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University of Edinburgh School of Social & Political Science

Social Anthropology

2013 2014

Anthropology of Violence

SCAN10058

Wednesdays, 14.10 16.00, Lecture Room 5, Chrystal Macmillan Building

Dr. Casey High

C.High@ed.ac.uk

Course Description

This course examines a variety of anthropological approaches to the study of violence, ranging from evolutionary explanations for male aggression to studies of changing American attitudes toward terrorism in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. It looks critically at the theoretical, methodological and ethical questions raised in studies of violence through ethnographic case studies from around the world. The course considers attempts to define violence as a concept in the social sciences and explores the possible causes, meanings, and uses of violent practices from a variety of different cultural contexts and perspectives. It gives particular attention to the political and economic conditions that promote war and other violent behaviour as well as specific cultural expressions within violent practices. It also discusses ethnographic descriptions of peaceful societies and examines the challenges of reconciliation in the aftermath of conflict. Intended Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course students will be able to:

Understand how and why violence has become a major area of anthropological research in recent decades.

Distinguish between and critically analyse a wide variety of theoretical approaches to violence in the social sciences and beyond.

Relate specific historical and ethnographic case studies of violence to current debates in anthropology.

Draw on the course readings and class discussions to engage in key debates about

contemporary violence.

Critically examine the political and ethical dimensions of research on violence.

Recognise the ways in which the study of violence draws on multiple disciplinary approaches from the natural and social sciences.

Write critically and creatively about violence from an anthropological perspective.

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Intended Learning Outcomes continued

Demonstrate the ability to critically evaluate evidence from specific case studies, and use such material in building coherent arguments in essay writing and seminar presentations.

Course Delivery

The course will be taught over ten sessions, on Wednesdays, 14.10 16.00, Seminar Room 5, Chrystal Macmillan Building. Attendance of the entirety of these sessions is compulsory. The first half of each session will consist of a lecture covering a specific theme

in the anthropology of violence in the first hour, while the second half of each session will involve discussion and small group work. All students should do the essential reading before each class. Communications: You are strongly encouraged to use email for routine communication with lecturers. We shall also use email to communicate with you, e.g., to assign readings for the second hour of each class. All students are provided with email addresses on the university system, if you are not sure of your address, which is based on your matric number, check your EUCLID database entry using the Student Portal. This is the ONLY email address we shall use to communicate with you. Please note that we will NOT use private email addresses such as yahoo or hotmail; it is therefore essential that you check your university email regularly, preferably each day.

Assessment Information

All Single and Combined Honours, BA (Humanities and Social Science), and non-graduating students will be assessed by: 1. A coursework essay of approximately 1000 words that carries a weighting of 30%

towards the final overall mark for the course as a whole. 2. An assessed essay of approximately 3000 words that is due near the end of the

semester and carries a weighting of 70% of the final mark. Please refer to the Honours Handbook for more complete information about assessment procedures. The following are some of the criteria through which the essays will be marked. However, it is important to note that the overall mark is a result of a holistic assessment of the assignment as a whole. A. Does the essay address the question with sufficient focus? B. Does the essay show a grasp of the relevant concepts and knowledge? C. Does the essay demonstrate a logical and effective pattern of argument? D. Does the essay support an argument with relevant examples? E. Does the essay demonstrate reflexivity and critical thinking in relation to arguments and

evidence? F. Is the essay written clearly and convincingly? G. Is the essay adequately presented in terms of: correct referencing and quoting; spelling,

grammar and style; layout and visual presentation?

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Submitting your coursework Course work will be submitted online using our submission system ELMA. You will not be required to submit a paper copy. Marked course work, grades and feedback will be returned online you will not receive a paper of your marked course work or feedback. For information, help and advice on submitting coursework and accessing feedback, please see the ELMA wiki at http://www.wiki.ed.ac.uk/display/SPSITWiki/ELMA Length Penalties

Essays over the word limit will lose 10% of their marks. (This applies as much to essays of 5 words over as to essays of 500 words over). This word limit includes footnotes and appendices but not the bibliography.

