Author: Scheele, Judith

Source: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Volume 12, Number 4, December 2006 , pp. 859-879(21)

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Abstract:

Issues surrounding the ways in which people deal with severe political disruption and violence are sometimes obscure, as it is in the nature of both to defy verbal expression and collective attempts to produce sense. Ethnography of Algeria suggests that to look at local graveyards, their layout, and the practices and conflicts associated with them is a way of understanding not only how people deal with death and violence, but also how they construe social order, political legitimacy, and historical continuity, in an environment where all of these have been severely disrupted. Through the social and spatial practices associated with local graveyards, images of upheaval and martyrdom are thus made part of an ongoing process of renegotiation of social hierarchies; these processes, however, can also be seen to break down at times of overwhelming distress.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9655.2006.00367.x

Publication date: 2006-12-01

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