TY - JOUR

T1 - Vigilance

T2 - On Conflict, Social Invisibility, and Negative Potentiality

AU - Vigh, Henrik Erdman

PY - 2011

Y1 - 2011

N2 - This article analyses the relationship between conflict, social invisibility and negative potentiality. Taking its empirical point of departure in fieldwork conducted in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and Bissau, Guinea-Bissau, it illuminates the manner in which people orientate themselves toward precarious prospects and potentialities. It focuses on the way futures are foretold and the forth-coming negotiated in an attempt to pre-empt violent possibilities. Much has been written about the experiential implications of violence, as well as its structural, symbolic or ritual dimensions. Yet, little attention has been paid to the orientational effects generated by long term conflict – that is, the way that violence, not as a manifest violation but as an underlying possibility, an invisible, imagined oncoming event, influences social life. Moving from the empirical to the theoretical, and from the specific to the general, the article compares two specific areas of conflict and orientation toward negative potentiality before moving on to a more general discussion of invisibility and potentiality in social life and theory.

AB - This article analyses the relationship between conflict, social invisibility and negative potentiality. Taking its empirical point of departure in fieldwork conducted in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and Bissau, Guinea-Bissau, it illuminates the manner in which people orientate themselves toward precarious prospects and potentialities. It focuses on the way futures are foretold and the forth-coming negotiated in an attempt to pre-empt violent possibilities. Much has been written about the experiential implications of violence, as well as its structural, symbolic or ritual dimensions. Yet, little attention has been paid to the orientational effects generated by long term conflict – that is, the way that violence, not as a manifest violation but as an underlying possibility, an invisible, imagined oncoming event, influences social life. Moving from the empirical to the theoretical, and from the specific to the general, the article compares two specific areas of conflict and orientation toward negative potentiality before moving on to a more general discussion of invisibility and potentiality in social life and theory.

U2 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/sa.2011.550306

DO - http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/sa.2011.550306

M3 - Tidsskriftartikel

VL - 55

SP - 93

EP - 114

JO - Social Analysis

JF - Social Analysis

SN - 0155-977X

IS - 3

ER -