Any apparently deliberate misrepresentation of the word count or failure to declare a word count will lead to a deduction of 20 marks. N.B. This can affect your final result. Late submission of assessed items

Unlike coursework in Years 1 and 2, for all Social Anthropology Honours assessment, NO EXTENSIONS ARE GRANTED WITH RESPECT TO THE SUBMISSION DEADLINES FOR ANY ASSESSED WORK. Please refer to the Honours handbook for additional information regarding late submission of coursework and essays and instructions on how to submit a Lateness Penalty Waiver.

Special Circumstances:

If you find yourself struggling due to illness, an accident or bereavement, you can ask your Personal Tutor and Student Support Officer for advice on applying for Special Circumstances. You should also read the Special Circumstances section of the Honours Handbook.

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Coursework Essay Questions (1000 words): Submission Deadline: Tuesday 15 October 2013 by 12 noon

1) Why has violence become such a prominent theme in anthropology?

2) What ethical and methodological problems can anthropologists face in conducting

ethnographic research on violence?

3) To what extent should studies of violence reflect the political stance or personal

convictions of the researcher?

4) Why do anthropologists generally reject biological explanations of violence?

5) Why are colonial social categories so important for understanding violent conflicts in

the contemporary world?

Assessed Essay Questions (3000 words): Submission Deadline: Wednesday 11 December 2013 by 12 noon

1) In what ways have anthropologists and other social scientists attempted to define

violence as a concept?

2) To what extent is male aggression an evolutionary adaptation?

3) How can attention to indigenous cosmology and/or mythology help anthropologists

better understand contemporary violent conflicts?

4) Why do anthropologists tend to view memories of past violence as forms of social

memory?

5) What does it mean to say that some forms of violence are invisible?

6) How does structural violence relate to specific forms of overt or intimate violence?

7) Why are violent practices so often related to symbolic understandings of gender and/or

the body?

8) In what ways are nation-states responsible for promoting and carrying out violence?

9) What are the challenges of reconciliation in the aftermath of violence?

10) To what extent is it misleading to talk about cultures of violence or violent societies?

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CLASSES AND READING LIST This reading list sets out both essential and further readings. Students must read all of the essential readings before each session and be prepared to comment on them in class. To

this end students will be required to have written a brief paragraph on each of the essential readings and bring it with them to class. Although these paragraphs will not form part of the overall assessment, they will form the basis of our class discussion. Students should refer to further readings in both pieces of assessed work. All essential readings, and some further readings, are available online or as PDFs on Learn. LECTURE PROGRAMME

Week Date Topic

1 18 September What is Violence and how do we Study it?

2 25 September Violence and Human Nature

3 2 October Historical Perspective: Conflicts in Colonialism

4 9 October Remembering Violence

5 16 October The Violence of Everyday Life

6 23 October Gender and Violence

7 30 October The Body

8 6 November Cosmology and the Poetics of Violence

9 13 November Interventions of the State: The War on Terror

10 20 November Peace and Reconciliation

Primary textbooks for the course:

Scheper-Hughes, N. and P. Bourgois (eds.) (2004) Violence in War and Peace: an anthology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Bourgois, P. (1995) In Search of Respect: selling crack in El Barrio. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Taylor, C. (1999) Sacrifice as Terror: the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Oxford: Berg.

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WEEKLY THEMES AND READING LIST WEEK 1: What is Violence and how do we Study It?

