( Youngs 2017 ), we are offering this topical special section to analyze protests through an ethnographic lens. Concentrating on power and performance, the articles consider the matrix within which the protests emerge—the time and space, the historic and
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Introduction
Performance, Power, Exclusion, and Expansion in Anthropological Accounts of Protests
Aet Annist
Jens Kreinath and Refika Sariönder
in both its constitutive parts and overall design, ranging from the modes of performance and participation to the intended audiences. As a response to different audiences in the environs of cities like Istanbul, there have been some collective
The Many Layers of Moral Outrage
Kurdish Activists and Diaspora Politics
Nerina Weiss
will provide a discussion on moral outrage, in which I particularly draw on literature of political rituals and performances. In doing so, I will highlight the importance of performative and expressive contexts in the study of emotions. It is in the
Color-Coded Sovereignty and the Men in Black
Private Security in a Bolivian Marketplace
Daniel M. Goldstein
The appearance of effective security making—demonstrated through surveillance, visibility, and ongoing performance—is significant to contemporary sovereign authority in urban spaces characterized by quotidian violence and crime. This article examines La Cancha, Cochabamba, Bolivia’s enormous outdoor market, which is policed not by the state but by private security firms that operate as nonstate sovereign actors in the space of the market. The article provides an ethnographic account of one of these firms (the Men in Black), and documents the work of both municipal and national police—all of them distinguished by differently colored uniforms—in the management of crime, administration of justice, and establishment of public order in the market. Sovereignty here is derived through public performance, both violent and nonviolent, through which the Men in Black demonstrate and maintain their sovereign power.
Introduction
Doing Ritual While Thinking about It?
Emma Gobin
reflexivity’ and the role they play in the formal economy of ritual performance have remained largely unexamined. In drawing on various empirical case studies to address these issues, this collection of articles proceeds from the idea that the reflexive
Introduction
Ethnographies of Private Security
Erella Grassiani and Tessa Diphoorn
articles that depict how these actors operate in particular localities—for example, Daniel Goldstein’s (2015) analysis of the performance of local sovereignty in Bolivia, Erella Grassiani and Lior Volinz’s (2015) piece on how policing (re
The Religious Foundations of Capoeira Angola
The Cosmopolitics of an Apparently Non-religious Practice
Sergio González Varela
circle called a roda ( Lewis 1992 ). Other capoeira players typically help the audience form the circle, and advanced practitioners are the ones in charge of playing the live music that accompanies the performance. Depending on styles, different
Assessing and Adapting Rituals That Reproduce a Collectivity
The Large-Scale Rituals of the Repkong Tantrists in Tibet
Nicolas Sihlé
In discussions on processes of ritual assessment and modification, the rituals examined are most often of a ‘performance-centered’ nature. 1 I am drawing here on Atkinson’s (1989: 14–15) useful distinction between ‘liturgy-centered’ and
Eluding the Esculacho
A Masculinities Perspective on the Enduring Warrior Ethos of Rio de Janeiro's Police
Celina Myrann Sørbøe
both in the police culture and in the favela. I thus situate the warrior ethos as a masculine performance shaped by gendered role expectations in the organizational, occupational, and street-working environment of the police. With this emphasis on the
“There Was No Genocide in Rwanda”
History, Politics, and Exile Identity among Rwandan Rebels in the Eastern Congo Conflict
Anna Hedlund
This article analyzes how the 1994 genocide in Rwanda is recalled and described by members of a Hutu rebel group, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) whose leadership can be linked to the 1994 atrocities in Rwanda. The article explores how individuals belonging to this rebel group, currently operating in the eastern territories of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), articulate, contest, and oppose the dominant narrative of the Rwandan genocide. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with members of the FDLR in a rebel camp, this article shows how a community of exiled fighters and second-generation Hutu refugees contest the official version of genocide by constructing a counterhistory of it. Through organized practices such as political demonstrations and military performances, it further shows how political ideologies and violence are being manufactured and reproduced within a setting of military control.