Lectures & Seminars Notes Anthropology
of Violence
Lecture 12-09-22
Civil war
- “Never again”
WHAT IS VIOLENCE?
Violence is in the eye of the beholder
Subjective
● Violent or liberating?
→ Terrorist or liberator
● Legitimate or illegitimate, permissible or sanctioned?
→ Police violence: thin line
● Justifiable or not?
→ Fighting back
● Depending on your own (social) political-economic position and norms
→ Cultural norms
● Depending on your own place in the world
→ If your country is in war, you’re not suprised when there is a bombing
● An experience
● An interpretation
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY OF VIOLENCE
Trends of thought in theoretical approaches
1. Objective line or operational approach: based on biological science, materiality and
rationality- general properties of human nature (biologically) and material (shortage) -
measurable scientific explanations for violence (not so much influenced by culture)
2. Subjective line or cognitive approach: connected to humanities- violence is a cultural
construct- concerned with the interpretation and meaning of violence. Anthropologist: record,
observe and create narratives on violence
3. The experiential approach: focuses on the subjective quality of violence, violence is not
something alien to human existence and does not only occur on battlefields and in war but in
ordinary, mundane life, the everydayness of violence and its dimension of living. Can only be
fully understood by individual experiences of violence and reflexivity. Influenced by
postmodern theories.
→ study the context
→ out of experience. to fully understand violence you had to have experienced it. it can
happen everyday
,TOWARDS A DEFINITION OF VIOLENCE
Narrow definitions of violence (manifest or direct violence)
● Visible forms of violence: “an act of physical hurt”
● Violence targeted on the body
● Identifiable perpetrators and victims
● Violence we see on the news on television, on our computer, in movies & docu’s
● Examples: suicide attacks, urban riots, bombings, (mass) murder, torture, rape
● Violence is a spectacle (staged, performed-messages; appal and/or fascinate an audience-
pornography of violence
● Fails to see the role of history, culture and political-economic structures → wider definition of
violence
“Violence can never be understood solely in terms of its physicality -force assault or the infliction of
pain- alone.
Violence also includes assaults on the personhood, dignity, sense of worth or values of the victim.
The social and cultural dimensions of violence are what gives violence its power and meaning.”
STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE
● Wider definition
● Galtung (1969) - model of violence
→ direct violence (visible)
→ structural and cultural violence (invisible)
● Violence can be built into unequal, unjust and unrepresentative social structures
- economic structure: globalization: some people get rich and others poor
● Structures of exploitation and repression- harmful, damaging, hurtful, violent.
, - colonization
● Invisible violence and perpetrator
● Examples imperialism, capitalism, caste society, patriarchy, racism & colonization
● Phenomena caused by these structures: poverty, inequality, racism, underdevelopment
● Focusses on history & (social) economic factors and local context
● Critique: Container concept - disguises the underlying forms of violence
● Useful: people aren’t always to blame for themselves
● Galtung: “The violence is built into the structure and shows up as an unequal power and
consequently as unequal life chances”
● Farmer: “Structural violence is violence exerted systematically- that is, indirectly- by
everyone who belongs to a certain social order (...) the concept of structural violence is
intended to inform the study of the social machinery of oppression”
● Bourgois: “Chronic, historically entrenched political-economic oppression and social
inequality, ranging from exploitative international terms of trade to abusive local working
conditions and high infant mortality rates”
→ more socio-economic, he says, but can be any structure
CULTURAL VIOLENCE
● Aspect of a culture that can be used to legitimize direct or structural violence
● Not whole cultures but for example aspect A from culture B
● Prominent social norms that make direct and structural violence seen “natural” or “right”
→ man disciplines his wife
● Aspect or norms exemplified by religion & ideology, language en art, empirical science and
formal science
● Examples: hate, stereotype, images, racist or sexist expressions
● Normalization of violence
● Cultural essentialism versus cultural relativism
→ “they’re primitive, it is part of their human nature” (cultural essentialism)
→ “it's part of their religion/culture. Who are we (dutch people) to say that they are wrong?”
