Short Abstract

This panel asks how do people make sense of their (conscious) engagement with violent political orders, or otherwise, how do they navigate the accusation of complicity? It invites a critical debate on the subjective experiences and tensions involved in producing, upholding, and resisting the state

Long Abstract

Often understood through its ‘dark’ connotations, complicity is usually associated with involvement in the production and maintenance of cruel and violent realities. In times marked by political instability, ongoing violence and genocide, questions around complicity with state violence and accountability for one’s actions acquire renewed urgency. In such moments, individuals and their societies are required to (re)assess their positions and consider alternative forms of confronting violent orders.

In this panel, we seek to unpack how people confront accusations of complicity and make sense of their (often fraught) involvement in the production and sustaining of violent political orders. Attending to the messy space between collaboration and resistance to state violence, and the possibilities and impossibilities that unfold within it, we ask: what does it mean (socially, morally, politically, economically, psychologically or otherwise) to navigate, carry and confront the accusation of complicity? What enables people to (perhaps unconsciously or otherwise strategically) ‘work from within’ violent political orders? What forms of subjectivity are shaped and respectively what new types of political action might emerge in these critical moments? And, finally, we ask, how should we study complicity?

While anthropologists have critically engaged with the concept of complicity mainly through exploring their own roles, positionalities and responsibilities, this panel seeks to extend this query also to those with whom we work. We seek to advance an anthropology of complicity as a conceptual lens for understanding current processes of social transformation through, rather than despite, the tensions that animate them. We therefore, attend to ‘complicity’ not as a moral verdict, but as an everyday practice that may explain how violent realities are shaped, sustained, but also opposed.

We welcome theoretical and ethnographic contributions that critically explore the intersections of political action, state violence, social transformation and resistance, involving both civil and state actors.