Victoria Sanford

Asale Angel-Ajani

Anthropology has long been associated with an ethos of "engagement." The field's core methods and practices involve long-term interpersonal contact between researchers and their study participants, giving major research topics in the field a distinctively human face. Can research findings be authentic and objective? Are anthropologists able to use their data to aid the participants of their study, and is that aid always welcome? In Engaged Observer, Victoria Sanford and Asale Angel-Ajani bring together an international array of scholars who have been embedded in some of the most conflict-ridden and dangerous zones in the world to reflect on the role and responsibility of anthropological inquiry. They explore issues of truth and objectivity, the role of the academic, the politics of memory, and the impact of race, gender, and social position on the research process. Through ethnographic case studies, they offer models for conducting engaged research and illustrate the contradictions and challenges of doing so.

Anthropology, Advocacy, and Activism

Engaged Observer

John Docker

Ben Kiernan

Doris Bergen

Anton Weiss-Wendt

David Moshman

Alfred A. Cave

Robert Hitchcock

Robert Krieken

The Historiography of Genocide is an indispensable guide to the development of the emerging discipline of genocide studies and the only available assessment of the historical literature pertaining to genocides.

The Historiography of Genocide

Anne Barbour

An expos of Guatemala's genocidal campaign against the Maya in the late 1970s and mid-1980s documents the massacres and displacements that took place as well as the experiences of Maya survivors seeking justice and healing.

Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala

Buried Secrets

Katerina Stefatos

Cecilia M. Salvi

Reports from war zones often note the obscene victimization of women, who are frequently raped, tortured, beaten, and pressed into sexual servitude. Yet this reign of terror against women not only occurs during exceptional moments of social collapse, but during peacetime too. As this powerful book argues, violence against women should be understood as a systemic problem—one for which the state must be held accountable. The twelve essays in Gender Violence in Peace and War present a continuum of cases where the state enables violence against women—from state-sponsored torture to lax prosecution of sexual assault. Some contributors uncover buried histories of state violence against women throughout the twentieth century, in locations as diverse as Ireland, Indonesia, and Guatemala. Others spotlight ongoing struggles to define the state’s role in preventing gendered violence, from domestic abuse policies in the Russian Federation to anti-trafficking laws in the United States. Bringing together cutting-edge research from political science, history, gender studies, anthropology, and legal studies, this collection offers a comparative analysis of how the state facilitates, legitimates, and perpetuates gender violence worldwide. The contributors also offer vital insights into how states might adequately protect women’s rights in peacetime, as well as how to intervene when a state declares war on its female citizens.

States of Complicity

Gender Violence in Peace and War

Victoria Sanford

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