Striving in the Path of God: Discursive Traditions on Jihad and the Cult of Martyrdom

Asma Afsaruddin, Classics, Notre Dame University

Research Grant, 2001

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My research project is focused primarily on a specific genre in Arabic-Islamic literature known as fasda’il al-jihad (“excellences or merits of striving/struggling [in the path of God]”). The prophetic and other kinds of reports contained in this literature will be adduced as evidence in favor of the thesis that the understanding of jihad in the Islamic tradition as primarily “armed struggle/combat” is a late one, which developed out of an earlier matrix of multiple and competing meanings of the term. Furthermore, the cult of martyrdom it engendered developed in response to specific historical and political circumstances. Among these circumstances are the continuing border skirmishes with the Byzantines in the Umayyad period (661–750), the Crusades and the Mongol attacks from the 11th century on, all hostile encounters which prompted the rise of this hortatory literature to galvanize a perhaps-reluctant populace to stave off external threats to Islam.

The Qur'an, the earliest document in Islam, alludes to a multiplicity of meanings for the locution "al-jihad fi sabil Allah," (lit. "striving/struggling in the path of/for the sake of God").

The reasons for propounding the relatively late and historically conditioned development of the notion of jihad as primarily armed combat that creates martyrs for the faith are compelling. Most importantly, the Qur’an, the earliest document in Islam, alludes to a multiplicity of meanings for the locution “al-jihad fi sabil Allah,” (lit. “striving/struggling in the path of/for the sake of God”). Furthermore, the Qur’an has no term for a martyr nor a well-developed concept of martyrdom, which is a necessary corollary to the notion of jihad as religious military activity. The term shahid that is understood today to refer to a martyr occurs only in the hadith literature; in the Qur’an it refers exclusively to a legal or eye witness. Proceeding from this thesis, my study will go on to contextualize the evolution and invocation of this hortatory discourse; that is, to explore why and when this literature was produced, what were the external and internal influences shaping the contours of this discourse, and what bearing does that have on tracing the complex semantic and ideological history of the term and functions of jihad. Considerable attention will be paid to sources such as the related “excellences of patience” (fada’il al-sabr) literature, which documents “alternate” views of jihad as quietism that emphasizes cultivation of the trait of patient forbearance in the face of trials. This approach promises to considerably nuance and transform our current state of knowledge concerning early and competitive perspectives on jihad.

Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa

Adam Ashforth, Political Science, Baruch College, City University of New York

Research Grant, 1998, 1999

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The HFG research and subsequent book, Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa, is an attempt to think about the implications of pervasive spiritual insecurity for the postapartheid democratic state in South Africa. It seeks to chart the contours of danger and uncertainty arising from people’s relations with invisible forces acting in the world, to examine how awareness of these dangers and uncertainty about how to manage them shapes everyday social life. It also raises questions about the ways in which spiritual insecurity complicates the project of democratic governance. The raw material upon which it is based is mostly drawn from my experience of life in Soweto during the 1990s, the decade when apartheid died and democracy was born in South Africa. Shadowing every page is the imperative of thinking about the cultural consequences of the AIDS pandemic in Africa.

For most South Africans, certainly the vast majority of those who call themselves “Africans,” everyday life is shadowed by an apprehension of dangers commonly summarized under the general rubric of “witchcraft,” a term describing the putative capacities of persons to cause harm to others or accumulate illicit wealth and power for themselves by means of mysterious invisible forces. In African communities, illness, death, accidents, poverty, and all the other manifestations of unhappiness in human life cause people to wonder whether witchcraft is at work. When these misfortunes are surmised to be the result of witchcraft, they are perceived as being injuries, harms deliberately inflicted by others. People living in a world of witches, such as most Black South Africans, devote an enormous amount of money, time, and energy to protecting themselves from witchcraft and trying to undo the damage caused by witches. Witchcraft is a fact of life. It impinges upon every aspect of life creating a condition I describe as one of spiritual insecurity.

Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa is organized into three sections. The first deals with the sociology of insecurity in Soweto and examines how issues of spiritual insecurity relate to other dimensions of insecurity such as those arising from poverty, violence, and disease. It charts some of the ways changes in social life in Soweto over the past decades such as increasing socioeconomic inequality, declining community solidarity, and the AIDS epidemic have played into, and played out as, matters of spiritual insecurity. It describes some aspects of life in a world with witches, particularly the presumption of malice in everyday community life, which constitutes what I describe as a negative corollary of the doctrine of ubuntu, or African humanism.

I examine some aspects of the transformations of spiritual power affording protection to individuals, families, and communities that have taken place in this part of the world as a result of Christian evangelization and changes in family life and political structures that have tended to undermine ideologies of "ancestorship."

Part One ends with a meditation upon the implications of believing in witchcraft at the start of the twenty-first century and argues that contemporary Sowetans generally approach issues of witchcraft with a sense that it is better not to believe in witches. Part One also argues that issues of spiritual insecurity in a place like Soweto should be approached from the perspective of “not-knowing,” that is, a recognition of the confusion that surrounds these matters in everyday life rather than a presumption of coherent “systems of belief” shared by communities of believers.

Part Two begins a discussion of the ways in which people in contemporary Soweto interpret and attempt to manage the invisible forces they experience as acting upon their lives. The central point this section considers is the nature of the various agencies that people interact with, agencies inherent in substances, objects, images, persons, and spirits or other invisible entities. When people worry about witchcraft in Soweto, they almost always worry about other persons interacting with substances known generically as muthi, and they seek protection from these dangers by reference to invisible beings such as ancestors, spirits, and deities (predominantly the triune Christian God) as well as other material substances also known as muthi.

The central aim of Part Two is to develop an understanding of how statements about witchcraft and other forms of harm involving invisible forces can be taken as plausible accounts of the world. This involves consideration of the ways people interpret the agency of substances and what I am calling the dialectics of health and harm implicit in the category muthi. Substances with agency, however, are not the only sources of harmful invisible forces. In Chapter Seven I describe the dangers inherent in polluting substances generically known as dirt, particularly those associated with death. Following these discussions of the dangers inherent in substances, I examine some aspects of the transformations of spiritual power affording protection to individuals, families, and communities that have taken place in this part of the world as a result of Christian evangelization and changes in family life and political structures that have tended to undermine ideologies of “ancestorship.” Part Two ends with a meditation upon some of the vulnerabilities and capacities of invisible aspects of the human person such as copying a fetus’s animating spirit to create a monster, “hijacking the mind” of a person in order to lead them to their own destruction, and gaining control of another’s innermost desires.

Part Three raises issues relating to spiritual insecurity as they manifest themselves in the domain of the state and present challenges for democratic governance. Principal amongst these is the problem of justice arising from the fact that witchcraft is a form of harm deliberately inflicted upon an innocent victim. I consider recent calls to reform the laws relating to witchcraft dating from the colonial era so as to recognize the reality of witchcraft, a reality treated as axiomatic by most Africans. Efforts to bring witchcraft cases into the formal legal system, however, run into irresolvable problems of evidence since the action of witchcraft is secret and known only to perpetrators and diviners. But divination involves forms of knowledge that are incompatible with the evidentiary principles underpinning the modern state.

Bibliography

1. Ashforth, Adam. Madumo, A Man Bewitched. Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 2000.

2. Ashforth, Adam. Witchcraft, Violence, and Democracy in South Africa. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2004.

Provisional Irish Republicans: Ten Years On

Robert W. White, Sociology, Indiana University

Research Grant, 1996, 1997

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The primary finding from my research is that, among Irish Republicans, there is a group of people who, no matter what, will not stop their involvement in political violence until they achieve the political goal they seek. That is, until, in their minds, they have achieved a declaration of intent from the British government to withdraw from Northern Ireland.

