Ann E. Cudd
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- May 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195187434
- eISBN:
- 9780199786213
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195187431.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This chapter argues that violence is and has always been a crucial component in the origin and maintenance of oppression. It explores how violence and the threat of violence constrain the actions of ...
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This chapter argues that violence is and has always been a crucial component in the origin and maintenance of oppression. It explores how violence and the threat of violence constrain the actions of groups, harming the victims and benefiting the correlative privileged social groups. It argues that women as a group are oppressed materially through violence, and that there is a credible, psychologically effective threat of greater harm that is transmitted by the obvious material harm that they do suffer.Less
This chapter argues that violence is and has always been a crucial component in the origin and maintenance of oppression. It explores how violence and the threat of violence constrain the actions of groups, harming the victims and benefiting the correlative privileged social groups. It argues that women as a group are oppressed materially through violence, and that there is a credible, psychologically effective threat of greater harm that is transmitted by the obvious material harm that they do suffer.
Adrienne LeBas
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199546862
- eISBN:
- 9780191728594
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199546862.003.0010
- Subject:
- Political Science, Democratization
This chapter provides an account of opposition party formation and development in Zimbabwe from 1999 to 2008. It argues that the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was able to maintain a strong and ...
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This chapter provides an account of opposition party formation and development in Zimbabwe from 1999 to 2008. It argues that the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was able to maintain a strong and cohesive party organization, despite significant state-sponsored violence and repression, for two reasons. First of all, the party benefited from the strong organizational structures and collective identity that organized labor and other civil society actors built prior to the launch of the opposition parties. Activists and grassroots constituencies had a track record of successful protest, and there were established procedures for decision-making and conflict resolution. Secondly, political polarization in Zimbabwe strengthened the opposition’s cohesion and the commitment of its activists. By increasing the salience of partisan identity, conflict and violence made defection difficult. The chapter suggests that conflict and polarization can have important party-building consequences, for both opposition and ruling parties alike.Less
This chapter provides an account of opposition party formation and development in Zimbabwe from 1999 to 2008. It argues that the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was able to maintain a strong and cohesive party organization, despite significant state-sponsored violence and repression, for two reasons. First of all, the party benefited from the strong organizational structures and collective identity that organized labor and other civil society actors built prior to the launch of the opposition parties. Activists and grassroots constituencies had a track record of successful protest, and there were established procedures for decision-making and conflict resolution. Secondly, political polarization in Zimbabwe strengthened the opposition’s cohesion and the commitment of its activists. By increasing the salience of partisan identity, conflict and violence made defection difficult. The chapter suggests that conflict and polarization can have important party-building consequences, for both opposition and ruling parties alike.
Martha K. Hugginsv, Mika Haritos-Fatouros, and Philip G. Zimbardo
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520234468
- eISBN:
- 9780520928916
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520234468.003.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Latin American Cultural Anthropology
This introductory chapter explains the theme and coverage of this book, which is about the role of policemen in Brazil as violence workers, torturers, and murderers, and explores how men from ...
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This introductory chapter explains the theme and coverage of this book, which is about the role of policemen in Brazil as violence workers, torturers, and murderers, and explores how men from Brazil's two main police forces describe their careers, explain police behavior, and justify their violence. It investigates how they came to perpetrate atrocity and describes the personal consequences of their complicity with the official program of state-sponsored violence that they may have carried with them all these years.Less
This introductory chapter explains the theme and coverage of this book, which is about the role of policemen in Brazil as violence workers, torturers, and murderers, and explores how men from Brazil's two main police forces describe their careers, explain police behavior, and justify their violence. It investigates how they came to perpetrate atrocity and describes the personal consequences of their complicity with the official program of state-sponsored violence that they may have carried with them all these years.
Adrienne LeBas
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199546862
- eISBN:
- 9780191728594
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199546862.003.0011
- Subject:
- Political Science, Democratization
Chapter 8 examines opposition party development after the transition to multiparty politics in Zambia and Kenya. In Zambia, the mobilizing structures provided by labor allowed the opposition Movement ...
