Political Violence

Review - George Kunnath, Rebels from the Mud Houses: Dalits and the Making of the Maoist Revolution in Bihar (New Delhi, 2012)

by Uday Chandra

Forthcoming in Journal of Agrarian Change 12 (4), 2012

Terörün Sosyolojisi: Toplumsal Kökenleri Anlama İmkânı

by Uluslararası İlişkiler

Talip Küçükcan, "Terörün Sosyolojisi: Toplumsal Kökenleri Anlama İmkânı", Uluslararası İlişkiler, Cilt 6, Sayı 24 (Kış), 2009

Küresel ve ulusaşırı nitelik kazanan şiddet ve terör eylemlerinin, bölgesel ve uluslararası ilişkileri... more Küresel ve ulusaşırı nitelik kazanan şiddet ve terör eylemlerinin, bölgesel ve uluslararası ilişkileri gerginleştirerek güvenlik eksenine çektiği görülmektedir. Şiddet ve terör eylemlerini analiz eden çalışmaların çoğu, ağırlıklı olarak söz konusu eylemlerin güvenlik boyutu üzerinde durmaktadır. Terörün toplumsal kökenleri üzerinde ise yeterince durulmadığı gözlenmektedir. Bu makale, son yıllarda yayınlanan bilimsel literatür ışığında terörün sosyolojisi üzerinde durma ve kökenlerini analiz etmenin önemine işaret etmeyi amaçlamakta; disiplinlerarası yöntem ve yaklaşımlara dayalı bir “teroroloji/terör bilimi”nin gereğini vurgulamaktadır. Çünkü şiddet ve terör eylemlerinin toplumsal bağlamı çözümlenmeden bu tür olaylarla etkin biçimde mücadele edilmesi mümkün olmayacak ve uluslararası ilişkileri olumsuz yönde etkilemeye devam edecektir.

Public War, Private Conscience: The Ethics of Political Violence???By Andrew Fiala

by Eric Rovie

Symbols of Power in Rituals of Violence: The Personality Cult and Iconoclasm on the Soviet Empire’s Periphery (East Germany, 1945–61)

by Alexey Tikhomirov

published in: Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, Volume 13, Number 1, Winter 2012, pp. 47-88.

Peace of cemeteries. Civil-war dynamics in post-war state's repression

by Francisco Herreros

Politics and Society (2011)

Together in the middle: Back-channel negotiation in the Irish peace process

by Niall O Dochartaigh

Negotiated deradicalization in the Irish peace process

by Niall O Dochartaigh

The 2012 Coup in Guinea-Bissau: CPLP, Portugal, Angola, Brasil and…wait…Guinea!

by Daniel Rio Tinto

Blog Post from the Imminent Crisis Blog, 2012.

Available at: more Available at: http://imminentcrisis.wordpress.com/2012/04/21/the-2012-coup-in-guinea-bissau-cplp-portugal-angola-brasil-andwaitguinea/

Please access the text on the blog and leave your comments to improve discussion! Thank you!

Piece written for the Imminent Crisis Blog - http://imminentcrisis.wordpress.com/

The Irregularities of Violence in Athens. In Cultural Anthropology Hotspots, Special Issue on the Greek Crisis

by Dimitris Dalakoglou

SEE http://www.culanth.org/?q=node/439

The so called 'Greek crisis' is linked with enormous structural violence, exercised by the state apparatuses and... more The so called 'Greek crisis' is linked with enormous structural violence, exercised by the state apparatuses and international institutions (IMF, EU, ECB), against the entire social body. Besides the violence of poverty and marginalisation, the Greek crisis has already been associated with a profound increase in the rate of suicide and violent crimes; recent research has also revealed a dramatic impact on the general health of the population. In this piece I will not focus on structural violence so much as on acts of physical violence performed publicly in Athens during recent political events.

Illegal evictions? Overwriting possession and orality with law’s violence in Cambodia

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. Forthcoming. Illegal evictions? Overwriting possession and orality with law’s violence in Cambodia. Journal of Agrarian Change.