(cultural relativism)
● Cultural relativism and moral relativism
SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE
● Pierre Bourdieu (1970s)
● Non-physical and often invisible forms of violence
● Manifest in power differential between social groups
● Visible perpetrators
, ● Relations of domination and inequality
● Example power difference between gender relations, class relations
● With consent or complicity: “it is violence which is exercised upon a social agent with his or
her complicity” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 2004, 273)
- People don't question the violence against them, sometimes blame themselves as well
because of the norms and structures of powers they know. They don’t question them.
● Blaming those in lower power positions themselves the violence they suffer
● “The internalized humiliation and legitimation of inequality and hierarchy ranging from
sexism and racism to intimate expressions of class power. It is exercised through cognition
and misrecognition, knowledge and sentiments, with unwitting consent of the dominated”
EVERYDAY VIOLENCE
● Concept of Nancy Scheper-Hughes
● Everyday versus every day
- ordinary, no exception
● “Daily practises and expressions of violence on a micro-interactional level: interpersonal,
domestic and delinquent.”
→ f.e domestic violence
● “... to focus on the individual experience that normalizes petty brutallity and terror at the
community level and creates a common sense of ethos of violence.”
● No sudden eruptions of violence
● Examples: domestic violence, gang violence, drug trafficking, shootings
VIOLENCE CONTINUUM
● Violence is reproduced overtime, in chains, spirals and mirrors that form a continuum of
violence.
→ if you are poor, you can use illegal ways of getting money. it is interconnected: violence
triggers violence.
● Violence is analyzed: “along a continuum from direct physical assault to symbolic violence
and routinized everyday violence, including the chronic, historically embedded structural
violence whose visibility is obscured by globalized hegemonies
● Violence can not be categorized: “It can be everything and nothing; legitimate or illegitimate;
visible or not visible; necessary or useless; senseless and gratuitous or utterly rational and
strategic.”
→ violence can mean very different things
DOCUMENTARY: WE ARE ALL NEIGHBOURS
Seminar 14-09-22
Bespreking artikelen
The Power of Violence in War and Peace
Bourgois, p. 5-34
of Violence
Lecture 12-09-22
Civil war
- “Never again”
WHAT IS VIOLENCE?
Violence is in the eye of the beholder
Subjective
● Violent or liberating?
→ Terrorist or liberator
● Legitimate or illegitimate, permissible or sanctioned?
→ Police violence: thin line
● Justifiable or not?
→ Fighting back
● Depending on your own (social) political-economic position and norms
→ Cultural norms
● Depending on your own place in the world
→ If your country is in war, you’re not suprised when there is a bombing
● An experience
● An interpretation
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY OF VIOLENCE
Trends of thought in theoretical approaches
1. Objective line or operational approach: based on biological science, materiality and
rationality- general properties of human nature (biologically) and material (shortage) -
measurable scientific explanations for violence (not so much influenced by culture)
2. Subjective line or cognitive approach: connected to humanities- violence is a cultural
construct- concerned with the interpretation and meaning of violence. Anthropologist: record,
observe and create narratives on violence
3. The experiential approach: focuses on the subjective quality of violence, violence is not
something alien to human existence and does not only occur on battlefields and in war but in
ordinary, mundane life, the everydayness of violence and its dimension of living. Can only be
fully understood by individual experiences of violence and reflexivity. Influenced by
postmodern theories.
→ study the context
→ out of experience. to fully understand violence you had to have experienced it. it can
happen everyday
,TOWARDS A DEFINITION OF VIOLENCE
Narrow definitions of violence (manifest or direct violence)
● Visible forms of violence: “an act of physical hurt”
● Violence targeted on the body
● Identifiable perpetrators and victims
● Violence we see on the news on television, on our computer, in movies & docu’s
● Examples: suicide attacks, urban riots, bombings, (mass) murder, torture, rape
● Violence is a spectacle (staged, performed-messages; appal and/or fascinate an audience-
pornography of violence
● Fails to see the role of history, culture and political-economic structures → wider definition of
violence
“Violence can never be understood solely in terms of its physicality -force assault or the infliction of
pain- alone.
