres to both, and to the very constructions of invisibility that render violence and global profiteering possible

Hidden Interactions in the Economics of Peace and Conflict

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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

Assistants, Guides, Collaborators, Friends: The Concealed Figures of Conflict Research

Recent scholarship has demonstrated an increasing awareness of the need for more grounded, empirical research into the micro-level dynamics of violent contexts. Research in these difficult, dangerous, and potentially violent conflict or post-conflict settings necessitates the formation of new relationships of dependency, and assistants, friends, collaborators, and guides become central figures in the field. However, all too often, these figures are written out of academic accounts and silenced in our analyses. This not only does them a significant disservice, but it also obscures potential biases, complexities, and ethical dilemmas that emerge in the way in which such research is carried out. Drawing upon fieldwork exploring the 2007–2008 Kenyan postelection violence, this paper argues that reliance upon insider-assistants is essential in conflict settings and explores the challenges inherent in these relationships. As researchers become increasingly engaged in micro-level studies of violent contexts, we must interrogate the realities of how our knowledge has been produced and engage in more open and honest discussions of the methodological and ethical challenges of conflict research

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