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Chapter 8 examines opposition party development after the transition to multiparty politics in Zambia and Kenya. In Zambia, the mobilizing structures provided by labor allowed the opposition Movement for Multiparty Democracy to win the founding elections in 1991 by a large margin. In Kenya, on the other hand, opposition parties struggled to solve internal disagreements and mobilize constituencies across the lines of ethnicity and region. The opposition Forum for the Restoration of Democracy split prior to founding elections, leading to the fragmentation of the protest vote on ethnic lines. Up until 2002, the Kenyan ruling party was able to retain office due to opposition fragmentation. Despite these initial differences in opposition success, party systems in both countries have been characterized by high levels of fragmentation and volatility. This chapter argues that these political outcomes can partly be explained by weak party structures and personalized party decision-making in both countries.Less
Chapter 8 examines opposition party development after the transition to multiparty politics in Zambia and Kenya. In Zambia, the mobilizing structures provided by labor allowed the opposition Movement for Multiparty Democracy to win the founding elections in 1991 by a large margin. In Kenya, on the other hand, opposition parties struggled to solve internal disagreements and mobilize constituencies across the lines of ethnicity and region. The opposition Forum for the Restoration of Democracy split prior to founding elections, leading to the fragmentation of the protest vote on ethnic lines. Up until 2002, the Kenyan ruling party was able to retain office due to opposition fragmentation. Despite these initial differences in opposition success, party systems in both countries have been characterized by high levels of fragmentation and volatility. This chapter argues that these political outcomes can partly be explained by weak party structures and personalized party decision-making in both countries.
Josefina A. Echavarria
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719079856
- eISBN:
- 9781781702185
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719079856.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, International Relations and Politics
Based on geo- and biopolitical analyses, this book reconsiders how security policies and practices legitimate state and non-state violence in the Colombian conflict, and uses the case study of the ...
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Based on geo- and biopolitical analyses, this book reconsiders how security policies and practices legitimate state and non-state violence in the Colombian conflict, and uses the case study of the official Democratic Security Policy (DSP) to examines how security discourses write the political identities of state, self and others. It claims that the DSP delimits politics, the political, and the imaginaries of peace and war through conditioning the possibilities for identity formation. The book offers an innovative application of a large theoretical framework on the performative character of security discourses and furthers a nuanced understanding of the security problematique in a postcolonial setting.Less
Based on geo- and biopolitical analyses, this book reconsiders how security policies and practices legitimate state and non-state violence in the Colombian conflict, and uses the case study of the official Democratic Security Policy (DSP) to examines how security discourses write the political identities of state, self and others. It claims that the DSP delimits politics, the political, and the imaginaries of peace and war through conditioning the possibilities for identity formation. The book offers an innovative application of a large theoretical framework on the performative character of security discourses and furthers a nuanced understanding of the security problematique in a postcolonial setting.
Macarena Gómez-Barris
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520255838
- eISBN:
- 9780520942493
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520255838.003.0006
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Latin American Cultural Anthropology
This chapter presents some concluding thoughts from the author. One of the objectives of this book has been to draw out the complexities regarding issues of memory within post-dictatorship Chile, ...
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This chapter presents some concluding thoughts from the author. One of the objectives of this book has been to draw out the complexities regarding issues of memory within post-dictatorship Chile, especially in terms of the persistence of state violence in the lived subjectivities of dictatorship victims. It has privileged the domain of representations precisely because they are meaningful and multifaceted sites that produce practices of cultural memory in the social field. Rather than mere repositories of memory, these sites offer symbols, testimonies, architectural spaces, images, and narrations of witness about state violence within Chile's public sphere. In addition, they structure and delimit the ways that democracy has failed to account for certain kinds of experiences, including the dramatic military counterrevolution, with grave human consequences.Less
This chapter presents some concluding thoughts from the author. One of the objectives of this book has been to draw out the complexities regarding issues of memory within post-dictatorship Chile, especially in terms of the persistence of state violence in the lived subjectivities of dictatorship victims. It has privileged the domain of representations precisely because they are meaningful and multifaceted sites that produce practices of cultural memory in the social field. Rather than mere repositories of memory, these sites offer symbols, testimonies, architectural spaces, images, and narrations of witness about state violence within Chile's public sphere. In addition, they structure and delimit the ways that democracy has failed to account for certain kinds of experiences, including the dramatic military counterrevolution, with grave human consequences.
Santana Khanikar
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- March 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780199485550
- eISBN:
- 9780199092031
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199485550.003.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Indian Politics
How is it that nation-states running on democratic procedures like elections engage simultaneously in extreme forms of violence towards its own citizens? While introducing this question in this ...
