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- Convenors:
-
Jennifer Speirs
(University of Edinburgh)
Iris Marchand (University of Edinburgh)
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- Stream:
- Morality and Legality
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 31 March, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Public acknowledgement of responsibility and apology for past policy decisions and actions about strategies of reproduction, adoption and kinship are often controversial, and raise issues for anthropologists concerning law, human rights, activism, and memory.
Long Abstract:
It has been suggested that we live now in an Age of Apology (Mookherjee et al 2009) which has ethical, social and political dimensions. Citing examples such as the Australian government's apology to the 'stolen generations', the indigenous children forcibly removed from their families as part of the policy of assimilation, the authors highlight 'the ethical pitfalls of seeking an apology, or not uttering it' and the varied understandings of apology and forgiveness across different social groups within the same state.Yet before apology there has to be acceptance of responsibility, and this is often controversial, with claims that today's citizens cannot be responsible for the actions of earlier generations, even if with hindsight and the passage of time it is acknowledged that those actions were wrong. Further, saying sorry in today's risk-averse environment can be seen as paving the way to demands for compensation and recourse to legal proceedings.This panel seeks to explore, based on ethnographic research, how different societies are dealing with retrospective regrets and claims for apologies. What kind of controversies or positive impacts result for those involved and for wider society? Are there rituals of revenge, celebration, forgiveness or reconciliation involved? How do anthropologists study and analyse the counterclaims and ambivalences inherent in saying sorry for past policies and actions? Are we able to remain neutral, and should we be so?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 31 March, 2021, -Iris Marchand (University of Edinburgh)
Paper short abstract:
Do child soldiers need to display regret or apologise for atrocious crimes they committed during a war in which they were both perpetrator and victim? This paper explores this question, with ethnographic examples from three child soldiers in Northern Uganda in 2005.
Paper long abstract:
Violent conflicts that involve murder, torture, maiming bodies, and psychological manipulation, create categories of victims and perpetrators. Yet victims and perpetrators cannot always be easily distinguished. This paper reflects upon the lives of three child soldiers in Northern Uganda during the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army) conflict, based on ethnographic fieldwork in 2005. In 2005 the International Criminal Court (ICC) listed the LRA war as a case of international concern and responsibility. The ICC intervention met with mixed levels of appreciation. The Acholi people have their own justice system, based on confession and forgiveness (mato oput). The devastating atrocities and injustices committed during the war would not be reconciled by locking up Kony and his companions thousands of miles away in a cell in The Hague. Mato oput is about apology and regret, directly from perpetrator to victim, in a communal ritual including the stepping on an egg and drinking from a bitter root. Yet the definition of perpetrator and victim was blurred during the LRA conflict. This paper asks who or what is to be held accountable for the traumatic transformation of children growing up in this warzone, forcefully educated to kill, maim, rape, loot, and destroy. Despite the crimes against humanity they are now asked to say sorry for, these children were entangled in a complex system of power politics. This paper seeks to critically discuss the meaning of ‘regret’ in this context, and whether or not an apology for their actions should be expected from former child soldiers.
Peter Wikström (Karlstad University) Erica Sandlund (Karlstad University)
Paper short abstract:
In this paper, public apologies broadly received in mediated settings as ‘non-apologies’ are examined using Conversation Analysis and multimodal frameworks. We highlight the perspective of accountability, and look at how other agendas may conflict with typical requirements of apology speech acts.
Paper long abstract:
This paper presents work in progress from a project on public statements broadly received as ‘non-apologies’ in the context of #MeToo. Drawing on linguistic frameworks from Ethnomethodological Conversation Analysis and multimodal discourse analysis, we examine the design and delivery of apology-framed statements made by prominent public figures, as well as the reception of these statements in journalistic and social media. In the present paper, we focus especially on the public apologies themselves. We find that these statements variously negotiate social and moral requirements for and constraints on accountability, for instance weighing the requirement of responsibility-taking against the constraint of avoiding self-incrimination. In this and other ways, the design of the apology statements is frequently expressive of agendas – personal, professional, or political – that conflict with the typical requirements of a ‘good’ apology. We briefly discuss our linguistic analysis of the statements in relation to popular reception of these statements in the mediated publics, and the implications of these contested apology events for developing our understanding of the conditions of civic participation in the still emergent digital publics.