Abstracts Category : Other

Violence: Anthropological perspectives on violence

by Sigrur Brandsdttir Halldra

This thesis will examine the phenomenon of violence from the perspective of anthropology. Violence is a large and complex subject and is a phenomenon that occurs in many forms historically and cross-culturally. Violence perhaps does not receive the same level of attention as it does in other disciplines such as psychology and sociology. Nevertheless, violence is a notable theme in ethnographic research and anthropologists have produced some significant work in this area, particularly pertaining to the relationship between violence, culture, and social organization. Violence is a complex phenomenon understood in different ways, context, and scales, and potentially encompasses everything from domestic abuse to street crime to state-level warfare thus making it challenging for this thesis to fully exhaust the subject. As such, the thesis will be focused rather than attempting to be exhaustive. The thesis will be organised on the basis of examining some influential and classic early work, mainly from sociology, followed by some anthropological works on violence which have become classics in their own right, to conclude with a review of some important contemporary research and a discussion about the responsibility of anthropologists working in violent spaces. Ritgerin fjallar um ofbeldi fr sjnarhorni mannfrinnar. Ofbeldi er vfemt og flki vifangsefni sem birtist msan htt, meal annars, vegna sgu- og fjlmenningarlegra hrifatta. Ofbeldi fr ef til vill ekki smu athygli mannfrinni eins og a gerir rum frgreinum svo sem slfri og flagsfri. Engu a sur er ofbeldi kveinn ttur jfrilegum rannsknum og mannfringar hafa lagt fram verulega vinnu essu svii, einkum varandi sambandi milli ofbeldis, menningar, og flagslegrar stofnunar. Ofbeldi er flki fyrirbri sem hgt er a skilja mismunandi vegu, mismunandi samhengi og mismunandi mlikvara, en ofbeldi nr allt fr heimilisofbeldi til gtuglpa og til hernaar. a er v erfitt a gera vifangsefninu tmandi skil, en ritgerin leggur v herslu kvena tti ofbeldis fremur en a vera tmandi. Ritgerin er uppbygg me hlisjn af v a skoa nokkur hrifamikil og klasssk eldri verk, aallega r flagsfri, samt nokkrum klassskum mannfriverkum um ofbeldi, en lkur me yfirliti yfir mikilvgar samtmarannsknir og umru um byrg mannfringa sem starfa ofbeldissvum.