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How is it that nation-states running on democratic procedures like elections engage simultaneously in extreme forms of violence towards its own citizens? While introducing this question in this chapter, I discuss the institutional, conceptual, and temporal-spatial aspects of the modern state and how it can be studied ethnographically. As a study of the violent dimension of the state, questions of legality, routinesness and the targets of violence are also addressed. The chapter also outlines how the notion of legitimacy is conceived in the work, by examining various competing theorizations, and also by showing how a distinction between the terms hegemony and legitimacy are sustained in the work. At the end, the chapter gives an outline of the rest of the book and how various chapters engage with the issue of state violence in two field-contexts.Less
How is it that nation-states running on democratic procedures like elections engage simultaneously in extreme forms of violence towards its own citizens? While introducing this question in this chapter, I discuss the institutional, conceptual, and temporal-spatial aspects of the modern state and how it can be studied ethnographically. As a study of the violent dimension of the state, questions of legality, routinesness and the targets of violence are also addressed. The chapter also outlines how the notion of legitimacy is conceived in the work, by examining various competing theorizations, and also by showing how a distinction between the terms hegemony and legitimacy are sustained in the work. At the end, the chapter gives an outline of the rest of the book and how various chapters engage with the issue of state violence in two field-contexts.
Christian Lange and Maribel Fierro
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748637317
- eISBN:
- 9780748653164
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748637317.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Middle Eastern Studies
Violence as an element of historical relationships between Muslims and between Muslims and non-Muslims has been the object of scholarly work in the past. However, the role of violence in the ...
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Violence as an element of historical relationships between Muslims and between Muslims and non-Muslims has been the object of scholarly work in the past. However, the role of violence in the political economy of Muslim societies, specifically its function as a tool to take possession of the public sphere has only recently begun to receive scholarly attention. There have been few attempts to offer a comprehensive view of the political uses of violence by Muslim states and of the historical struggle of the Muslims to defend the integrity of their bodies, honour and property against violent intrusions. This volume hence aims to discuss the political uses of public violence and punishments in the Muslim society. The chapters focus the state violence in Islamic societies and the reactions to the state violence. Three themes are laid out in order to fruitfully purse the study of public violence in the history of Islamic societies. These three themes are: the public and private dimension of violence in traditional Islamic societies; the ritual dimension of violence or the ways in which acts of violence were clothed in symbolic imagery and patterns of behaviour; and the representational dimension of violence such as how acts of violence were mentally processed, and challenged by those who observed and reported them. In this introductory chapter, the notion of violence as ritual and sacred is discussed. Within this paradigm, violence in the Muslim society such as hadd and hudud punishments were seen as the rights of God hence they elude legal reasoning. In sum, ritual violence was seen as ‘good violence’ that prevents the furthering of ‘bad violence’. Discussed as well in this chapter is the representation of violence.Less
Violence as an element of historical relationships between Muslims and between Muslims and non-Muslims has been the object of scholarly work in the past. However, the role of violence in the political economy of Muslim societies, specifically its function as a tool to take possession of the public sphere has only recently begun to receive scholarly attention. There have been few attempts to offer a comprehensive view of the political uses of violence by Muslim states and of the historical struggle of the Muslims to defend the integrity of their bodies, honour and property against violent intrusions. This volume hence aims to discuss the political uses of public violence and punishments in the Muslim society. The chapters focus the state violence in Islamic societies and the reactions to the state violence. Three themes are laid out in order to fruitfully purse the study of public violence in the history of Islamic societies. These three themes are: the public and private dimension of violence in traditional Islamic societies; the ritual dimension of violence or the ways in which acts of violence were clothed in symbolic imagery and patterns of behaviour; and the representational dimension of violence such as how acts of violence were mentally processed, and challenged by those who observed and reported them. In this introductory chapter, the notion of violence as ritual and sacred is discussed. Within this paradigm, violence in the Muslim society such as hadd and hudud punishments were seen as the rights of God hence they elude legal reasoning. In sum, ritual violence was seen as ‘good violence’ that prevents the furthering of ‘bad violence’. Discussed as well in this chapter is the representation of violence.
David L. Hoffmann
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801446290
- eISBN:
- 9780801462832
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801446290.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, Russian and Former Soviet Union History
This chapter examines excisionary violence as an attempt by Soviet officials to physically remove segments of the population deemed harmful to society in general. It first considers the origins of ...
