Violence ethnographic encounters

Violence

Encounters: Experience and Anthropological Knowledge
ISSN: 1746-8175

Series Editor: John Borneman
Encounters: Experience and Anthropological Knowledge is a series that examines
fieldwork experiences of contemporary anthropologists. It aims to render into
vivid and accessible prose the insights gained from fieldwork on topics such as
money, violence, sex and food. These shortcollections of essays are committed to:
G
G
G

the subjective quality of sensual experience, tied to a particular time and place;
curiosity in difference itself, in translating the strange, foreign or unassimilable;
storytelling that contributes both to the documentary function of the ethnographic encounter and to analytical potential.
Previously published in this series:
Money:Ethnographic Encounters
Edited by Stefan Senders and Allison Truit

Violence
Ethnographic Encounters
Edited by
Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi

Oxford • New York

English edition
First published in 2009
Berg
Editorial offices:
1st Floor, Angel Court, 81 St Clements Street, Oxford OX4 1AW, UK
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA
© Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi 2009
All rights reserved.
No part ofthis publication may be reproduced in any form
or by any means without the written permission of Berg.
Berg is the imprint of Oxford International Publishers Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Violence : ethnographic encounters / edited by Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-84788-416-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN978-1-84788-417-6
(cloth : alk. paper) 1. Violence. 2. Ethnology—Fieldwork. 3. Political
violence. 4. Ethnic conflict. I. Ghassem-Fachandi, Parvis.
GN495.2.V555 2009
305.8—dc22
2009021840

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 84788 417 6 (Cloth)
978 1 84788 416 9 (Paper)
Typeset by Avocet Typeset,Chilton, Aylesbury, Bucks
Printed in the United Kingdom by MPG Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn

www.bergpublishers.com

Contents

Notes on Contributors
Foreword
Acknowledgements

Introduction
Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi

vii
x
xii

1

1 Written on My Body
Billie Jean Isbell

15

2 Bandh in Ahmedabad
Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi

35

3 Fieldwork and Fear in Iraqi Kurdistan
Diane E.King

51

4 The Sense of War Songs
Bilinda Straight

71

5 Sleeping with One Eye Open
Kristen Drybread

79

6 A Hell of a Party
Brenda Maiale

97

7 Arriving in Jewish Buenos Aires
Natasha Zaretsky

107

8 Dreamwork and Punishment in Lebanon
John Borneman

119

9 Unwelcomed and Unwelcoming Encounters
Annarose Pandey

135

vi • Contents
10 Guide to FurtherReading
Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi

145

Bibliography

157

Index

163

Notes on Contributors

John Borneman teaches anthropology at Princeton University. He has done fieldwork in Germany, Central Europe, Syria, and Lebanon and has published widely
on issues of kinship, sexuality, nationality, justice and political form. His most
recent ethnographic study is Syrian Episodes: Sons,Fathers, and an Anthropologist in Aleppo (2007).
Kristen Drybread teaches anthropology at Columbia University, where she
recently completed her Ph.D. In addition to studying relationships between incarceration, identity, masculinity and justice among male prisoners in a Brazilian
juvenile detention facility, she has conducted research on issues of immigration,
nationality, human rights, and childhoodsocialization. She has conducted ethnographic research in Indonesia, Brazil and, most recently, in New York City. Grants
from the Wenner-Gren, Fulbright Hays, Firestone, and Woodrow Wilson
Foundations made possible her field research in Brazil.
Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi teaches in the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers
University in New Jersey. Born in the divided former West Berlin, he...