Original link: https://tyingknots.net/2022/07/enough-anthropologists-take-on-gun-violence/
Broadly, violence can be defined as the use of force to cause harm or injury. However, in explaining why and how violence occurs, people often resort to human nature itself, “it’s part of human nature,” or simply to a culture and belief system, “it’s their meme, they’re born Violence”. However, in fact, these generalized statements are not helpful for our understanding of violence, and in the long run, they will even unintentionally feed the breeding ground of violence, while ignoring the complex historical, political, economic and cultural factors that cause violence. social background.
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On July 4, 2022, local time, during the Independence Day festival, shootings occurred in the suburbs of Chicago and in Philadelphia in the United States. At least six people were killed and 24 injured in the shooting during the parade in Highland Park, a suburb of Chicago; in the shooting near Benjamin Franklin Park Avenue in Philadelphia, two police officers were shot and the suspect is still being tracked in the process of. Just two months ago, on May 4, 2022, there was also a series of shooting incidents in Uvaldi, Texas, USA. Salvador Ramos, who was only 18 years old, was armed with an AR-15 rifle. He shot his grandmother at home, then broke into the local Rob Elementary School with a gun, shot indiscriminately in a row, and was shot dead on the spot an hour after the police delayed reinforcements. The lone wolf mass shooting killed 21 people, including 19 children and 2 adults, and seriously injured 17 others. However, such a massacre is not an isolated incident, and it will never be the last shooting. Similar tragedies have occurred at synagogues in Pittsburgh, concerts in Las Vegas, Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, and more. After the case, Canada quickly passed a bill to further strengthen gun control. In the United States, where shootings occur frequently, although there are frequent calls and protests to change legislation and control guns, they are still struggling at the legislative level. long.
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At the same time, violence has also appeared in China in different forms. On June 10, 2022, Beijing time, in a barbecue restaurant in the North District of Tangshan City, a man tried to sexually harass a strange woman. After being rejected and resisted by the girl, several men beat up several women at the scene, causing differences. Among them, a woman who was beaten suffered serious head injuries. The main suspect, Chen Jizhi, has now been arrested. According to police investigations, many men who participated in violent group beatings have criminal detention records. From the incidents such as the assault in Tangshan and the beheading on the streets of Jinshan in Shanghai, to the sexual assault of women in Shenzhen Luohu, the eight-child mother in Xuzhou Fengxian, and the stripping of female passengers on the Xi’an subway, a series of incidents of gender-based violence are shocking and angry at the same time. It also prompts us to think more deeply from the perspective of structural violence: How does gender-based violence combine with other forms of violence to constitute persistent harm to women and other sexual minorities? The forms of violence are different, but in the face of different violent technologies and means (body, guns, knives, sticks, chains, surveillance cameras, etc.) The owner’s psychology and behavior patterns, and where are the power boundaries?
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This article was originally published in the American Anthropological Association’s “Open Anthropology” section in 2018. The two authors attempt to summarize and reflect on the thinking and practice of gun violence by anthropologists from an anthropological perspective. They admit that current anthropological discussions are far from enough, but with limited resources, many anthropologists are constantly questioning the political, economic, social and cultural motives behind gun violence, synthesizing them from various dimensions. Sexuality understands the soil where gun violence thrives.
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For the anthropology of violence, you are also welcome to read:
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Anthropology of Violence | Do guns have the power to change humanity?
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By Sallie Han (Professor, Department of Anthropology, SUNY Onesta College), Jason Antrosio (Chair, Department of Anthropology, Hartwick College, New York)
Original title | Enough: Anthropologists Take on Gun Violence
Original link | https://ift.tt/bYJH5T3
Original publication time | March 2018 Translator | Edited by Sun Yukun | Wang Jing
01. Reflect on gun violence from the perspective of people
What does it mean when it comes to “enough”?
In the current conversation about gun violence in America, it’s not about what’s satisfying or sufficient. Rather, it’s about exceeding our acceptable limits and falling far short of our expectations. It is about the excess of thinking and prayer, but also the deficiency of change and action. So, “enough” means both more than enough and totally insufficient.
