TERRAIN n°43-September 2004
Scares and menaces
Translation by Noal Mellott
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TERRAIN n°43-September 2004
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Menacing techniques
Elizabeth
Claverie
A few days before militiamen entered a small town in Bosnia-Herzegovina in April
1992, the victims-to-be were unable to envision or detect the omens of a menace
against them on the very place where they lived, a place they shared with their
future executioners. Two types of sources, artificially brought together: on
the one hand, the accounts by women from an association of victims who described
the near impossibility of "seeing" what was going to happen ("Our
neighbors are going to kill us") and their "surprise" at what
occurred; and, on the other hand, testimony before the International Criminal
Tribunal for former Yugoslavia by those who prepared specific attacks on towns
and villages well ahead of time and carried out nationalistic plans.
KEY WORDS: MENACES, ETHNIC PURIFICATION, YUGOSLAV WARS, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA.
Words for scaring: Threatening letters in Paris in 1892
Philippe
Artières
During the spring of 1892, when several bombs planted by anarchists went off
in Paris, a "silent epidemic" spread through the mail. Hundreds of
threats were anonymously sent in an atmosphere of terror sustained by the press.
These letters "for scaring" provide us with a glimpse of social resentment
and of a web of occupational, family and personal strife. In particular, they
are pieces of evidence about the practices that disturbed the graphic order
established by 19th-century society.
KEY WORDS: ANONYMOUS LETTERS, ANARCHISM, PRESS, THREATS, POLICE, PARIS.
Fear, mistrust and defiance of machines
Véronique
Moulinié
How to work near, even on, machines and apparently not show fear even though they are recognized as extremely dangerous? This journey inside firms lets us see how workers, in the basic sense of this word, manipulate fear. Ostensibly asserted or even brandished but not actually felt, this emotion is an instrument for resisting authority, a means for signaling opposition. On the contrary, the fear that might arise while working around a dangerous machine is banned, as if replaced with feelings that, ranging from mistrust to imprudence, should be experienced in order to discover the right position to maintain in relation to the machine. The process that turns "newcomers" into "workers" can thus be sketched. We understand why these feelings and attitudes, prescribed or proscribed, tend to be a discourse, a matter of what the peer group says and projects onto any newcomer, rather than to correspond to the latter's actual attitudes.
KEY WORDS: WORKER, TRAINING, MISTRUST, IMPRUDENCE, EMOTIONS, DANGER.
In an aside to the dead: Fear, tears and laughing in the funeral business
Pascale
Trompette and Sandrine Caroly
Undertakers of all kinds, embalmers and mortician's assistants, have an occupational
slot on the long assembly line for producing funeral services. In these positions
in between the living and the dead, life on the job does not allow for squeamishness.
These "workers" have the place of professionals who are used to death
and to the outburst of feelings ensuing from it. Behind this strictly professional
attitude with its seeming avoidance of any personal involvement, barely visible
signs of shock, fear or discomfort and of rituals for coping with the welling
up of emotions can be observed. To cope with fear, those who work on the deceased
have invented their own occupational "type", one combining denial
and craftiness, virile honor and a professional sense of control, a community
response and relief through laughing.
KEY WORDS: FEAR, DEATH, EMOTION, FUNERAL PRACTITIONERS, WORK, FRANCE.
Liver and heart thieves: Europeans and Westernized Malagasy as seen by the Betsileo (Madagascar)
Luke Freeman
The northern Betsileo in highland Madagascar are rice-farmers; but many of them
have an education and obtain employment. They tell scary stories about the stealing
of vital organs, in particular children's livers and hearts. The thieves are
always Europeans or educated Malagasy. Unlike most analyses of such stories,
which are told around the world, this study of the fear aroused by such narratives
does not see it as related to colonial or postcolonial domination and the exploitation
of bodies but, instead, as expressive of the fear of the alienating power and
wealth acquired thanks to education and a colonization of the mind.
KEY WORDS: EDUCATION, FEAR, COLONIZATION, RUMOR, BETSILEO, MADAGASCAR.
Gut scared? Risks and poisons
Noëlie
Vialles
Since consumer reactions to recent health alerts are usually set down to fear,
they can be discounted as "irrational". But this argumentation is
not used by consumers, whose behavior can be better understood in terms of the
normal requirement to "know what you are eating", with its corollary
of avoiding any suspicious food. The archetypical suspicious food is poison.
The "mad cow panic" fully illustrates permanent aspects of what are
called "food scares", which are more a matter of suspicion. The industrial
production of foodstuffs amplifies the effects of these scares but without either
creating or significantly changing their structural characteristics.
KEY WORDS: FOOD, FOOD SCARES, BODY, DANGER, RISK, MISTRUST/CONFIDENCE, POISON, EUROPE.
The violence of relations in fieldwork: The Haitian example
Natacha
Giafferi
Current events and scientific projects are not always compatible. How, in Haiti
for instance, to develop and maintain the cordial relationships necessary for
field work? Given the ambiguities that might be one of the only remaining fallback
positions of the supposedly "noble savages" as they face the incursions
of our desire to know and control everything, should we not try to adapt "our"
methodological and theoretical approaches to these new situations? Should we
not consider the difficulties of a dialog between academics from the North and
their "subjects" from the South to be a response to our questions
about the relations between culture and society?
KEY WORDS: NORTH/SOUTH, UNDERDEVELOPMENT, SCIENTIFIC PROJECTS, VIOLENCE, DIFFICULTY OF FIELD WORK, ETHNOLOGY, HAITI.
The theater of political passions
Raymond
Jamous
In Lebanon, political feelings are expressed through relations based on domination,
patronage or competition. Exercising power is but one (intense) aspect of the
relation between the violence in words and in deeds running through all social
strata. Various figures are presented: the young killer, the smooth talker,
the "youth leader", the head of family and the warlord who is tempted
to defy heaven. The first three try to prevail through their actions or their
control over language, but have limited influence over agnates. The last two
act violently, manifest their will to power and use relations based on dependence.
The words used in opinions moderate or exacerbate political tensions, but they
offer no means for legitimating or controlling the acts of violence and clashes
that, out of hand, resulted in massacres during the civil war.
KEY WORDS: NARRATION AS POLITICAL ACTION, VERBAL VIOLENCE, HONOR, POWER, LEBANON.