We begin this week by looking critically at what anthropologists and other social scientists are talking about when they describe, interpret and theorize violence. Is it possible to define universally what violent behaviour is cross-culturally? We will examine some of the underlying assumptions made in studies of violent practices and discuss the ethical issues involved for researchers who carry out fieldwork in the context of war and socio-political conflict. Essential Readings: Riches, D. (ed.) (1986) The Anthropology of Violence. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

(Chapter 1: The Phenomenon of Violence, Pgs. 1-27) Bourgois, P. (1995) In Search of Respect: selling crack in El Barrio. (Introduction and chapter 1: Violating Apartheid in the United States, Pgs. 1-47) Further Readings: Sluka, J. (1995) Reflections on Managing Danger in Fieldwork: dangerous anthropology in Belfast. In C. Nordstrom and A. Robben (eds.) Fieldwork under Fire: contemporary studies of violence and survival. Berkeley: University of California Press. (pgs. 276-294). Robben, A. (1995) The Politics of Truth and Emotion among Victims and Perpetrators of Violence. In Fieldwork under Fire contemporary studies of violence and survival. (p. 81-103) Zulaika, J. (1995) The Anthropologist as Terrorist. Fieldwork under Fire: contemporary studies of violence and survival. (pgs. 206-223). Swedenburg, T. (1995) With Genet in the Palestinian Field. In Fieldwork under Fire: contemporary studies of violence and survival. (p. 25-40) Robben, A. and C. Nordstrom (1995) The Anthropology and Ethnography of Violence and Sociopolitical conflict. In Fieldwork under Fire: contemporary studies of violence and survival. (pgs. 1-23). Benjamin, W. (1996) Critique of Violence. In M. Bullock and Michael Jennings (eds.)

Walter Benjamin: selected writings, volume 1, 1913-1926. Starn, O. (1991) Missing the Revolution: anthropologists and the war in Peru. Cultural Anthropology 6(1). Rosaldo, R. (2004) Grief and the Headhunters Rage. In Violence in War and Peace.

(chapter 17) WEEK 2: Violence and Human Nature

For some anthropologists, violent practices such as rape and murder are as much a result of human evolution as they are influenced by socioeconomic conditions. Are men psychologically predisposed to be violent? What do they have to gain in Darwinian terms through such practices? Looking at studies ranging from a classic ethnography of tribal violence in the Amazon and urban crime rates in the United States, we will discuss the implications and problems of sociobiological approaches that explain violence as an evolutionary adaptation in human psychology.

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Essential Readings: UNESCO (1986) The Seville Statement on Violence. De Waal, F. (1992) Aggression as a Well-integrated Part of Primate Social Relationships:

a critique of the Seville statement on violence. In J. Silverberg and P. Gray (eds.) Aggression and Peacefulness in Humans and Other Primates. New York: Oxford University Press (pgs. 37-56).

Sussman, R. (1999) The Myth of Man the Hunter/Man the Killer and the Evolution of Human Morality. In The Biological Basis of Human Behaviour. R. Sussman, ed. Pgs. 121-129. Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Further Readings: Milgram, S. (1963) Behavioral Study of Obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 67(4): Pgs. 371-378. Otterbein. K. (2000) A History of Research on Warfare in Anthropology. American

Anthropologist 101(4): Pgs. 794-805. Chagnon. N. (1988) Life Histories, Blood Revenge and Warfare in a Tribal Population.

Science 239: 985-92. Daly, M. and M. Wilson (1982) Homicide and Kinship. American Anthropologist 84(2): Pgs. 372-378. Knauft, B. (1991) Violence and Sociality in Human Evolution. Current Anthropology 32(4): 391-428. Wrangham, R. and D. Petersen (1996) Demonic Males: apes and the origins of human

violence. New York: Mariner Books. Buss, D. (2006) The Murderer Next Door: why the mind is designed to kill. New York: Penguin Press. Buss, D. (2008) Evolutionary Psychology: the new science of the mind. Boston: Pearson, WEEK 3: Historical Perspective: Conflicts in Colonialism

This week we examine how various forms of violence have emerged and changed through colonial history and the new political and economic relations it brought to many parts of the world. We will look at how historical approaches to violence have challenged assumptions previously made about tribal warfare and genocide. In what ways did Europes colonial expansion in Africa, Asia and the Americas create new spaces for violence? To what extent have western imaginations of the other inflected contemporary violence conflicts in the postcolonial world? Essential Readings: Taylor, C. (1999) The Hamitic Hypothesis in Rwanda and Burundi. In Sacrifice as