The unfolding of a juridico-cadastral system in present-day Cambodia is at odds with local understandings of... more The unfolding of a juridico-cadastral system in present-day Cambodia is at odds with local understandings of landholding, which are entrenched in notions of community consensus and existing occupation. The discrepancy between such orally recognized antecedents and the written word of law have been at the heart of the recent wave of dispossessions that have swept across the country. Contra the standard critique that corruption has set the tone, this paper argues that evictions in Cambodia are often literally underwritten by the articles of law. Whereas ‘possession’ is a well-understood and accepted concept in Cambodia, a cultural basis rooted in what James C. Scott refers to as ‘orality’, coupled with a long history of subsistence agriculture, semi-nomadic lifestyles, barter economies, and–until recently–widespread land availability have all ensured that notions of ‘property’ are vague among the country’s majority rural poor. In drawing a firm distinction between possessions and property, where the former is premised upon actual use and the latter is embedded in exploitation, this article examines how proprietorship is inextricably bound to the violence of law.

Death does not rot: women of the Lord's Resistance Army

by Letha Victor

MA Thesis, Department of Anthropology, McGill University, 2011

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From 1986 to 2006, northern Uganda was the site of a violent conflict between the Lord's Resistance Army... more -

From 1986 to 2006, northern Uganda was the site of a violent conflict between the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and the Government of Uganda. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the Acholi sub-region in 2009, this thesis examines the narratives of young women who were abducted by the LRA, forced to serve multiple roles in "the bush," and have since returned to civilian life. I explore the supernatural dimensions of the conflict and contend that women were agents of their own survival because they learned to manipulate their physical and cosmological circumstances, both during and after their captivity. At the margins of transitional justice debates, women negotiate their own memories within an intricate web of religiosity. Though forced into marriage, motherhood, and soldiering, only to come home to lives marked by stigma, patriarchy, and poverty, ex-LRA women are complex persons who defy the tropes of "sex slave" and "child soldier."

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De 1986 à 2006, le nord de l'Ouganda a été le site d'un conflit violent entre la «Lord's Resistance Army» (LRA) et le Gouvernement de l'Ouganda. Basée sur une recherche ethnographique menée dans la sous-région d'Acholi en 2009, cette mémoire de thèse examine les récits de jeunes femmes qui ont été enlevés par la LRA, forcés de servir de multiples rôles dans «la brousse», et ont depuis réintégré la vie civile. J'explore les dimensions surnaturelles du conflit et je soutiens que les femmes étaient des agents de leur propre survie, car elles ont appris à manipuler leurs conditions physiques et cosmologiques, à la fois pendant et après leur captivité. En marge des débats de la justice transitionnelle, les femmes négocient leurs propres souvenirs au sein d'un réseau complexe de la religiosité. Bien forcées de se marier, de devenir mères, et d'être des soldats; rentrées à des vies marquées par la stigmatisation, le patriarcat, et la pauvreté, elles sont quand même des personnes complexes qui défient les tropes «d'esclave sexuelle» et «d'enfant soldat».

Rebel Recruitment

by Yvan Guichaoua

CRPD Working Paper Series, No 6. Dec 2011
Centre for Research on Peace and Development (CRPD), KU Leuven

Forthcoming in: Brown, G. & Langer, A. E. Elgar Handbook Of Civil War And Fragile States (http://goo.gl/W37M0)

Legacies of political violence: an examination of political conflict in Mpumalanga Township, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

by Debby Bonnin

Uncovering the French-speaking jihadisphere: An exploratory analysis

by Benjamin Ducol

Terrorist groups have exploited the internet and other information technologies to advance their strategies since the... more Terrorist groups have exploited the internet and other information technologies to advance their strategies since the mid-1990s. Violent jihadi groups are no exception. They have located the internet at the core of their media strategies, which has given birth to a vibrant global jihadisphere: an online community of militants and sympathizers united by their common adherence to a global Salafi jihadi ideology. Not only do jihadi groups devote increasing energy to attempting to connect with global audiences, but jihadi sympathizers from all around the world are more involved than ever in widening the spread of jihadi online content through para-personal media. The expanding use of non-Arabic languages such as French, English, German, Russian and Dutch by jihadi groups and ideologues has not yet been adequately examined in the academic literature. This article represents a preliminary effort at delineating the nature of the French-speaking jihadisphere, including discussion of the major websites and forums composing it, the real and virtual links between these, and how forum users originally learned of the forums’ existence.