Most of the people who live in Ireland view themselves as “Irish” people. Traditionally, they tend to be Catholic. A significant number of people who live in Ireland, however, view themselves as British in origin. These are the descendants of settlers who “planted” Ireland in the seventeenth century, and they tend to be Protestant in their religion. The conflict in Ireland is not about religion, but rather ethnic identity. From the beginning of the English conquest of Ireland, in the twelfth century, there has been conflict between “natives” and “invaders.” When Ireland was partitioned in 1920, the partition was implemented such that a majority of those living in the Irish Free State (now the Republic) were Catholic and a majority of those living in Northern Ireland were Protestant. This compounded the perspective that the conflict is over religion. Successive British governments have supported this interpretation, which also supports their interpretation that the British Army in Northern Ireland is a neutral peacekeeping force.

The primary finding from my research is that, among Irish Republicans, there is a group of people who, no matter what, will not stop their involvement in political violence until they achieve the political goal they seek.

From the 1920s, when the Irish Republican Army forced the British to withdraw from that area of Ireland where most people viewed themselves as Irish, there has been either open or soon-to-be open conflict between those who seek a full British withdrawal from Ireland and those who do not. This includes IRA campaigns from 1939 to 1945, 1956 to 1962, the Provisional IRA campaign from 1969 to 1994 and 1996 to 1997, and the current paramilitary campaign by the Continuity IRA (there have also been splinter groups that engaged in Irish Republican political violence, e.g., the Irish National Liberation Army). The primary target of these campaigns has been the security forces in Northern Ireland, including the British Army and local police forces. A large number of civilians have also been killed, by Republican paramilitaries, Protestant paramilitaries, and the security forces.

A key feature of all these Irish Republican organizations is that among their founders, especially with respect to the Provisional IRA and the Continuity IRA (which were founded by the same people), are individuals who are the children of a previous generation of IRA fighters. How these people were raised, who these people are, greatly influences their perspective. Many of them have suffered significant personal costs, either through their parents, themselves, or their children, in pursuit of the “Irish Republic.” To ask them to quit, to accept that the British will always remain in Ireland, is to ask them to not be who they are, their raison d’être. Further, the socialization that produced these people also provided them with an interpretation of Irish history that offers a wealth of evidence that their perspective—that the British will not leave Ireland unless they are forced to so do—is correct. The people described are politically sophisticated; they are not alienated, lost souls or people driven by spite or hatred. This makes them that much more difficult to deal with, from the perspective of a government.

Further, it would appear that people who, no matter what, will not give up the gun until their objective is achieved are present in many politically violent social movements, including the PLO, the ANC, and ETA. Such people keep the “dream” alive across generations.

Bibliography

1. Stryker, S., Owens, T. J., & White, R. W. (2000). Self, Identity, and Social Movements. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Economies of Violence: Petroleum, Politics and Community in the Niger Delta, Nigeria

Michael Watts, International Studies, University of California, Berkeley

Research Grant, 2002

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Petroleum in Nigeria has produced a combustible politics marked by violence. Rather than see oil-dependency as a source of predation or as a source of state military power, this research shows how oil capitalism produces particular sorts of enclave economies and particular sorts of governable spaces characterized by violence and instability. While the biophysical qualities of oil matter in this analysis, so do the powers of transnational oil companies, the character of “the oil complex,” and the ways in which oil as a territorially based and nationalized commodity can become the basis for making claims. Petrocapitalism operates through a particular sort of “oil” (a configuration of oil firms, the state, and oil-producing communities). The complex is strongly territorial, operating through local oil concessions. The presence and activities of the oil companies as part of the oil complex constitute a challenge to forms of community authority, interethnic relations, and local state institutions principally through the property and land disputes that are engendered, and through forms of popular mobilization and agitation to gain access to company rents and compensation revenues, and the oil revenues of the Nigerian state, largely through the creation of regional and/or local state institutions. The oil complex generates differing sorts of “governable spaces” in which contrasting identities and forms of rule come into play. In some cases youth and intergenerational forces are key; in some cases gender, in others the clan or the kingdom or the ethnic minority (or indigenous peoples), in some cases local chiefly or governmental authorities, and the forces of the local state. A striking aspect of contemporary development in Nigeria is the simultaneous production of differing forms of rule and governable space—different politics of scale—all products of similar forces and yet which work against, and often stand in direct contradiction to one another.

