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Marginalia and Structural Violence in Past Societies
Benjamin W. Porter
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08540
Email: bwporter@princeton.edu
How does structural violence motivate the creation and circulation of marginalia in past societies? Marginalia -- regimes of peoples, objects, and ideas found at or near the limits of our analytical, or our subjects’ cognitive, awareness -- has persisted as a popular, although conflicting keyterm in scholarly discourse. Policy makers understand the marginal to equal the non-normative and the disadvantaged, while critical theorists recognize the hybrid cultural production that takes place in marginal spaces. This possibly irresolvable tension provides a productive entrance into an archaeology of marginalia.
This session will therefore take-up the conference theme of structural violence through an examination of the mechanics of marginality. Twenty-minute papers are invited that address one or a combination of the following questions: How does structural violence create and maintain boundaries between dominant and marginal regimes of social life? What are the varieties of social life in marginal conditions? How do marginalized groups reorganize themselves to meet the unique demands of environmental, economic, or political conditions? Do these configurations remain shadowy versions of normative practices? Or are new ways of co-existence fostered? How do non-human agents promote or help overcome structural violence in marginal conditions? How is cultural knowledge – science, magic, and technology, for instance – received, resisted, or developed on the margins?
This session encourages scholars to adjust or suspend their well-tuned theoretical and methodological assumptions that govern the discipline’s search for normative social “facts” in ancient societies. Recognizing that marginalia are not guided by structural dichotomies of core and periphery, urban and rural, elite and non-elite is one important step. Maintaining a suspicious stance towards text-artifacts is another, as language and writing do not always recognize marginal cultural phenomena.
Participants should submit a title, a 200-word abstract, and contact information to Benjamin Porter at bwporter@princeton.edu. A selection of papers will be published soon after the conference.
The Bones of Our Ancestors: The Treatment of Human Remains as a Mechanism for Tolerance or for Intolerance.
Jon Price
Northumbria University
Ellison Place
Newcastle upon Tyne,
NE1 8ST
United Kingdom
+44 (0)191.232.7763
Jon.Price@unn.ac.uk
The issue of violent conflict carried out through responses to heritage are clearest when we examine the treatment of the cultural heritage of the dead. The desecration of tombs and cemeteries, or the restoration of desecrated tombs and cemeteries is a common manifestation of conflict, from the lowest intensity of social conflict to the highest intensity of warfare. In addition death is a normal and typical outcome of conflict, and the procedures and structures put in place to deal with war dead, or the civilian victims of conflict, are generally cultural heritage statements which often represent a continuation of conflict in a passive-aggressive way.
The dead bodies of loyal soldiers or war victims are integrated in memorial statements of political intent. Even in cemeteries where no violence is committed on the living bodies of the enemy, the dead bodies of the enemies or their ancestors may be used in a way which may have the effect, intentionally or otherwise, of doing violence to conventions of respect.
Civilian graves are excavated by the military to justify their own presence as liberators, or in the quest to bring stated war criminals to justice. Memorials and war graves created to maintain a political presence or to make a political statement are subsequently desecrated and re-dedicated in reflection of modern political conflicts which may or may not be related to the original wars. Civilian cemeteries are desecrated by vandals, or destroyed during development.
In all these areas archaeologists are engaged or implicated. Forensic archaeologists work to identify the identity and fate of individuals in mass burials. Conservators work to repair and replace damaged memorials. Archaeologists carry out pre-development exploration which is used to justify or to hinder development plans. Can archaeologists engaged in these projects work towards toleration, or is their work always likely to reinforce intolerance and facilitate further aggression?
Papers:
The Appropriation of Military War Dead for Political Purposes
Jon Price
Northumbria University
Jon.Price@unn.ac.uk
Using mainly the example of the Great War (1914-19) this paper will address the issues of how the burial and memorialisation of the dead is or is not controlled, how this reflects national and establishment position and control, and how the dead are appropriated by these groups for the purpose of perpetuating or justifying conflict. This process will be examined as a continuum, starting during the conflict, but continuing as a factor right through to the present day. Examples will include the post war treatment of African dead in Africa; and the re-appropriation of the British Imperial Army dead from present day Britain, India and Pakistan, after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The paper will then touch on the appropriation of the dead from more recent and current conflict, and the response from affected descendant individuals or groups to this appropriation. Finally the example of the Western Front will be used to show how in Europe, despite this appropriation, the continuing recovery, by archaeologists, of war dead from the comparatively recent conflict of the Great War, can become a focus for tolerance and cooperation rather than intolerance and conflict.
From Narrative to Dialogue – Bridging the "Bridging Narrative" Divide
Robert R. Sauders
Assistant Professor
Departments of Anthropology, Geography & History
Eastern Washington University
103 Isle Hall
Cheney, WA 99004
Telephone (509) 359-7904
Email: rsauders@ewu.edu
For decades, Israeli and Palestinian communities have been locked in a persistent struggle to control the construction of the past for their particular national, cultural, ethnic and religious legitimization goals. In response, Israeli New Historians have called for a conscious historiographic effort to connect these conflicting narratives as a prerequisite for overcoming ideological forms of structural violence and fostering reconciliation between Israeli and Palestinian communities. This ‘bridging narrative’ is accomplished by communicating the narrative of one party to members of the other in order to resist and reverse the delegitimizing and dehumanizing narratives that are all too common in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. While the bridging narrative concept has attempted to span the ideological gap between Israeli and Palestinian historical and cultural heritage accounts, is has largely proven unsuccessful in creating the conditions for true reconciliation.
