Culture and Conflict Final
Humanities
- A. SHORT ESSAYS (10 points/each) Write a paragraph.
- Why was the image of prisoners surrounded by excreta reinforced the stereotypes of Irish barbarism in England?
- According to Bourgois, why do men gang rape women and for which purpose?
- Why is Mamdani argued that the post genocide in Rwanda is different from the post apartheid South Africa?
- Do you believe that communities that experienced a civil war can cohabit? Is forgiveness possible without social justice? Give some examples from the readings.
Readings:
The Everyday Violence of Gang Rape (Philippe Bourgois). p343
Dirty Protest: Symbolic Overdetermination and Gender in Northern Ireland Ethnic violence (Begoña Aretxaga). p244.
When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda (Mahmood Mamdani) p 468
- LONG ESSAYS (30 points/ each) (write an introduction and conclusion for each essay)
- Discuss structural violence and institutionalized racism such as Apartheid and Jim Crow laws in both South Africa and the United States.
Address the following questions in your essay:
What does Bourgois mean by structural violence of class and apartheid?
What is structural violence and how does it apply to South Africa and the United States?
What was Apartheid in South Africa and Jim Crow laws in United States?
How does the street culture represent a form of resistance to exploitation and marginalization? Why are South African black youths still resolving of violence?
Why are American prisons an appendage to the dark ghetto?
What were the popular justice courts in South Africa and in the past in the United States?
How can social justice be achieved both in South Africa and United States?
What is the American inner city apartheid?
Hughes why is the South African black community still affected by the Apartheid era?
What is the purpose of the reconciliation courts in post Apartheid South Africa?
Were Apartheid victims able to forgive the aggressors?
How does those readings related to the current race relations in the United States?
Why are white supremacists in need of media attention? Why now and for which purpose?
How do you envision the future race relations in America?
Readings:
Symbolic Violence (Pierre Bourdieu and Loic Wacquant)
Undoing: Social Suffering and the Politics of Remorse in the New South Africa (Nancy Scheper-Hughes).
Who’s the Killer? Popular Justice and Human Rights in a South African Squatter Camp (Nancy Scheper-Hughes).
On Suffering and Structural Violence: A View from Below (Paul Farmer)
Inner City Apartheid: The Contours of Structural and Interpersonal Violence (Philippe Bourgois)
The New “Peculiar Institution”: On the Prison as Surrogate Ghetto (Loic Wacquant).
- Discuss the impact of conflicts on children’s mental and physical well being.
Address the following questions in your essay: (30 points)
What was the impact of the war in Nicaragua on children?
Why did the Argentinean government use the children of the “subversive” families during the dirty war?
How can children be protected during conflicts?
What could be done to help children who had witness war?
What is the impact of the civil war in Sierra Leone on children?
Why are children vulnerable during conflicts?
How does the culture survive when children are involved in conflict?
How were children recruited in Sierra Leone?
In the documentary, did the former child soldier express remorse or did he really understand the consequences of his actions?
What is the long term impact on a society of the involvement of children as fighters?
is there a gender difference, if so why?
What are the consequences of violence on children?
Is separating children from their parents at US border, a form of violence toward children?
Is neglect another form of violence against children?
Readings:
The Treatment of Children in the ‘Dirty War’: Ideology, State Terrorism, and the Abuse of Children in Argentina (Marcelo M. Suarez-Orozco).
Suffering Child: An Embodiment of War and Its Aftermath in Post-Sandinista Nicaragua (James Quesada).
Two Feet Under and a Cardboard Coffin: The Social Production of Indifference to Child Death (Nancy Scheper-Hughes).
Documentaries:
Yezidi girls,
Sierra Leone’s cocaine-drugged child Soldiers,
