Original link: https://tyingknots.net/2022/06/gun-violence-magic-haiti/
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 in 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 May 4, 2022 local time, a series of shooting incidents occurred in Uvalde, Texas, USA. Salvador Ramos, only 18 years old, armed with an AR-15 rifle, previously shot his grandmother at home, and later He 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 this case, Canada quickly passed a bill to further strengthen the control of guns. In the United States, where shootings occur frequently, although there are frequent calls and protests to change legislation and control guns, it is still difficult 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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From an anthropological perspective, the author of this article, Professor Chelsea Kiefland, has long focused on street politics, social policing, gun use and regulation in Haiti and the Caribbean. Through in-depth and meticulous field investigation, Kiefland pointed out that guns, as an important part of the modern violent technology system, not only have complex cultural symbolic meanings, but also a “combination of human beings and technology”. Possession and control can have “a powerful technical and psychological impact on people, changing people’s existence and behavior patterns, and bringing violence to the world.” Although Kiefland’s research is mainly based on the political and cultural environment of the Caribbean, it may be helpful for us to further explore the relationship between technology and society in different social contexts, and to understand the process of violence generation, persistence and change.
Author | Chelsey Kivland (Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Dartmouth College)
Original title | Do Guns Possess the Power to Change Us?: A story of three deaths in Haiti has a lesson to teach the US
Original link | https://ift.tt/n7PAJGO
Original publication time | April 19, 2019 Translator | Edited by Qiu Wenjing / Wang Jing
01. The power to change human nature
“Whoever touches that gun will die at some point…because it will act on that person,” a 37-year-old Haitian man explained to me. His name is Karl (a pseudonym) and he lives in the Bel Air slum in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. I have been doing anthropological research there since 2008. The gun Carr was talking about was a Smith & Wesson .38 special-caliber revolver, which has long been the standard for U.S. police and U.S.-trained security forces in Haiti. After the pistol was bought from a former Army soldier for $75, it went through the hands of three people: a young father named Franz, a young man named Pababa and another new father named Henry people.
From December 2012 to February 2013, the three of them were shot in succession and died in the Bel Air slum. Although the .38 revolver, or “that gun” as residents call it, was not necessarily the one that killed the three, they all died while in possession of it.
An open-air market and bus station in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Photo by Luke Mattar.I’ve asked Bel Air people why these gunmen are being shot instead, and they tend to speculate that the gunmen have been enchanted by a magic called maji. In Haiti, magic refers to the immoral use of spiritual powers, as opposed to the ritualistic form of Vodou, which summons ancestors to heal and protect family members. (Note: Some voodoos believe that the Christian name should be written “Vodou” rather than “Voodoo,” which has a derogatory connotation.) This kind of magic requires the aid of supernatural powers, one at the expense of the other. cast magic. Many Bel Air people believe that the gunmen died because they used unethical supernatural powers that, instead of protecting them, turned the gun on themselves, killing them under the gun.
However, when neighbors recounted how these deaths occurred, they all offered an explanation for another supernatural change: the supernatural potency of the .38 pistol that turns people into unethical agents. With each subsequent death, the legend surrounding the gun grew, with speculation that a “touch” of the gun might herald death. “Those poor young men have changed since they touched this gun,” said one Bel-Air man. They talked about the gun as if it were an amulet that could turn good people into evil spirits walking the world.
It would be short-sighted to dismiss these claims as irrational explanations of “superstitious people”. The racially charged conclusion of “superstitious people” has long been used to ostracize and demonize Haitians so that people outside of Haiti cannot see that guns really exhibit a magical-like power: changing a person The power of the state of mind.
In all seriousness, understanding the paranormal role of guns has broad implications for understanding and addressing the global problem of gun violence. In the United States, on the one hand, gun owners tend to view guns as a value-neutral tool, as they say, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill.” On the other side are pro-gun regulators who believe that guns do kill people. Without the lethal power of guns, as in other countries, the death toll would be far fewer. But looking at the Haiti case from an anthropological point of view, the reality is actually more complicated. The danger of guns comes not only from technological lethality, but also from its ability to exert force on human agency, thereby changing human nature . It can be said that what motivates people to pull the trigger is not only the technology of the gun, but also the symbolism behind the gun.
During the Haitian Revolution between 1791 and 1804, the people raised their arms and overthrew the French colonists. Auguste Raffet/Wikimedia CommonsOn the one hand, the possession of guns symbolizes the sovereignty of the people. After all, Haiti’s independence in 1804 was the result of enslaved people bravely taking up arms against the colonial regime. After the Haitian Revolution, generals handed out rifles to soldiers as they retired. In the years that followed, peasant armies were able to use their weapons to control regional territories and stage coups. The Duvalier family, who ruled Haiti from 1957 to 1986, concentrated the dictatorship’s power and restricted civilian ownership of guns to the regime’s paramilitary network.
In 1987, after the fall of the dictatorship, in order to transfer power to the people, a democratic constitution was passed, giving Haitian citizens the right to armed self-defense. The U.S. Constitution is similar, drafted after imperial rule and the anti-imperialist war of independence, and it also stipulates the right of citizens to bear arms.
However, in Haiti, as in the rest of the world, guns can also symbolize the abuse of power . The Haitian Creole “chèf”, although generally referring to a leader, means sheriff (chèf seksyon) when used to refer to armed men, a word formerly used to refer to the henchmen of dictatorial leaders. Armed with a government-issued .38 caliber revolver, sheriffs can do whatever they want with impunity in the name of their leader, even without a uniform and ID.