Terror: the Rwandan genocide of 1994. (Chapter 3: pgs 55-97). Ferguson, R.B. (1999) A Savage Encounter: Western contact and the Yanomami war

complex. In R. Ferguson and N. Whitehead (eds.) War in the Tribal Zone: expanding states and indigenous warfare. 199-228. Santa Fe: SAR Press. (chapter 9)

Bourgois, P. (1995) In Search of Respect: selling crack in El Barrio. (Chapter 2: A Street History of El Barrio Pgs. 48-76) Further Readings: High, C. (2009) Victims and Martyrs: converging histories of violence in Amazonian anthropology and U.S. cinema. Anthropology and Humanism 34(1): 41-50. Taussig, M. (2004) Culture of Terror Space of Death: Roger Casemants Putumayo

Report and the explanation of torture. In Violence in War and Peace. (chapter 2) Conrad, J. (2004) From Heart of Darkness. In Violence in War and Peace. (chapter 1) Gordon, R. (2004) The Bushman Myth: the making of a Namibian underclass. In

Violence in War and Peace. (chapter 6)

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Further Readings continued: Whitehead, N. (1999) Tribes Make States and States Makes Tribes: warfare and the creation of colonial tribes and states in Northeast South America. In R. Ferguson and N. Whitehead (eds.) War in the Tribal Zone: expanding states and indigenous warfare. Pgs 127-150. Santa Fe: SAR Press. Said, E. (1978) Orientalism: Western representations of the Orient. London: Routledge and Keegan Paul. Taussig, M. (1987) Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: a study in terror and healing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. WEEK 4: Remembering Violence

In recent years social scientists have become increasingly interested in how people remember (and forget) past violence. Anthropologists tend to view memory not just as the excavation of accurate representations of the past or individual experiences of trauma, but also forms of remembering that are profoundly social. This week we will look at the politics and poetics of memory through ethnographic examples of how people relate to past violence in diverse ways. How do people of different generations and genders remember the past differently? What kinds of social memory are constituted through trauma like initiation rituals or the Holocaust? Essential Readings:

Lambek, M. (1996) The Past Imperfect: remembering as moral practice. In Tense Past: cultural essays in Trauma and Memory. Pgs. 235-253. New York: Routledge. High, C. (2009) Remembering the Auca: violence and generational memory in Amazonian Ecuador. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15(4): Pgs. 719-736. Argenti, N. and K. Schramm (2009) Introduction: remembering violence. In Remembering Violence: anthropological perspectives on intergenerational transmission. Oxford: Berghahn. Further Readings: Lambek, M. and P. Antze (1996) Introduction: Forecasting Memory. In Tense Past: cultural essays in Trauma and Memory. New York: Routledge. Bloch, M. (1998) Time, Narratives and the Multiplicity of Representations of the Past. In

How We Think They Think: anthropological approaches to cognition, memory and literacy. Pgs. 100-114. Oxford: Westview Press.

Berliner, D. (2009) Memories of Initiation Violence: remembered pain and religious transmission among the Bulongic (Guinea, Conakry). In Remembering Violence: anthropological perspectives on intergenerational transmission. Berghahn. Whitehouse, H. (1996) Rites of Terror: emotion, metaphor and memory in Melanesian

initiation cults. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 703-715.

