Diss on Tattoos

Agency & Motivations for Violence: Gangs in El Salvador

Mara Savatrucha (MS-13) is one of the most notorious gangs in the world. Along with Calle 18, these gangs emerged among the Salvadorian immigrant community of Los Angeles just decades ago. As the US authorities deported gang members back to El Salvador (on daily flights that still happen today), the culture of violence was exported with it back to a country rife with the legacy (arms and structural tensions) of the Civil War.

MS-13 currently has over 50’000 members across El Salvador, the US, Guatemala and Honduras. The cities, like San Salvador, El Salvador’s capital, experience some of the highest murder rates in the world1.

Research

Bourgeois (2004)  Everyday violence results from internalisation of historically entrenched structural violence (applicable to both El Salvador but also LA and reaction to structural violence there)  4 types of violence: 1. Political - Targeted physical violence and terror administered by official authorities (military repression, political torture, armed resistance) (conditions in prison) 2. Structural  chronic, historically-entrenched political-economic oppression and social inequality (intl terms of trade, to abusive local working conditions) (grievances) 3. Symbolic  internalised humiliations and legitimations of inequality and hierarchy ranging from sexism and racism to intimate expressions of class power – Bourdieu (unwitting consent of dominated) (link to Gilligan – shame) 4. Everyday micro-interactional level: interpersonal, domestic, delinquent  El Salvador - Initially saw in Cold War context then re-wrote his field notes from 1981 (midst civil war) El Salvador - Now sees killing of 75000 people during 1980s directly attributable to US military, economic and logistical support for Salvadoran army - But CW context blinded him to internecine everyday violence undermining guerrillas internal solidarity - But also (Wood) – certain forms everyday violence decreased in revolutionary setting – wife-beating etc – as peasants also took pride in mobilising in support of FMLN (pleasure in agency)  Need to move beyond pornography of violence – where difficult to talk about dominated/victims in realistic way without either exalting them as innocent victims or crushing them without agency  Neoliberalism, in Latin American post-CW, actively dynamises everyday violence – fusing of structural and symbolic violence produces destructive patterns of interpersonal violence that reinforce the legitimacy of social inequality  Need not sanitise violence – but clarify the chains of causality that link structural, political, and symbolic violence in production of everyday violence (structure for our presentation?)  In post-CW era – it is intl market forces (not politically-driven resistance) that is waging war for hearts and minds of pop

Bourgeois, P. (2003) In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio  I have more detailed notes on this but areas relevant:  Surface violence (eg substance abuse in innerc-city El Barrio) a symptom and vivid symbol of “deeper dynamics of social marginalization and alienation”  Links to Gilligan  psychological and emotional violence  in El Barrio – links to Puerto Rican cultural forms that have expanded and reinvented themselves in

1 http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/featured/deadly-gangs-el-salvador/10773 immigrants – around a “theme of dignity and autonomy – an oppositional mentality forged in the face of long-term colonial domination”  basis forged in reaction to experience in LA/US more widely, external-impact on Salvadoran history/Civil War  Building on the analytical framework of cultural production theory and drawing from feminism, wants to restore the agency of culture, the autonomy of individuals, the centrality of gender and the domestic sphere to a political economic understanding of the experience of persistent poverty and social marginalization in urban US (12)  Participant-observation ethnographic techniques better suited than exclusively quantitative methodologies for documenting lives of people on margins of society that is hostile to them (although methodological issues – analytical and political tensions, unconscious self-censorship)  Specifically in the New York City Puerto Rican context, the self-destructive daily life of those who are surviving on the streets needs to be contextualized in the particular history of the hostile race relations and structural economic dislocation they have faced  Political economy analysis is not a panacea to compensate for individualistic racist or otherwise judgemental interpretations of social marginalization – a focus on structures often obstructs the fact that humans are active agents of their own history, rather than passive victims (17)  Ethnographic methods allow the ‘pawns’ of larger structural forces to emerge as real human beings who shape their own futures – structure vs agency debate – the relationship between individual responsibility and social structural constraints