This research shows how oil capitalism produces particular sorts of enclave economies and particular sorts of governable spaces characterized by violence and instability.

This project focuses on three spaces: on chieftainship, the indigene or ethnic minority, and the nation. These social idioms are inseparable from oil, but their forms of identification and the robustness of their spaces are often incompatible. Standing at the center of each governable space is a contradiction: at the level of the oil-producing chieftainship, the overthrowing of gerontocratic authority and its substitution by a sort of violent mafia constituted by militant youth. At the level of the ethnic community is the tension between civic nationalism and a sort of exclusivist militant particularism (a sort of aggressive ethnonationalism). And at the level of the nation, one sees the contradiction between oil-based state centralization and state fragmentation, as oil becomes a sort of generalized equivalent put to the service of massive corruption. It is in this sense that the research invokes the idea of “economies of violence” to characterize rule (stable and unstable) in contemporary Nigeria. This project traces the varieties of violence engendered by oil, to elaborate the ways in which resources, territoriality and identity can constitute forms of rule, and understand the genesis of economies of violence that emerge from differing sorts of governable (or ungovernable) spaces.

The Association of Polymorphisms in Genes affecting Monoamine Neurotransmission with Aggressive Behavior in Schizophrenic Violent Individuals

Rael Strous, Psychiatry, Beer Yaakov Mental Health Center

Research Grant, 2000, 2001

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Violence remains an important sociobiological problem, and is reported to affect approximately 3.7% of the population each year. In the mentally ill, the prevalence of violent behavior is higher that in the general population. The etiology of violence in the general population, as well as in the mentally ill, is poorly understood, but there are very likely common biological and genetic factors that play a role. This international collaborative study intended to focus on the genetic aspects of violence, investigating polymorphic differences in genes that influence catecholaminergic neurotransmitter systems in the brain.

Considering the wealth of research demonstrating an association between these monoamine neurotransmitter systems and aggression, polymorphic differences in the genes that affect monoamine transmission may play a role in human aggression. Our team has identified a common functional polymorphism at COMT codon 158. The COMT enzyme inactivates catecholamines by catalyzing S-adenosyl-L-methionine dependent methyl conjugation. This polymorphism results in substantial differences in enzyme activity. One allele encodes a methionine at codon 158 (158Met) and the other allele a valine (158Val). 158Val homozygotes have 3- to 4-fold higher levels of activity than 158Met homozygotes.

This investigation confirmed previous evidence by our group showing a relationship between a polymorphism in the gene encoding the enzyme catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) and aggression in schizophrenia.

The COMT polymorphism has since been investigated as a possible contributing factor in several psychiatric and behavioral conditions. This investigation confirmed previous evidence by our group showing a relationship between a polymorphism in the gene encoding the enzyme catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) and aggression in schizophrenia. Patients with schizophrenia (SZ) were assessed for violent behavior using the Lifetime History of Aggression (LHA) scale, an 11-item questionnaire that includes Aggression, Self-Directed Aggression, and Consequences/Antisocial Behavior subscales. DNA was genotyped for the COMT 158 polymorphism, as well as a functional polymorphism in the monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) gene promoter. Similar to our previously reported findings, a statistically significant association was found between aggressive behavior in SZ and the COMT 158 polymorphism; mean LHA scores were higher in subjects homozygous for 158Met, the low enzyme activity COMT variant (F(2,105) = 5.616, P = 0.005). Analysis of the major LHA subscales revealed that the association with 158Met was due to high scores on the Aggression and Self-Directed Aggression subscales, but not the Consequences/Antisocial Behavior subscale. No significant association was detected for the MAOA gene alone.

