This book focuses on the emotional hazards of conducting fieldwork about or within contexts of violence and provides a forum for field-based researchers to tell their stories. Increasingly novice and seasoned ethnographers alike, whether by choice or chance, are working in situations where multidimensional forms of violence, conflict and war are facets of everyday life. The volume engages with the methodological and ethical issues involved and features a range of expressive writings that reveal personal consequences and dilemmas. The contributors use their emotions, their scars, outrage and sadness alongside their hopes and resilience to give voice to that which is often silenced, to make visible the entanglements of fieldwork and its lingering vulnerabilities. The book brings to the fore the lived experiences of researchers and their interlocutors alike with the hope of fostering communities of care. It will be valuable reading for anthropologists and those from other disciplines who are embarking on ethnographic fieldwork and conducting qualitative empirical research.

Atmospheric Violence grapples with the afterlife of environmental disasters and armed conflict and examines how people attempt to flourish despite and alongside continuing violence. Departing from conventional approaches to the study of disaster and conflict that have dominated academic studies of Kashmir, Omer Aijazi’s ethnography of life in the borderlands instead explores possibilities for imagining life otherwise, in an environment where violence is everywhere, or atmospheric. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in the portion of Kashmir under Pakistan’s control and its surrounding mountainscapes, the book takes us to two remote mountainous valleys that have been shaped by recurring environmental disasters, as well as by the landscape of no-go zones, army barracks, and security checkpoints of the contested India/Pakistan border. Through a series of interconnected scenes from the lives of five protagonists, all of whom are precariously situated within their families or societies and rarely enjoy the expected protections of state or community, Aijazi reveals the movements, flows, and intimacies sustained by a landscape that enables alternative modes of life. Blurring the distinctions between story, theory, and activism, he explores what emerges when theory becomes a project of seeing and feeling from the non-normative standpoint of those who, like the book’s protagonists, do not subscribe to the rules by which most others have come to know the world. Bringing the critical study of disaster into conversation with a radical humanist anthropology and the capaciousness of affect theory, held accountable to Black studies and Indigenous studies, Aijazi offers a decolonial approach to disaster studies centering not on trauma and rupture but rather on repair—the social labor through which communities living with disaster refuse the conditions of death imposed upon them and create viable lives for themselves, even amidst constant diminishment and world-annihilation.

Contraband Cultures presents narratives, representations, practices and imaginaries of smuggling and extra-legal or informal circulation practices, across and between the Latin American region (including the Caribbean) and its diasporas. Countering a fetishizing and hegemonic imaginary (typically stemming from the Global North) of smuggling activity in Latin America as chaotic, lawless, violent and somehow ‘exotic’, this book reframes such activities through the lenses of kinship, political movements, economic exchange and resistance to capitalist state hegemony. The volume comprises a broad range of chapters from scholars across the social sciences and humanities, using various methodological techniques, theoretical traditions and analytic approaches to explore the efficacy and valence of ‘smuggling’ or ‘contraband’ as a lens onto modes of personhood, materiality, statehood and political (dis)connection across Latin America. This material is presented through a combination of historic documentation and contemporary ethnographic research across the region to highlight the genesis and development of these cultural practices whilst grounding them in the capitalist and colonial refashioning of the entire region from the sixteenth century to the present day.

In February 2021 the Canadian government published a considerably expanded list of domestic terrorist entities. While some, such as Blood and Honour, were already known, others – such as Atomwaffen Division, the Base, the Proud Boys, and the Russian Imperial Movement – emerged from the shadows. Until then many considered far-right groups in Canada a negligible phenomenon, at worst a local police matter. The Great Right North charts the growth of these groups, illuminating how official and unofficial government attention generates the context in which they build their movements. The result of seven years of research – including social media scraping, analysis of print and video sources, and interviews with scores of leaders and adherents – it examines how far-right organizations operate, recruit, and finance their activities and explores why individuals choose to join. Breaking new ground by revealing the ideological underpinnings and fragmentation within these groups, the authors also highlight the role of digital platforms in their proliferation. Most politicians have been quiet about the phenomenon of far-right extremism in Canada, insisting it is imported activism financed elsewhere. The Great Right North provides an essential primer – for journalists, those working in policy institutes and think tanks, and students and scholars – for understanding its vast and urgent homegrown challenges.

Ethnography has a long history in the humanities and social sciences and has provided the base line in the field of police studies for over 60 years. We have recently witnessed a resurgence in ethnographic practice among police scholars, and this Handbook is a response to that revival. Students and academics are returning to the ethnography arena and the study of police in situ to explain the evocative worlds of the police. The list of ethnographic sites is vast and all have fed the rejuvenation of ethnographic endeavour. Together they suggest innovation, theoretical depth, broad geographical boundaries, multi-site experiments, and multi-disciplinarity, all of which are central to the exploration of police and policing in the twenty-first century. This Handbook encapsulates the revival of police ethnography by exploring its multidisciplinary field and cataloguing the ongoing ethnographic work. It offers an original and international contribution to the field of police studies and research methods, providing a comprehensive and overarching guide to police ethnography. We see the previous classics in every page and still note the influence of the early ethnographers. At the same time, we see the innovative breadth and diversity of these narratives. The aim of this Handbook is to highlight the mosaic that is police ethnography at a point in time and note with pleasure its contribution to the field once more. Ethnography may be messy, difficult, and at times uncooperative, but its results offer a unique insight into the perspectives of people and organisations that can hide in plain sight. An accessible and compelling read, this Handbook will provide a sound and essential reference source for academics, researchers, students, and practitioners engaged in police and criminal justice studies.

More than 25 experts from around the world have contributed to this unique and provocative book. In a series of illuminating short essays, each author has presented a striking image as an invitation to consider the ghosts of colonialism and imperialism in today’s global economy. In defiance of those who claim that today’s capitalist system is free of racism and exploitation, this book shows that the past is not behind us, it defines our world and our lives. This book takes the reader on a global tour, from Malaysia to Canada, from Angola to Mexico, from Libya to China, from the City of London to the Australian outback, from the deep sea to the atmosphere. Along the way we meet the financiers, artists, advertisers, activists and everyday people who are grappling with the entangled legacies of empire.

This book links world-literary studies with anthropology and ethnography. It shows how ethnographic narratives can represent a compelling point of departure for world-literary explorations. The volume compares the travel writing and fiction of Robert Louis Stevenson and Rudyard Kipling as colonial ethnographic narratives; the militant writings of Carlo Levi and Mahasweta Devi; and the travelogues and ethnographic fiction of Amitav Ghosh and the literary journalism of Frank Westerman. Each of these readings focuses on a set of social, political and historical circumstances and relies on a dialogue with anthropological theory and history. This book demonstrates how imperialism, colonialism, capitalism and ecology are interdependent, and contributes to methodological debates within both anthropology and world-literary studies.