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Journal ArticleDOI

Exploring the Backstage: Methodological and Ethical Issues Surrounding the Role of Research Brokers in Insecure Zones

03 Apr 2019-Civil Wars (Informa UK Limited)-Vol. 21, Iss: 2, pp 157-178
TL;DR: In this paper, the contribution and situation of research brokers problematically tend to be shrouded in silence in most research texts, and they probe into the particular ethical and methodological problems of such brokers.
Abstract: The contribution and situation of research brokers problematically tend to be shrouded in silence in most research texts. In this article we probe into the particular ethical and methodological cha ...
Citations
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Journal Article
TL;DR: In this paper, a research has been done on the essay "Can the Subaltern Speak" by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, which has been explained into much simpler language about what the author conveys for better understanding and further references.
Abstract: In the present paper a research has been done on the essay ‘Can the Subaltern Speak’ by’ Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’. It has been explained into much simpler language about what the author conveys for better understanding and further references. Also the criticism has been done by various critiques from various sources which is helpful from examination point of view. The paper has been divided into various contexts with an introduction and the conclusions. Also the references has been written that depicts the sources of criticism.

2,638 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This article focused on collaborative processes rather than on the activity of individual researchers and gave the assistants and informants of anthropologists a central role in the making of anthropological knowledge, showing how local conditions and local ideas about culture and history, as well as previous experience of outsiders' interest, shape local people's responses to anthropological fieldwork and help them to influence the construction of knowledge about their societies and lives.
Abstract: Africanizing Anthropology tells the story of the anthropological fieldwork centered at the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) during the mid-twentieth century. Focusing on collaborative processes rather than on the activity of individual researchers, Lyn Schumaker gives the assistants and informants of anthropologists a central role in the making of anthropological knowledge. Schumaker shows how local conditions and local ideas about culture and history, as well as previous experience of outsiders’ interest, shape local people’s responses to anthropological fieldwork and help them, in turn, to influence the construction of knowledge about their societies and lives. Bringing to the fore a wide range of actors—missionaries, administrators, settlers, the families of anthropologists—Schumaker emphasizes the daily practices of researchers, demonstrating how these are as centrally implicated in the making of anthropological knowlege as the discipline’s methods. Selecting a prominent group of anthropologists—The Manchester School—she reveals how they achieved the advances in theory and method that made them famous in the 1950s and 1960s. This book makes important contributions to anthropology, African history, and the history of science.

142 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: Eriksson Baaz and Maria Stern as mentioned in this paper argue that separating sexual from other forms of violence committed during war both fetishises and exceptionalises these particular acts in a way that dehumanises all involved.
Abstract: Until very recently, sexual violence has been viewed as an unfortunate but unavoidable side-effect of war; rarely discussed and even less frequently prosecuted. In the aftermath of the Rwandan and the former Yugoslavian conflicts, that slowly began to change. The international community’s perception of rape in war turned from the assumption that it was the inevitable result of (sexually) frustrated (male) soldiers separated from their families and usual societal norms acting on their own volition, to the belief that it was instead a coherent strategy of war ordered by commanding officers. This new understanding of sexual violence in conflict offered hope that it could be both prevented and stopped and so has, for at least the past decade, become the overriding interpretation of rape in war, at least officially, amongst humanitarians, academics, and policymakers alike. Maria Eriksson Baaz and Maria Stern’s Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War? Perceptions, Prescriptions, Problems in the Congo and Beyond may well turn this belief on its head. Throughout this book, the authors use rich theoretical analysis, coupled with original fieldwork undertaken in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), to raise serious questions about both the focus on, and our understanding of, sexual violence as a weapon of war. They convincingly argue that although the prevailing narrative of rape as a gendered weapon of war has been both comforting in its appeal and revolutionary in its success in engaging many actors in working towards redress for the victims of war rape (p. 2), having such a dominant framework of analysis has meant that the voices and suffering of those that don’t quite fit into this limited model – victims, perpetrators, and others – are not considered at all. Importantly, the authors query the intense focus on sexual violence in conflict and argue that separating sexual from other forms of violence committed during war both fetishises and exceptionalises these particular acts in a way that dehumanises all involved. In the first chapter, ‘Sex/Gender Violence’, Maria Eriksson Baaz and Maria Stern consider the two main narratives of sexual violence in conflict: what the authors call the ‘Sexed’ Story and the ‘Gendered’ Story. The ‘Sexed’ Story is the older explanatory framework – often called the ‘sexual urge’ or ‘pressure cooker’ theory (p. 17) which assumes that (1) ‘wartime rape is a result of the sexual desires of men, resulting from their biological make up’ (p. 17) and (2) that ‘war suspends the social constraints that hinder men from being the sexual animals they naturally are/can be’ (p. 18). The ‘Gendered’ Story is the more recent understanding of rape in conflict – that instead of Book reviews