Zucker, E. (2013) Forest of Struggle: Moralities remembrance in Upland Cambodia. University of Hawaii Press. Cole, J. (2001) Forget Colonialism? Sacrifice and the art of memory in Madagascar. Berkeley: University of California Press. Nora, P. (1989) Between Memory and history: les lieux de memoire. Representations 26: 7-24. Connerton, P. (1989) How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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WEEK 5: The Violence of Everyday Life Most people would describe killing and other direct use of physical force to do harm as violence. But what about the conditions of poverty and everyday suffering with which many people in the world live? This week we will look at how poverty, oppression and other inequalities may constitute a form of violence in everyday life. How do poverty and other structural violence encourage violent practices? As anthropologists, how can we identify the links between specific acts of violence and wider social, economic and political processes? Essential readings: Bourgois, P. (1995) In Search of Respect: selling crack in El Barrio. (chapters 3-5) Kleinman, A. The Violence of Everyday Life: the multiple forms and dynamics of

social violence. In V. Das, A. Kleinman, M. Ramphele and P. Reynolds (eds.) Violence and Subjectivity. Berkeley: University of California Press. (pp. 226-241)

Farmer, P. (2004) On Suffering and Structural Violence: a view from below. In A. Kleinman, V. Das and M. Lock (eds.) Social Suffering. Berkeley: University of California Press. 261-283. Further Readings:

Maek, I. (2007) Imitation of Life: negotiating normality in Sarajevo under siege. In X. Bougarel, E. Helms and G. Duijzings, (eds.) The New Bosnian Mosaic: Identities, memories and moral claims in a post-war society (pp. 39-57). Scheper-Hughes, N. (1985) Culture, Scarcity and Maternal Thinking: detachment and

infant survival in a Brazilian shantytown. Ethos 13(4) pp. 291-317. Orwell, G. (2004) The Lower Classes Smell, from The Road to Wigan Pier. In

Violence in War and Peace. (chapter 36) Wacquant, L. (2004) The New Peculiar Institution: on the prison as a surrogate

ghetto. In Violence in War and Peace.(chapter 39) Farmer, P. (2005) Pathologies of Power: health, human rights, and the new war on the poor. Berkeley: University of California Press. Farmer, P. (2004) An Anthropology of Structural Violence. Current Anthropology 45(3): 305-325. Scheper-Hughes, N (1992) Death Without Weeping: the violence of everyday life in Brazil. Berkeley: University of California Press. WEEK 6: Gender and Violence

Women are often the specific target of violence in everyday life and in times of war. This week we will look at gendered violence in a number of different social contexts, from the streets of New York City to domestic life in the Andes. To what extent should we impose our own assumptions about justice and acceptable gender relations when we study other cultures? What can specific cultural constructions of masculinity tell us about the gendered forms violence often takes? Essential Readings: Bourgois, P. (1995) In Search of Respect: selling crack in El Barrio. (chapters 6-9) Abu-Lughod, L. (2002) Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? anthropological

reflections on cultural relativism and its others. American Anthropologist. 104(3) 783-790.

Harris, O. (1994) Condor and the Bull: the ambiguities of masculinity in Northern Potosi. In P. Harvey and P. Gow (eds.) Sex and Violence. Pgs. 40-65. New York: Routledge.

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Further Readings: High, C. (2010) Warriors, Hunters, and Bruce Lee: gendered agency and the transformation of Amazonian masculinity. American Ethnologist 37(3): 753-770. Harvey, P. (1994) Domestic Violence in the Peruvian Andes. In P. Harvey and P. Gow

(eds.) Sex and Violence. Pgs. 66-89. New York: Routledge. Merry, S. (2009) Gender Violence: a cultural perspective. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Danner, M. (2004) From The Massacre at El Mozote: a parable of the Cold War. In

Violence in War and Peace. (chapter 41) Bourdieu, P. (2004) Gender and Symbolic Violence. In Violence in War and Peace. (chapter 42) Coleman, L. (2007) The Gendered Violence of Development: imaginative geographies of exclusion in the imposition of Neo-liberal capitalism. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations Vol 9: 204-219. Overing, J. (1989) Styles of Manhood: an Amazonian contrast in tranquillity and

violence. In S. Howell and R. Willis (eds.) Societies at Peace: anthropological perspectives. 79-99. (chapter 4)

Dobash, R. and R. Dobash (1992) Violence, Women and Social Change. New York: Routledge. Archetti, E. (2007) Masculinity, Primitivism, and Power: Gaucho, Tango, and the

shaping of Argentine national identity. In W. French and K. Bliss (eds.) Gender, Sexuality, and Power in Latin America since Independence. Pgs. 212-229. Plymouth, UK: Rowman & Littlefield.

