Iraq at a distance : what anthropologists can teach us about the war / edited by Antonius C.G.M. Robben.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Robben, Antonius C. G. M.

Series:

Ethnography of political violence.

The ethnography of political violence

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

War and society--Case studies.

War and society.

Political anthropology--Fieldwork--Case studies.

Political anthropology.

War on Terrorism, 2001-2009.

Iraq War, 2003-2011.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (200 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, c2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The Iraq War has cost innumerable lives, caused vast material destruction, and inflicted suffering on millions of people. Iraq at a Distance: What Anthropology Can Teach Us About the War focuses on the plight of the Iraqi people, caught since 2003 in the carnage between U.S. and British troops on one side and, on the other, Iraqi insurgents, militias, and foreign al Qaeda operatives.The volume is a bold attempt by six distinguished anthropologists to study a war zone too dangerous for fieldwork. They break new ground by using their ethnographic imagination as a research tool to analyze the Iraq War through insightful comparisons with previous and current armed conflicts in Cambodia, Israel, Palestine, Northern Ireland, Afghanistan, and Argentina. This innovative approach extends the book's relevance beyond a critical understanding of the devastating war in Iraq. More and more parts of the world of long-standing ethnographic interest are becoming off-limits to researchers because of the war on terror. This book serves as a model for the study of other inaccessible regions, and it shows that the impossibility of conducting ethnographic fieldwork does not condemn anthropologists to silence.Essays analyze the good-versus-evil framework of the war on terror, the deterioration of women's rights in Iraq under fundamentalist coercion, the ethnic-religious partitioning of Baghdad through the building of security walls, the excessive use of force against Iraqi civilians by U.S. counterinsurgency units, and the loss of popular support for U.S. and British forces in Iraq and Afghanistan after the brutal regimes of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein had been toppled.

Contents:

Ethnographic imagination at a distance: an introduction to the anthropological study of the Iraq War / Antonius C.G.M. Robben

"Night fell on a different world": dangerous visions and the War on Terror, a lesson from Cambodia / Alexander Laban Hinton

The War on Terror and women's rights in Iraq / Nadje Al-Ali

The War on Terror, dismantling, and the construction of place: an ethnographic perspective from Palestine / Julie Peteet

Losing hearts and minds in the "War on Terrorism" / Jeffrey A. Sluka

Mimesis in a war among the people: what Argentina's dirty war reveals about counterinsurgency in Iraq / Antonius C.G.M. Robben.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780812221831

0812221834

9781283890267

1283890267

9780812203547

0812203542

OCLC:

793341716