The distribution map of the number of deaths due to gun violence in the United States from January to July 2022, from: https://ift.tt/es5R3rf.We continue the cry for “enough is enough” and the challenges it presents in this issue of Open Anthropology.
As anthropologists, we work to understand the complexity and variety of human experience. We do this through thoughtful, well-founded, and careful academic research that involves a range of methods, different types of knowledge, information, and data; and multiple modes of analysis and interpretation. From this, we can understand the incidents of gun violence that are considered “senseless”.
As has been pointed out time and time again, there are always too many questions and not enough answers. Following the February 2018 shooting of 17 teachers and students at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the American Anthropological Association reiterated the urgent need for a comprehensive, evidence-based approach to Prevent gun violence. Despite the lack of sustained and systematic support for gun research, anthropologists and other relevant researchers and scholars persisted in the investigation. As Jason Antrocio, one of the editors of this article, recently noted in a blog post on Living Anthropologically, “To take legislative action, we already have quite a few Research”.
“It’s not guns that kill people, it’s people who kill people” is a phrase often used by the National Rifle Association. The human being has always been a central concern of anthropology. So, in this installment, our focus is on people and how people live or die with or because of guns. There are fourteen articles and one book review in this collection, all selected from publications of the American Anthropological Association.
The breeding of fear, especially of specific groups of people, is a recurring theme in these articles, especially as it brings about a boom in the small arms market (and marketing) and paints America’s schools as requiring increased surveillance and militarization of policing The place. Some of these works were written before the April 20, 1999, school shooting in Columbine, Colorado. Some of the works directly responded to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut in December 2012 (some of the content below is to follow the original text, but also translated as the Newton Township shooting) and in June 2016 in Florida. Orlando nightclub shooting in the state The works commented in the face of a tirade about the so-called mass shootings and shootings that killed more than 35,000 people a year in the United States from 2012 to 2016. The collection also includes selected topics that consider gun violence from a comparative and global perspective, including ethnographies from outside the United States.
02. A society without borders
“As we’re seeing now, Manifest Destiny needs guns,” said Sturm-Luger, founder and chief executive of small arms manufacturer Sturm-Luger. Executive William Ruger speaks during a June 1990 donation ceremony for the Cody Firearms Museum in Cody, Wyoming.
In his 1993 Museum Anthropology, John Dorst traces the history of these collections in A Walk through the Shooting Gallery, The Cody Firearms Museum is considered to be “probably the most comprehensive repository of non-military small arms in the United States right now. As such, its donation ceremony … proved to be a ceremonial affirmation of the ideology of private gun ownership”. However, once guns move beyond donation ceremonies into museums, Dost argues, “museums frame guns as works of art of considerable cultural complexity,” in part because museums want to appeal to a more diverse and gender-balanced audience.
In this display of the cultural sophistication of firearms, however, Dost notes that “perhaps the most conspicuous is the absence of the gun as a device for penetrating the flesh at a distance”. The museum’s exhibit repositions guns as objects of consumer desire. finally,
If the exhibits at the Cody Firearms Museum deliberately avoid describing the specific effects of firearms, they also belie the institution’s thoroughly corporate nature. … (museum) The reenactment takes us from ancient gun production to early mechanized manufacturing, but this development is mythically realized in the recreational spaces of hunting lodges, not in the control of small arms on an international scale Modern meeting room for a joint venture of manufacturing, marketing and distribution. Although its representatives were also present at the donation ceremony, it was this huge mechanism that enshrouded the wealth of the company that was the most inconspicuous in the exhibition hall, and it was precisely this museum that was strongly supported by the company.
Dost’s comments help encapsulate an important shift in the 1990s to a consumer-oriented gun culture backed by a shrewd and sleek corporate order.
The background wall in the picture shows an assault rifle. Jessica Rinaldi/Getty ImagesSimilarly, in 1995, John Devine published in the journal Cultural Anthropology Can Metal Detectors Replace Panoramic Prisons? (Can Metal Detectors Replace the Panopticon?) explores the shift in surveillance, especially in urban schools. As German titled his 1996 book, Maximum Security is the stated goal. “Students really connect schooling with security, policing and high-tech weapons scanning equipment.” Devin bemoaned the low level of theorization of these developments, as well as reminding Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School and other suburban schools of the reality that metal detectors are being installed.