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This chapter examines excisionary violence as an attempt by Soviet officials to physically remove segments of the population deemed harmful to society in general. It first considers the origins of excisionary violence as well as the conceptual and practical prerequisites for the forms of state violence employed by the state. It then shows how the state created systems of social categorization and social excision, including concentration camps. In particular, it discusses the tsarist government's internment of roughly 600,000 “enemy aliens” and deportation of as many as one million citizens (ethnic Poles, Germans, Jews, and Muslims) from border regions in the early years of the twentieth century. The chapter also explains how the practices and instruments of state violence became part of the Soviet state's goals of reforming society.Less
This chapter examines excisionary violence as an attempt by Soviet officials to physically remove segments of the population deemed harmful to society in general. It first considers the origins of excisionary violence as well as the conceptual and practical prerequisites for the forms of state violence employed by the state. It then shows how the state created systems of social categorization and social excision, including concentration camps. In particular, it discusses the tsarist government's internment of roughly 600,000 “enemy aliens” and deportation of as many as one million citizens (ethnic Poles, Germans, Jews, and Muslims) from border regions in the early years of the twentieth century. The chapter also explains how the practices and instruments of state violence became part of the Soviet state's goals of reforming society.
Kevin Hearty
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781786940476
- eISBN:
- 9781786944993
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781786940476.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
Viewing Irish republican policing memory primarily through a transitional justice lens, this chapter critically examines how Irish republicans, as a principal party to the conflict, approach the ...
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Viewing Irish republican policing memory primarily through a transitional justice lens, this chapter critically examines how Irish republicans, as a principal party to the conflict, approach the difficult issue of ‘dealing with the past’ as both collective victims and perpetrators of human rights violations during the conflict. It will interrogate the range of divergent views within modern Irish republicanism on issues such as victimhood, truth recovery, ‘moving on’ and ‘dealing with the past’. In particular, it looks at how the memory of human rights violations framed the wider policing debate and led to a master narrative of ‘never again’ whereby the value of ‘remembering’ past abuses lay in helping to prevent future repetition. This is placed against a more general backdrop of the stop-start ‘dealing with the past’ process in the North of Ireland that has included the establishment, operation and subsequent replacement of the Historical Enquiries Team (HET), the passage of the Civil Service (Special Advisers) Act (Northern Ireland), and proposals like the Haass/O’Sullivan document and the Stormont House Agreement.Less
Viewing Irish republican policing memory primarily through a transitional justice lens, this chapter critically examines how Irish republicans, as a principal party to the conflict, approach the difficult issue of ‘dealing with the past’ as both collective victims and perpetrators of human rights violations during the conflict. It will interrogate the range of divergent views within modern Irish republicanism on issues such as victimhood, truth recovery, ‘moving on’ and ‘dealing with the past’. In particular, it looks at how the memory of human rights violations framed the wider policing debate and led to a master narrative of ‘never again’ whereby the value of ‘remembering’ past abuses lay in helping to prevent future repetition. This is placed against a more general backdrop of the stop-start ‘dealing with the past’ process in the North of Ireland that has included the establishment, operation and subsequent replacement of the Historical Enquiries Team (HET), the passage of the Civil Service (Special Advisers) Act (Northern Ireland), and proposals like the Haass/O’Sullivan document and the Stormont House Agreement.
Macarena Gomez-Barris
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520255838
- eISBN:
- 9780520942493
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520255838.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Latin American Cultural Anthropology
The 1973 military coup in Chile deposed the democratically elected Salvador Allende and installed a dictatorship that terrorized the country for almost twenty years. Subsequent efforts to come to ...
