Of what Politics is Violence a Symptom of?
|
Abstract: What do we mean by political violence? At its most basic, à la Clausewitz, “violence” is an extension of politics by other means. But what kind of politics? I articulate a typology of politics, of which acts of violence are symptoms of. Without a conceptualization of political violence, we turn our attention more towards behavioral manifestations of logics of political violence, not to the logics of political violence itself. This problem can play out in at least two ways: (i) Violence may look outwardly different, but motivated by the same logics; (ii) Violence may look outwardly the same, but motivated by different logics; but also, (iii) it is not even clear if the logics that animate violence are the same or different from the logics that animate non-violence (or political contestation), or what their relationship is. Typologizing the logic of violence undergirding both violence and non-violence improves our conceptualizations of types of political violence, what they look like, and highlights relationships between forms of political contestation.
|
Moral Practices of Contention: Punity and Humanity in Combat and Activism in Aceh, Indonesia
|
Abstract: Theories of civil wars that emphasize motivations rarely look at the individual level of analysis - why is it that a group of people, when faced with the same grievances, choose to take different paths? Some pick up weapons, others become human rights activists. Puzzlingly, some combatants conduct their struggle on the principle of humaneness whereas some human rights activists and relief workers conduct their struggle on the principle of punity. Based on (unfinished) fieldwork in Aceh, Indonesia, I argue that while whether someone decides to resist through combat or activism might be explained by the social networks available to them, whether their conduct is based on principles of humanity or punity is better explained by understanding their everyday emotional lives.
|
The Emotional Logic of Racialized Violence: Comparing Anti-Black and Anti-Chinese Violence in the US and Indonesia
|
Abstract: Racialized violence takes different forms against different racialized groups at different times. For example, racialized violence against African Americans tend to target men whereas racialized violence targeted at Asian Americans tend to target women and older folk. American troops in Vietnam and Afghanistan as well as in the conduct of coups in Indonesia and Congo each involve a range of different symbolic expressions of violence. Likewise, while anti-Chinese violence in Indonesia was expressed at Chinese shops following the Asian Financial Crisis, more recent anti-Chinese violence has targeted Chinese temples instead. I argue that this variation can be explained by what different racialized groups come to mean to perpetuators of violence at different times.
|