85 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: D'Costa as mentioned in this paper compared with the voluminous literature on the Partition of India, compared to the literature on gender and war crimes in South Asia, and found that women were disproportionately involved in war crimes.
Abstract: Nationbuilding, Gender and War Crimes in South Asia Bina D'Costa London and New York: Routledge, 2011 246 pp., US $130.00 (hbk) Compared with the voluminous literature on the Partition of India, th...

27 citations

References
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Book
01 Jan 2000
TL;DR: In this article, the idea of provincializing Europe and the Narration of Modernity is discussed, with a focus on postcoloniality and the artifice of history, and the two histories of capital and domestic cruelty.
Abstract: Acknowlegments ix Introduction: The Idea of Provincializing Europe 3 Part One: Historicism and the Narration of Modernity Chapter 1. Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History 27 Chapter 2. The Two Histories of Capital 47 Chapter 3. Translating Life-Worlds into Labor and History 72 Chapter 4. Minority Histories, Subaltern Pasts 97 Part Two: Histories of Belonging Chapter 5. Domestic Cruelty and the Birth of the Subject 117 Chapter 6. Nation and Imagination 149 Chapter 7. Adda: A History of Sociality 180 Chapter 8. Family, Fraternity, and Salaried labor 214 Epilogue. Reason and the Critique of Historicism 237 Notes 257 Index 299

3,940 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: In this paper, a research has been done on the essay "Can the Subaltern Speak" by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, which has been explained into much simpler language about what the author conveys for better understanding and further references.
Abstract: In the present paper a research has been done on the essay ‘Can the Subaltern Speak’ by’ Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’. It has been explained into much simpler language about what the author conveys for better understanding and further references. Also the criticism has been done by various critiques from various sources which is helpful from examination point of view. The paper has been divided into various contexts with an introduction and the conclusions. Also the references has been written that depicts the sources of criticism.

2,638 citations

Book
01 Jan 1967
TL;DR: Turner as mentioned in this paper presents a collection of ten essays dealing with various aspects of symbolism and ritual among the Ndembu of Zambia, Central Africa, and provides one of the few postwar studies sure to rank as an ethnographic classic.
Abstract: THIS is a collection of ten essays dealing with various aspects of symbolism and ritual among the Ndembu of Zambia, Central Africa. Nine have been published previously; the tenth—over a quarter of the text—is a new and richly detailed account of male initiation. The volume contains the greater part of Professor Turner's published work on religion. Using data of extraordinary richness, it presents some of the most provocative and suggestive theories recently advanced in the study of ritual behaviour and symbolism. Complemented by his earlier accounts of Ndembu social structure, this provides one of the few post-war studies sure to rank as an ethnographic classic. These essays were written over a period of ten years, and thus display a course of gradual analytical development. It is unfortunate that Professor Turner has made no attempt to consolidate his theories in the brief introduction; but the first chapter does present many of his central ideas so that the reader may follow the basic line of argument. Turner is concerned with two interdependent questions: (1) What are the peculiar properties of symbols which give them their enduring force in both the conception and the ritual enactment of moral values ? (2) What are the relations between symbolic behaviour and ideology and the broader problems of social relations ? In both his definition and his scheme for investigation Turner insists upon the essential ambiguity of symbols and of their associated ritual behaviour. For him, symbols condense and unify complex and disparate themes, synthesizing both ideological and sensory items through a process he terms polarization. Turner accounts for this by means of certain universal psycho-physiological processes through which socialization and ideation are effected in each individual. For him, the appetitive and sensory aspects of men are tamed in the interest of society. Psycho-physiological forces find expression through symbolic acts, yet are kept within socially safe bounds by the very formal structures which specific symbols involve. Thus, the moral code of society is vitalized by its association with sensory cues and libidinous urges; and these socially destructive urges of individuals are constrained within socially workable bounds, even as they are vented in repressed form. These repressed forms of expression account for further cathartic effects of ritual. The artifice of culture and ritual supports yet constrains chaotic, natural man according to a model parallel to the current work of LeVi-Strauss, though Turner's theories lead through Christian and Freudian channels rather than toward the former's own type of relativistic pessimism. Turner emphasizes symbols as expressions of forces; LeVi-Strauss emphasizes their nominal qualities but both see symbols as links between the natural and cultural aspects of men. Turner is more sophisticated psychologically and utilizes data with greater detail and reliability than LeVi-Strauss. On the other hand, he lacks appreciation of those logical and formal qualities which all symbolic systems also possess. We have a superb account of the detailed operation of Ndembu symbols within narrow ritual fields of action, but no broad account ofNdembu cosmology and its relation to any of these symbolic sub-systems.