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The 1973 military coup in Chile deposed the democratically elected Salvador Allende and installed a dictatorship that terrorized the country for almost twenty years. Subsequent efforts to come to terms with the national trauma have resulted in an outpouring of fiction, art, film, and drama. This ethnography examines cultural sites and representations in post dictatorship Chile—what the author calls “memory symbolics”—to uncover the impact of state-sponsored violence. It surveys the concentration camp turned memorial park, Villa Grimaldi, documentary films, the torture paintings of Guillermo Núñez, and art by Chilean exiles, arguing that two contradictory forces are at work: a desire to forget the experiences and the victims, and a powerful need to remember and memorialize them. By linking culture, nation, and identity, the book shows how those most affected by the legacies of the dictatorship continue to live with the presence of violence in their bodies, in their daily lives, and in the identities they pass down to younger generations.Less
The 1973 military coup in Chile deposed the democratically elected Salvador Allende and installed a dictatorship that terrorized the country for almost twenty years. Subsequent efforts to come to terms with the national trauma have resulted in an outpouring of fiction, art, film, and drama. This ethnography examines cultural sites and representations in post dictatorship Chile—what the author calls “memory symbolics”—to uncover the impact of state-sponsored violence. It surveys the concentration camp turned memorial park, Villa Grimaldi, documentary films, the torture paintings of Guillermo Núñez, and art by Chilean exiles, arguing that two contradictory forces are at work: a desire to forget the experiences and the victims, and a powerful need to remember and memorialize them. By linking culture, nation, and identity, the book shows how those most affected by the legacies of the dictatorship continue to live with the presence of violence in their bodies, in their daily lives, and in the identities they pass down to younger generations.
Melvin Delgado
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- February 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780190058463
- eISBN:
- 9780190058494
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190058463.003.0002
- Subject:
- Social Work, Communities and Organizations
Social work’s quest takes on greater significance at this critical time in the nation’s history, responding to a society that has persisted in marginalizing groups because of the color of their skin, ...
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Social work’s quest takes on greater significance at this critical time in the nation’s history, responding to a society that has persisted in marginalizing groups because of the color of their skin, sexual identities, and abilities, and is increasingly being segregated. This book illustrates (conceptually, case examples, and statistically) how state-sanctioned violence is a modern-day manifestation with deep historical roots of government serving as a principal contributor to the persistence and reproduction of racism, as it has since the founding of the nation, illustrating state power to carry out a violence agenda targeting communities of color covering centuries. Violence establishes and maintains nation-states (Fenton, 2017). A nation willing to exercise violence and sacrifice segments of its population is one resting on a very precarious foundation. This chapter lays out a conceptual foundation for understanding state-sanctioned violence.Less
Social work’s quest takes on greater significance at this critical time in the nation’s history, responding to a society that has persisted in marginalizing groups because of the color of their skin, sexual identities, and abilities, and is increasingly being segregated. This book illustrates (conceptually, case examples, and statistically) how state-sanctioned violence is a modern-day manifestation with deep historical roots of government serving as a principal contributor to the persistence and reproduction of racism, as it has since the founding of the nation, illustrating state power to carry out a violence agenda targeting communities of color covering centuries. Violence establishes and maintains nation-states (Fenton, 2017). A nation willing to exercise violence and sacrifice segments of its population is one resting on a very precarious foundation. This chapter lays out a conceptual foundation for understanding state-sanctioned violence.
Amy L. Brandzel
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040030
- eISBN:
- 9780252098239
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040030.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
This chapter examines the violent maintenance of citizenship through the police state, and the uses of hate crime legislation to both name and disallow any recognition of this violence. The ...
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This chapter examines the violent maintenance of citizenship through the police state, and the uses of hate crime legislation to both name and disallow any recognition of this violence. The intervention into how we understand citizenship to be violently organized functions at two interconnected levels, that is, at the structural level of state violence, and at the social level of identity categories. At the level of the state, hate crime legislation offers us important information on how the violence of citizenship is managed, controlled, and directed. At the structural level of the state, the chapter adds to left critiques of hate crime legislation by unpacking how these laws are used to create a dangerous discontinuum, in which hate crimes are marked as individualized errors, while police brutality is systemically assuaged. By examining the machinations of hate crime legislation at these two levels, it is argued that hate crime legislation works, simultaneously, to recognize and deny: (1) the violence of citizenship; and (2) the fear that the oppressed will seek revenge and retaliate for this experience by using violence themselves.Less
This chapter examines the violent maintenance of citizenship through the police state, and the uses of hate crime legislation to both name and disallow any recognition of this violence. The intervention into how we understand citizenship to be violently organized functions at two interconnected levels, that is, at the structural level of state violence, and at the social level of identity categories. At the level of the state, hate crime legislation offers us important information on how the violence of citizenship is managed, controlled, and directed. At the structural level of the state, the chapter adds to left critiques of hate crime legislation by unpacking how these laws are used to create a dangerous discontinuum, in which hate crimes are marked as individualized errors, while police brutality is systemically assuaged. By examining the machinations of hate crime legislation at these two levels, it is argued that hate crime legislation works, simultaneously, to recognize and deny: (1) the violence of citizenship; and (2) the fear that the oppressed will seek revenge and retaliate for this experience by using violence themselves.
