Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Ethnography
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via HighWire
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Binford, L.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati  
What's this?

Violence in El Salvador

A Rejoinder to Philippe Bourgois's `The Power of Violence in War and Peace'

Leigh Binford

Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Mexico avocados{at}compuserve.com.mx

This article engages Philippe Bourgois's analysis of the continuum of violence from wartime to post-war El Salvador in Ethnography (2:1). Acknowledging the utility of the violence model proposed by Bourgois, it contends that a general theory of structural relations and everyday violence requires mediating concepts in order to be usefully applied in any concrete situation, and that Bourgois has not supplied them. As a consequence, Bourgois's application of the model to Salvadoran wartime and post-war reality is excessively mechanical. Study of the unfavorable peace settlement, which preserved unequal structural relations, is probably necessary in order to shed light on the high levels of post-war violence. The shortcomings of Bourgois's analysis is further related to an over-reliance on personal narrative, discussed here in terms of the `testimonial function'.

Key Words: everyday violence • peasants • structural violence • guerrilla war • FMLN guerrillas • El Salvador • testimonial • narrative • ethnographic method

Ethnography, Vol. 3, No. 2, 201-219 (2002)
DOI: 10.1177/1466138102003002004
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 EthnographyHome page
P. Bourgois
The Violence of Moral Binaries: Response to Leigh Binford
Ethnography, June 1, 2002; 3(2): 221 - 231.
[PDF]