Wood (2003)  Based around sustained organized and vilent insurgency forging democracy from below  but transitions need to be pro-poor (need to be material relationship for peace agreements to endure)  Material grievances – inadequate access to land, played a role, yet emotional and moral motives were essential to emergence and consolidation to insurgent collective action  Civil War in El Salvador transformed political, economic and social landscape  Insurgency forged democracy in El Salvador by laying the politics and economic bases of compromise after mobilization for economic and political inclusion was met with state violence  Poor rural residents in their 10s of thousands acted together for social change, despite high risks of doing so – led to emergency of FMLN – had to be dealt with which opened doors to democracy in El Salvador  Olsen – collective action problem – collective action costly to individuals and won’t be sustained without either coercion, or motivated through selective incentives available only to those participating - But in El Salvador, whilst FMLN became alternative governing authority and did provide some collective goods – these were open to everyone (free-riding) so not incentive to join insurgency  Pre-existing social networks and shared collective identity provide multifaceted contact based on shared norms  But breakup of peasant communities occurred too early to explain mobilization  That the values, beliefs, social norms and political identities could outweigh the risk of disappearance, torture and death is at heart of puzzle of insurgency  Instead - Participation was voluntary - It was widespread - It evolved over time - Moral commitments and emotional engagements were principal reason - Dignity in the face of condescension, repression - Took pride, indeed pleasure, in successful assertion of their interests and identity – pleasure of agency - Motivated by the value they put on being part of the making of history A lot of the gang members are children of those involved in insurgency  idea of respect in their community, in their part in history, being passed down?

Gilligan (2000)  Public health approach is appropriate model to show that violence is a contagious disease, not a hereditary one [Social and psychological factors are more important in violence than biological ones]  Prison inmates work with – pride, dignity, self-respect threatened so acted violently – if don’t have self-respect, don’t have anything  Emotion of shame primary cause of all violence – necessary but not sufficient cause of violence - Need several preconditions - Violence-inducing effects of shame can be stimulated, inhibited, or redirected by presence/absence of other feelings (guilt, innocence)  Preconditions 1. Feel ashamed over matters so trivial, triviality makes it even more shameful to feel ashamed about them – nothing more shameful than to feel ashamed 2. Perceive of having no non-violent means of warding off or diminishing feelings of shame – violence as last resort 3. Lack emotional capacities that normally inhibit violent impulses stimulated by shame 4. Presence of overwhelming shame in absence of feelings of either love or guilt  Anomalies: Not everyone becomes violent from shame, and even most violent people on earth are not violent most of the time  Power of shame is inversely proportional to magnitude of precipitating cause – more trivial the cause of shame, more shameful it becomes to acknowledge the shame

Ross Kemp – El Salvador Programme  On average 11 murders a day in a country with population smaller than London  In conversation – since gov law, more gang members coming in to prison (increased by 80%) – when asked how he feels about it (Hugo) says – not good, people getting time when not commit crime just for being MS13 – Ross says, but you are violent gang, he responds, “that’s not the point man, the government, they got to do a lot of programmes in the street, to put these people to work, to do something”  “I tell my son not to be a gang member, not to be like me, to be a normal people”  Don’t call enemy gang by name – but ‘the other neighbourhood’  Gov more interested in incarceration not rehabilitation  Started 1980s LA – race wars  Active gang member on streets – weekly flights dump deportees – Eric and Duke  Duke MS13 gang member since beginnings in LA  “We had to start defending ourselves” (race wards in LA), “at 7 years old, every time I used to go buy bread early in the morning I used to find a lot of suckers decapitated by La Guardia” (the police, the killing squad)  “We saw and we learned, and even though we didn’t want to , violence was in us. We had to start being proud. We saw whites being proud of being white, we saw black being proud of being black. Shit, we had to start being proud of Salvadorian”  So you were the hardest ones there? Eric – “now we are”  Duke Not just watching people get stabbed, but people getting arms and heads cut off – they were at their highest point of violence, stabbing, and “we thought, fuck this shit, that ain’t violence, let’s show these fools what violence is” – and that’s how it happened  MS13 started at backlash to persecution in US, and now traveled back here – fertile breeding ground after end of civil war  Not associated with drugs or money, just about hating people not in their gang and kill them  When asked if members of MS13 – answer “until we die”  Chicho and his clique  Ask a group active in their neighbourhood – why start: 1. “I started let’s say, looking for revenge because they (18th street) killed my uncle. I got my revenge then I stayed” 2. Often hurt someone in family and can’t let them get away with it 3. “If they came, we’d just kill them” “We defend our area because this is where we live, we can’t let them come and operate here” 4. “This is El Salvador and Mara Salvatrucha are in control”  MS13 meant to be 2nd biggest threat to US after Al Qaeda – threat, or scared kids with guns?  Corruption – elites (gov and businessmen) shipping 500odd tones of cocaine through country so suits them to have cliqua as a smokescreen  Chicho – constantly saying “I’m the one who’s the problem, they’ve [his family] got nothing to do with it” – I’m the one in the gang, but his brother killed – said with almost guilt (Gilligan)  Rehab project for female ex-gang members – training and also education and tattoo removal  What was reason joined gang? - “I joined to be like the other girls of the neighbourhood” - “I didn’t want to join any gang but both gangs put pressure on me. 18 people, girls beat me up” - You can either get in to gang by being beaten up – doing it by hurt, or by ‘love’ – the train – basically gang rape (one man after another’ - “A mission is a mission” – if you’re told to go and kill someone you kill someone. When ask if she’s done that, she smiles, laughs and says yes – they find it funny // chilling honesty  Just that one project – 14 girls (two died recently)) in whole of South America for female gang members!!!