Martha K. Hugginsv, Mika Haritos-Fatouros, and Philip G. Zimbardo
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520234468
- eISBN:
- 9780520928916
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520234468.003.0003
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Latin American Cultural Anthropology
This chapter explains the theoretical and methodological questions associated with the objective of this book to reconstruct social memory about atrocity. It examines whether different styles of ...
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This chapter explains the theoretical and methodological questions associated with the objective of this book to reconstruct social memory about atrocity. It examines whether different styles of human rights record keeping influence social memory about state violence, and whether social and research perception of atrocity workers influence how their violence is written about and remembered. The chapter also investigates whether the moral sensitivity of researchers to writing an ethnography of atrocity shapes what they write and what become the facts of public knowledge.Less
This chapter explains the theoretical and methodological questions associated with the objective of this book to reconstruct social memory about atrocity. It examines whether different styles of human rights record keeping influence social memory about state violence, and whether social and research perception of atrocity workers influence how their violence is written about and remembered. The chapter also investigates whether the moral sensitivity of researchers to writing an ethnography of atrocity shapes what they write and what become the facts of public knowledge.
Manduhai Buyandelger
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226086552
- eISBN:
- 9780226013091
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226013091.003.0003
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
Chapter 2 discusses state-enforced forgetting during socialism and its persistence after socialism’s collapse. Repeated cycles of purging and rehabilitation blurred the boundaries between victims and ...
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Chapter 2 discusses state-enforced forgetting during socialism and its persistence after socialism’s collapse. Repeated cycles of purging and rehabilitation blurred the boundaries between victims and perpetrators, discredited individual memories, and allowed the state to be perceived as less violent. More indirect technologies of forgetting, which are enmeshed with other forms of power, include the routinization of state-sanctioned narratives, undermining the framework of collective remembering, erasing the contexts for remembering, the manipulation of emotions, and silencing. The author argues that in addition to the forced altering of the content of memories, the state impaired confidence in memory and led to self-imposed forgetting. She uses Benjamin’s emphasis on the separation between progress and history to illuminate the estrangement of people from their past, which takes the form of forgotten or unknown origin spirits. After the collapse of socialism, state agency has been embodied by individual citizens who impose the silencing of the past on their fellow citizens. Further, there is an eerie link between the shamanic and the state: the forgotten and identity-less souls of the dead echo the unidentified bodies in hidden mass burials, and both are repercussions of state violence and forgetting.Less
Chapter 2 discusses state-enforced forgetting during socialism and its persistence after socialism’s collapse. Repeated cycles of purging and rehabilitation blurred the boundaries between victims and perpetrators, discredited individual memories, and allowed the state to be perceived as less violent. More indirect technologies of forgetting, which are enmeshed with other forms of power, include the routinization of state-sanctioned narratives, undermining the framework of collective remembering, erasing the contexts for remembering, the manipulation of emotions, and silencing. The author argues that in addition to the forced altering of the content of memories, the state impaired confidence in memory and led to self-imposed forgetting. She uses Benjamin’s emphasis on the separation between progress and history to illuminate the estrangement of people from their past, which takes the form of forgotten or unknown origin spirits. After the collapse of socialism, state agency has been embodied by individual citizens who impose the silencing of the past on their fellow citizens. Further, there is an eerie link between the shamanic and the state: the forgotten and identity-less souls of the dead echo the unidentified bodies in hidden mass burials, and both are repercussions of state violence and forgetting.
Santana Khanikar
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- March 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780199485550
- eISBN:
- 9780199092031
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199485550.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Indian Politics
How do people respond to a state that is violent towards its own citizens? In State, Violence, and Legitimacy in India, this question is addressed through insights offered by ethnographic ...