Our findings provide further support that COMT is a modifying gene that plays a role in determining interindividual variability in the proclivity for outward and self-directed aggressive behavior found in some schizophrenic patients. Considering the role of dopamine in schizophrenia and the finding that dopamine agonists provoke aggressive behavior, an increase in dopaminergic transmission caused by COMT 158Met is a possible mechanism through which this allele can act. In the context of preexisting prefrontal abnormalities in schizophrenia caused by genetic, developmental and/or environmental factors, 158Met homozygosity may lead to an increase in prefrontal dopamine with an increased propensity for impulsive, violent behavior in schizophrenia.

Bibliography

1. Rael, Strous. Aggressive behavior in schizophrenia is associated with the low enzyme activity COMT polymorphism: A replication study. Am J Med Genet. 2003;120B:29-34). (July 2003) American Journal of Medical Genetics (Strous RD, Nolan KA, Lapidus R, Diaz L, Saito T, Lachman HM).

The Carjacker’s Perspective: A Qualitative Study of Urban Violence

Richard Wright, Criminology, University of Missouri-St. Louis

Research Grant, 2000

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With the exception of homicide, perhaps no offense is more symbolic of contemporary urban violence than carjacking. Carjacking, the taking of a motor vehicle by force or threat of force, has attained almost mythical status in the annals of urban violence and has played a substantial role in fueling the fear of crime that keeps people off of their own streets. But for all of the media attention carjacking has received in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere, it remains a poorly understood and underresearched crime. In an attempt to rectify this situation, we conducted a field-based study of the decision-making of active carjackers in real-life settings and circumstances, focusing on, among other things, the subjective foreground conditions that move such offenders from an unmotivated state to one in which they are determined to attack a specific vehicle and/or driver. Drawing from semistructured ethnographic interviews with twenty-eight active carjackers recruited from the streets of St. Louis, Missouri, we found that while the decision to commit any given carjacking stems most directly from a situated interaction between particular sorts of perceived opportunities and particular sorts of perceived needs and desires, this decision is activated, mediated, and shaped by ongoing participation in urban street culture.

We found that while the decision to commit any given carjacking stems most directly from a situated interaction between particular sorts of perceived opportunities and particular sorts of perceived needs and desires, this decision is activated, mediated, and shaped by ongoing participation in urban street culture.

Bibliography

1. Jacobs, B., Topalli, V. and Wright, R. (in press) "Carjacking, Streetlife, and Offender Motivation," British Journal of Criminology, Vol. 43, No. 4.

2. Topalli, V. and Wright, R. (in press) Dubs and Dees, Beats and Rims. In Dabney, D., Criminal Behavior: A Text Reader, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Intrahousehold Income Inequality and Conflict: Testing an Economic Model of Domestic Violence in Kerala, India

Kaivan Munshi, Economics, Brown University

Research Grant, 2002, 2003

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Domestic violence in developing countries has been an area of growing concern among researchers and activists in the women’s health and rights movements. An entrenched patriarchal system and a scarcity of labor market opportunities for women are seen to leave women at the mercy of their husbands. We would expect this situation to change over time with increased female participation in the labor market, but in fact the opposite pattern has been observed. Domestic violence and intrahousehold conflict have been observed to actually increase after the introduction of income-generation programs that are focused on women, for example, among Grameen Bank participants in Bangladesh. Our objective in this research project is to study the economic determinants of marital violence in South India and to make sense of the puzzling increase in intrahousehold conflict that accompanies a relative increase in female incomes. We use an interdisciplinary approach that combines the theory and methods of economics and sociology.