War and Peace in an Age of Terror and State Terrorism

by Uluslararası İlişkiler

Richard Falk, " War and Peace in an Age of Terror and State Terrorism (Terör ve Devlet Terörizmi Çağında Savaş ve Barış), Uluslararası İlişkiler, Cilt 4, Sayı 14 (Yaz), 2007

The 9/11 attacks on the United States unsettled our understanding of war and security in the world. This unsettling... more The 9/11 attacks on the United States unsettled our understanding of war and security in the world. This unsettling resulted partly because of the magnitude of the symbolic and substantive harm inflicted by a non-state actor lacking in military capabilities, and partly because the United States government responded by way of “war” rather than by reliance on “law enforcement.” The discourse on war and peace is also confused by a reluctance to extend the label of “terrorism” to political violence by state actors against civilian innocence. The experience of the past five years calls for a rethinking of the relationship between “war,” “law,” and “security” in the global setting of the early 21 st century.

Violence, The Fragile Ego and the Peaceful Self

by Max Velmans

This paper is based on an invited lecture on “Violence, the fragile ego, and the peaceful self” given at the National Seminar on Containing Violence: Measures for Resolution hosted by the Center for Ghandian Studies, GITAM University, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India, 28th January, 2011, during the period that I was a National Visiting Professor of the Indian Research Council of Philosophy (Govt. of India).

This paper gives a brief introduction to various categories of violence along with some of their biological,... more This paper gives a brief introduction to various categories of violence along with some of their biological, socio-cultural, psychological and existential causes, for example violent responses to frustrated needs or desires of the kind specified by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The paper goes on to examine some of the basic principles for ameliorating violence. It then considers a special case of violence associated with fundamentalist beliefs, arguing that these can be understood as a form of destructive self-transcendence, that can ultimately only be remedied by the genuine self-actualization and self-transcendence required for a peaceful self.

"Debemos condenar y condenamos" Justicia militar y represión en España (1936-1948)

by Jorge Marco

en: ARÓSTEGUI, Julio (coord.): Franco: la represión como sistema, Barcelona, Flor del Viento, 2012

Policante, A. "Of Cameras and Balaclavas: Violence, Myth and the Convulsive Kettle", Globalizations, 8.4, September 2011: 457-471.

by Amedeo Policante

In the midst of an important protest one often feels like an actor, or a convict. You find yourself so persistently... more In the midst of an important protest one often feels like an actor, or a convict. You find yourself so persistently under the silent gaze of one, two, a hundred cameras that you cannot avoid recalling the image of the Foucauldian Panopticon with its ‘multiple separations’ and ‘individualizing distributions’; with ‘an effect of backlighting’ we are constantly reduced to captive shadows in the cells of the photographic machine. There is a certain ambiguity in the effects produced by this gaze. One feels somehow protected by her visibility and yet also threatened and substantially isolated by the constant individualizing surveillance of the camera. What relationship of power is produced in these exceptional circumstances by the use of visual technologies? And what relation can we establish between the use of visual technologies and the struggle for visibility expressed by our performative act of protesting? Finally, what are the truth-claims and the mythopoeic effects of the vast archives of images produced during protests? How are these truth-claims discursively produced? These are some of the questions through which we intend to investigate the space of the ‘kettle’, as it appeared during the last G20 protests investing the City of London, and the opposing fantasies of power and resistance which struggled over the bodies of those that were contained in it. The convulsive body of the ‘kettle’ is shaken and animated by a visual struggle made of cameras and bodies, film and blood. All these elements are at once forces of domination and forces of resistance investing both police and protesters.