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How do people respond to a state that is violent towards its own citizens? In State, Violence, and Legitimacy in India, this question is addressed through insights offered by ethnographic explorations of everyday policing in Delhi and the anti-insurgency measures of the Indian army in Lakhipathar village in Assam. Battling the dominant understanding of the inverse connect between state legitimacy and use of violence, Santana Khanikar argues that use of violence does not necessarily detract from the legitimacy of the modern territorial nation-state. Based on extensive research of two sites, the book develops a narrative of how two facets of state violence, one commonly understood to be for routine maintenance of law and order and the other to be of extraordinary need for maintaining unity and integrity of the nation-state, often produce comparable responses. The book delves into the debates surrounding state–citizen relationship in India, while critically engaging with dominant notions of state legitimacy and its relation with use of violence by the state.Less
How do people respond to a state that is violent towards its own citizens? In State, Violence, and Legitimacy in India, this question is addressed through insights offered by ethnographic explorations of everyday policing in Delhi and the anti-insurgency measures of the Indian army in Lakhipathar village in Assam. Battling the dominant understanding of the inverse connect between state legitimacy and use of violence, Santana Khanikar argues that use of violence does not necessarily detract from the legitimacy of the modern territorial nation-state. Based on extensive research of two sites, the book develops a narrative of how two facets of state violence, one commonly understood to be for routine maintenance of law and order and the other to be of extraordinary need for maintaining unity and integrity of the nation-state, often produce comparable responses. The book delves into the debates surrounding state–citizen relationship in India, while critically engaging with dominant notions of state legitimacy and its relation with use of violence by the state.
Jan Pakulski
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719097027
- eISBN:
- 9781526103987
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719097027.003.0003
- Subject:
- Political Science, International Relations and Politics
An eliticide or ‘national ‘decapitation’ – a systematic and deliberate targeting and mass extermination of a nation’s ‘ruling minority’– is a form of organised and state-perpetrated mass violence ...
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An eliticide or ‘national ‘decapitation’ – a systematic and deliberate targeting and mass extermination of a nation’s ‘ruling minority’– is a form of organised and state-perpetrated mass violence that, until recently, has been escaping the attention of historians and social scientists. Eliticides emerged in the 20th century as tools of social engineering and political conquest, primarily by Stalin and Hitler. The 1939-45 eliticide in Poland, conducted by the Nazi and Soviet invaders, not only weakened the resistance movement and undermined the social, political and moral order (thus opening the way for social pathologies), but also increased vulnerability to Soviet take over and fatally hindered the post-war social reconstruction of Poland. It resulted in the formation of a politically dependent and socially deracinated ‘quasi-elite’ with limited capacity for governing.Less
An eliticide or ‘national ‘decapitation’ – a systematic and deliberate targeting and mass extermination of a nation’s ‘ruling minority’– is a form of organised and state-perpetrated mass violence that, until recently, has been escaping the attention of historians and social scientists. Eliticides emerged in the 20th century as tools of social engineering and political conquest, primarily by Stalin and Hitler. The 1939-45 eliticide in Poland, conducted by the Nazi and Soviet invaders, not only weakened the resistance movement and undermined the social, political and moral order (thus opening the way for social pathologies), but also increased vulnerability to Soviet take over and fatally hindered the post-war social reconstruction of Poland. It resulted in the formation of a politically dependent and socially deracinated ‘quasi-elite’ with limited capacity for governing.
Macarena Gómez-Barris
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520255838
- eISBN:
- 9780520942493
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520255838.003.0004
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Latin American Cultural Anthropology
In the aftermath of state violence, the social costs were not evenly distributed among female and male subjects. Documentaries by Patricio Guzmán (Chile, Obstinate Memory, 1997) and Silvio Caiozzi ...
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In the aftermath of state violence, the social costs were not evenly distributed among female and male subjects. Documentaries by Patricio Guzmán (Chile, Obstinate Memory, 1997) and Silvio Caiozzi (Fernando ha vuelto [Fernando Returns], 1998) emphasize the familiar narrative that males were the main targets of military repression and that mothers, daughters, and sisters bore the greatest emotional burden of violence's effects. The problem with this rendition is that the female subjects in the films are reified as sufferers and victims of the nation, and female revolutionary subjectivity is cast as marginal. In contrast, Marilú Mallet's film La cueca sola (They Danced Alone, 2003) creates a feminist genealogy of social struggle and experience, which nuances the effects of collective violence and locates female agency within a broader spectrum of the identities mediated by, and emerging out of, authoritarianism.Less
In the aftermath of state violence, the social costs were not evenly distributed among female and male subjects. Documentaries by Patricio Guzmán (Chile, Obstinate Memory, 1997) and Silvio Caiozzi (Fernando ha vuelto [Fernando Returns], 1998) emphasize the familiar narrative that males were the main targets of military repression and that mothers, daughters, and sisters bore the greatest emotional burden of violence's effects. The problem with this rendition is that the female subjects in the films are reified as sufferers and victims of the nation, and female revolutionary subjectivity is cast as marginal. In contrast, Marilú Mallet's film La cueca sola (They Danced Alone, 2003) creates a feminist genealogy of social struggle and experience, which nuances the effects of collective violence and locates female agency within a broader spectrum of the identities mediated by, and emerging out of, authoritarianism.