WEEK 7: The Body

Whether as a source of pain, nationalist sentiment or cultural identity, the body is central to understanding the social meanings of violence. This week we will explore historically and ethnographically how the practice of violence is often closely related to body symbolism and embodied experience. We will examine cases in which bodies become expressions of domination, control, contestation, ambiguity and terror. Why is the female body so often a site of symbolic violence and nationalist imagination? In what ways does the treatment of bodies reveal structural violence? Essential Readings:

Foucault, M. (1995) The Body of the Condemned. In Discipline and Punish: the birth of the prison. New York: Vantage. (chapter 1, part 1)

Das, V. (2004) Language and Body: transactions in the construction of pain. In A. Kleinman, V. Das and M. Lock (eds.) Social Suffering. Pgs. 67-92. Berkeley: University of California Press. Further Readings: Wacquant, L. (2004) Body and Soul: notebooks of an apprentice boxer. (The Street and the Ring pgs. 13-150) Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ramphele, M. (1997) Political Widowhood in South Africa: the embodiment of ambiguity. In A. Kleinman, V. Das and M. Lock (eds.) Social Suffering. Pgs. 99- 118. Berkeley: University of California Press. Dembour, M. (2001) Following the Movement of the Pendulum: between universalism and relativism. In J. Cowan, M. Dembour and R. Wilson (eds.) Culture and Rights: Anthropological Perspectives. Pgs. 56-79. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Feldman, A. (1994) Formations of Violence: the narrative of the body and political terror in Northern Ireland. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Henry, D. (2006) Violence and the Body: somatic expressions of trauma and vulnerability during war. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 20(3): 379-398. Scheper-Hughes (1996) Theft of Life: the globalization of organ stealing rumours. Anthropology Today 12(3): 3-11.

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WEEK 8: Cosmology and the Poetics of Violence While many anthropologists point out the political and economic conditions that cause violent conflicts, others look to the particular ideologies that order different societies in attempting to explain violence. This week we will explore how culturally contingent ideas about life, death, and the body have influenced the ways in which violent practices are carried out in the context of genocide in Rwanda, initiation rituals and revenge-killing in South America. What do such practices mean to the victims, perpetrators and witnesses of violence? Essential readings: Taylor, C. (1999) The Cosmology of Terror. In Sacrifice as Terror: the Rwandan

genocide of 1994. (Chapter 4: 151-180). Hinton, A. (2005) In the Shadow of Genocide. In Why did they Kill?: Cambodia in the

shadow of genocide. Berkeley: University of California Press. Whitehead, N. (2004) On the Poetics of Violence. In N. Whitehead (ed.) Violence. Pgs. 55-78. Santa Fe: SAR Press. Further readings:

George, K. (2004) Violence, Culture, and the Indonesian Public Sphere: reworking the Geertzian legacy. In N. Whitehead (ed.) Violence. Pgs. 25-50. Santa Fe: SAR Press. Graeber, D. (2006) Beyond Power/Knowledge: an exploration of the relation of power, ignorance and stupidity. Annual Malinowski Lecture, London School of Economics. Bloch, M. (1992) Prey Into Hunter: the politics of religious experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (chapter 2- Initiation) Strathern, A. and P. Stewart (2006) Terror, the Imagination, and Cosmology. In A. Strathern, P. Stewart and N. Whitehead (eds.) Terror & Violence. Pgs. 1-39. London: Pluto Press. Taylor, A.C. (1993) Remembering to Forget: identity, mourning and memory among the

Jvaro. Man, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 28: 653-78. Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. (1992) The Anti-Narcissus. In From the Enemys Point of

View: Humanity and divinity in an Amazonian society. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. (chapter 10)

