NOTES

"Introduction: State Terror and Anthropology," Jeffrey A. Sluka, in Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror, J.A. Sluka, ed., Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Sluka sets out to describe and explain the widespread and growing problem of state terror. First, he distinguishes between terror and terrorism, and provides working definitions. Second, he discusses two varieties of state terror, namely, torture and political murder. Third, he thoroughly surveys various aspects of the anthropology of state terror, emphasizing the need to follow the dictates of conscience and not only describe and explain state terror, but also to take a political stand against it, rather than remain neutral under the pretense of scientific objectivity through neutrality. Fourth, Sluka develops a theoretical model to explain state terror as a choice to use violence to maintain a hierarchical social, economic, and political system against the discontent and resistance of the citizenry.

STATE TERROR

Terrorism is defined as political intimidation and control by violence or the threat of violence. State terror is a violent response by the elite toward the citizenry when the latter challenges the status quo. If their challenge becomes violent or anti-state, then the elite or those in power stigmatize it as terrorism. However, anti-state terrorism is relatively insignificant compared to state terrorism which is enormously more powerful with its institutionalized machinery of systematic torture, death squads, and other atrocities violating the most basic of human rights (p. 1).

Since World War II there has been a massive escalation of state terrorism with a toll in the millions of deaths, disappearances, tortured, refugees, etc. (See p. 2 for statistics). This amounts to an undeclared and unrecognized war of states against humanity (4).

Anyone who challenges or criticizes the state, or status quo, may be stigmatized and targeted as subversive, terrorist, traitor, communist, and the like. No one is safe, not even women, elderly, or children. Even street children, homeless people, and other "underdesirables" may be targeted for "social cleansing." The target can be anyone who doesn't conform or who simply has a critical or alternative idea in their head (5-6).

Such phenomena have been labeled "death by government" by University of Hawai`i political scientist Rudy J. Rummel (see his website). He estimates the unprecedented death toll in the first 80 years of the 20th century at 170 million to 360 million. (This does not even include war casualties). The more concentrated the power in the central government then the more lethal it is, from democratic to authoritarian to totalitarian regimes. Where absolute power develops, then a culture of violence emerges. Freedom and democracy are the only anecdotes to state terror, according to Rummel (6-7).

State terror, however, does not develop in isolation, but is part of an international system forming a global network wherein there is a mutuality of economic, political, and military interests of the elites in power from the First World to the Third World. Repression, terror, and execution by the state is simply accepted by the elites as a necessity to maintain the status quo. Thus, by far, the largest industries in the world are for arms and security.
Only since the 1970s, has this shocking and horrid phenomenon been studied by academic scholars. Among the most notable is the M.I.T. linguist Noam Chomsky who has courageously pointed to the role of the U.S. He and others have documented the fact that the U.S. and its allies, like the United Kingdom and France, are the major supporters, sponsors, and perpetrators of terrorist incidents in the world today (7-10).

ANTHROPOLOGY AND STATE TERROR

Cultural anthropologists have focused on micropolitics at the local community level. As a result, because of the rapid growth of state terror in Latin America and many other regions of the world where anthropologists conduct fieldwork, they have increasingly had to either ignore or face the fact that the people with whom they work are often victims, many of them tortured, murdered or disappeared as a result of state terror. Those who survive live in a culture of fear and violence. An increasing number of anthropologists who can not ignore the facts and their conscience, have spoken out as witnesses against state terror and oppression. Thus, state terror has begun to capture the anthropological imagination as a research subject. But this is difficult, because anthropologists have tended to examine communities as if they were isolated from larger social, economic, and political systems. Furthermore, such research can be quite risky or even dangerous. Accordingly, there has been a great deal of confusion and debate about just how to best confront state terror (10-11).

Simultaneously, this approach to state terror has coincided with a growing concern for rethinking the politics of anthropology, decolonizing the discipline, and becoming more politically engaged on behalf of the oppressed and exploited masses, joining their struggles for equality, social and economic justice, and human rights against poverty, racism, and other forms of oppression. This advocacy anthropology rejects neutrality and enters the struggle at the grass roots level and beyond. High quality scholarship and a principled moral stance are demonstrated to be compatible, despite those who hide under one of the myths of scientism--- objectivity through neutrality. Knowledge is applied through action, if it is not to be useless or merely support the status quo. The keys are relevance and responsiveness to host community needs--- action anthropology or liberation anthropology. This is the politics of truth with a humanitarian agenda (11-14).

E.V. Walter's 1969 book, Terror and Resistance, revealed that state terror exhibited cross-cultural regularities despite cultural variation, could become a "normal" (rather than abnormal) part of social life in a country, and that it was a choice instead of a necessity. Furthermore, all states have the potential to develop state terror to intimidate and control any political opposition or resistance to the status quo. Also he distinguished between the victims of state terror and the targets, the latter a much wider population, most not directly affected (14-16).

Subsequently, Sluka identifies and discusses a number of other pioneers in the anthropological study of state terror including Robert Carmack, Myrna Mack, Ricardo Falla, and Victor Montejo in the case of Guatemala. Among other pioneers are Michael Taussig in the Peruvian Amazon, Nancy Scheper-Hughes in Brazil, and Marcelo Suarez-Orozco in Argentina (16-22).

Suarez-Orozco has cautioned about three problems in studying state terror: ethnographic seduction (manipulation by perpetrators and victims); misrepresentation (humanizing individuals who are inhumane, thus becoming an apologist for terrorists); and shifting from a focus on resistance to one on terror (24-28).

Another problem is the personal safety of the researcher as well as access to the research arena and potential backlash on those interviewed. All anthropologists Sluka knows who have studied state terror have been threatened in one way or another. Several are political exiles while others have been assassinated. He even mentions that in the future the contributing authors to his edited book could be subjected to recriminations (x). Even colleagues may criticize the objectivity, professional ethics, motives, and the like of those anthropologists who study state terror (23-24).

Anther problem, if the anthropologist is working in a foreign country, then a visa and research permit are necessary. These may be refused or revoked for an anthropologists studying state terror. Also research grants are controlled by the elite who are not going to fund research that challenges their power.

TOWARD AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY OF STATE TERROR

Sluka begins developing a theoretical explanation for state terror which pivots on the fact that the state is a system based on inequality or social stratification. That means differential access to power--- economic and political, a ranking of people in society into classes with differential access to goods, services, experiences, and opportunities. The gap between the rich and the poor has been widening since WWII, thus resistance of the impoverished, and accordingly state terror has increased to control lower classes through intimidation and fear. He links this with the New Right movement during the Reagan and Thatcher administrations when the focus on human rights in international relations was abandoned in favor of combating terrorism. In short, the state faces a crisis of integration, and responds with represssion and terror against the populace to maintain order and control, the status quo. This increasingly dysfunctional sociopolitical "system" is increasingly fragile and vulnerable, its inherent inequality is its achilles heel. Indeed, anthropologist John Bodley considers almost all major contemporary human problems to emerge from this inequality. But the state is based on legitimacy as well as force, and the former is breaking down as well (29-34).

CONCLUSIONS

In the face of this growing and worsening crisis of the state and its correlated terror, some anthropologists, based on their conscience and humanitarian values, choose sides and pursue the politics of truth as witnesses, applying their knowledge in action on behalf of those suffering--- the impoverished, oppressed, and exploited. This is a decolonized anthropology and a liberation anthropology for emancipation of the people--- courageously speaking the politics of truth to power, the elite as well as the masses, yet at considerable risk.

FURTHER READING

See citations in Sluka's chapter as well as articles in the journals Critique of Anthropology and Dialectical Anthropology.