COAV (Children in Organised Armed Violence) Interview 2  Social researcher Marlon Carranza from uni Centroamericana Jose Simeon Canas in El Salvador  Background (Collier – greed/grievance model – young under-educated men / vs Wood – pleasure in agency) - El Salvador has highest masculine unemployment rate for Central America (not including Panama) 15.2% (2000) and highest employment rate in underground economy (42.8% - 2003) - Invests less in social sector in relation to total public spending than any other Central American country (only 27% - 2003)  “The gangs began due to a number of factors that have to do with the long history of violence in the country, even before the war”  Motivations: “the proliferation of weapons is a common factor, as is the sensation that a lot of what motivates these young people is a desire for “power and control” and to “stand out”, and not just for economic reasons” (Gilligan)  “Without a doubt, money is a factor, and the group’s participation provides economic benefits to youth, including such luxury goods as brand name clothes and tennis shoes that they would not otherwise have access to. And it is also easier to get drugs. But purely economic reasons don’t explain why the youth enter into a gang to get those goods, given that they could organize themselves in other ways”  [Previous research “Barrio Adentro” – 2000] – most common motivation was vacilando (for fun – 40%) followed by family problems (21%) and friends (20%)  “The word vacil means “for fun” and sums up all the benefits of being a gang members, which can be summed up in two words: respect and power, related to the fear imposed on others. Only by understanding the combination of these benefits (economic, access to drugs and alcohol, social visibility and an ideology that justifies their actions) will we be able to understand the reasons for joining a gang”  Average profile: “poor relationship with his family, in part because the family has been partially responsible for their exposure to violence” / average 8 yrs schooling / armed (70% carry weapons) / take a lot of drugs / 75% no study / 75% been in prison  only 40$ say they want to leave the gang

2 Mittrany, C (2003) “We want to get out of this deep abyss that violence has pushed us into” - COAV  Reinsertion programmes “should meet the material needs of youth and the needs of youth to be heard and seen” (not just economic work programmes) but “the gang youth need to feel that they are being listened to and the opportunity to become what they want to be: the protagonists of their own lives”  Diff to Rio – not such a close relationship between gangs and organized crime

Barnes, N. “Characteristics and Motivations of Transnational Gangs in the Americas” – Prof of Sociology, California State Uni

 “Repatriated youths were faced with rapid urbanization, persistent poverty and lack of meaningful labour opportunities, making joining a gang one of the few options for survival” (Collier)  Maras leadership, rank and file gang members (usually 14-26 yrs old – correlation with “youth bulge theory”)  “The predictors of youth involvement in gang include gender (being male), and coming from a working class background and/or a single parent household. Youth are drawn to gangs in the absence of meaningful work opportunities, violent and weakened family structures (due to migration of parents) and the failure (or non- existence) of the welfare state” (Collier – but this is overly simplistic – doesn’t account for female gang members or intrinsic motivations)  “The most immediate rewards of joining a gang are social and cultural, not material or economic. Gangs offer youth the protection, respect, identity, belonging and social support that is often lacking in their urban communities”  “Once youths become gang members, their motivations to remain include maintaining masculine cultural pride, status and power’ defending their “turf” against rival gangs and the police; possible increased economic gain; and to support drug (ab)use”  Em – See ref for data sources

Vinyamata, E. – Advisor of Minister’s of Justice Conference of Latin American Countries and Director of Campus for Peace and Solidarity at Open Uni of Catalonia 3

 Gang criminal activity “increasingly resembles a civil war. A war without ideologies that seeks control or access to wealth and power through violent action”  Gangs prosper in countries with: corruption; poverty, marginalization and marked inequality; lack of employment opportunities; repressive security policies; disaffection of majority of population with regard to their country (opposite in El Salvador?); unstructured or dysfunctional families; predominance of a culture of violence (what is that exactly….! Belief that achievements through violence, history of civil war?); absence of democratic institutions  Most gang members emerge from lower middle classes – degraded neighbourhoods (but if motivations tied to their environment – how could export from LA to ES?)