After describing the huge and unusually expensive security equipment in New York City’s poorest schools, Devin reflects on the issue of school violence:
In fact, violence in schools has become a process of interaction between an increasingly threatening and threatened group of students and the teaching system, which delegates the responsibility for combating antisocial behaviour of students to its lowest priority components— – Guards, now they are equipped with advanced technology, but are expected to limit only the most extreme, overt, combative and outrageous behavior. Youth culture, for its part, interprets this reluctance in the face of unacceptable behavior as a reflection of a society that has no boundaries at all, a society that fears challenging adolescents.
Given the prevalence of school violence in the 1990s, Devon then bluntly asked the question: “So, why is school violence a taboo topic in educational anthropology?” -as-reproduction), such as Paul Willis’ Learning to Labor, criticize them for giving little consideration to the “agency of violence”, the impact on safety and policing Also rarely mentioned.
Faced with his provocative headline question about Panorama Prison, Devin responded with a resounding “no.” “The postmodern mass of metal detectors and all the other security technology has not replaced the disciplinary system pioneered by the symbols of the modern panorama prison. Although the technological security mechanism strives to be the new panorama prison, it has not success”. And, in a startling conclusion, Devin predicted what would happen in the decades following his work: “Contrary to the fate envisioned by Willis’ (1977) lads, it is not capitalism that awaits these students. The bottom layer and workshop of the enterprise, but a violent space completely outside the mainstream culture but closely related to it”.
Katherine S. Newman, et al., Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings, 2005, Basic Books.Devin’s conclusions lead directly to a review of Katherine S. Newman’s Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings. Lawrence A. Palinkas commented in the American Ethnologist in 2005. Palinkas reviewed his main findings, but also pointed to some of the difficulties of studying such events at the time: small sample size, (respondents) reluctance or refusal to be interviewed, and retrospective data collection.
Despite these limitations, Newman and her colleagues provided some valuable insights: Factors that contribute to school shootings are diverse, and no single feature takes precedence in explaining why they occur; this Responsibility for such incidents lies not only with the boys who perpetrate these violent acts, but also with the communities that nurture and educate them; and preventing such incidents lies in fostering a culture that recognizes and responds to behaviors that imply a risk of violence against oneself or others.
As Devin concludes, Newman’s work is a prescient caveat.
03. How teens deal with gun culture
Along the lines of research on surveillance and militarization in urban schools, let’s take a look at two recent articles in Anthropology & Education Quarterly. The first is An Ecology of Fear: Examining the Contradictory Surveillance Terrain by Rachel Pinnow (2013) Navigated by Mexican Youth in a US Middle School). Panoff describes this paradoxical surveillance space as
The inconsistency between the principles that guide law enforcement, developed in the name of promoting school and student safety, and real-world behavior, these resources are used to target specific juveniles, discipline and punish them as criminals, significantly prolonging the relationship between schools and prisons. channel between.
Panoff points out that there is little research on how Mexican-American youth respond to such surveillance, which is where her article contributes. Like Devin, Panoff draws on the concept of a panoramic prison, where “the objectification of identity arises from the criminal point of view”. Thus, Panoff sought to trace “how criminal representations are established and propagated in specific youth groups, and how the resulting objectification of identity affects classroom practice and interactions”.
Panoff conducted research in the southeastern United States, where immigrants were growing at the time, and local governments were increasingly nervous about the potential emergence of gang and school violence. While the middle school has a mandatory gang prevention program, these efforts focus only on Latino gangs. “Clearly, the discussion of the proliferation of ideological gangs, such as the proliferation of white supremacist groups in the region, is missing.” Sure enough, over the course of the study, the deterrent of in-school suspensions shifted from primarily targeting white men to targeting Mexican-American students. In conclusion, “What is most concerning is that a fundamental paradox of the surveillance space in Rockville is that it was established in the name of improving student safety and security, But it appears to be targeting only one specific group of students (namely Mexican students), which may make the school experience for these students simply insecure.”