A major aim of our research is to estimate the causal effect of increases in female income on marital violence. To test for a causal relationship, researchers would ideally allow the male-female income differential to vary randomly across a group of households that are otherwise alike in every respect. Our study site consists of 23 estates of a tea plantation in Kerala, South India, and serves as an ideal setting for such a “natural experiment.” The 23 estates have enormous variation in rainfall and elevation, which in turn generates large differences in tea yields across the estates. Men and women are occupied in different tasks on the tea estate, so their earnings respond differently to the variation in tea yields. Exogenous climatic variation thus generates random variation in intrahousehold inequality across households. At the same time, one company owns all the estates. Structural similarities across estates, including identical access to health, education, and child care services, ensures a controlled environment. Using climatic conditions as a statistical instrument for male-female income differentials, we will be able to estimate the causal relationship between these differentials and marital violence. Our research improves on an enormous literature that has used variation in female-male income differentials, female education, and direct measures of women’s status without statistical instruments, to study the effect of female empowerment on household outcomes.

Using climatic conditions as a statistical instrument for male-female income differentials, we will be able to estimate the causal relationship between these differentials and marital violence.

This setting also affords us the opportunity to understand the process through which decision-making within the household changes as female incomes rise and the various forms that conflict may take. An additional component of our project includes an in-depth investigation of this process of social change using qualitative methodologies.

The subject of this research is extremely relevant at a time when income generation and empowerment efforts focused on women are being put into place throughout the developing world. We have spent many months in the field collecting a range of high-quality data sources, including tea company records and a survey of four thousand female workers between January and March 2003, which was funded by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. Preliminary results show that approximately 48 percent of female workers have ever been beaten by their husbands. Data entry of the survey will be completed in summer 2003, and data analysis is set to begin in fall 2003. The qualitative component of the project is scheduled for summer 2004.

Bibliography

1. Collins, Randall, Janet Saltzman Chafetz, Rae Lesser Blumberg, Scott Coltrane, and Jonathan H. Turner. 1993. Toward an integrated theory of gender stratification. Sociological perspectives 36(3):185-216.

2. Cooper, Russell and Andrew John. 1988. Coordinating Coordination Failures in Keynesian Models. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 103(3): 441-463.

3. Ellsberg, Mary, Lori Heise, Rodolfo Pena, Sonia Agurto, and Anna Winkvist. 2001. Researching domestic violence against women: Methodological and ethnical considerations. Studies in family planning 32(1):1-16.

4. Heise, Lori, Alanagh Raikes, Charlotte H. Watts, and Anthony B. Zwi. 1994. Violence against women: A neglected public health issue in less developed countries. Social science and medicine 39(9):1165-1179.

5. Jejeebhoy, Shireen J. 1998. Associations between wife-beating and fetal and infant death: Impressions from a survey in rural India. Studies in family planning 29(3):300-308.

6. Kabeer, Naila. 1997. Women, wages and intra-household power relations in urban Bangladesh. Development and change 28:261-302.

7. Lundberg, Shelly and Robert A. Pollak. 1994. Noncooperative Bargaining Models of Marriage. American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 84(2):132-136.

8. Mason 1997. Mason, Karen O. 1997. Gender and demographic change. In Jones, G. et al., eds. The continuing demographic transition. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

9. McCloskey, Laura. 1996. Socioeconomic and coercive power within the family. Gender & society 10(4):449-463.

10. Rao, Vijayendra. 1997. Wife-beating in rural South India: A qualitative and econometric analysis. Social science and medicine 44(8):1169-1180.

11. Samarasinghe, Vidyamali. 1993. Puppets on a string: Women's wage work and empowerment among female tea plantation workers of Sri Lanka. The journal of developing areas 27:329-340.

12. Schuler, Sidney Ruth, Syed M. Hashemi, Ann P. Riley, and Shireen Akhter. 1996. Credit programs, patriarchy and men's violence against women in rural Bangladesh. Social science and medicine 43(12):1729-1742.

