Violence and SubjectivityVeena Das The essays in Violence and Subjectivity, written by a distinguished international roster of contributors, consider the ways in which violence shapes subjectivity and acts upon people's capacity to engage everyday life. Like its predecessor volume, Social Suffering, which explored the different ways social force inflicts harm on individuals and groups, this collection ventures into many areas of ongoing violence, asking how people live with themselves and others when perpetrators, victims, and witnesses all come from the same social space. From civil wars and ethnic riots to governmental and medical interventions at a more bureaucratic level, the authors address not only those extreme situations guaranteed to occupy precious media minutes but also the more subtle violences of science and state. However particular and circumscribed the site of any fieldwork may be, today's ethnographer finds local identities and circumstances molded by state and transnational forces, including the media themselves. These authors contest a new political geography that divides the world into "violence-prone areas" and "peaceful areas" and suggest that such descriptions might themselves contribute to violence in the present global context. |
Contents
ViolenceProne Area or International Transition? | 19 |
Problems of Memory | 120 |
The Work of Oracles in Sri Lankas Eastern War Zone | 171 |
The Quest for Human Organs and the Violence of Zeal | 271 |
Mayan Multiculturalism and the Violence of Memories | 296 |
Reconciliation and Memory in Postwar Nigeria | 315 |
Mood Moment and Mind | 333 |
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS | 367 |
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Amman areas army arrested Arthur Kleinman Asha become Biafra body Bosnian Bulelani child circumcision claims colony Colop conflict context Croatia cultural dalals death Delhi discourse economic Emergency essay Estate Tamils ethnic ethnography everyday experience family planning father federal fieldwork groups Guatemala Hindu household human identity Igbo India individual jhuggis katua khatna Kleinman lence lives LTTE male Mayan means memory ment moral mother motivated musalmani Muslim narratives Nigeria Nigerian Civil War oracles organs pain paramilitary parents patients percent person plots political present protect realism refugees regime relation relationships responsibility ritual rumor Saktirani Sam Colop scopic security forces sense Serbia Serbs Sinhala social South Africa Sri Lanka sterilization certificates story suffering tell terror tion torture transplant trauma University Press Veena Das victims village violence vision visual women young Yugoslav Yugoslavia