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- Title
Die Macht der Schwachen - Über Handlungsmöglichkeiten von Zivilpersonen in den Gewaltkonflikten Kolumbiens und Guatemalas.
- Authors
Naucke, Philipp
- Abstract
This article analyzes the agency of civilians in violent conflicts. In newspapers, NGO-reports or scientific publications, civilians in armed conflicts are often represented as helpless victims of senseless violence. This representation, in which the civilian population is denied any form of independent agency, has been transformed discursively into the motive of the 'innocent civilian'. Without calling into question that civilians too often are victims of violent crimes in armed conflicts, I argue that this particular motive represents only a part of the complex civilian life and that it actually obstructs the view on the agency of civilians in such difficult situations. In this article, the motive of the 'innocent civilian' will be contrasted with the version of an 'active civilian', in which the creativity, the decision-making ability and the agency of the civilian population is emphasized. For this purpose, the article begins with an analyses of the motive of the 'innocent civilian' and its underlying definitions and assumptions. Subsequently, the broad range of possible courses of action by civilians in armed conflicts will be highlighted based on selected anthropological literature and two empirical case studies, the ,Comunidad de Paz de San José de Apartadó' in Colombia and the ,Comunidades de Población in Resistencia del Ixcán' in Guatemala.
- Publication
Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 2016, Vol 141, Issue 1, p101
- ISSN
0044-2666
- Publication type
Article