INTRODUCTION

Among the primary goals of the modem, post-Enlightenment state are assimilation, homogenization, and
conformity within a fairly narrow ethnic and political range, as well as the creation of societal agreement about
the kinds of people there are and the kinds there ought to be. The ideal state is one in which the illusion of a
single nation-state is created and maintained and in which resistance is managed so that profound social
upheaval, separatist activity, revolution, and coups d'etat are unthinkable for most people most of the time. The
state thus attempts to ensure conformity to encompassing unitary images through diverse cultural forms and an
array of institutions and activities that, taken together, help determine the range of available social, political,
ethnic, and national identities (2, 12, 66). The crisis of the contemporary state springs from its differentially
successful monopolization of power and the contradiction between it and the demands of peripheralized
people(s) who through resistance have created new subject positions that challenge fundamentally the
definitions of who and what ought to be repressed. To phrase it differently, the ways in which nation and state
are constructed and the manner in which those constructions enter into social knowledge have to do with
consensus about what is and what is not legitimate. When consensus fails, ethnic or political opposition, which
is otherwise suppressed or subtle, becomes overt. The state, of course, cannot allow this to happen. As
Claestres (49:110) phrases it, "The refusal of multiplicity, the dread of difference-ethnocidal violence-[is] the
very essence of the state." Since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, twenty-two new global communities have been
created, fifteen from the remains of the Soviet Union alone, but the phenomenon is not restricted to that part of
the world. There are over fifty ethnic conflicts now taking place, mostly within the confines of diverse nation-
states-a veritable explosion of violence with the state lending the force of arms to one side or the other.
Geographers predict that there will be twenty- five additional new states by 1996, even more in the twenty-first
century (260), all forged, some violently and some by agreement, from the territory and peoples of existing
states. In addition to Abkhazians in Georgia and Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, Tibetans, Quebequois, Kurds,
Tamils, and Basques are among others seeking their own version of a nation-state. At the same time there is an
apparently contradictory trend, namely the globalization of capitalist economy and culture. These two trends-
the fragmenting of illusory nation-states and the simultaneous homogenization of culture-may only appear
contradictory; the latter may be driving the former. The nation-state has long been the vehicle, the ideological
justification, and the political legitimation for liberal rational forms of political and cultural unity and economic
homogeneity. Although the social organization and economic achievements of a market economy are goals
toward which many new entities are striving, especially those of the former Soviet Union and East Central
Europe, their prospects for retracing the trajectory of nineteenth and twentieth century bourgeois capitalism
are slight. The potential and reality of additional ethnic and nationalist violence are enormous as dissidents
challenge the pre- vailing and approaching order and existing states struggle to implement new distributions of
power and capital, to suppress internal movements for political change, especially autonomy and self-
determination, and to stave off external threats to newly established borders. Until relatively recently, few
anthropologists examined violence and conflict between groups and the state and among groups within states,
especially violence rooted in ethnicity, nationalism, bids for autonomy and self-determination, and political
demands for fundamental change. Some have looked primarily at the invention and reinvention of categorical
differences inflected by language, culture, and history in colonial and post-colonial societies (101, 102, 109,
117, 135, 209). An emerging project to rethink violence and social theory at the level of the imagining of the
state and the role of the anthropologist in this project is suggested by the work of Coronil (64), Feldman (84a),
Gordon (109), Isbell (138-140), Taussig (240, 241), Poole & Renique (198), recent collections of Carmack (37),
Downing & Kushner (74, 75), Nordstrom & Martin (192), Warren (253), and others (29, 65, 230). This review
places the existing literature within a theoretical perspective that considers both the ethnography of the state
and the ethnography of violence, but we must first consider some terms of the discussion.