2,058 citations


"Exploring the Backstage: Methodolog..." refers background in this paper

  • ...…accounts of relations between researchers brokers/ assistants come from anthropology (for early accounts see e.g., Griaule 1948, Powdermaker 1966, Turner 1967, Grindal and Salamone 1995), as explaining and qualifying social ties and relations with the field are part of what you are expected to…...

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Journal ArticleDOI
01 Oct 1974
TL;DR: The first Social Science Prize for social anthropology was given to Clifford Geertz for his significant contributions to social anthropology as mentioned in this paper, who was the first Professor of the Social Sciences at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton.
Abstract: At the Annual Meeting in May 1974, the American Academy awarded its first Social Science Prize to Clifford Geertz for his significant contributions to social anthropology. Mr. Geertz has taught at Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Chicago; in 1970 he became the first Professor of the Social Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Mr. Geertz' research has centered on the changing religious attitudes and habits of life of the Islamic peoples of Morocco and Indonesia; he is the author of Peddlers and Princes: Social Changes and Economic Modernization in Two Indonesian Towns (1963), The Social History of an Indonesian Town (1965), Islam Observed: Religious Developments in Morocco and Indonesia (1968), and a recent collection of essays, The Interpretation of Cultures (1973). In nominating Mr. Geertz for the award, the Academy's Social Science Prize Committee observed, "each of these volumes is an important contribution in its own right; together they form an unrivaled corpus in modern social anthropology and social sciences."

1,608 citations


"Exploring the Backstage: Methodolog..." refers background in this paper

  • ...…takes centre stage in research accounts as s/he reflects on his/her positionality and the ethical and methodological difficulties encountered (Barnes et al. 1966, Salamone 1977, Geertz 1983, Bleek 1987, Sluka 1995, Herbert 2001, Mandel 2003, Vlassenroot 2006, Venkatesh 2008, Luning 2013, Lee 2016)....

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Book
01 Jan 1977
TL;DR: Rabinow as mentioned in this paper describes a series of encounters with his informants in that study, from a French innkeeper clinging to the vestiges of a colonial past, to the rural descendants of a seventeenth-century saint.
Abstract: In this landmark study, now celebrating thirty years in print, Paul Rabinow takes as his focus the fieldwork that anthropologists do. How valid is the process? To what extent do the cultural data become artifacts of the interaction between anthropologist and informants? Having first published a more standard ethnographic study about Morocco, Rabinow here describes a series of encounters with his informants in that study, from a French innkeeper clinging to the vestiges of a colonial past, to the rural descendants of a seventeenth-century saint. In a new preface, Rabinow considers the thirty-year life of this remarkable book and his own distinguished career.

716 citations


"Exploring the Backstage: Methodolog..." refers background in this paper

  • ...…a large influence on the latters’ grids of intelligibility, shaping not only the way in which they make sense of certain phenomena, but also what they see in the first place (Rabinow 1977, Olivier de Sardan 1995, Metcalf 2002, Borchgrevink 2003, Paluck 2009, Turner 2010, 2013, Caretta 2015)....

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