Lives Opposed: Perceptivity and tacticality in conflict and crime
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Lives Opposed : Perceptivity and tacticality in conflict and crime. / Vigh, Henrik Erdman.
In: Social Anthropology - Anthropologie Sociale, Vol. 26, No. 4, 2018, p. 487-501.Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Lives Opposed
T2 - Perceptivity and tacticality in conflict and crime
AU - Vigh, Henrik Erdman
PY - 2018
Y1 - 2018
N2 - This article looks at the way people tactically adjust to contexts of insecurity and danger. Building on fieldwork with disenfranchised urban poor in West Africa and marginal West African migrants in Europe, it clarifies how perspectives and practices are attuned to precarious situations and life conditions. The article argues that the struggle to identify threats leads to a nervous sociality in which figures and social forces are examined for hidden intentions and negative potentials. Such circumstances engender an apprehensive bearing, as an affective state, posture and approach, through which social life is sought, investigated and controlled. It augments perceptivity and leads to a scanning and probing of social life that feeds into a social version of the hermeneutics of suspicion and generates a range of pre‐emptive practices.
AB - This article looks at the way people tactically adjust to contexts of insecurity and danger. Building on fieldwork with disenfranchised urban poor in West Africa and marginal West African migrants in Europe, it clarifies how perspectives and practices are attuned to precarious situations and life conditions. The article argues that the struggle to identify threats leads to a nervous sociality in which figures and social forces are examined for hidden intentions and negative potentials. Such circumstances engender an apprehensive bearing, as an affective state, posture and approach, through which social life is sought, investigated and controlled. It augments perceptivity and leads to a scanning and probing of social life that feeds into a social version of the hermeneutics of suspicion and generates a range of pre‐emptive practices.
KW - Faculty of Social Sciences
KW - migration
KW - conflict
KW - cocaine
KW - apprehension
KW - tactics
U2 - 10.1111/1469-8676.12545
DO - 10.1111/1469-8676.12545
M3 - Journal article
VL - 26
SP - 487
EP - 501
JO - Social Anthropology
JF - Social Anthropology
SN - 0964-0282
IS - 4
ER -
ID: 196349346