LEADER 02269oam 2200313z- 450 001 9910172220203321 005 20170809165318.0 010 $a1-4008-1135-X 035 $a(CKB)111056486501380 035 $a(BIP)047207417 035 $a(EXLCZ)99111056486501380 100 $a20121017c1996uuuu -u- - 101 0 $aeng 200 $aCharred Lullabies : Chapters in an Anthropography of Violence 210 $cPrinceton University Press 215 $a1 online resource (272 p.) $cill 311 $a0-691-02774-9 330 8 $aHow does an ethnographer write about violence? How can he make sense of violent acts, for himself and for his readers, without compromising its sheer excess and its meaning-defying core? How can he remain a scholarly observer when the country of his birth is engulfed by terror? These are some of the questions that engage Valentine Daniel in this exploration of life and death in contemporary Sri Lanka. In 1983 Daniel "walked into the ashes and mortal residue" of the violence that had occurred in his homeland. His planned project--the study of women's folk songs as ethnohistory--was immediately displaced by the responsibility that he felt had been given to him, by surviving family members and friends of victims, to recount beyond Sri Lanka what he had seen and heard there. Trained to do fieldwork by staying in one place and educated to look for coherence and meaning in human behavior, what does an anthropologist do when he is forced by circumstances to keep moving, searching for reasons he never finds? How does he write an ethnography (or an anthropography, to use the author's term) without transforming it into a pornography of violence? In avoiding fattening the anthropography into prurience, how does he avoid flattening it with theory? The ways in which Daniel grapples with these questions, and their answers, instill this groundbreaking book with a rare sense of passion, purpose, and intellect. 531 $aCHARRED LULLABIES 610 $aEthnology 610 $aViolence 610 $aSri lanka 610 $aPolitical science 676 $a303.6/095493 700 $aDaniel$b E. Valentine$0896920 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910172220203321 996 $aCharred Lullabies$92004135 997 $aUNINA