Frameworks and tensions

Central theoretical debate

• Primordalism vs constructivism → Does violence emerge from innate biological drives or historically/culturally produced

Harrison’s (1989) inversion of Hobbes

• For Hobbes nature provides violence and culture provides peace

• For Avatip, nature provides sociality and culture — specifically male ritual — provides war

• This challenges the Western assumption that violence is a default state

Three key arguments

1. Violence is never just ‘natural

2. Western analytical frameworks distort the subject

3. The observer is never neutral

‘Othering’

• Besteman (1996) -. The 'clan warfare' narrative in Somalia ideologically distanced Somalis from Western audiences, treating them as a different kind of human being.

• By framing them as primitive tribesmen, Western observers could safely bracket their own society's tensions around race and class.