Emotion, Affect, and Law

This chapter introduces perspectives within an emerging anthropology of emotion, affect, and the law, which traces how embodied emotional responses are mobilized socially and politically to reinforce the moral legitimacy of particular legalistic and technocratic solutions to the problem of violence in Africa. Taking the particular case of Dominic Ongwen, a convicted commander of the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army who was brought before the International Criminal Court for a range of crimes against humanity, we see the beginning of a trend to demonstrate methodologically an interrelationship between micro processes and macro and historical processes. This happens through a study of the emotive and affective processes that go into the making of individual ‘perpetrators’. But we also see that part of that process involves the necessary connection to the longue durée that makes such racial depictions immediately believable. Through an examination of both the psychosocial and complex historical and political conditions that underscore inter-generational trauma in postcolonial contexts, we see how the intersection of emotion, affects, and law has played out in the study of law and anthropology.

A Weapon and a Tool

This article uses Indigenous decolonizing methodologies and Critical Race Theory (CRT) as methodological and theoretical frameworks to address colonial and racialized concerns about archival description; to argue against notions of diversity and inclusion in archival descriptive practices; and to make recommendations for decolonizing description and embracing redescription as liberatory archival praxis. First, we argue that extant descriptive practices do not diversify archives. Rather, we find that descriptive work that isolates and scatters aims to erase the identifiable existence of unique Indigenous voices. Next, we argue that while on one hand, the mass digitization of slavery-era records holds both the promise of new historical knowledge and of genealogical reconstruction for descendants of enslaved peoples, on the other hand, this trend belies a growing tendency to reinscribe racist ideologies and codify damaging ideas about how we organize and create new knowledge through harmful descriptive practices. Finally, working specifically against the rhetoric of diversity and inclusion, we challenge the ways archives claim diverse representation by uncritically describing records rooted in generational trauma, hatred, and genocide, and advocate for developing and employing decolonizing and redescriptive practices to support an archival praxis rooted in justice and liberation, rather than more palatable (and less effective) notions of “diversity and inclusion”.

Restorative Peacebuilding in Liberia

This chapter explores how traditional Liberian communities decimated by colonization, multi-generational trauma, and war found healing through ancient wisdom and ritual. The events related here highlight some of the ways that guidance from other-than-human realms, particularly from nature and the dead, makes quantum healing possible by restoring respectful relationships with all life as well as with the unseen world that is its source. The discussion highlights the urgency for international peacebuilding and foreign aid policy to re-examine the erroneous assumption that outside experts and money will solve the dilemmas caused by colonization, commodification, and greed. In the experiences related here, the authors show how dreaming, divination, ritual, offerings, and community councils helped divided communities work together for the sake of peace. The unexpected appearance of elephants—traditionally understood to be harbingers of peace—reawakened an ancient understanding of how to work in alliance with the natural world. The mysterious, interwoven events related here reveal new ways of working collaboratively across cultures and beyond the human realm. This suggests an innovative role for outsiders wishing to support the efforts of traditional communities seeking peace and stability after war, with the awareness that impending global extinction requires an unprecedented cultural shift to re-invigorate lived reciprocity within and beyond the human community for the sake of all life.

Sacred Medicine: Indigenous Healing and Mental Health

This participatory action research was designed to create guidelines and strategies to improve the delivery of mental health services to immigrants from Central and South America to the US. The demand for appropriate strategies for addressing the mental health needs of this population is increasing. This study recruited 17 traditional healers and their clients in the US and Peru to share their understanding of mental health needs, the conditions for which someone might seek treatment, and those aspects of traditional cosmology and practice that could inform modern approaches. The findings identified patterns of generational trauma still evident from colonialism, the need to respect the traditional worldview of immigrants in relation to diagnosis of mental distress, connection to nature and place, and the role of community and ancestors to the process of healing and recovery. Recommendations for practitioners to be a bridge between traditional and modern approaches to mental health are offered.

How Neoliberalism Shapes Indigenous Oral Health Inequalities Globally: Examples from Five Countries

Evidence suggests that countries with neoliberal political and economic philosophical underpinnings have greater health inequalities compared to less neoliberal countries. But few studies examine how neoliberalism specifically impacts health inequalities involving highly vulnerable populations, such as Indigenous groups. Even fewer take this perspective from an oral health viewpoint. From a lens of indigenous groups in five countries (the United States, Canada, Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand and Norway), this commentary provides critical insights of how neoliberalism, in domains including colonialism, racism, inter-generational trauma and health service provision, shapes oral health inequalities among Indigenous societies at a global level. We posit that all socially marginalised groups are disadvantaged under neoliberalism agendas, but that this is amplified among Indigenous groups because of ongoing legacies of colonialism, institutional racism and intergenerational trauma.

Brown America: An Acknowledgement of this Nation’s Roots America was, is, and always will be…“brown”

This concept paper addresses the hyperbole and irrational fear related to the demographic projection often termed as the “browning of America.” The “browning” is a term that refers to a growing “non-white” population in the United States. The case is made for how, from the inception of its creation, the United States culture and society were built upon foundational roots originating from the Indigenous people of the American continent with added elements comprised of many cultures from various regions of the world. Rather than embracing the perspective of a demographic “browning,” the position taken in this paper rejects a white supremacist orientation that negates yet appropriates the contributions of multiple cultures to U.S. culture. Examples of how United States language, culture, and customs are derived from various “non-white” cultures and traditions attest to how those descended from the European Diaspora have been assimilated into a pluralistic “brown” worldview. For this reason, the position taken is that the United States always was, still is, and forever will be, “brown.” Yet, the generational trauma held by a significant portion of European Americans and coupled by their dislocation undermines their capacity to experience healthy psycho-social integration. For this reason, this paper touches upon the psychological and sociological etiology of a white supremacist orientation and the cost for the lack of knowledge and attribution to the sources of the unique nature of U.S. culture.

Trauma in August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson

August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson (1987) is a play which deals with the social life of a broken African American family in Pittsburg – a city in Pennsylvania – who migrated from the South. The family’s grandparents, who were slaves on a Southern plantation, were separated and exchanged with a piano. This shocking incident causes cross-generational trauma and other traumatic incidents for the family as they retrieved the piano. This study examines the play through the lens of Literary Trauma Theory. This theory appeared in the middle of 1990s, henceforth it has been developed by so many scholars, and the latest revision is made by Joshua Pederson, an Associate Professor of Humanities at Boston University, in 2014. The first wave of the theorists claim that trauma causes amnesia for the victims; they can neither remember nor describe what they have experienced, but Pederson in his revised edition of the theory proves the opposite. By applying the latest version of trauma theory this study shows how slavery, its aftermath or its legacy affected and haunted African Americans, and created trauma or historical trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for the African Americans.