13. Whaley, Rachel Bridges. 2001. The paradoxical relationship between gender inequality and rape: Toward a refined theory. Gender & society 15(4):531-555.

The World Crisis: 1635–1665

Geoffrey Parker, History, The Ohio State University

Research Grant, 2001, 2002

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In the mid-seventeenth century, a series of violent economic, social, intellectual and political upheavals afflicted most regions of this planet. Although not the only known global catastrophe, it was the first to leave abundant records worldwide, and its scale defies description. The economic and social crisis led to the death of millions and forced millions more to live in misery. At the same time, a worldwide wave of violence, aggression, rebellion and war toppled or threatened governments around the world. To cite just the most prominent events: in China, the last Ming emperor committed suicide when rebels seized his capital (1644) and it took forty years of civil war for a new dynasty (the Qing) to restore order. In 1648, major revolts began in both Russia and Poland while in Istanbul the Ottoman Sultan was murdered. In Britain, after seven years of civil war, rebels tried and executed King Charles I in 1649, provoking a new round of revolts in Scotland and the Anglo-Atlantic. Waves of rebellions almost overwhelmed both the French and Spanish Monarchies in the 1640s.

Coincidence cannot explain so many simultaneous eruptions of violence and revolution around the globe: what, then, were its causes and why did it affect some areas far more than others? My explanation involves a combination of five factors: a sudden episode of “global cooling”; the emergence of vulnerable areas of economic specialization; a sharp increase in religious and fiscal pressure by many (but not all) governments; the crumbling of the prevailing demographic regime; and the emergence of radical new ideologies. The interplay of these five elements produced major crises worldwide.

My explanation involves a combination of five factors: a sudden episode of "global cooling"; the emergence of vulnerable areas of economic specialization; a sharp increase in religious and fiscal pressure by many (but not all) governments; the crumbling of the prevailing demographic regime; and the emergence of radical new ideologies.

Finally, what were the consequences of the crisis and what “lessons” can we learn? Searching for contemporary “relevance” in events that occurred 350 years ago is fraught with danger; but since the mid-seventeenth century crisis was the only occasion when a sudden shift in the world’s weather seriously affected human life and left a copious record (archeological and climatic as well as historical), historians have a duty to ask these questions.

My book, which should be completed in mid-2004 and published in 2005, studies both the impact of severe climatic change on history and the ways in which specific political and economic decisions can produce war, revolution, catastrophe—and, in a few cases (such as Japan), peace.

Violent Territorialities and the Cultural Politics of Belonging in West Kalimantan Indonesia

Nancy Lee Peluso, Society and the Environment, University of California, Berkeley

Research Grant, 2002

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I am writing a book that explores the cultural and territorial politics of violence, identity, and landscape in the western districts of West Kalimantan, in Indonesian Borneo. I am looking specifically at how violence has been related to resource extraction, land control, and the construction of ethnic and national identities. Based on my own fieldwork and archival research since 1990, the book will document and analyze the forms, contexts, and representations of violence, and how violence has reshaped access to and control over the agrarian environment.

The violence cannot be separated from the specific historical and environmental conditions of the forested regions where the shaping and claiming of these agrarian landscapes have taken place.

I will also examine the parallel ways that two sets of peoples have imagined, experienced, and constructed these landscapes—Chinese and Salako peoples, who have moved through and settled in this region for three centuries. In reviewing archival materials, newly available secondary materials, and my own field notes and collected documents, I have found that the region cannot be described as only Dayak or Indonesian. Rather, the landscapes that have emerged from this study have been layered landscapes, and their visibility or invisibility has much to do with the politics of representation and history. Violence in different historical moments has shaped these patterns of layering and the capacity to actually “know” or to “see” the landscape in particular ways. Moreover, the violence cannot be separated from the specific historical and environmental conditions of the forested regions where the shaping and claiming of these agrarian landscapes have taken place. From customary Dayak lands and fruit forests to Chinese gold mines and rubber or pepper farms, to vast networks of irrigated rice fields, to production forestry zones, to watershed protection reserves, to military staging grounds, to sites of ethnic violence, various types of claims have emerged here through the politics of landscape. Past claims to territory are preserved not only within the practices and memories of people, but written on the landscape itself. I will discuss why political and communal violence have occurred in some historical moments and not others, and how violence has erased some claims from the landscape while preserving others.