Violence also includes assaults on the personhood, dignity, sense of worth or values of the victim.
The social and cultural dimensions of violence are what gives violence its power and meaning.”
STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE
● Wider definition
● Galtung (1969) - model of violence
→ direct violence (visible)
→ structural and cultural violence (invisible)
● Violence can be built into unequal, unjust and unrepresentative social structures
- economic structure: globalization: some people get rich and others poor
● Structures of exploitation and repression- harmful, damaging, hurtful, violent.
, - colonization
● Invisible violence and perpetrator
● Examples imperialism, capitalism, caste society, patriarchy, racism & colonization
● Phenomena caused by these structures: poverty, inequality, racism, underdevelopment
● Focusses on history & (social) economic factors and local context
● Critique: Container concept - disguises the underlying forms of violence
● Useful: people aren’t always to blame for themselves
● Galtung: “The violence is built into the structure and shows up as an unequal power and
consequently as unequal life chances”
● Farmer: “Structural violence is violence exerted systematically- that is, indirectly- by
everyone who belongs to a certain social order (...) the concept of structural violence is
intended to inform the study of the social machinery of oppression”
● Bourgois: “Chronic, historically entrenched political-economic oppression and social
inequality, ranging from exploitative international terms of trade to abusive local working
conditions and high infant mortality rates”
→ more socio-economic, he says, but can be any structure
CULTURAL VIOLENCE
● Aspect of a culture that can be used to legitimize direct or structural violence
● Not whole cultures but for example aspect A from culture B
● Prominent social norms that make direct and structural violence seen “natural” or “right”
→ man disciplines his wife
● Aspect or norms exemplified by religion & ideology, language en art, empirical science and
formal science
● Examples: hate, stereotype, images, racist or sexist expressions
● Normalization of violence
● Cultural essentialism versus cultural relativism
→ “they’re primitive, it is part of their human nature” (cultural essentialism)
→ “it's part of their religion/culture. Who are we (dutch people) to say that they are wrong?”
(cultural relativism)
● Cultural relativism and moral relativism
SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE
● Pierre Bourdieu (1970s)
● Non-physical and often invisible forms of violence
● Manifest in power differential between social groups
● Visible perpetrators
, ● Relations of domination and inequality
● Example power difference between gender relations, class relations
● With consent or complicity: “it is violence which is exercised upon a social agent with his or
her complicity” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 2004, 273)
- People don't question the violence against them, sometimes blame themselves as well
because of the norms and structures of powers they know. They don’t question them.
● Blaming those in lower power positions themselves the violence they suffer
● “The internalized humiliation and legitimation of inequality and hierarchy ranging from
sexism and racism to intimate expressions of class power. It is exercised through cognition
and misrecognition, knowledge and sentiments, with unwitting consent of the dominated”
EVERYDAY VIOLENCE
● Concept of Nancy Scheper-Hughes
● Everyday versus every day
- ordinary, no exception
● “Daily practises and expressions of violence on a micro-interactional level: interpersonal,
domestic and delinquent.”
→ f.e domestic violence
● “... to focus on the individual experience that normalizes petty brutallity and terror at the
community level and creates a common sense of ethos of violence.”
● No sudden eruptions of violence
● Examples: domestic violence, gang violence, drug trafficking, shootings
VIOLENCE CONTINUUM
● Violence is reproduced overtime, in chains, spirals and mirrors that form a continuum of
violence.
→ if you are poor, you can use illegal ways of getting money. it is interconnected: violence
triggers violence.
● Violence is analyzed: “along a continuum from direct physical assault to symbolic violence
and routinized everyday violence, including the chronic, historically embedded structural
violence whose visibility is obscured by globalized hegemonies
● Violence can not be categorized: “It can be everything and nothing; legitimate or illegitimate;
visible or not visible; necessary or useless; senseless and gratuitous or utterly rational and
strategic.”
→ violence can mean very different things
DOCUMENTARY: WE ARE ALL NEIGHBOURS
Seminar 14-09-22
Bespreking artikelen
The Power of Violence in War and Peace
Bourgois, p. 5-34