VIOLENCE, TERRORISM, AND TORTURE

Violence is often reified, taken as a characteristic or category that is either present or absent within a society or
group, making it difficult to examine the role it plays in social relations or to examine it as an alternative people
use to deal with human predicaments. Going beyond the mere presence or absence of violence challenges us
to locate it within a set of practices, discourses, and ideologies (137), to examine it as a way to deploy power
within differential social and political relations (30), or as a means that states use to buttress themselves and to
maintain power (132). Scholars do not agree on exactly what constitutes violence. Noting that it permeates daily
life in many parts of the modem world, Williams (256) selects violence as a keyword, denoting a concept that in
his estimation significantly reflects ideas and values that often characterize general discussions of
contemporary society. He identifies seven senses of violence: aggressive behavior, vehement conduct,
infringement of property or dignity, the use of physical force, and threat, or dramatic portrayal of any of the
above. Riches (204) argues that what is generally called violence can be practical or symbolic, visible or
invisible (as in witchcraft), physical or emotional, and can stem from a perpetrator's personal capacity or from
the forces of society. He gives precedence to the first in each of these dichotomies, restricting the use of the
term violence to practical, physical, visible, and personal physical force that people use to achieve goals. In this
instrumental view, interactions in which physical hurt is either absent or not readily apparent, even if it may
have been intended or implicit, is not violence. Bourdieu, on the other hand, includes the symbolic "censored"
and "euphemized" but "socially recognized violence" embedded in everyday, hegemonic practice in "disguised
and transfigured" form (30:191), a totalizing vision partially challenged by Comaroff (56). Feminist scholarship
in particular (177, 228, 235) and that of subordinate peoples in general (45, 63) insists that symbolic violence is
important in the structuring and ordering of relations of domination and subordination, though critics caution
that state regimes everywhere justify their own violence as a reaction to the (symbolic) violence implicit in
opposition itself. The very presence of opposition is read by the state as violence subject to suppression (192).
This review addresses both physical and symbolic violence.

ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES OF VIOLENCE

Anthropologists who have considered violence primarily in its practical, physical, and visible manifestations
have juxtaposed "violent" societies [e.g. the Yanomami (42, 43), the Kiowa (178), or the Kohistani of Pakistan
(147)] with those said to be peaceful [e.g. the !Kung (157, 169), the Semai (72, 204-207), the Innuit (32-34), the
Buid of the Philippines (104), and the Xinguanos of the Brazilian Amazon (114)], as though they were mirror-
images. No single explanation has been found for the variance in the degree to which people use violence to
solve differences. Biological explanations are far from a dead letter in psychological and genetic studies,
especially as they are viewed in popular culture (245), but biology is rarely cited as a single cause explanation in
anthropology (41-43, 76, 97, 115). A large literature has emerged on other causes of violence [e.g. material,
ecological, psychological, and historical (38, 39, 85, 87-89, 103, 104, 114)]. Historically, anthropology has been
concerned mostly with so-called sub- state or pre-state societies-the tribal zone (91). Here, people condone,
even encourage violence as a social and cultural resource for a variety of reasons. For the Maori and
indigenous people of the Northwest Coast of North America, it is a means to material rewards and a way to
maintain a trade advantage (86, 247). The Yanomami use it to protect valued resources (42, 43), the Kohistani as
part of a religious code involving honor or vengeance (147), and the Ilongot to assuage grief (210).
Anthropology has not been in the forefront of the study of collective violence, terrorism, and especially violence
in state societies, in part because its methods and theory depend on months or years in the field, until recently
defined as a relatively small, self-contained community that did not include the state. Also, prolonged research
in a local community is difficult or impossible in times of violent strife and it is risky business to appear to take
sides in situations in which the state resorts to torture, terrorism, and disappearances and in which armed
opposition groups operate in a similar manner. Even studies of violence in the tribal zone, however, are rarely
con- textualized in a matrix of regional, state, or global economic and political systems, nor are they always well
placed in historic perspective, though this is changing gradually (91), especially with respect to complex
societies (37, 112, 192, 253). Political, economic, and historical correctives to the more egregious
representations of the colonial subject as either inherently violent or innately peaceful have appeared (109,
181). Gibson (104) discusses the historical circum- stances in which the Semai, Buid, and Bataak of Southeast
Asia were taken as slaves by the Sulu sultanate of eighteenth and nineteenth century Philippines. They
responded by retreating deep into the forest and elaborating a cultural complex of peace and non-violence.
Several restudies of the Yanomami indicate that much of their violent activity coincides with contact with
settlers, petrochemical industries, and institutions of the state (68, 90, 108). Gordon (109) places the
"Bushmen" of southern Africa, the quintessential harmless people, in the context of the colonial project to
simultaneously subdue and domesticate them on the one hand and to define them as "vermin of the veldt" on
the other, a strategy of containment the United States found enormously successful in "taming" North American
indigenous peoples. Social scientists who address collective violence in complex state societies (37, 105, 121,
192, 243, 244, 253) examine the culture, economics, politics, or sociolinguistics of components of those
societies from points of view that may, for example, explore local culture as it is embedded in the structure and
institution of the state (224), but they do not necessarily theorize those structures and institutions (62, 63, 126,
195, 200) or the nature of the state itself. Others more successfully address historical representations of the
violent Other (239-241) and take up the violence that arises within the context of decolonization, political and
cultural struggles for independence from colonial rule, and the continued domination of former colonial powers
(24, 45, 118, 149). Das (67b), Guidieri et al (117) and Horowitz (136) address ethnic conflict within the
boundaries of a state and Glenny (106), Magas (165), and Poulton (199) are among those who examine the
breakup of the Yugoslav state, though they do so with varying degrees of even-handedness, Magas being the
most obviously partisan. A number of anthropologists have studied warfare in pre-state and archaeologically
known societies (87, 91, 99, 120, 258). War between states as a special kind of collective violence, its reasons
and its meanings, and especially the national character of the enemies of the United States were early taken up
as anthropological phenomena by North American scholars, partly in response to the needs of the United
States War Department (22, 110) and in support of the United States in World War II. Since the notorious
involvement of anthropologists in counterinsurgency in Thailand in the 1960s (251), anthropologists have
avoided direct involvement in war related research. Anthropological perspectives on the origins of warfare are
more or less the same as for violence: they encompass the cultural (137), social and cultural (113), economic
and political (248), and scarce resources arguments (92). Others take a political economy approach (18, 47,
259) or a purely historical one (171). Explanations for maintenance or continuation of war include resistance
and rebellion on the part of indigenous or other oppressed people (91) and revenge, which in state societies
may be couched in religious, ethnic, and ideological language (e.g. "Remember the Alamo" or "Kill a Commie for
Christ"). Revenge is often deeply personalized-the images of Saddam Hussein the assassin in the Gulf War of
1990, the World War I specter of the bloodthirsty Hun, World War II and Cold War enemies as insects, pigs, and
beasts of various kinds are commonplace. Cohn discusses the imagery of sex and death among nuclear
defense technicians, and other articles in a edited volume (182) reveal the triumph of image over reality and the
social, economic, and political context of media coverage of the Gulf War throughout the Middle East, Asia, and
Europe. Sex and masculinity are often aspects of the representation of warfare, but Elshtain (79) casts
considerable doubt on gendered myths that depict men as makers of war and women as simultaneously
conciliators and socializers of warriors. The continuation of war may also be justified in official circles as a
rational, common-sense strategy of deterring force with equal or greater force. Finally, a warrior class or group
has an interest in maintaining war or its threat (171). These last two explanations are especially characteristic
of state societies with well-developed departments of defense and standing armies, but numerous non-state
societies also have permanent warrior classes and measured responses to violent incursions from the outside
(91).