In practice, the bridging narratives have typically taken the form of strictly intra-communal reconstructions of history that are then communicated as ‘narrative’ to external communities in the hope that the reconciliation effort will be both self-evident and successful. However, too often these narratives become mired in political rhetoric and machinations which fundamentally neutralize their conciliatory potential. A possible alternative to the unilateral nature of the bridging narrative is a collaborative process of fostering ‘bridging dialogues’ where communities in conflict attempt to jointly build histories and accounts of the contested past.
Cosmopolitanism and Subtextual Archaeology
Sandra Scham
sandrascham@hotmail.com
It might be said that the "old" cosmopolitanism, that envisioned originally by Diogenes and handed down to successor claimants to western civilization, created archaeology in the Middle East. Certainly, Victorian explorers like Burton, Lawrence, Bell, etc. who fancied themselves devoted to Eastern Civilizations, all the while denigrating and aiding in the destruction of the social and political fabric of these cultures, believed themselves to be "citizens of the world." Recently, a more credible claimant to that title, the African-European-American scholar Kwame Anthony Appiah, has stepped forward with a new vision of cosmopolitanism, which he has labeled "Ethics in a World of Strangers."
Rather than an argument for universalism, multi-culturalism or globalization Appiah's cosmopolitanism has, at its heart, a message for anthropologists and archaeologists. Often our notions about preservation and authenticity are based upon a concept of cultural difference that is bounded and that fails to admit diversity on its own terms. In order to adjust this view we must reflect upon, and for the most part reject, the perspectives that have sustained us for so long. The tacit acknowledgment that many of us have already made that the lineage of our discipline is not a noble one is only a first step. In exploring how far some of our ideas about the past in the Middle East may have moved our governments and institutions inexorably toward the untenable present, we need to look at the ways in which the archaeology of this region has been taught, how its sites and material culture have been handled and what happens to the communities surrounding our sites while we work there and afterwards.
As a major contributor to values and perceptions formed both there and abroad, traditional archaeology of the Middle East has, and continues to have, clear subtexts relating to almost every aspect of practice in the region and it is these subtexts that determine what is conveyed about its narrative. Anthropologists believe that they have rejected these subtexts but, as a discipline in which data is of immense importance, we continue to depend upon the knowledge produced in the past, condemning our forebears for their lack of technological expertise more than for their criminal disregard for the people they worked among. Thus, however we may reject them, the "biblical" versus "Near Eastern" versus "Middle Eastern" past continue to surface with radically conflicting versions of the same archaeological record adjusted for different audiences. The depiction of the "cosmopolitan" past is an adjustment that has yet to be made.
Among the questions we might explore in considering the relevance of cosmopolitanism to the issue of overcoming structural violence this session will consider the following:
1) True cosmopolitanism connotes ideas of both tolerance and hospitality. It would be difficult to find two values that have been more misunderstood, taken advantage of and mischaracterized by Westerners in the Middle East than these. Even though this misunderstanding may not be one that is shared by the archaeologist, does it nonetheless affects our dealings with both foreign institutions and communities? What specific actions might be taken to change this?
2) Archaeologists do not easily accept the role of guests in the countries in which they work but are they, nonetheless, obligated by the particular values that being a guest implies? Reciprocity is an important part of hospitality—what constitutes reciprocity and how far do our obligations, for example, to contribute to the local economy extend?
3) The academic constructs of "our" cultures and "our" sites are more than just a shorthand way of describing the work we do. Does this suggest that the Victorian sense of confronting an "exotic" culture that, nevertheless, belongs to us continues to bring us to work in the East? In our acceptance of this do we perpetuate and support the attempts of Western politicians and religious leaders to affix the region and its people to a moment in time when we believed ourselves to be in more control over them?
4) How should a "cosmopolitan conversation," that is, one that is neither consensus-seeking nor didactic, take place with the people we work among, who endure our presence and offer us hospitality? Under what circumstances could this conversation take place?
5) Much of our Western education has taught us that an admission of uncertainty is a poor basis upon which to begin a discussion related to work. Appiah suggests, however, that this quality, which he calls fallibilism, is the basis for a real cosmopolitan conversation. What are the psychological, social and cultural barriers to achieving fallibilism?
Looting, Landscape and Law
M.M. Kersel and Y.M. Rowan
ymrowan@hotmail.com -or- mokersel@hotmail.com
This session will ask participants to examine the intersections of looting, the archaeological landscape and law. Looting of archaeological landscapes occurs throughout the world and is motivated by a variety of factors, but the underpinning commonality is that looting is an act of destruction: it destroys the cultural legacy of past societies, it destroys archaeological context, it destroys the possibility of richer cultural heritage reconstructions and it can destroy the pride of a populace in their past. In order to counter the effects of looting, governing bodies – both local and global – institute legal initiatives, but these are often unsuccessful for a variety of reasons. Looting, collecting, and the market for antiquities are components of an international economic system that combines legal and illicit aspects.
Many have vested interests in the perpetuation of looting in order to feed the demand for antiquities. Recognizing the deleterious effects of looting, most states have implemented national laws which protect their archaeological resources, or have signed international conventions designed to create cooperative agreements between market nations and those rich in archaeological resources. Can legal restrictions work to protect the cultural heritage of a country or region, or are market forces too strong to overcome the incentives to loot? Do market nations perpetuate looting through weak laws and ineffectual political support for international conventions and reciprocal agreements? Are inadequate policies and laws an additional component of deeply embedded structural inequities that privilege the interests of powerful industrial nations over those of economically disadvantaged nation states? In this session participants present case studies and discussions about looting: the effects of such practices, creative solutions to looting, the efficacy of laws (local, national and international), and efforts to ameliorate the destruction of the landscape.
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