Esmeralda Bravo holds up a photo of her granddaughter Nevajo, one of the victims of the shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Photographer Wally Skalij via Los Angeles Times.Published in Anthropology & Education with similar concerns is Suzie Abajian’s 2016 “Recording Militarization: Studying the Challenges Facing the Highly Controversial Practice in Urban Schools”. Documenting Militarism: Challenges of Researching Highly Contested Practices within Urban Schools. Abajian conducted a “year-long qualitative case study on militarization and conscription…in a Southern California school serving primarily low-income Latino students…documented and revealed the expanding military presence, military The Effects of Funding and Militarization Practices on the Educational Experience of Urban School Students”.
Like the other articles collected in this issue, Abajian noted the lack of relevant research and the difficulty of research. Despite these obstacles, Abagian found a “pedagogy of enforcement” and a “culture of militarism” that “more than any other post-graduation career path,” Two factors prioritized “students at this school” for “military advancement.” These pedagogies become especially prominent in policing training classes when teachers are also police officers on duty.
Further, given the presence of undocumented students in schools, they are in a (real and perceived) particularly vulnerable position because of policies such as the Secure Communities Act, in theory, a very small offense behavior may result in (their) deportation. So having heavily armed police officers as teachers doesn’t necessarily create an environment where students feel free to experiment, take risks, and not fear failure.
Furthermore, as a Syrian immigrant who came to the United States, Abajian had to grapple with some issues that were reflexive and representative. As Abajian concludes, in the context of “militarization and ‘imperative patriotism’ within the United States, it is difficult for my study participants and I to reveal how we really feel about military service and law enforcement and how we feel about it.” perceptions – thus limiting the knowledge that may be acquired”. Based on the shape of the nation’s discourse since November 2016, each of the problems Abagian points out may be intensifying.
04. Mental Illness, Adolescence, Children’s Play
One of the most prominent themes in any discussion of school shootings since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting has been mental illness. Eileen Anderson-Fye and Jerry Floersch’s article in Ethos (2011) explores adolescence, mental health, and medication And other issues.
Anderson Fey and Fruersch in “I’m Not Your Typical ‘Homework Stresses Me’ Girl: A Psychological Anthropological Study of College Students’ Use of Psychiatric Drugs and Mental Health Services” ‘Homework Stresses Me out’ Kind of Girl’), shows how anthropological theories and methods influence policy and practice. Of direct relevance to many who work in education, Anderson Fey and Fruersch describe “how 18-25 year olds transition into adulthood in a specific way in college, and medication management plays a role in their development. It’s important, especially in terms of autonomy and identity”. In addition, these issues must be considered in a broader context: “Perspectives in global health and medical anthropology remind us that the issues and trends we see in the United States are not isolated, but are part of the flow of images and products such as prescription drugs”.
Average daily first-time use of various illegal drugs or alcohol (21 is the legal drinking age in the U.S.) for American college students (ages 18-22), 2011-2014, source: https://ift.tt/knp2H5PAfter an overview of the broader issue, Anderson Fey and Fruersch focused on the Transitions in Medication Experience (TIME) study conducted at a University in the Midwest. Their research discusses and provides students’ direct views on overwhelmed mental health services, stigma management, service options, and the general environment. It concludes with a call for similarly comprehensive research: “Psychological anthropology is well suited to help integrate different levels and types of knowledge, and to apply the long tradition of understanding human development and well-being in cultural and institutional contexts to the United States and to more and more countries around the world. A growing number of adolescents and young adults apply to some of the most pressing contemporary issues that matter to them.”
The next two articles return to the Anthropology and Education Quarterly. High-Five Fridays: (Mis)Trust-Building in One by Denise Ives and Camille Cammack White Liberal Community) is our latest article in this collection, and therefore the only article that discusses some of Trump’s reactions since he became President of the United States.
Ives and Carmack tell “the story of attempts to disrupt the normalization of the white experience by resisting local community policing initiatives in this liberal Northeastern community.” Specifically, High Five Friday:
It’s a plan put forward by the local police department, in which officers enter elementary schools on Friday and high-five students as they enter the building in the morning, in what has been described as a simple, inexpensive form of community outreach. We believe that even a seemingly benign project like High Five Fridays must be at a historic moment of Ferguson, the Dallas shooting, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the Police Lives Matter movement. Interpreted as a political act: a program that gives police superiority over the guarded, and whites over everyone else.