POLITICAL VIOLENCE

Political violence encompasses overt state-sponsored or tolerated violence in all of Williams' senses, (coercion
or the threat of it, bodily harm, etc.) but may also include actions taken or not by the state or its agents with the
express intent of realizing certain social, ethnic, economic, and political goals in the realm of public affairs,
especially affairs of the state or even of social life in general. These may or may not be direct violence. For
example, ferocity between Hutus and Tutsi in Rwanda and Burundi (158, 166, 167, 173); be- tween Tamils and
Sinhalese in Sri Lanka (142, 215, 228a, 236-238); between Ladinos and indigenous peoples in Guatemala (37,
168, 246, 253); between Israelis and Palestinians in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip (227); or among
Croats, Serbs, and Muslims in the Balkans (106, 125, 165, 199), insofar as it is tolerated or encouraged by states
in order to create, justify, excuse, explain, or enforce hierarchies of difference and relations of inequality, are
acts of state violence, even though states themselves may not appear on the surface to be primary agents (cf
133). Moreover, the deliberate acts of agents of the state in, for example, the Soviet Union in the 1930s, which
caused mass starvation in the countryside (13, 14, 164), and similar economic or political deeds elsewhere in
the world that result in widespread deaths (226) and often huge numbers of political refugees (67a, 84, 124,
262) also qualify as political violence, terror, even genocide (151, 160). Terrorism is, according to the dictionary,
"the policy of using acts inspiring great fear as a method of ruling or of conducting political opposition," and
may include violence in all of its senses including torture or its threat. It "is not so much the exploitation of the
other as much as the mere consciousness of the possibility,” said Simuel of domination. Clearly the same must
be even more true of torture. Torture-the very term evokes images of a distant, less civilized past, of dark
cellars, of both the tortured and torturers radically different from ourselves. Nonetheless torture perpetrated by
states and their agents is commonplace, documented in scores of countries around the world (9). As for terror,
academics, politicians, and popular pundits usually reserve the label for political opposition movements or
figures (155), only rarely applying it to states (29, 46, 132, 156). Violence and terror are highly politicized terms
embraced and elaborated by victims and avoided by perpetrators, especially if the perpetrator is a state. In fact,
state leaders everywhere claim respect for universal human rights and deny that their acts constitute torture,
violence, or terror, preferring to characterize them as necessary measures to insure order and respect for the
law. Nonetheless, the state is often the instigator of cycles of violent human rights abuses as it seeks to
suppress change and prevent opposition movements from undermining its legitimacy (9, 69). Discussions and
explanations of torture, other violence, and terrorism within state society center on the purported need of
societies to modernize quickly at all costs (197, 202), to coordinate knowledge with systems of social control
(93), and to legitimate the rule of the state (202). Legitimacy is always a central concern in the sense that
violence is only violence by definition if the perpetrators fail to establish the legitimacy of their acts against
claims of others that it is illegitimate (203). Consider the case of a California woman who shot dead, in the very
courtroom in which he was being tried, the man accused of sodomizing her son. In the eyes of her supporters,
she was justified in killing the man who, just before the shooting, allegedly smirked at her terrified son, whom he
had earlier threatened with death if he, the child, ever told anyone about his sexual abuse. The woman's
supporters do not define her act as violence. Similarly, the person who bombs an office building or hijacks an
airplane is not considered a terrorist by those who believe that the workers in the building are part of a military
and industrial complex that threatens world peace or that their political cause will somehow be advanced by the
hijacking. States as well as political opposition movements also take this instrumental view as justification for
tactical preemption in which they gain advantage over opponents by forestalling with violent measures possible
action by opponents or by taking revenge for acts completed. They present their actions as both unavoidable
and necessary to prevent what would otherwise be inevitable and unavoidable deeds of their targets (203). For
the most part, the public has learned to find such official measures justified, that is to say, legitimate by
definition. But the public does not accept as readily the structurally similar acts of foreign nationals targeting
civilian centers or vigilante justice of the sort meted out to the alleged sodomizer.