WEEK 9: Interventions of the State: the war on terror

While the responsibility of protecting human rights rests centrally in the hands of modern nation-states, it is often these same states that carry out some of the most severe and widespread acts of violence. From Nazi Germany to American imperialism we can see that nation-states have a major role in violent conflicts around the world. This week we will explore how war, torture and other forms of violence result from the suspension of rights within state regimes. We will look at how this process has played out in the war on terror in the United States and elsewhere. In what ways do modern states promote or legitimize violence? Essential Readings:

Lutz, C. (2002) Making War at Home in the United States: militarization and the current crisis. American Anthropologist 104(3): 723-735.

Mamdani, M. (2002) Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: a political perspective on culture and terrorism. American Anthropologist 104(3): 766-775.

Munster, R. (2004) The War on Terrorism: When the Exception Becomes the Rule. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law 17(2): 141-53.

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Further Readings: Enns, D. (2004) Bare Life and the Occupied Body. Theory & Event 7(3). Neal, A. (2006) Foucault in Guantnamo: Towards an Archaeology of the Exception. Security Dialogue 37(1): 31-46. Humphreys, S. (2006) Legalizing Lawlessness: On Giorgio Agambens State of Exception. European Journal of International Law 17(3): 677-87. Agamben, G. (2005) State of Exception. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kelly, T. and A. Shah (2006) The Double-edged Sword: protection and state violence. Critique of Anthropology 26(3): 251-257. Feuchtwang, S. (2006) Images of Sub-humanity and their realization. Critique of Anthropology 26(3): 259-278. Sluka, J. (2000) Death Squad: the anthropology of state terror. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Taussig, M. (1989) Terror as Usual: Walter Benjamins theory of history as a state of siege. Social Text 23: 3-20. Feldman A. (2004) On Cultural Anesthesia: from Desert Storm to Rodney King. American Ethnologist 21(2): 404-418. WEEK 10: Peace and Reconciliation

Why do we find more violence in some societies than in others? Can we really talk about cultures of violence or peaceful societies? This week we will look at ethnographic case studies of societies in which violence and aggressive behaviour are, according to the ethnographers, completely unacceptable and seldom observed. We will look critically at these representations of society as well as examine how peace is made in the aftermath of violent conflict. What are some of the key challenges to reconciliation? Essential readings: Sponsel, L. (1996) The Natural History of peace: a positive view of human nature and its

potential. In T, Gregor (ed.) A Natural History of Peace. Pgs. 95-116. Vanderbilt University Press.

Allen, T. (2007) The International Criminal Court and the Invention of Traditional Justice in northern Uganda. Politique Africaine 107: 147-166. Nordstrom, C. (2004) Shadows of War: violence, power, and international profiteering in the twenty-first century. (Part 4: Peace? Pgs. 141-202). Berkeley: University of California Press. Further Readings: Sponsel, L. (1994) The Mutual Relevance of Anthropology and Peace Studies. In The

Anthropology of Peace and Non-Violence. Boulder: Cynne Rienner. (Chapter 1) Robarchek, C. and C. Robarchek (1998) Reciprocities and Realities: world views, peacefulness, and violence among Semai and Waorani. Aggressive Behavior 24: 123-133. Briggs, J. (2000) Conflict Management in a Modern Inuit Community. In P. Schweitzer, M. Biesele, and R. Hitchcock (eds.) Hunters and Gatherers in the Modern World: conflict, resistance, and self-determination. New York: Berghahn. Howell S. (1989) To be angry is not to be human, but to be fearful is: Chewong

concepts of human nature of Howell, S. and R. Willis (eds.) Societies at Peace: anthropological perspectives. London: Routledge. (chapter 2)

Campbell, A. (1989) Peace. In S. Howell & R. Willis (eds.) Societies at Peace: anthropological perspectives. 213-224. (chapter 11)

Evans Pim, J. (2010) Nonkilling Societies. Honolulu, HI: Center for Global Nonkilling.