Ives and Carmack voiced their concerns about the plan, and concerns raised in the early days of the plan’s formation appear to have gone unheeded. While these concerns led to the suspension of the project, the suspension was de-contextualized and quickly became popular. As so often happens, the comments turned sharp and hostile. “A group of parents started a petition to revive the ‘Five Friday’ campaign. School committee members who had questioned the validity of the campaign were mocked on Twitter.” “High Five Friday” was thus popularized in Massachusetts. Black parents who opposed the plan were hacked and publicly threatened by internet bloggers. finally:
Our experience of trying to unravel High Five Friday gave us a better understanding of the challenges ahead of us. We realized that a Black Lives Matter banner at City Hall or a rainbow sidewalk downtown could actually be a cover for resistance to change that would make white liberals uncomfortable, or ask us to confront own accomplice in a system of perpetuating oppression. We realize that a well-intentioned rationalization, an idea of ”not in our town,” can act to silence dissent in the same way that our belief in American exceptionalism There is no difference between dissent and excuses for state injustices. Resisting the Trump administration will require us to unite across differences. In doing so, we must remain vigilant that non-white groups and others targeted by this administration will not bear the burden alone. We must have the courage to accept James Baldwin’s invitation to look over the wall. We must not only be willing to listen to, but believe, the stories of nonwhite groups whose experiences with law enforcement have been and will continue to be different from those of most white Americans.
As Ives and Carmack describe, the Trump administration’s zeal to develop a pro-police authoritarian regime is partly based on the Bush administration after 9/11. Anna Beresin, in Children’s Expressive Culture in Light of September 11, 2001, elaborates on the “variety of spontaneous play responses”. “9/11 created a whole new genre of civic games and, more unfortunately, new civic groups: victims of terrorism, heroes, frightened travelers, people labelled ‘terrorists’ , panic-stricken city dwellers, and children in fully closed schools.”
Children coping with traumatic memories after 9/11 by drawing by Julia Cortez, 7, and Paul Keim, 8, Source: NYU Child Study Center )The work of Beresin and her partners amounts to a kind of immediate field report, and repeated observations also provide situational advantages. “The coursework that this article focuses on, I’ve done for 11 years. I’ve never encountered that kind of homework record after 9/11.” Beresin concluded that
If 9/11 taught us something, it’s that the line between reason and irrationality is thinner than we admit, that violence has its legitimacy to those who perpetuate it, and that children’s irrational play It does make a lot of sense. If we want to avoid what psychoanalysts call “trauma,” we must give children the opportunity to relax themselves by turning painful images into playful symbols of art. Some people need to be attackers, some people need to be attacked, some people need to be shocked, and some people need to be rebels. Some people need to recreate the symbols, others need to start looking for new ones. The study of symbolism is cultural in nature. It will be both sad and interesting to see how and where these reimagined symbols evolve.
Beresin later wrote Recess Battles: Playing, Fighting, and Storytelling (2010), an ethnographic description of how children interact with culture through play fight.
05. Public Responses and Absences in Anthropology
The Newtown Massacre and Anthropology’s Public Response, Daniel Lende, American Anthropologist (2013), summarizes What happened in anthropology shortly after the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. As Rand writes, “The response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting shows how anthropology has grown online and how this public anthropology is becoming an increasingly important part of the discipline”. Rand sees this as a pivotal moment when anthropology for online audiences merges with traditional publications and anthropological institutions. But Rand also pointed to a key persistent problem: “When writing about issues that are hotly debated by the media, anthropologists need to find a way between the clichés of other professions and the uniqueness of our field. … If the mainstream media Being able to hit the same points with more flash and a better reputation, why would there be a need to turn to anthropology?” Rand bemoaned the lack of a coherent anthropology story and put it bluntly: “We need a A new story.…Information needs to be addressed to [the public], not just to other anthropologists who have ‘got it’ for a long time. An effective story brings people into the experience of presence beyond their own experience – connecting them with Others and other places meet—while also talking about the reader’s desire to feel, understand, and be better.”