Religion – 83% Roman Catholic  links to how portray themselves?

US Department of State Website: Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour (2007)  Constitutional, multiparty democracy (El Salvador)  “Although the government generally respected the rights of its citizens, protection of human rights was undermined by widespread violent crime, including gang-related violence, impunity and corruption. The most significant human rights problems included harsh, violent, and overcrowded prison conditions; lengthy pretrial detention; inefficiency and corruption in the judicial system; violence and discrimination against women; abuses against children; child labour; and forced child prostitution; trafficking

3 http://www.uoc.edu/ojs/index.php/journal-of-conflictology/article/viewFile/vol0iss1-vinyamata/vol0iss1- vinyamata in persons; discrimination against persons with disabilities; discrimination against indigenous persons; discrimination against persons based on sexual orientation; and lack of enforcement of labour rights” (sounds fun)

Fieser, R. (accessed 27.03.12) – “San Salvador’s Pitch for Peace” – Catholic Relief Service 4  Edgar’s story – at 18 was known as “shy boy”, lives in fear of death. “There are lots of people here who want to kill me. I don’t mean homeboys. I mean the really bad people from the organized crime rings and other people who just hate us”  war memories form early childhood haunt him  Youth Builders project – former ‘enemy’ gang members working together  rebuilding community, rehabbing lot in to basketball court etc  Brian Axel – participated in programme in hope it would inspire him to quit the gang permanently, “There was one guy, who we call Choven, who never comes out. He’s bit – about 6 feet 2 inches tall. It’s kind of scary to see him, but he came out and worked on the court”  Lionel Gomez – “participated in Youth Builders because he wanted to turn his drawing into a money-making skill. The 29 year old joined a gang when he was 13, went to jail at 18, and most recently survived a vicious attack by members of his own gang. But he has never held a stable job”  “Youth Builders helpmed me put a little more love in my life’ Lionel says, in a voice so soft it makes his gold-capped teeth and tattoo-laden hands seem like a disguise”  Lionel – mother’s boyfriend beat him, mother threw him out, “joined a gang where his temper flared”. “Violence, he says, was his reaction to nearly everything”  Harder to get a job than he expected – tattoos give him away. “As he was signing the contract recently for a job at a nearby factory, the hiring manager caught sight of the tattoos on his hand and rescinded the offer”

New York Review of Books Guillermoprieto, A. (2011) In the New Gangland of El Salvador  Alexis Ramírez, who joined the maras when he was fifteen, doesn’t look like he could kill people thoughtlessly, although he is serving fifty years for homicide and has forty- eight left to go.  I asked him if, when he was free, it hadn’t been dangerous for him to walk down the street covered in tattoos, and he gave a sideways smile. “If you know how to walk it’s not”  Came from ‘nice family’ – father an evangelical, mother “preserving in the things of God”  He was still in school when he decided to join the maras. “I saw the tattoos [of the mareros in his neighborhood]. I saw the way they behaved toward each other,” he said. “In my neighborhood they didn’t steal from people; they took care of them. I liked all that.”  I tried, unsuccessfully, to figure out if that ducking, swaying thing he did was an authentic remnant of what had once been a whole and gentle person, or an ingratiating trick that a thoughtless killer kept stored among his array of weapons.  José Eduardo Villalta, twenty-four…has most of a fifty-year sentence still ahead of him, and I asked him if he didn’t find that depressing. “No,” he said firmly. “I feel at ease here. This is my home.”

