This article examines the characteristics of recent ethnographies of “conflict zones,” especially those that seek to bring an experience-near depiction of violence to the reader. These works are contrasted to older ethnographic treatments of violence. A number of critiques of these works are considered, and the article concludes with a discussion of the several roles (methodological, conceptual, and moral) that the human rights movement has played in helping to formulate the agenda for the new ethnographies of violence and conflict.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Aijmer, G.
, and J. Abbink, eds. 2000. Meanings of violence: A cross-cultural perspective.Oxford, UK: Berg.
2.
Avruch, K.
1998. Culture and conflict resolution.Washington DC: U.S. Institute of Peace Press.
3.
Benedict, R.
1946. The chrysanthemum and the sword.Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
4.
Bornstein, Avram
. 2001. Ethnography and the politics of prisoners in Palestine-Israel.Journal of Contemporary Ethnography30 (5): 546-574.
5.
Bourgois, P.
1995. In search of respect.New York: Cambridge University Press.
6.
Caputo, P.
1983. Del Corso's gallery.New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
7.
Chagnon, N.
1968. Yanomamo: The fierce people.New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
8.
Coy, Patrick G.2001. Shared risks and research dilemmas on a Peace Brigades International team in Sri Lanka.Journal of Contemporary Ethnography30 (5): 575-606.
9.
D'Andrade, R.1995. Moral models in anthropology.Current Anthropology36 (3): 399-408.
10.
Daniel, E. V.
1996. Charred lullabies: Chapters in an anthropography of violence.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
11.
Daniel, E. V.
2000. Mood, moment, and mind. In Violence and subjectivity, edited by V. Das, A. Kleinman, M. Ramphele, and P. Reynolds, 333-366. Berkeley: University of California Press.
12.
Das, V.
, ed. 1990. Mirrors of violence: Communities, riots, and survivors in South Asia.Delhi: Oxford University Press.
13.
Das, V.
, A. Kleinman, M. Ramphele, and P. Reynolds, eds. 2000. Violence and subjectivity.Berkeley: University of California Press.
14.
Eakin, E.2001. Anthropology's radical alternative.New York Times, April 21, A15.
15.
Evans-Pritchard, E. E.
1940. The Nuer.Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
16.
Feldman, A.
1991. Formations of violence: The narrative of the body and political terror in Northern Ireland.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
17.
Feldman, A.
2000. Violence and vision: The prosthetics and aesthetics of terror. In Violence and subjectivity, edited by V. Daset al., 46-78. Berkeley: University of California Press.
18.
Geertz, C.
1988. Works and lives: The anthropologist as author.Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
19.
Green, L.1994. Fear as a way of life.Current Anthropology9 (2): 227-256.
20.
Howell, N.
1990. Surviving fieldwork.Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association.
21.
Hutchinson, S.
1996. Nuer dilemmas: Coping with money, war, and the state.Berkeley: University of California Press.
22.
Keiser, L.
1991. Friend by day, enemy by night: Organized vengeance in a Kohistani community.Fort Worth, TX: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
23.
Koch, C. J.
1979. The year of living dangerously.New York: St. Martin's.
24.
Lee, R.
1995. Dangerous fieldwork.Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
25.
Loyd, A.
1999. My was gone by, I miss it so.New York: Atlantic Monthly.
26.
Mahmood, C. K.
1996. Fighting for faith and nation: Dialogues with Sikh militants.Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
27.
Mahmood, C. K.2001. Terrorism, myth, and the power of ethnographic praxis.Journal of Contemporary Ethnography30 (5): 520-545.
28.
Nash, J.
1979. We eat the mines and the mines eat us.New York: Columbia University Press.
29.
Nordstrom, C.
1997. A different kind of war story.Philadelphia: University of Pennslyvania Press.
30.
Nordstrom, C.
, and A. Robben, eds. 1995. Fieldwork under fire: Contemporary studies of violence and survival.Berkeley: University of California Press.
31.
Royal Anthropological Institute
. 1951. Notes and Queries on Anthropology (6th ed.). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
32.
Said, E.
1978. Orientalism.New York: Pantheon.
33.
Scarry, E.
1985. The body in pain: The making and unmaking of the world.Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
34.
Scheper-Hughes, N.1995. The primacy of the ethical: Propositions for a militant anthropology.Current Anthropology36 (3): 409-420.
35.
Simons, A.
1995a. Networks of dissolution: Somalia undone.Boulder, CO: Westview.
36.
Simons, A.
1995b. The beginning of the end. In Fieldwork under fire, edited by C. Nordstrom and A. Robben, 42-60. Berkeley: University of California Press.
37.
Sluka, J.
1989. Hearts and minds, water and fish: Popular support for the IRA and INLA in a northern Irish ghetto.Greenwich, CT: JAI.
38.
Sluka, J.1990. Participant-observation in violent social contexts.Human Organization49 (2): 114-205.
39.
Sluka, J.
1995. Reflections on managing danger in fieldwork: Dangerous anthropology in Belfast. In Fieldwork under fire, edited by C. Nordstrom and A. Robben, 276-294. Berkeley: University of California Press.
40.
Spivak, G.
1988. Can the subaltern speak? In Marxism and the interpretation of culture, edited by C. Nelson and L. Grossberg, 271-313. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
41.
Taussig, M.
1987. Shamanism, colonialism and the wild man: A study in terror and healing.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
42.
Taylor, C.
1999. Sacrifice as terror: The Rwandan genocide of 1994.Oxford, UK: Berg.
43.
Trinh, T. M.
1989. Woman, native, other.Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.
44.
Vlahos, M.1991. Culture and foreign policy.Foreign Policy82 (spring): 59-78.
45.
Wallensteen, P.
, and M. Sollenberg. 2000. Armed conflict, 1989-1999.Journal of Peace Research37 (5): 635-649.
46.
Zulaika, J.
1988. Basque violence: Metaphor and sacrament.Reno: University of Nevada Press.
47.
Zulaika, J.
, and W. Douglass. 1997. Terror and taboo: The follies, fables, and faces of terrorism.London: Routledge.