Looking back at Rand’s 2018 comments, just after the “March for Our Lives” (note: March for Our Lives, a student-led demonstration in support of gun control legislation), it appears that most of the issues noted above are correct. If there’s a problem, it’s that anthropology’s online response has waned in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. After the Las Vegas shooting or the events in Parkland, there were few responses on anthropology blogs. More anthropologists seem to be doing “micro-comments” on Facebook or Twitter than blogs. Meanwhile, what Rand and many of the anthropologists involved in responding to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting could not have anticipated was the slow spread of related conspiracy theories, so with the events in Parkland, “Operation Blame” ( false flag) and “crisis actors” were quickly mobilized. In short, as Rand claims, anthropology does need a new, valid story. However, we are not competing with the pundits of the mainstream media, but with the blatant false stories and claims.
We then transitioned to two articles published after the Orlando nightclub shooting. Guns Are Not an Equal Opportunity Destroyer by Roger Lancaster is part of the Anthropology News special issue (2016) on mass shootings part. Lancaster’s subtitle describes his theme: “Guns are a key link in the chain of violence, but they are also part of a larger picture of inequality in American society”. Lancaster weaves together his personal experiences growing up with guns on a farm, but also his experiences as a gay man in an urban setting. Lancaster tries to explore between the expressible extremes of rhetoric and the proper position:
We thus seem to be stuck in an American dilemma, a vicious circle. The prevalence of guns, especially pistols, has less to do with rural solidarity than with our ingrained culture of fear. Easily available guns turn a robbery or brawl into a deadly incident, sending the smell of blood flying on front pages and social media, which in turn convinces people further that they need guns for their own protection.
Lancaster reminds us to beware of oversimplifications and correlation-based arguments; beware of so-called panacea; and beware of “cognitive distortions caused by horrific scenes of violence such as mass shootings.” He asks us to start from a harm reduction or public health perspective and remember that most shootings are suicidal. His final analysis is crucial: “America is a uniquely violent state because of its unique and harsh forms of social inequality, with no buffers. Guns are a key link in the chain of violence, but they are also part of a larger social picture. part”.
People hold a vigil for the victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting at a park in Florida on June 19, 2016. Photographer John Raoux, source APAlso from 2016 is ‘Pulse’ Nightclub Shooting: Linking Militarism, Neoliberalism, and Multiculturalism to Understanding by Zachary Blair in North American Dialogue The Pulse Nightclub Shooting: Connecting Militarism, Neoliberalism, and Multiculturalism to Understand Violence. “As an undergraduate student at the University of Central Florida, I’ve known anthropology about the same time I’ve known Pulse. When I moved back to Orlando more than a decade later to write my doctoral dissertation, Pulse was one of the few One of those places that seems almost unchanged, a place where I find comfort in the familiar.” Blair told this personal story in an article that
Attempts to place the Pulse nightclub shooting in a larger structural and political-economic context. In particular, I position the Pulse Shooting incident as an event situated in, and a consequence of, a complex relationship of global processes and policies, including: (1) U.S. imperialism and militarism, (2) neocolonialism in the context of the Free State of Puerto Rico ism, and (3) neoliberal multiculturalism in the gay club space.