Keefe, B. (1997) “Gang Members Speak Up”, Peace Magazine 5  “In San Salvador, El Salvador and Los Angeles, California a small group of gang members have organized, calling themselves Homies Unidos. Comprised of members of different - and rival - gangs, Homies Unidos is doing something that

4 http://crs.org/el-salvador/san-salvadors-pitch-for-peace/ 5 http://peacemagazine.org/archive/v13n6p27.htm [Accessed 27.03.12] nobody has ever done in El Salvador and is rarely done in the United States. They are working together, trying to construct a future for themselves and their homeboys and homegirls. But it's not easy.”  Places emergence of gangs from having to “protect themselves on the streets”, turning to gangs for security  Hector Pineda experienced this first-hand. A member of La Mara Salva Trucha gang in Los Angeles, Pineda - aka "El Negro" - 22, now lives in San Salvador where he founded Homies Unidos.  1996, Save the Children and other organizations helped founders develop 1st public opinion poll to study needs of gang members (1000+ polled)  "The amazing thing we found is that a vast majority of gang members want to lead a more peaceful life, they want to get rid of the violence, they want jobs, they want an education, they want a future for themselves and their children," says Rose-Avila."  Don’t ask people to leave gangs – no peace makers, but promoters of non-violence. "We take the best from the gangs and try to build from there. Because in gangs sometimes they are the only family you have. Society has ostracized you, you don't belong to anyone, so your Homies are all you've got. And you can't change people, you can't tell them that they are something they're not, you have to accept them."

Reuters News Report 6  Fri 23rd March 2012 – Rival gangs MS-13 and Mara 18 call truce  signed document endorsed by Catholic Church  “The gangs have been in a period of ‘reflection’ since last year as they considered the toll of crime in the country” (9% jump in murder rate 2011)  “Much of that violence is blamed on Mexican drug cartels that use the country as a transit point”  “Considering the pain it causes, to our families and ourselves, we have taken this decision (to call a truce), because we are all aware that many dead are our own”  The statement says that is speaks for more then 100’000 gang members who “do not want to wage war”  Language used – Gilligan  pre-condition of inability for ‘normal’ feelings of love and guilt to constrain shame-fuelled violence (pain caused to families – the constraint) // “wage war”

New York Times Article 7  Possibility that ‘truce’ resulted from secret deal between gov and gang leaders to halt killings in exchange for better prison conditions (and Reuters claims gov paid them to put down arms)  Goal “reducing homicides by 30 percent and reaping political gains”

Huffington Post Article 8  “The Maras have their roots in Southern California, where young men seeking refuge from Central America’s civil wars formed violent gangs on the street of Los Angeles and its suburbs in the 1980s”  Violence due to turf battles, and also engage in extortion and drug trafficking

6 Renteria, N. (2012) – Reuters News Report [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/24/us-elsalvador- gangs-idUSBRE82N03J20120324 accessed 27.03.12]

7 Archibold, R. (2012) New York Times article [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/world/americas/homicides-in-el-salvador-drop-and-questions- arise.html Accessed 27.03.12]

8 Aleman, M. (2012) Huffington Post Article [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/24/el-salvador- mara-salvatrucha-mara-18-truce_n_1376955.html [Accessed 27.03.12]]  30 high-level gang members transferred to lower security prisons – more contact “with their underlings” to direct criminal activities from inside prison  “Most Central American nations have responded to the region’s crime with tough anti- gang laws, which have added to problems of overcrowding and violence in their prison systems. In February, Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina proposed legalizing drugs as a way to decrease violent crime”

