The Mosaic of Violence – An Introduction

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgements The article collection in this special issue is based on the conference ‘Social Figurations of Violence and War Beyond the State’, jointly organised by the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (MPI) in Halle/Saale and the working group ‘Orders of Violence’ of the German Political Science Association (DVPW), which took place at the MPI in February 2008. We are very grateful for the immense support received by the MPI which, first of all, generously financed the conference and ensured its professional organisation. Furthermore, and equally important, the MPI provided a stimulating intellectual atmosphere that contributed to the success of the conference and, not least, of the present issue. We would also like to thank our co-speaker of the working group ‘Orders of Violence’, Katrin Radtke, for her cooperation in organising the conference. Notes 1. Cf. Erik Ringmar, ‘On the Ontological Status of the State’, European Journal of International Relations 2/136 (1996) pp.199–243. 2. Hill has criticised the tendency of studies on quasi, weak, failed and collapsed states to concentrate on deviances as a deficient and deviant post-colonial construction of the non-western world; see Jonathan Hill, ‘Beyond the Other? A Postcolonial Critique of the Failed State Thesis’, African Identities 3/2 (2005) pp.139–54. Cf. also Susanne Karstedt, ‘Typen der Sozialintegration und Gewalt: Kollektivismus, Individualismus und Sozialkapital’ in Wilhelm Heitmeyer and Hans-Georg Soeffner (eds) Gewalt. Entwicklungen, Strukturen, Analyseprobleme (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 2004) pp.269–70. 3. Cf. Mark Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars. The Merging of Development and Security (London: Zed 2001); Florian P. Kühn, Sicherheit und Entwicklung in der Weltgesellschaft. Liberales Paradigma und Staatsaufbau in Afghanistan (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag 2010). 4. Berit Bliesemann de Guevara, Staatlichkeit in Zeiten des Statebuilding. Intervention und Herrschaft in Bosnien und Herzegowina (Frankfurt: Peter Lang 2009); Berit Bliesemann de Guevara, States of Conflict: A Case Study on Peace-building in Bosnia and Herzegovina (London: IPPR 2009). 5. Cf. Ward Berenschot, ‘Rioting as Maintaining Relations: Hindu–Muslim Violence and Political Mediation in Gujarat, India’, Civil Wars 11/4 (December 2009) pp.414–33; Patrick Chabal and Jean-Paul Daloz, Africa Works. Disorder as Political Instrument (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press 1999); William Reno, ‘Shadow States and the Political Economy of Civil Wars’ in Mats Berdal and David M. Malone (eds) Greed and Grievance. Economic Agendas in Civil Wars (Boulder/London: Lynne Rienner 2000) pp.43–69. 6. Trutz von Trotha, ‘Zur Soziologie der Gewalt’, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 37 (1997) pp.9–58. Trotha has first used this approach in his excellent study on the colonial state in Togo; see Trutz von Trotha, Koloniale Herrschaft. Zur soziologischen Theorie der Staatsentstehung am Beispiel des ‘Schutzgebietes Togo’ (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1994). 7. Cf. Anton Blok, ‘The Enigma of Senseless Violence’ in Göran Ajimer and Jon Abbink (eds) Meanings of Violence. A Cross Cultural Perspective (New York: Berg 2000) pp.23–38; Arjun Appadurai, ‘Introduction: Commodieties and the Politics of Value’ in Arjun Appadurai (ed.) The Social Life of Things. Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1986) pp.5 et seqq. 8. Fernand Braudel, ‘Geschichte und Sozialwissenschaften – Die “long durée”’ in Claudia Honneger (ed.) Schrift und Materie der Geschichte. Vorschläge zur systematischen Aneignung historischer Prozesse (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1977) p.60. 9. Its ‘chronocentrism’ is one main reason why the thesis of ‘new wars’ has to face so much controversy. The novelty of current wars could only be judged by a comprehensive structural history of wars. On the notion of chronocentrism, see Jib Fowles, ‘Chronocentrism’, Futures 6/1 (1974) pp.65–8. 10. Cf. the following literature overviews: Thomas Zitelmann, ‘Gewalt diesseits, jenseits und am Rande des Staates. Ethnologische Positionen’, Behemoth. A Journal of Civilisation 2/1 (2009) pp.20–40; Paul Richards, ‘New War: An Ethnographic Approach’ in Paul Richards (ed.) No Peace, No War: An Anthropology of Contemporary Armed Conflicts (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press 2005) pp.1–21; Klaus Schlichte, ‘Neues über den Krieg? Einige Anmerkungen zum Stand der Kriegsforschung in den Internationalen Beziehungen’, Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen 9/1 (2002) pp.113–38. See also the critique of instrumentalist approaches by Jutta Bakonyi and Kirsti Stuvoy, ‘Violence and Social Order Beyond the State: Somalia and Angola’, Review of African Political Economy 104/5 (2005) pp.359–82; Christopher Cramer, ‘Homo Economicus Goes to War: Methodological Individualism, Rational Choice and the Political Economy of War’, World Development 30/11 (2002) pp.1845–64; Christopher Cramer, Civil War is Not a Stupid Thing. Accounting for Violence in Developing Countries (London: Hurst 2006). 