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- Convenors:
-
Melina Kalfelis
(University of Bayreuth)
Rossye Alvarez (Queen Mary University of London)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- Peter Froggatt Centre (PFC), 03/006B
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 27 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel scrutinizes trust dynamics in contexts of conflict, violence, and global inequality. We invite scholars to reflect on trust in historical and recent processes of (un)commoning and explore to what extent violence not only refutes but also changes, drives, and determines trust.
Long Abstract:
The British philosopher Thomas Hobbes considered state monopolization of violence indispensable for citizens' trust in the prospect of nonviolent interaction. However, in countries of today's world, duress, injustice, and exclusion are still part and parcel of many human lifeworlds. How are people trusting in such circumstances? While scholarship primarily associates violence and conflict with distrust and its corrosive effects, we ask instead how they shape and change the ways people trust. What do political formations like vigilantism, secessionism, extremism, post-truth politics, state resistance, and many more tell us about the interplay of trust and violence in everyday life? How are trust and distrust diverging and converging throughout conflict?
This panel invites scholars to reflect on trust dynamics in historical and recent processes of (un)commoning and explores violence not only as a refutation, but also as a condition, driver, or basis of trust. If we understand trust informed by the past, present, and future, how do enduring experiences of harm and inequality determine and affect trust and its connections with violence? How are political projects of (un)commoning in different contexts creating, destroying or maintaining trust? What is the role of trust in conflicts manifesting through senses of belonging or identity? And how are governments incapable to protect their citizens from crime and hardship creating the conditions for a changed sense of justice?
The panel opens a reflexive space to discuss these and other questions about trust as an ongoing process in the context of conflict, violence, and global inequality.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 27 July, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
The presentation concerns events of 2020 revolution in Belarus as it was lived by young men in the countryside, particularly focusing on totalising experiences of state violence that shaped novel structures of communal feelings, visceral cravings for participation and contemplations of the moment.
Paper long abstract:
The events of the anti-authoritarian uprising of August 2020 in Belarus reached diverse quarters of the nation, and its countryside did not remain passive, even though it was previously seen as notoriously dominated by of atomising system of dependency, implemented through the state-controlled labour economy.
As an overwhelming wave of police brutality, with thousands of arrested and hundreds of tortured and mutilated, swept the country in the days after the presidential elections, an unprecedented and sudden feeling of camaraderie came to the surface amongst the lads in the village. It stemmed precisely from that very sensation of the totality of violence that shook so many of previously apathetic observers to the very core and prompted visceral cravings for retaliation and restoration of dignity. Novel forms of collective mobilisation came to the fore, and daily discourses were swamped with notions of trust, hope, and liminal properties of the precious moment that felt like gravity was no more.
In the presentation, I focus on the experiences of young rural men, with whom I spent August 2020 during my ethnographic fieldwork in a predominantly Polish-populated village in the north-west of Belarus.
Analytically, I focus on various scales of the temporal and visceral properties of the event, analysing such aspects as its generative and futural properties, put in the context of larger sensations of nascent epochal change and, in particular for this presentation, of unprecedented sense of liminal togetherness that preponderated every thread of social fabric. In so doing, I engage critically with literature on hope, revolutions and events.
Paper short abstract:
This paper traces shifting dynamics of fear and indignation during the establishment of a non-democratic regime in 2010s Hungary. I argue that during a dramatic change of political order, biographical histories of power and violence result in realigned relations and new formulations of trust.
Paper long abstract:
How does sudden change of political system erode and reinforce trust? I examine this question in Hungary, where the ruling party Fidesz established a non-democratic political system in the 2010s. After securing a third consecutive supermajority in parliamentary elections in April 2018, a Fidesz-linked magazine published a ”blacklist” naming individuals who allegedly were agents of the billionaire-philanthropist George Soros. Claiming that Soros and his helpers planned to destroy European nation states by bringing in millions of migrants, Fidesz published a legislative plan entitled “Stop Soros!”, which posited possible prison sentences for people promoting migration. My ethnography traces Budapest liberal intelligentsia, where the blacklist caused a stir as people rushed to check who were named on the list. Some were scared, others proud, some shrugged off the entire episode, some wondered why they were not on the list, and yet others were sure they would be on the next list. Soon a voluntary list was drawn in solidarity of those listed, subsequently also published by the same magazine. What do these different reactions from fear and self-censorship to indignance and envy tell of dynamics of trust? I show how political transformation reveals people’s dormant, pre-existing relationship to power that in turn is related to individual and family biographies during a tumultuous century that has seen multiple violent political regimes. I argue that social fabric is redrawn as the relation between self and power eclipses other relations, simultaneously eroding trust by paralyzing previous social formations while strengthening others as new alliances emerge.