Blair describes these changes in turn. He argues that “there is a constitutive, cyclical dynamic between imperialism under Middle Eastern capitalism and U.S. violence against LGBTQ+ people”. On Puerto Rico: “Forced to leave Puerto Rico, partly due to rampant homophobia and partly due to structural poverty exacerbated by neocolonial policies, it is no accident that so many LGBTQ+ Puerto Ricans are showing up at Pulse nightclubs”. On neoliberal multiculturalism: “Before Pulse, the so-called ‘higher’ Latin nights were lesbian nights, hip-hop nights and college nights – representing the weekly lineup of niche nights that The night divides LGBTQ+ people by race, gender and class and celebrates their diversity as a business strategy for profit.” This analysis of the links between factors enables people to understand and adopt new strategies:
建立（各因素间的）联系不仅能使人们对暴力有更广泛的理解，还能通过将暴力置于可以解决的更大问题中来增强社会和政治行动。……在结束中东战争、解放波多黎各、逐步废除同性恋空间中的种族主义以及改变资本主义消费模式方面，仍然有机会实现正义。
彼得·本森（Peter Benson）在《政治和法律人类学评论》（PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review）上的文章《企业家长制和有害产品的问题》（Corporate Paternalism and the Problem of Harmful Products）（2014）也是关于营销策略和资本主义消费的，在文章中，本森将烟草业和枪支并列。
特定的关键行业面临着这样或那样的批评，因为他们的产品以这种或那种方式伤害着人们。人类学家王爱华（Aihwa Ong）（2003:6）所说的“问题空间”（problem-space）围绕着特定商品和消费行为的形成，借用福柯（1985，1997）的术语，这个过程可以被描述为“问题化”（problematization）。··· 通过公共关系和宣传来塑造文化，围绕问题的辩论、讨论、概念化和理解的方式进行，是产业用来变通问题化以符合其经济利益的一个关键策略。
本森在某种程度上呼应了《漫步在射击展览馆》的分析主题，描述了烟草和枪支的宣传如何强调消费者的选择和个人责任。一个多少有点奇怪的转折是，菲利普莫里斯国际公司（Philip Morris）设立了一个预防青少年吸烟部门，并资助青少年相关项目。本森认为，“将问题归结为对’危险行为’的教育，淡化了尤其与烟草导致的健康风险和成瘾行为相关的真实情况，包括工业香烟营销的角色，工业同时塑造文化和政治的能力和意愿，以及家庭、吸烟者、年轻人和社区等团体或许十分有限的资源和其能动性”。类似地，枪支游说团的重点是家庭、教育和保护。“枪支游说团将枪支框定为保护家庭和个人的资源，它声称这一切是为了家庭、儿童和公民权利的最大化利益。但其结果是利用这些情感和意识形态为销售有害产品服务”。
06. 比较民族志与反对暴力的未来
本合集的最后三篇文章提供了来自美国以外地区的比较民族志。接下来的两篇文章分别是关于那些被认定是有文化暴力因子的地方和人，以及种族、民族和文化如何交织在一起产生了认为暴力出现是自然结果的决定论。
比林达·斯蒂尔（Bilinda Straight）的《对肯尼亚“恶地”暴力的理解》（Making Sense of Violence in the ‘Badlands’ of Kenya）发表在2009年的《人类学与人文主义》（Anthropology and Humanism）上。斯蒂尔一开始就论证了“具体来说，’文化’作为一个话语类别，牵涉到围绕着暴力的多种原因和背景中，这些原因和背景是相互促进的，并产生灾难性的效果”。部分原因是类民族志和殖民国家认可的描述，一种对桑布鲁人（Samburu，居住在肯尼亚中部偏北的尼罗河流域民族）的看法，产生了一种
肤浅、简略的文化解释，方便符合对永恒不变的“部落”战争的日益全球化的成见。这种“文化”解释之所以简单，并不是因为它不真实，而是因为它只是错综复杂的原因之一，这些原因包括殖民时期和独立时期的肯尼亚政府因发展不足，以及减少土地持有量而造成的资源枯竭（Lesorogol, 1991, 2003），还有当地的、地区的和国家的政治现实。
