ABSTRACT

Despite their personal commitment to peace, anthropologists have an ambivalent relationship to pacifism and nonviolence. This is partly because violence is pervasive at all levels of interpersonal, intergroup, and international relations anthropologists routinely study. Ethnographic records show that violence of all kinds is part and parcel of human relationality. While there are many fine-grained analyses of conflicts, disputes, injustices, and inequalities, and their complex, and often long-term, consequences, pacifism and nonviolence have not been among the discipline’s explicit ethnographic or theoretical concerns. In this paper I discuss the concept of “peace resources,” recently introduced by Japanese anthropologist Oda Hiroshi, as a possible starting point for more ethnographic and practical engagement with pacifism and nonviolence. I use my ethnographic observations of various activities aimed at the abolition of nuclear weapons taking place alongside the annual commemoration of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki on August 9th to examine the concept’s promise.

SPEAKER

Hirokazu Miyazaki is the Kay Davis Professor and Professor of Anthropology at Northwestern University. He is also Professor (Special Appointment) at Hiroshima University. Miyazaki’s scholarship has focused on theories of exchange, money, futurity, hope, and peace. His publications include The Method of Hope: Anthropology, Philosophy, and Fijian Knowledge (2004), Arbitraging Japan: Dreams of Capitalism at the End of Finance (2013), The Economy of Hope (2017), and Nuclear Compensation: Lessons from Fukushima (2021). Miyazaki is currently completing a book manuscript on a variety of forms of peace activism in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

DETAILS

Our speaker will be presenting in-person at Deakin Waterfront: AD1.122 in the Sally Walker building or you can join us via Zoom, please email holly.high@deakin.edu.au for the password.

https://deakin.zoom.us/j/84436200390?pwd=VjRHUVZseTMvYWcrSFFJbU1LRDcrUT09