Arana, A. (2005) “How the street gangs took Central America”, Foreign Affairs Vol.84:3  Maras (after deadly species of local ants?!)  “Now pose the mot serious challenge to peace in the region since the end of Central America’s civil wars” (violence in peace – Tilly)  “The solutions attempted so far--largely confined to military and police operations-- have only aggravated the problem; prisons act as gangland finishing schools, and military operations have only dispersed the gangs' leadership, making bosses harder than ever to track and capture.”  “1996 – Congress extended the get-tough approach to immigration law. Noncitizens sentenced to a year or more in prison would now be repatriated to their countries of origin, and even foreign-born American felons could be stripped of their citizenship and expelled once they served their prison terms. The list of deportable crimes was increased, coming to include minor offenses such as drunk driving and petty theft. As a result, between 2000 and 2004, an estimated 20,000 young Central American criminals, whose families had settled in the slums of Los Angeles in the 1980s after fleeing civil wars at home, were deported to countries they barely knew”  "As more and more hard-core gang members were expelled from Los Angeles, the Central American maras grew, finding ready recruits among the region's large population of disenfranchised youth (according to the United Nations, 45 percent of Central Americans are 15 years old or younger). In El Salvador (a country of 6.5 million people), the gangs now boast 10,000 core members and 20,000 young associates”  Tilly – violence in peace (Honduras - murder rate of 154 per 100,000--higher even than Colombia's, where, despite an ongoing civil war, the murder rate is just 70 per 100,000)  Legislation alone cannot fix gang problem; “According to Covarrubiaz (the former San Jose cop), get-tough programs "work temporarily, but do not address the real problems.”” (structural violence – Bourgeois)  “In the last two years, Central American members of MS-13 have begun to return to the United States itself. This time, however, they are appearing in nontraditional areas, ranging from New York City to suburban Maryland and Massachusetts-- anywhere there are significant Salvadoran populations” (exporting violence from US to Salvador – re-exporting it back)  Blame? “Some Central American government officials have accused the United States of inflicting the problem on them, comparing Washington's deportation of gang members to the 1980 Mariel boat lift, when Fidel Castro supposedly emptied his prisons and shipped the inhabitants north to Miami. Meanwhile, U.S. officials, including Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton, think the Central Americans should shoulder the problem alone and favor continued deportations. Such mutual recriminations are typical of the debate over gang problems and help explain why the affected countries have yet to develop a united front to deal with them”  “It is unrealistic, however, to expect any of the tiny Central American countries, with their fragile governments, to take the lead in organizing a multilateral approach; that role can only be played by the United States”  “So far, Central America has yet to adopt such a multifaceted approach, nor have the countries there learned to work together or with the United States--despite the fact that the gang problem affects all of them. Instead, El Salvador and Honduras continue to pursue their mano dura policies. Meanwhile, the region's more deep- seated problems--such as dysfunctional politics, rampant corruption, drug smuggling, intense urban poverty, and overpopulation--remain untouched, and the mano dura campaigns are only taking attention and resources away from the fight against these larger ills”  “Central American governments have also used their highly publicized crackdowns on youth gangs to avoid action on another urgent priority: strengthening local democratic institutions. Since the end of the Central American civil wars in the early 1990s, judicial, legislative, and social reforms have stalled amid partisan infighting, and local political debates remain sprit along the same left-right fault fines that caused bloodshed two decades ago”  “The region should also implement a three-pronged approach to gangs, one that includes prevention, suppression, and intervention. Prison systems must be transformed so that they no longer serve as training grounds for new gang members. In California, police now avoid placing competing gangs in the same facilities. Central America should do the same, to avoid the sort of clashes that recently occurred in Honduras and El Salvador when M-18 and MS-13 members were thrown into the same prisons”

Collier (2000) – Economic Perspective  Statistical investigation of global pattern of large-scale civil conflict since 1965  Expected to find grievances leading to conflict but found economic agendas are central to understanding why civil wars start  Some groups benefiting from conflict so have interest in sustaining it  Economic opportunities and therefore measures of economic agenda: 1. Primary commodities: Looting of primary commodities (Very few economic gains from gang membership in ES) 2. Proportion of young men in society: Cost of attracting recruits to rebellion  lack of other income-earning opportunities and education (El Salvador – young population) 3. Endowment of education  Grievance measures: 1. Ethnic or religious hatred 2. Economic inequality – unequal incomes or ownership of assets 3. Lack of political rights 4. Gov economic incompetence  All results show importance of economic over grievance – only significant grievance factor is a prior period of rapid economic decline increases risk of conflict  Obviously conflict inflicts costs, but also economic opportunities: - People shorten time-horizons during civil war leading to opportunistic behaviour - Increase in criminality – risks of punishment for criminal behaviour decline - Markets become disrupted – trade becomes more monopolistic so marketing margins increase - Scope of rent-seeking predation on trade increases for rebels  Small groups that have economic interest in sustaining/reviving conflict are disproportionately influential  Need economic policies to reduce incentives for conflict - Diversification of economy away from primary export - Poverty reduction - Make markets as competitive as possible – competition reduce profits to normal levels and reduce attraction of conflict for wartime traders - Market integration promoted by deregulation This is study on civil wars and rubbished by Cramer etc – relevance to ES?