En medio de una importante manifestación, frecuentemente se siente uno como un actor o un convicto. Se encuentra a sí mismo bajo la mirada fija y silenciosa de una, dos, o un centenar de cámaras, que uno no puede evitar el recuerdo de la imagen del Panóptico Foucaultiano, con sus ‘múltiples separaciones’ y ‘distribuciones individualizadas’; con ‘un efecto de iluminación a contraluz’, donde estamos reducidos constantemente a las sombras captivas en las células de la máquina fotográfica. Existe una cierta ambigüedad en los efectos producidos por esta mirada fija. Uno se siente protegido de alguna manera por su visibilidad, aunque también amenazado y esencialmente aislado por la constante vigilancia individualizada de la cámara. ¿Qué relación de poder se produce en estas circunstancias excepcionales con el uso de las tecnologías visuales? ¿Y qué relación podemos establecer entre las tecnologías visuales y la lucha por la visibilidad expresada por nuestro acto escénico de protesta? Finalmente, ¿cuáles son las verdaderas declaraciones y los efectos que producen mitos de los vastos archivos de imágenes producidas durante las manifestaciones? ¿Cómo se producen discursivamente estas verdaderas declaraciones? Estas son algunas de las preguntas a través de las cuales tratamos de investigar el espacio de la ‘tetera’, como apareció durante las últimas protestas de la reunión del G20 conferida a la ciudad de Londres, y las fantasías de oposición del poder y resistencia que lucharon sobre los cuerpos de aquellos que estuvieron contenidos dentro de ese espacio. El cuerpo convulsivo de la ‘tetera’ se sacude y anima por una lucha visual producida por cámaras y cuerpos, película y sangre. Todos estos elementos son al mismo tiempo fuerzas de dominio y fuerzas de resistencia, conferidas tanto a la policía como a los manifestantes.

Beyond Subalternity: The Political Aesthetics and Ethics of Adivasi Resistance in Contemporary Jharkhand

by Uday Chandra

Forthcoming, Contemporary South Asia, BASAS Special Issue (January 2013)

Adivasis are typically viewed by scholars, activists, and policymakers alike as primitive subjects trapped within... more Adivasis are typically viewed by scholars, activists, and policymakers alike as primitive subjects trapped within modern state imaginaries. Adivasi politics, therefore, is understood vis-a-vis the dramaturgy of postcolonial tragedy. Such an understanding, I argue, denies any meaningful agency to adivasis, and prevents an exploration of the rich, multi-layered performances of resistance through which adivasi subject-formation is successfully negotiated in postcolonial India. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in contemporary Jharkhand, this paper probes into the myriad tropes and strategies by which the modes, mechanisms, and meanings of modern state power have been reworked and resisted in two apparently opposed moments of resistance: the "peaceful" Koel-Karo anti-dam movement of the 1980s and the ongoing "violent" Maoist movement. In doing so, I show how the aesthetics of power are tied inextricably, albeit ironically, to the ethics of subaltern resistance, each acting and reacting upon the other to define the potentialities of and proscriptions on political expression in the margins of the postcolony.

Yet another false step in counter-Maoist policy

by Bibhu Prasad Routray

Published in New Indian Express, 11 March 2012

The moot question, thus, is not whether conflict-ridden areas should be developed or not, but whether they can be... more The moot question, thus, is not whether conflict-ridden areas should be developed or not, but whether they can be developed, as long as they remain under the influence of the extremists? Will development initiatives, with potentially damaging impact on the Maoist influence, be allowed to take off by the extremists? Won’t a single attack, if not a series, prove to be a decisive setback for the entire development project, thereby deepening the suspicion of the population in the capacity of the government? And thus, won’t it be rational for the government to secure a semblance of order before pouring money into such areas?