Yaacov Lev
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748637317
- eISBN:
- 9780748653164
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748637317.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Middle Eastern Studies
This chapter focuses on the Fātimids. It uses the Qādī al-Nu'mān's Iftitā al-da'wa wa-ibtidā' al-dawla which centres on the Fātimid state. The aim of this chapter is to provide perceptions of how the ...
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This chapter focuses on the Fātimids. It uses the Qādī al-Nu'mān's Iftitā al-da'wa wa-ibtidā' al-dawla which centres on the Fātimid state. The aim of this chapter is to provide perceptions of how the events took place during the Fātimid period. It discusses the different images, the attitudes of the writers who produced them and the impact they intended to make on their readers. Although violence is central in all of the accounts on the rise of the Fātimids to power, they differ in regard to its causes and present it differently. While state violence sustained the Islamic medieval polity, it was only one of the elements that maintained social and political order. Since there was a persistent tendency to seek divine and religious legitimization for state violence and political power, with emphasis on the rule of law and dispensation of legal justice, charity and charitable deeds in fact complemented state violence. Like other medieval Muslim state, the Fātimid state came to power through violence and was brought to an end by violence. It sought divine legitimacy for its existence and for violence it exercised by placing emphasis on its dispensation of justice and benevolence.Less
This chapter focuses on the Fātimids. It uses the Qādī al-Nu'mān's Iftitā al-da'wa wa-ibtidā' al-dawla which centres on the Fātimid state. The aim of this chapter is to provide perceptions of how the events took place during the Fātimid period. It discusses the different images, the attitudes of the writers who produced them and the impact they intended to make on their readers. Although violence is central in all of the accounts on the rise of the Fātimids to power, they differ in regard to its causes and present it differently. While state violence sustained the Islamic medieval polity, it was only one of the elements that maintained social and political order. Since there was a persistent tendency to seek divine and religious legitimization for state violence and political power, with emphasis on the rule of law and dispensation of legal justice, charity and charitable deeds in fact complemented state violence. Like other medieval Muslim state, the Fātimid state came to power through violence and was brought to an end by violence. It sought divine legitimacy for its existence and for violence it exercised by placing emphasis on its dispensation of justice and benevolence.
Santana Khanikar
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- March 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780199485550
- eISBN:
- 9780199092031
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199485550.003.0010
- Subject:
- Political Science, Indian Politics
If the state in democracies like India engages in violence, then is this state still accepted by the people? The conception of legitimacy in this study is about observable behaviour, about if and why ...
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If the state in democracies like India engages in violence, then is this state still accepted by the people? The conception of legitimacy in this study is about observable behaviour, about if and why people accept power holders as authority, and not about whether it is the ideal way to engage with violent power holders within the discourses of normative political theory. And what we see in both the field-sites of this study, is acceptance, though it may be slow and appear flickering or contextual at time. The specific vision that the nation-state is, marked by geographical boundaries and internal sovereignty often needs to use violence to legitimize its existence. Such use of violence does not appear to be leading to a dis-illusionment with the form or the institutions of the state.Less
If the state in democracies like India engages in violence, then is this state still accepted by the people? The conception of legitimacy in this study is about observable behaviour, about if and why people accept power holders as authority, and not about whether it is the ideal way to engage with violent power holders within the discourses of normative political theory. And what we see in both the field-sites of this study, is acceptance, though it may be slow and appear flickering or contextual at time. The specific vision that the nation-state is, marked by geographical boundaries and internal sovereignty often needs to use violence to legitimize its existence. Such use of violence does not appear to be leading to a dis-illusionment with the form or the institutions of the state.