Paper short abstract:
In this paper, I analyze the antagonistic articulation towards the current Polish government and more broadly the state. By analyzing the consequences of the distrust in the state and the emergence of new political identities I discuss the possibilities of transforming the government's responses.
Paper long abstract:
The attempts to narrow down the circumstances under which one can have an abortion sparked a series of protests in Poland. The protests were not organized by one coherent environment, but rather they were a spontaneous reaction to the events on the political and administrative levels. Those protests, similar to the protests against scapegoating the LGBTQ+ community during the presidential electoral campaign in Poland in 2020, faced a rather violent response from the state. That response to the protests, which were tolerated and welcomed as a sign of vital civil society before conservative-authoritarian party Prawo i Sprawiedliwość came to power, not only meant exclusion from the public debate but also complete loss of the little trust in the state bureaucracy and its representatives, polish society had.
In this paper, I look closer at the Laclauian concept of populism, and by reconstructing the protests discourse I am mapping the emergence of the chain of equivalence; the formulation of the empty signifier, and I analyze the antagonistic articulation towards the current Polish government and more broadly to the state. Populism is often described as irrational, heavily based on the emotions of fear and anger, and I, in this paper, try to go beyond that, showing that the initial mobilization based on fear and anger can lead to the emergence of radically empathetic and inclusive political articulations. By analyzing the consequences of the distrust in the state and the emergence of new political identities I discuss the possibilities of transforming the government's responses.
Paper short abstract:
The communication presents ethnographic research on the secessionist process in Catalonia. It focuses on the role of trust/untrust in empowerment and collective action during the organization and celebration of a non-recognized referendum of Independence from Spain on October 1st, 2017.
Paper long abstract:
Although theorist has recognized the emotional attachment to the nation as one of the elements that explain the strength of nationalism, few of them studied how the emotional dimension contributes to the development of nationalism and its different manifestations. The affective turn that occurred in the 90s has shown that emotions are essential to all aspects of political action and emphasize that they play a role in the motivation for action and the results of these mobilizations. Therefore, they have structural consequences that affect movements, so the analysis must include the emotional dimension.
This communication will present the results of ethnographic research on the independence process experienced in Catalonia (Spain) since 2006. It will focus on the historical relationship of trust/mistrust with Spain as a political structure and on the role of trust in empowerment and collective action in the spaces where shared community actions have been organized and experienced. Especially during a cycle particularly intensive of mobilization between 2012 and 2019 and its landmark: the organization and celebration of a non-recognized referendum of Independence on October 1st, 2017. The consulting was organized clandestinely by anonymous subjects who did not know each other. The performance of this collective mobilization required prior trust in sharing the same political project, a confidence that in turn was reinforced by the success of the performance, as well as by the violence exerted by the state against people participant in the reference the same day, and posteriorly by judicial persecution of referendum organizers.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores violence that took place in Kampala, Uganda, in September 2009, and its effects on social relationships. During the days of unrest, friendships and kin bonds were broken as ethnic loyalties were tested. How do people trust others in a setting with quotidian ruptures of violence?
Paper long abstract:
Based on long-term fieldwork, oral history interviews, newspaper archives, and NGO accounts, this paper interrogates the precarity of ethnic identification and how it affects interpersonal relationships in Kampala, Uganda, through an account of the Baganda strike of September 2009. Baganda, the largest ethnic group in the country, maintain intense loyalty to their king, often overriding allegiance to the Ugandan state, and Kampala is located within the bounds of their historic kingdom. When President Museveni, a self-identifying Munyankole from Western Uganda, warned the king of Buganda against traveling to a contested district due to security concerns, many Baganda began setting up roadblocks throughout the city while searching for Banyankole to punish. Ankole actors were seen as inseparable from the actions of the president, and even Banyankole who were married to Baganda could not escape suspicions.
This paper explores how trust, friendships, and kin bonds can remain in a city where a seemingly mundane announcement can trigger an eruption of violence. Focusing specifically on a Muganda man married to a Munyankole woman, I ask: how did the events of 2009 affect their feelings of intimacy and trust? In moments of extreme ethnic allegiance, how does one prove loyalty to one's family and one's ethnic group in a mixed marriage? Showing the complicated dynamics of kinship and ethnicity, I argue that the Baganda strike shows how the politics of the state affect even the most intimate family relationships.