Groupthink  Term coined 1953 by William Whyte  Enemy within & without  purification in group, and extermination of out group  Groupthink is an institutionalized form of anti-strategic behaviour - Go in with rational self-maximisation - Then have need for cohesion and belonging, meaning in a group - Group is less than the sum of its parts  Developed by Irving Janis (strive for unanimity overrides motivation to realistically appraise alternative causes of action)  Collective rationality (mob mentality)  Inverts collective action problem – if in group, do away with rationality  Come to choices that are sub-optimal strategically (ethnic and religious violence)  gang membership puts family at risk/own life at risk = suboptimal, especially in use of tattoos  Clark McCauley: 3 conditions under which groupthink occurs: 1. Directive leadership 2. Homogeneity of background and ideology 3. Insulation from outside influence

Binford, L. () “Violence in El Salvador. A Rejoinder to Philippe Bourgois’ ‘The Power of Violence in War and Peace’”  Bourgois utility of violence model (structural relations and everyday violence), but Binford argues these this theory needs mediating concepts in order to be usefully applied to a concrete situation  Bourgeois understanding of post-war reality in El Salvador is mechanical  study of unfavorable peace settlement, which preserved unequal structural relations, is also necessary to shed light on high levels of post-war violence

Girard  could be relevant in terms of groupthink/scapegoating/mimesis of violence  anti-rational behaviour of violence in gangs?

Girard, Rine (1996), “Mimesis and Violence” in J.G. Williams (ed.) The Giard Reader, The Crossroad Publishing Company: New York  “Violence is the process itself when two or more partners try to prevent one another from appropriating the object they all desire through physical or other means. Under the influence of the judicial viewpoint and of our psychological impulses, we always look for some original violence or at least for well-defined acts of violence that would be separate from non-violent behaviour. We want to distinguish the culprit from the innocent, and, as a result, we substitute discontinuities and differences for the continuities and reciprocities of the mimetic escalation” (9)  Violence based on aggression – some individuals more aggressive than others, violence based on economic scarcity – but “a teory of conflict based primarily on appropriative mimcry does not have the drawbacks” of above (10)  “The phenomena that take place when a human group turns into a mob are identical to those produced by mimetic rivalry, and they can be defined as that loss of differentiation which is described in mythology and re-enacted in ritual…mimetic rivalry tends toward reciprocity (12)  “Violence is not originary; it is a by product of mimetic rivalry. Violence is mimetic rivalry itself becoming violent as the antagonists who desire the same object keep thwarting each other and desiring the object all the more. Violence is supremely mimetic” (12-13)  Key ideas:

- Mimetic desire – all our desires are borrowed from other people - Mimetic rivalry – conflict originates in mimetic desire - Since mimetic rivalry develops from struggle for the possession of the objects is contagious – it leads to the threat of violence rd th - If 2 individuals desire the same thing (could be respect?) – soon a 3 , and 4 so on individual thing – eventually the object is forgotten and mimetic conflict transforms in to general antagonism

- They wanted same object, now want to destroy the same enemy (symbolic violence – tattoos/markers of gangs) (mimetic antagonism)

- A paroxysm of violence would tend to focus on an arbitrary victim and unanimous antipathy would mimetically grow against him

- The elimination of this victim would reduce appetite for violence and calm situation  origins of sacrifice and religion  Critique

- Evidence often based on readings of myths and bible stories – which can often be tendentious

- Also exist non-mimetic desires (taboo desires in repressive societies) - Can have positive mimesis – loving mimesis or creative mimesis  Scapegoating  When mimesis reaches the point of mimetic contagion (where society at risk) here the scapegoat mechanism is triggered

- 1 person singled out as cause of trouble and is expelled/killed – this person is the scapegoat (but in ES also some killings random – bus shooting of random victims)

- Social order restored as people perceive they have solved the cuse of their problems by removing the scapegoated individual

- Burke first coined the term but Girard developed concept more extensively

Others to Read 1. Violence in War and Peace: An Anthology, Nancy Scheper-Hughes (Editor) (University of California, Berkeley), Philippe Bourgois (Editor) (University of Pennsylvania) 2. Bourgois:  http://istmo.denison.edu/n08/articulos/power.html  http://www.philippebourgois.net/Monthly%20Review%20El%20Salvador%201982.pdf  http://www.philippebourgois.net/Ethnography%20Power%20of%20Violence %202001.pdf  http://www.philippebourgois.net/Apuntes%20Investigacion%20CECYP %202002%20smaller.pdf 3. Also – my diss at BA level was on tattoos – could be some interesting (or really uninteresting and bad!) work on there in terms of that – but not sure if we need that level of detail – I’ll look when at home 4. http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1947579_2012504,00.html - photos