THE STATE

Conventional social science theories of the state, drawn largely from utilitarian and Weberian analyses of
legitimacy and political power, objectify and endow the state with institutions with law-making and enforcing
capabilities that may be more or less democratic, more or less brutal, more or less violent. Insofar as
anthropology has dealt with the state, it has taken it as an unanalyzed given or posited a stage, implicitly the
final one, in the evolution of political and cultural organization. In this view, the state is manifest as the political
management of a specified geographic territory and its inhabitants through the mechanism of centralized
government institutions staffed and controlled by a small number of specialists (51, 221). State structures and
practices are the cumulative effect of a social contract in which the public has ostensibly agreed that the state
has a monopoly on force, and therefore it and only it can legitimately constrain and coerce people. According to
conflict theory, the state emerged in order to allow an elite class to obtain and maintain power over
subordinates, thereby managing class conflict through force and by means of the control of ideology (99; cf 48,
152). In a benign view of origins, the state provides the stability needed for increasing complexity and
presumably desirable and beneficial overall growth and development (39, 51), a utopian bias that has been
implicated in the ongoing critique of colonialism and its projects (188, 216; cf 222). Recent debate in other
social sciences about the nature of the state (21, 35, 40, 83, 100, 141, 179, 211, 223) and analyses that
interrogate the state as ethnographic subject are not as commonplace in anthropology, although that is
changing slowly (1, 10, 52, 71, 250). To be sure, there is an autonomous and extraordinarily powerful entity
called the state. According to Abrams, one measure of its powerfulness is its ability to thwart attempts to
unmask that power (2:63). But the state is not just a set of institutions staffed by bureaucrats who serve the
public interest. It also incorporates cultural and political forms, representations, discourse, practices and
activities, and specific technologies and organizations of power that, taken together, help to define public
interest, establish meaning, and define and naturalize available social identities (2, 12, 53, 66, 79, 94-96, 185,
186, 190, 193). These identities are located within both the domain of state apparatuses and so-called civil
society, often glossed as public versus private, a distinction that renders opaque the state's daily intrusions into
peoples' lives, their employment, their bodies, "through a plurality of qualities and statuses which are the
predicate of the subject 'I"' (3:42). Abrams, for example, characterizes the state as an ideological project, "an
exercise in legitimation of that which would be illegitimate if seen directly and as itself, an unacceptable
domination" (2:76). He advocates a shift to analysis of social subordination, the legitimating of the illegitimate,
and to the hegemonic fields in which power relations play themselves out. Integral to this view is Gramsci's
(111) theory of hegemony, especially transformative hegemony (58, 255, 256). It has become an anthropological
commonplace to note that arbitrary symbolic systems are created in a dialectic of official hegemony and
popular resistance that both divide and unite and that are naturalized so that they are both part of taken-for-
granted daily life and flexible enough to respond to changing political and economic circumstances (35, 66).
The agreed upon identities imply closure on other modes of being by disrupting, diluting, some- times even
denying the possibility of alternatives. The state promotes and enforces that consensus in a dialectical
relationship with the intelligentsia (31) even as external relations change. This is not a totally transparent
process of course, as Stuart Hall (122:44) reminds us: Ruling or dominant conceptions of the world [may] not
directly prescribe the mental content of.. .the heads of the dominated classes. But the circle of dominant ideas
does accumulate the symbolic power to map or classify the world for others; its classifications do acquire not
only the constraining power of dominance over other modes of thought but also the inertial authority of habit
and instinct. It becomes the horizon of the taken for granted: what the world is and how it works, for all practical
purposes. Ruling ideas may dominate other conceptions of the social world by setting the limit to what will
appear rational, reasonable, credible, indeed sayable or thinkable, within the given vocabularies of motive and
action available to us.

In most states, the struggle for consensus is not ordinarily contested in the realm of politics but rather in that of
social life where consensus is built. It is the deviants and resisters of all kinds who are subject to the state's
violence. Although there is a danger that the state as ideological project becomes a mechanical device to
explain all limitations to human freedom, proponents maintain that that project is a dialogue between
destruction and preservation, prohibition and enabling, and it illuminates how people contest, negotiate, learn,
and ultimately internalize identities.

SUMMARY

Introduction

The main goals of modern states after the Enlightenment are to make people similar in terms of culture and politics,
maintain the illusion of a single nation-state, and prevent major social disruptions. States aim to ensure uniformity
through various cultural aspects and institutions. However, today's states are facing a crisis because they have only
partially succeeded in maintaining power, and people who feel marginalized are resisting in ways that challenge the state's
definitions. This resistance becomes more evident when there is no consensus on what is legitimate. As a result, we see
ethnic and political conflicts within nation-states, often involving violence.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many new communities have emerged, some violently and some through
agreements, seeking to form their own nation-states. At the same time, there is a contradictory trend of globalizing
capitalist culture and economy. This trend towards global homogenization may actually be driving the breakup of nation-
states. Nation-states have traditionally served as a justification for political unity, cultural identity, and economic
homogeneity. Many new entities are striving for the economic achievements of market economies, but their prospects for
following the path of 19th and 20th-century capitalism are limited.