Today, the word “chèf” is used both as a respectful name for armed men who protect people and as a criticism of armed men who abuse them. Since the fall of the dictatorship, the urban baz and other resident community organizations have assumed the political and economic management functions of the urban fringe, and the paradoxical meaning of the word chèf is especially reflected in these baz leaders. Possessing a .38 caliber gun, in particular, signifies possession of a certain urban territory.
02. The story of “that gun”
In telling the story of the deaths of the three, the Bel Air people emphasized this symbolism. As the story circulated and became standardized among the neighbors, I began to understand that the story was less a telling of the facts of what happened than a way of framing how the .38 pistol plays a crucial role (a framing device).
“Do you want to know the story of Henry’s death?” Carl asked me once. “It’s a story of three dead, maybe more. Well, let me tell you.”
According to Carr, it all started when Franz, the Baz leader, brought a gun to his birthday party, which was a big event on the street and a DJ. At that time, the hostile Baz, led by Pababa, came to the party uninvited and fully armed, signaling an intention to fight for control of the area. Pababa was unhappy to see Franz carrying a gun and waving it in the air. “When they saw a .38 gun, they wanted to ruin the party,” Carl told me, “and then Pababa shot Franz. It all happened so fast. Bang! Franz was lying in a pool of blood. Everyone ran away.”
“So, Pababa had the .38 at that point,” Carr continued. A few weeks later, Pababa and friends went to a party in Buzz, another block. Pababa’s team felt in control and at ease, drinking beer, dancing and shooting in the air. A member of the host Bazri, Boss Henry, was unhappy with the brazen performance and told Pababa that his men were not allowed to enter their party and shoot at random. Pababa thought differently: “If we want to shoot, shoot. Whoever has a .38 caliber gun can shoot.” To this, Henry’s boss responded: “If you keep shooting, I’ll go. Get my gun.” When Henry confronted Pababa, as Carl recalled: bang bang bang! Pababa was killed.
After the shooting, everyone ran – except Henry, who found the .38 caliber gun and became its new owner. Carr guessed he did it because he knew “that gun has a lot of power”. With the .38 caliber gun, Henry started to behave differently. To many, he seemed to have been carried away by power, ordering people everywhere, inciting fights, and even stealing from neighbors. Henry, as Carr said, behaved like anyone with such a gun. “You become an impatient. You feel the power in your body and you think you can do anything. … He’s going to rob business, rob … and then [the police] find him and shoot him a lot. Bullets.” That’s what happened to Henry.
This is the story Carl told me, so it may not represent how things really are, or even what other people think. But Carl’s story isn’t unique, either. It’s consistent with crime reports, and it echoes what I’ve heard from many people. The most important thing in all stories is how the narrator sees the role of guns.
While the guns had a powerful effect on all three of the dead, they didn’t work in the same way. For Franz and Pababa, the gun empowered the two to fight for control of Buzz’s land, but it was their doomed defeat. For Henry, the gun led him into criminal tracks. Henry’s friend said the same as Carl: “He saw the weapon, and he saw the road (destined to crime) before him.” However, another said: “Before, he was a good young man. But the .38 pistol is a He showed another way (of being and behaving), and he wanted to be as infamous as Pabaaba.”
In these narratives, guns serve not just as a tool to enable people’s pre-existing intentions, but as a catalyst for the development of previously unimaginable intentions. The supernatural power of the gun is that it has the power to open up new possibilities.
03. Reflect on the relationship between people and guns
A gun is not just an inanimate object that can be separated from the user’s intent. The gun held by man is a composite of man and technology that changes man and what guns can do in the world. As the philosopher and anthropologist Bruno Latour said: “Because you have a gun, you are another subject; because it has established a relationship with you, the gun is also another object… A bad guy becomes became a worse man; a silent gun became a fired gun.” The core idea of this passage is that man is a necessary existence for the activation of weapons, and weapons are the ability to activate and enhance man indispensable.
However, Bel Air’s explanation pushes the idea further. People act with guns, not just to shoot, but to imbue the technology with a social sense of power and violence. It is precisely because material objects and people have to work together to create the world’s murderers and acts of violence that the .38 pistol is so powerful.
In the United States, the AR-15 assault rifle is also such a violent gun. It was smeared with the blood of the dead, and its tragedies were reborn in a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and Sutherland Springs, Texas. Baptist Church in Las Vegas, concerts in Las Vegas, and Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. The rifle is easy to use, extremely lethal, and, since the end of the assault weapons ban in 2004, it has remained plentiful and readily available. However, its availability and technology are only part of the story. It’s also “America’s Rifle,” used in addition to real-life thugs, online game avatars, and military heroes. Originally a symbol of mass entertainment and national defense, it is now a symbol of tragedy.
The background wall in the picture shows an assault rifle. Jessica Rinaldi/Getty ImagesFranz, Pababa, and Henry died suddenly and unnecessarily, as did 142 people (139 victims and 3 gunmen) in the five aforementioned mass shootings. There is a lesson to be learned from a paranormal interpretation perspective: We cannot treat guns and people as separate entities, talk only about gun control, or only talk about mental health policy, and gun control must be implemented as a combination of guns and people. If we are to truly understand and control gun violence, we must acknowledge that guns have powerful technical and psychological effects on people, changing the way people exist and behave, bringing violence to life.
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