Violence and Subjectivity / Edition 1

by Veena Das, Arthur Kleinman, Mamphela Ramphele, Pamela Reynolds

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520216082
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	10/02/2000
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	389
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Veena Das is Professor of Sociology at Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, and Professor of Anthropology at the New School Graduate Faculty in New York. Arthur Kleinman is Maude and Lillian Presley Professor of Medical Anthropology at Harvard Medical School. Mamphela Ramphele is Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Town. Pamela Reynolds is Professor and Chair of the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cape Town.

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Introduction
Veena Das and Arthur Kleinman

Violence-Prone Area or International Transition?
Adding the Role of Outsiders in Balkan Violence
Susan L. Woodward

Violence and Vision:
The Prosthetics and Aesthetics of Terror
Allen Feldman

Circumcision, Body, Masculinity:
The Ritual Wound and Collective Violence
Deepak Mehta

Teach Me How to Be a Man:
An Exploration of the Definition of Masculinity
Mamphela Ramphele

On Not Becoming a "Terrorist": Problems of Memory,
Agency, and Community in the Sri Lankan Conflict
Jonathan Spencer

The Ground of All Making:
State Violence, the Family, and Political Activists
Pamela Reynolds

Violence, Suffering, Amman:
The Work of Oracles in Sri Lanka's Eastern War Zone
Patricia Lawrence

The Act of Witnessing:
Violence, Poisonous Knowledge, and Subjectivity
Veena Das

The Violences of Everyday Life:
The Multiple Forms and Dynamics of Social Violence
Arthur Kleinman

Body and Space in a Time of Crisis:
Sterilization and Resettlement during the Emergency in Delhi
Emma Tarlo

The Quest for Human Organs and the Violence of Zeal
Margaret Lock

Mayan Multiculturalism and the Violence of Memories
Kay B. Warren

Reconciliation and Memory in Postwar Nigeria
Murray Last

Mood, Moment, and Mind
E. Valentine Daniel

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
INDEX