与特别是在媒体上全球范围内流传的肤浅的文化主义解释相比，斯蒂尔带来一个更为周密的地方性政治解释。当桑布鲁族发生暴力时，全球的媒体关注这一冲突并称之为“部落战争”。但当暴力消失后，他们的身影也从媒体上消失了，他们的声音持续被边缘化。这
不仅仅是剥夺了人们的历史（Wolf，1982），而是使特殊性变得不重要了。因此，人类学家可能试图将被边缘化的人特殊化；然而，其他地方的人，特别是有色人种，以及“异域者”，作为特殊性的代表是非常难的。究竟有没有人关心加布拉人、博拉纳人、博科特人或桑布鲁人？根据游戏规则，即使是像肯尼亚这样的边缘化国家也会在内部将某些群体边缘化，这是一种具有讽刺意味的举动，具有政治和经济上间接统治的性质。因此，边缘化的民族群体被政治精英们操纵着，他们甚至为部落间小规模战争提供资金。
类似的问题也呈现在布伦特·梅兹（Brent Metz）, 洛伦佐·马里亚诺（Lorenzo Mariano）和朱利安·洛佩斯·加西亚（Julián López García）撰写的《危地马拉东部乔尔提地区暴力事件之后的暴力》（The Violence after ‘La Violencia’ in the Ch’orti’ Region of Eastern Guatemala）中，该文章发表在2010年的《拉丁美洲和加勒比人类学期刊》（Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology）上。
2021年12月20日，在危地马拉圣卡塔里纳伊斯塔瓦坎举行的仪式上，鸟瞰奇基克斯村遇害者的七具棺材。警方表示，在危地马拉西部，至少有13人被杀，包括妇女、儿童和一名警察，这是原住民村庄之间长期存在的土地争端。摄影师Carlos Alonzo，图源AFP危地马拉东部被描绘成一片由脾气暴躁、持枪、毫无法律可言的拉迪诺人（Ladinos）（具有各种文化和生物性遗传的非本地西班牙人）占据的干涸土地”。作者指出，该地区凶杀案和暴力事件的数据在统计学意义上是真实的，但暴力仅仅是因为这些人是原始的“暴力分子”这一说法是不正确的。
梅兹、马里亚诺和洛佩斯·加西亚追溯了该地区的历史，以及从殖民时期开始的无法可依的发展。然而，历史原因是不够的：
2007年的凶杀案数据表明，目前的暴力不能被简化为内战的习惯、遗产、文化、民风、内战的残余或升级，其中受内战影响最大的地区危地马拉西部和北部却有着比较低的凶杀率。相反，必须从结构性因素中寻找原因，这些因素煽动起内战的火焰，并因新自由主义政策和全球化而变得更加严重。
梅兹、马里亚诺和洛佩斯·加西亚试图将凶杀案与结构性暴力的因素联系起来。一个关键的联系是在当地“失去尊重”的想法。总而言之：
东部地区现在与以往任何时候相比，都充斥着更多暴力，因为导致暴力的结构仍然存在，包括失败的自给农业、不充分的国家服务，如教育和执法，缺乏足够的市场机会，以及持续的、即使不太明显的种族主义和性别歧视。就像菲利普·布尔古瓦（Philippe Bourgois）（1995）笔下东哈林区被边缘化的瘾君子和毒贩一样，乔尔提人为获得尊重和自我认可而进行的痛苦挣扎会导致自我毁灭的行为，包括对被理解为傲慢和侮辱的过度敏感，以及报复的驱动力。消费主义、国际移民、电影和音乐中对黑手党的美化，以及经常把血淋淋的尸体放在头条版面的报纸，都加速了暴力行为的出现和频发。
最后一篇文章是由尼克拉斯·霍尔廷（Niklas Hultin）在《美国民族学家》（2015）上发表，讨论了控制小型武器的尝试，名为《渗漏的人道主义：关于冈比亚小型武器控制的人类学》（Leaky Humanitarianism: The Anthropology of Small Arms Control in the Gambia）。文章认为，“小型武器在冲突区和国家之间的流动，不仅威胁着人类的生命，也威胁着以主权国家完全控制领土为前提的、现代地缘政治秩序的基础”。
在政府和非政府组织都同意控制武器的情况下，仍有一些团体和个人出于各种原因渴望得到枪支，并“怀疑政府追求小型武器控制的动机”。“从这个角度来看，对小型武器的控制呈现出复杂的色调。对枪支制造和其所有权的限制，从旨在防止犯罪和暴力的良性行为，变成了一个专横国家巩固权力的工具之一”。霍尔廷将武器控制这一行为描绘成一种“最终确认并加强了国家权力的人道主义的’渗漏’形式”。霍尔廷最后提到：
虽然本文基于冈比亚的特殊背景，但其概念的主旨却广泛适用。小型武器控制总是反映着它所处的政治、文化和经济背景，其成功与否也取决于这一背景，其中，至少有一部分是伤害性权力适当分配的多样化理解的结果。
作为一个整体，这些选题再次有力地证明了人类学的重要性。我们把这一期合集作为一种资源提供给我们自己，从而更好地支持我们的学生、孩子，以及那些在枪支问题上承担起领导责任的年轻人。我们在来自帕克兰、芝加哥、洛杉矶、华盛顿特区和其他遭受枪支暴力影响的社区的声音中，找到了巨大的希望和灵感。我们加入他们的队伍，拓展这个讯息：够了。
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