ANT204H1 Lecture : African Genocide Explored I - May 19 (L01)
Document Summary
Mass violence in africa violence unimaginable to anyone. We are outsiders to the situation b/c we are emotionally and rationally detached. Age-old ethnic tensions and tribalism reasons used often that anthropologists find hard to believe. These excuses leave us believing that those people are fundamentally different from us: violence justified by the actions of the natives (will do anything to maintain their ethnic identity) Stuck in a situation in which humanity is divided: you vs. crazy people w/o empathy, who are stuck in the past, traditional. Anthropologists accept the premise that people are fundamentally similar more than they are different from each other. There are differences but we are a unified species, more the same than not. Within these situations, anthropologists find what the common human impulse is, what kind of contexts, conditions could"ve driven one to act in that certain way. Spatial / geographic context what"s happening at the same time, in the immediate vicinity.