11. Charles Tilly, The Contentious French (Cambridge/London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 1986); Charles Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2003); Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilly, ‘Contentious Politics and Social Movements’ in Charles Boix and Susan C. Stokes (eds) The Oxford Handbook on Comparative Politics (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press 2007). 12. Tilly, The Contentious French (note 11) p.4. 13. Charles Tilly, As Sociology Meets History (New York: Academic Press 1981) p.161. 14. Tilly, The Contentious French (note 11) p.10; Richards, ‘New War’ (note 10) p.11. 15. Cf. Heinrich Popitz, Phänomene der Macht, 2nd, extended edition (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr 1992). 16. In the terms of Bourdieu, political entrepreneurs posses social capital, i.e. resources based on the membership in a group and institutionalised relations of knowledge and acceptance; see Pierre Bourdieu, ‘Ökonomisches Kapital, kulturelles Kapital, soziales Kapital’ in Reinhard Kreckel (ed.) Soziale Ungleichheiten (Göttingen: Otto Schwartz 1983) pp.190–91; cf. Pierre Bourdieu, ‘The Forms of Capital’ in John G. Richardson (ed.) Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (New York: Greenwood 1986) pp. 241–60. 17. Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence (note 11) p.21. 18. Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence (note 11) p.21 pp.20–1. 19. Max Gluckman was among the first to highlight the relevance of rumours and gossip for the activation of social borders, the self-definition of groups and the reproduction of social norms; see Max Gluckman, ‘Gossip and Scandal’, Current Anthropology 4/3 (1963) pp.307–16. 20. Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence (note 11) p.31. 21. Ideas are travelling fast around the world. This is maybe most obvious in the dominant discourses of violence. While, for example, the anti-colonial and independence movements in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s drew mainly on the idea of nationalism and self-determination, many of the later violent movements in the 1970s and 1980s referred to socialist ideas. By the end of the 1980s, democratisation movements gained importance. At the same time, however, a trend towards cultural justification/articulation of violence became visible, with ethnic and sometimes racist movements gaining importance all over the globe. Cf. Jean-Francois Bayart, The Illusion of Cultural Identity (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press 2005); Peter Geschiere and Birgit Meyer, ‘Globalisation and Identity: Dialectics of Flow and Closure’, Development and Change 29/4 (1998) pp.601–15; Peter Geschiere and Francis Nyamnjoh, ‘Capitalism and Authochthony. The Seesaw of Mobility and Belonging’, Public Culture 12/2 (2000) pp.423–52; Jutta Bakonyi (ed.), Terrorismus und Krieg. Bedeutung und Konsequenzen des 11. September 2001 (Hamburg: Arbeitsgemeinschaft Kriegsursachenforschung at Hamburg University 2001) pp.17–18; Klaus Schlichte, In the Shadow of Violence: The Politics of Armed Groups (Frankfurt: Campus 2009) pp.107–8. 22. Trutz von Trotha, ‘In Search of Peace. History, Basic Narrative, the Future of War, and the Rise of the Local. An Introduction with a Short Overview of the Contributions’ in Marie-Claire Foblets and Trutz von Trotha (eds) Healing the Wounds. Essays on the Reconstruction of Societies after War (Oxford: Hart Publishing 2004) p.3. 23. The state is constantly engaged in substituting the many pre-state histories, symbols and narrations by one dominant and consistent discourse. The most successful basic narrative of our time is the unit of ‘people-as-nation-as-state’. It is the leading idea constituting the European state and was exported via colonialism to the rest of the world. 24. Especially in recent times of increased uncertainty and rapid social changes, processes of reconstruction of traditions and the circulation of myths and patterns of self-identification are visible in many countries. Such a process of neo-traditional group formation can be interpreted as an attempt to position the self in the fluid and rapid changing environment of modernity. See Jonathan Friedman, ‘Being in the World: Globalisation and Localisation’, Theory, Culture and Society 7/2–3 (1990) pp.311–28; Arjun Appadurai, ‘Dead Certainty: Ethnic Violence in the Era of Globalization’, Development and Change 29/4 (1998) pp.126 et seqq. 25. Pierre Bourdieu, ‘The Social Space and the Genesis of Groups’, Theory and Society. Renewal and Critique in Social Theory 14/6 (1985) p.729. 26. Pierre Bourdieu, ‘The Social Space and the Genesis of Groups’, Theory and Society. Renewal and Critique in Social Theory 14/6 (1985) p.730; Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence (note 11) p.21. 27. Appadurai, ‘Dead Certainty’ (note 24). 28. Wolfgang Sofsky, The Order of Terror. The Concentration Camp (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP 1999). 29. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books 1979); Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process. The History of Manners, vol. 1 (Oxford: Blackwell 1978); Nobert Elias, The Civilizng Process. State Formation and Civilization, vol. 2 (Oxford: Blackwell 1982). 