Violence

Cultural Anthropology has published a number of essays in which violence is a central theme. Some of these essays highlight how everyday life is organized around violent practices and local images of violence. See, for example, Danny Hoffman’s “The City as Barracks” (2007) and Bruce Grant’s “The Good Russian Prisoner” (2005). Other essays examine the role of media in cultural productions of violence. See, for example, Charles L. Briggs’s “Mediating Infanticide” (2007) and Anne Allison’s “Cyborg Violence” (2001). These examinations of violence also address other key topics and theoretical concerns, including the dynamics of society during and after war, the political implications of memory and the role of media in producing states of security and emergency.

Cultural Anthropology essays on violence include the following:

Physical Training, Ethical Discipline, and Creative Violence: Zones of Self-Mastery in the Hindu Nationalist Movement
Arafaat A. Valiani
Cultural Anthropology Feb. 2010, Vol. 25, No. 1: 73-99
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From the Enemy's Point of View: Violence, Empathy, and the Ethnography of Fakes
Nils Bubandt
Cultural Anthropology Aug. 2009, Vol. 24, No. 3: 553-588
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The Songs of the Siren: Engineering National Time on Israeli Radio
Danny Kaplan
Cultural Anthropology May 2009, Vol. 24, No. 2: 313-345
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FATHERS, SONS, AND THE STATE: Discipline and Punishment in a Wolof Hinterland
Donna L. Perry
Cultural Anthropology Feb. 2009, Vol. 24, No. 1: 33-67
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EL CAMPO: Faciality and Structural Violence in Farm Labor Camps
Peter Benson
Cultural Anthropology Nov. 2008, Vol. 23, No. 4: 589-629
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THE HUMANITARIAN POLITICS OF TESTIMONY: Subjectification through Trauma in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Didier Fassin
Cultural Anthropology August 2008, Vol. 23, No. 3: 531-558
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Getting By the Occupation: How Violence Became Normal During the Second Palestinian Intifada
Lori Allen
Cultural Anthropology August 2008, Vol. 23, No. 3: 453-487.
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An Acoustic Register, Tenacious Images, and Congolese Scenes of Rape and Repetition
Nancy Rose Hunt
Cultural Anthropology May 2008, Vol. 23, No. 2: 220-253.
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The Coolie
Valentine E Daniel
Cultural Anthropology May 2008, Vol. 23, No. 2: 254-278.
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"Survival is Your Business": Engineering Ruins and Affect in Nuclear America
Joseph Masco
Cultural Anthropology May 2008, Vol. 23, No. 2: 361-398.
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Mediating Infanticide: Theorizing Relations between Narrative and Violence
Charles L. Briggs
Cultural Anthropology Aug. 2007, Vol. 22, No. 3: 315-356
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The City as Barracks: Freetown, Monrovia, and the Organization of Violence in Postcolonial African Cities
Danny Hoffman
Cultural Anthropology Aug. 2007, Vol. 22, No. 3: 400-428.
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Displacing Violence: Making Pentecostal Memory in Postwar Sierra Leone
Rosalind Shaw
Cultural Anthropology Feb. 2007, Vol. 22, No. 1: 66-93.
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The Good Russian Prisoner: Naturalizing Violence in the Caucasus Mountains
Bruce Grant
Cultural Anthropology Feb. 2005, Vol. 20, No. 1: 39-67.

The Bakassi Boys: Vigilantism, Violence, and Political Imagination in Nigeria
Daniel Jordan Smith
Cultural Anthropology Aug. 2004, Vol. 19, No. 3: 429-455.

Violence and the Rhetoric of Images
Gregory Starrett
Cultural Anthropology Aug. 2003, Vol. 18, No. 3: 398-428.
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Cyborg Violence: Bursting Borders and Bodies with Queer Machines
Anne Allison
Cultural Anthropology May 2001, Vol. 16, No. 2: 237-265.
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From the “Clean Snows of Petawawa”: The Violence of Canadian Peacekeepers in Somalia
Sherene Razack
Cultural Anthropology Feb. 2000, Vol. 15, No. 1: 127-163.

A Carceral Regime: Violence and Social Memory in Southwest China
Erik Mueggler
Cultural Anthropology May 1998, Vol. 13, No. 2: 167-192.

Doing Violence to Ethnography: A Response to Catherine Besteman’s “Representing Violence and ‘Othering’ Somalia”
I. M. Lewis
Cultural Anthropology Feb. 1998, Vol. 13, No. 1: 100-108.

Representing Violence and “Othering” Somalia
Catherine Besteman
Cultural Anthropology Feb. 1996, Vol. 11, No. 1: 120-133.

Fear as a Way of Life
Linda Green
Cultural Anthropology May 1994, Vol. 9, No. 2: 227-256.