The potential for more ethnic and nationalist violence is high as dissidents challenge existing orders, and states try to
establish new power and economic structures, suppress movements for political change, and protect their borders. Until
recently, few anthropologists studied violence and conflict between groups, states, and within states, particularly violence
rooted in ethnicity, nationalism, autonomy, and political change. Some researchers have examined how differences based
on language, culture, and history are created and redefined in colonial and post-colonial societies. There's an emerging
project among anthropologists to rethink violence and social theory in the context of the state and the role of the
anthropologist in understanding these issues.

Violence, Terrorism, and Torture

The text discusses the complexity of understanding violence in society. Several scholars, including Williams and Riches, have different
perspectives on what constitutes violence. Williams identifies seven senses of violence, including aggressive behavior and physical
force. Riches argues that violence can be practical or symbolic, visible or invisible. Bourdieu believes in the existence of symbolic
violence in everyday practices. Feminist and subordinate peoples' scholarship emphasizes the importance of symbolic violence in
power dynamics, but critics note that states often use violence to suppress opposition, which they perceive as symbolic violence. The
review explores both physical and symbolic violence.

Violence is not a simple "yes" or "no" concept in society. It goes beyond mere presence or absence, encompassing a variety of forms,
from practical to symbolic, visible to invisible, and stemming from individual actions or broader societal forces. Scholars have differing
views on what constitutes violence, with some emphasizing its symbolic aspects embedded in everyday practices. Symbolic violence
plays a crucial role in power dynamics and relations of domination and subordination, particularly recognized by feminist and
subordinate perspectives. However, states may use the notion of symbolic violence to justify their own actions against opposition,
considering any form of dissent as a kind of violence that needs to be suppressed. In essence, violence is a complex, multifaceted
concept that involves more than just physical harm; it encompasses a wide range of behaviors and dynamics in society.

Anthropological Studies of Violence

This passage discusses various aspects of violence, particularly in the context of different societies. It touches on
anthropology's historical approach to studying violence and offers insights into why different societies may engage in or
avoid violence. Let's break down the key points in simpler terms:
1. Comparing Violent and Peaceful Societies: Anthropologists have often contrasted societies with a reputation for
violence (like the Yanomami, Kiowa, or Kohistani) with those considered peaceful (such as the !Kung, Semai, Inuit,
Buid, and Xinguanos). They've done this to understand the differences in how these societies handle conflicts.
2. Explaining Variations in Violence: There isn't a single explanation for why different societies use violence to
resolve conflicts. While some suggest biological factors, like genetics, these are not commonly accepted in
anthropology. Instead, a lot of research has focused on other factors like material resources, ecological conditions,
psychological aspects, and historical contexts.
3. Tribal Societies and Violence: Anthropology has traditionally focused on pre-state or tribal societies, where
violence can serve various purposes. For example, some societies use violence for gaining material wealth,
maintaining trade advantages, upholding religious honor, or dealing with grief.
4. Challenges in Studying Violence: Anthropologists have faced challenges when studying violence in complex state
societies because their methods often require prolonged fieldwork. Additionally, getting involved in violent
situations, where governments employ harsh tactics, is risky. Research in tribal societies hasn't always considered
broader economic and political contexts.
5. Correcting Stereotypes: Some researchers have corrected historical stereotypes that painted colonial subjects as
either inherently violent or innately peaceful. They've pointed out that certain peaceful behaviors in societies, like
the Semai, were shaped by historical circumstances.
6. State Societies and Collective Violence: Anthropologists studying complex state societies examine violence from
various angles, including culture, economics, politics, and sociolinguistics. They often don't focus on theorizing the
state itself.
7. Warfare in Pre-State Societies: Some anthropologists have explored warfare in pre-state and archaeologically
known societies. They've considered reasons for warfare, which can range from cultural and social factors to
economic and political issues.
8. Origins of Warfare: Explanations for the origins of warfare include cultural, social, economic, and political factors,
as well as the competition for scarce resources. Some also take a political economy or purely historical perspective.
9. Continuation of War: War may persist due to resistance and rebellion among oppressed groups, the pursuit of
revenge often couched in religious or ideological language, and rational strategies to deter force with force.
 10. Warrior Classes: In some societies, a dedicated warrior class has a vested interest in maintaining war or the threat
of war, and this is especially common in societies with well-developed military organizations.
11. Gender and Warfare: The passage also briefly touches on gender roles in warfare, disputing stereotypes that
portray men as the sole initiators of war and women as the sole peacemakers and socializers of warriors.
12. Media and Imagery: It mentions how the media and imagery play a significant role in shaping perceptions of war,
and how sex and masculinity are often intertwined with the representation of warfare.

