Anthropology and Violence on the Frontlines - Menezes

Anthropology and Violence on the Frontlines 

CHAIRS: MILLER, Bruce (UBC) and BAINES, Stephen (U Brasilia) BAINES, Stephen (U Brasilia) Doing Front Line Ethnographic Research with Indigenous People in Roraima State, Brazil 

ARORA, Kamal (UBC) Clutching a Pink Can of Pepper Spray: Fieldwork under the Shadow of the Delhi Gangrape  NITSÀN, Tal (UBC) Anthropologists and the Front Lines of Gender-Based Violence 

MILLER, Bruce (UBC) Violence, Fissure Lines, and the Unexpected Insight 

MENEZES, Gustavo Hamilton de Sousa (FUNAi) Doing Field Work in Brazilian Prisons

 

ABSTRACT:

MILLER, Bruce (UBC) and BAINES, Stephen (U Brasilia) Anthropology and Violence on the Frontlines. This session concerns the experiences of anthropologists engaged in “front line” work in other disciplines—including such topics as work with indigenous peoples on borders, in prisons, and in violent settings. We ask, what features of this work are commonly unreported and yet influence our ability to access sites, raise our concerns about personal safety, and affect our theorizing and even our own sense of the role of the discipline? Examples include the indirect (threats in court to expert witnesses), the directly violent (attempts to kill and discredit an anthropologist working with those in opposition to dam development), among others. 

Session took place in Vancouver, B.C. Canada at the 76th Annual Meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology, March 29 - April 2, 2016.