30. See for example Allen Feldman, Formations of Violence: The Narrative of the Body and Political Terror in Northern Ireland (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press 1991); Arjun Appadurai, ‘Dead Certainty’ (note 24); Günther Schlee, Identities on the Move. Clanship and Pastoralism in Northern Kenya (New York: Manchester University Press 1989). 31. Stathis N. Kalyvas, The Logic of Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2006) pp.101 et seqq. 32. Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence (note 11) pp.34–5. 33. According to Bourdieu, cultural capital refers to the internalisation of cultural resources in the process of education. Incorporated cultural capital is tied directly to an actor and part of his/her personality which is shaped by education. Cultural capital thus cannot be delegated to others; it can, however, be objectified in form of titles. See Bourdieu, ‘Ökonomisches Kapital, kulturelles Kapital, soziales Kapital’ (note 16) pp.186 et seqq. 34. Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence (note 11) p.36. 35. To name but a few: François Jean and Jean-Christophe Rufin, Ökonomie der Bürgerkriege (Hamburg: Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung 1999); Mats Berdal and David Malone, Greed and Grievance. Economic Agendas in Civil Wars (Boulder/London: Lynne Rienner 2001); Cynthia J. Arnson and William Zartman (eds) Rethinking the Economics of War. The Intersection of Need, Creed, and Greed (Washington DC/Baltimore: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars 2005); Jutta Bakonyi, Stephan Hensell and Jens Siegelberg (eds) Gewaltordnungen bewaffneter Gruppen. Ökonomie und Herrschaft nichtstaatlicher Akteure in den Kriegen der Gegenwart (Baden-Baden: Nomos 2006). 36. Cf. Katrin Radtke, Mobilisierung der Diaspora. Die moralische Ökonomie der Bürgerkriege in Sri Lanka und Eritrea (Frankfurt: Campus 2009); Klaus Schlichte, In the Shadow of Violence: The Politics of Armed Groups (Frankfurt: Campus 2009). 37. Cf. Katrin Radtke, From Gifts to Taxes: The Mobilisation of Tamil and Eritrean Diaspora in Interstate Warfare (Berlin: Humboldt University 2005). 38. The latter was, for example, the case in Angola, where the UNITA established quasi-state structures based on mining, cf. Kirsti Stuvoy, War Economy and the Social Order of Insurgencies. An Analysis of the Internal Structure of UNITA's War Economy (Hamburg: Arbeitsgemeinschaft Kriegsursachenforschung at Hamburg University 2002). 39. Cf. Volker Matthies, ‘Kriege: Erscheinungsformen, Kriegsverhütung, Kriegsbeendigung’ in Alexander Brand, Manfred Knapp and Gert Krell (eds) Einführung in die internationale Politik. Studienbuch (München: Oldenbourg 2004) pp.428 et seqq. 40. Richards, No Peace, No War (note 10). 41. Trutz von Trotha, ‘Forms of Martial Power: Total Wars, Wars of Pacification, and Raid. Some Observations on the Typologie of Violence’ in Georg Elwert, Stephan Feuchtwang and Dieter Neubert (eds) Dynamics of Violence. Processes of Escalation and De-Escalation in Violent Group Conflicts (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot 1999) pp.39–40. 42. A social field is characterised by its specific values, rules and orientations, and within a field individual as well as collective actors try to enhance their social positions and to achieve their own interests. The strategies these actors select depend again on their social habitus and repertoire of action, on the one hand, and on the resources or forms of capital which these actors possess, on the other hand. Their actions can then either perpetuate the structural arrangement of the field or it leads to its transformation, and hence also to a change of the rules of the game structuring the field. Cf. Pierre Bourdieu, Praktische Vernunft. Zur Theorie des Handelns (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp 1998) pp.49–50; Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason. On the Theory of Action (Cambridge: Polity Press 1998); Loïc J.D. Wacquant, ‘Auf dem Wege zu einer Sozialpraxeologie. Struktur und Logik der Soziologie Pierre Bourdieus’ in Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc J.D. Wacquant (eds) Reflexive Anthropologie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1996) p.37. 43. The term refers to Bayart, The Illusion of Cultural Identity (note 21). It does not imply that actions are no longer political but that they are interpreted in cultural terms. 44. The concept of greediness stems from Coser, who classifies institutions as greedy if they demand indispensible loyalty and skip alternative options for affiliation and organization; see Lewis A. Coser, Greedy Insitutions: Patterns of Undivided Commitment (New York: Free Press 1974). 45. Cf. in general, James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State. How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven/London: Yale University Press 1998). 46. For the understanding of world society applied here, see Dietrich Jung, ‘The Political Sociology of World Society’, European Journal of International Relations 7/4 (2001) pp.443–74. 47. Achille Mbembe, ‘At the Edge of the World: Boundaries, Territoriality, and Sovereignty in Africa’ in James Darby and Phillip Darby (eds) Globalisation and Violence. Volume 2: Colonial and Postcolonial Globalizations (London: Sage 2006).