In summary, the passage discusses how anthropologists have approached the study of violence in different societies and
the various factors influencing the use of violence to resolve conflicts, from biological explanations to social, economic,
and historical contexts. It also highlights the importance of considering broader societal and global factors when studying
violence.

Political Violence

Political violence refers to acts of force or intimidation that serve political, social, ethnic, economic, or state-related
objectives. It can include both actions directly carried out by the government and those indirectly supported or tolerated
by it to maintain or establish hierarchies and inequalities. Such violence may not always involve physical harm and can
encompass conflicts like those between different ethnic groups, such as the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda.

This violence can also extend to the deliberate actions of state agents, like those causing mass starvation in the Soviet
Union or other widespread deaths and displacement. Terrorism, often associated with creating fear to achieve political
goals, may also involve different forms of violence, including torture.

States typically avoid labeling their actions as violence, terror, or torture, instead justifying them as necessary for
maintaining order and upholding the law. These actions often arise from the state's desire to suppress opposition and
maintain its legitimacy.

The legitimacy of such actions is a central concern in discussions surrounding political violence, with perpetrators trying to
establish the legitimacy of their actions against claims of it being illegitimate. This perspective varies depending on the
viewpoint of different parties involved. For example, a person killing someone who threatened their child may not be seen
as violent by their supporters, while those who bomb buildings or hijack airplanes may not be considered terrorists by
those who believe their actions serve a just cause.

States and opposition groups also sometimes justify their violent actions as necessary measures to prevent future violence
or to gain an advantage over their opponents. The public often perceives such official state actions as legitimate, while
structurally similar actions carried out by foreign nationals or vigilante justice are not as readily accepted.

THE STATE

Traditional social science theories about the state usually view it as a set of institutions responsible for making and
enforcing laws. These theories often treat the state as a fixed and final stage in the evolution of political and cultural
organization. They see the state as a way to control a specific geographic area and its people through a centralized
government run by specialists. Some theories suggest the state emerged to allow a powerful elite to maintain control over
others, using force and ideology to manage conflicts.

In a more positive perspective, some believe the state brings stability and development. However, contemporary social
science debates have started to question these conventional ideas, and anthropology is gradually catching up with this
trend. While there is indeed a powerful entity called the state, it's not just a group of bureaucrats serving the public. It
encompasses various cultural and political elements that shape public interest, meaning, and social identities.

These identities are influenced by both the state and civil society, which often overlap, blurring the line between what's
public and private. This can make the state's involvement in people's lives less obvious. Some view the state as an
ideological project that legitimizes its own power. They argue that it's important to analyze social subordination and the
hegemonic fields in which power plays out.

Symbolic systems created by the state and popular resistance contribute to the consensus, but they also limit other
possibilities. The state enforces this consensus, mainly in social life, and those who don't conform may face state violence.
While there's a risk of oversimplifying the state as an ideological project, proponents argue that it's a dynamic interplay
between control and liberation, shedding light on how people challenge, negotiate, and internalize their identities.