Kidnapping in Colombia

Mauricio Rubio, Economics, University of Carlos III, Madrid

Research Grant, 2002

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The goal of the project is to analyze why kidnapping rates have been so high in Colombia. A brief history of kidnapping shows that it has two different roots. It was practiced in rural areas by some late “bandoleros” of the political violence period in the 1950s. On the other hand, urban kidnapping of foreigners—diplomats and CEOs—was imported from groups such as Tupamaros and Montoneros.

The relationship between drug activities and kidnapping has been quite complex. First, drugs facilitated the replacement of a few foreigners paying huge ransoms—the typical set-up during the 1970s—with a higher number of local victims paying less per incident. Drug lords buying haciendas had a side effect of pushing up rural property prices. This speculative trend displaced poor peasants and attracted urban middle classes to the countryside. The weekend house owner became the typical victim during the eighties, when kidnapping rates first increased significantly. Rural guerrilla groups were able to get kidnap resources with a negligible effect on agricultural production and without deteriorating relationships with peasants. The usual arrangement with rich farmers was extortion. Second, drug dealers gave a definitive stimulus to paramilitary groups as a private protection scheme against kidnapping. Third, some notorious drug lords began their criminal careers as kidnappers. Forth, drug traffickers have used kidnapping for purely political reasons and currently use it for collecting debts. Fifth, guerrilla groups easily shift between kidnapping/extortion and drugs to finance their military operations.

Indiscriminate kidnapping appeared when the middle class group of urban victims was besieged within the urban areas, by the mid ’90s. Kidnapping has been mostly linked to politically motivated groups. Colombian evidence does not corroborate the claim that kidnapping is just another business. One key issue for kidnappers is how to deal with agency problems. Several testimonies show that guerrilla leaders have been conscious of the need to indoctrinate their troops and to adopt highly centralized decision processes. Indoctrination diffuses personal responsibility and reduces the individual tendency to appropriate big cash ransoms. This may help explain why nonpolitical groups have not been able to kidnap in such a systematic manner as guerrilla groups.

Several testimonies show that guerrilla leaders have been conscious of the need to indoctrinate their troops and to adopt highly centralized decision processes. Indoctrination diffuses personal responsibility and reduces the individual tendency to appropriate big cash ransoms.

Upward turning points in the trend of aggregate statistical data—a first rise in the early ’80s and a soaring rate by the mid ’90s—are consistent with this brief history. However, two significant drops in the aggregate rate—from 1992 to 1995 and from 2001 to date—are not easily explained. A quite common hypothesis—that the first drop was due to an antikidnapping law—was not corroborated with time series procedures.

Cross-section data shows a pattern of high initial concentration and a later spreading of rates. Statistical models show that the capacity of local factors to explain regional differences of kidnapping rates is not only small but has been decreasing. Also, that the regional patterns of kidnapping are mainly explained by the geographical expansion of armed groups.

Micro-level data is scarce and the quality is dubious. Reaching former victims for interview or to answer a questionnaire has been an extremely difficult task. Interviews with negotiators show that preventive efforts have concentrated on trying to reduce the risk of being kidnapped, but no significant progress has been made on how to deal with the situation when it happens. No explicit evidence has been found about changes in the know-how of perpetrators besides the one associated with increased threat reputation and the bureaucratic buildup of rules and procedures.