Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA)

Oral Presentation Session

Social Suffering and Reoccupying Spaces of Devastation: Engaging with the women of Afghanistan Social Suffering and Reoccupying Spaces of Devastation: Engaging with the women of Afghanistan Social Suffering and Reoccupying Spaces of Devastation: Engaging with the women of Afghanistan

Presenter(s)

• PD

  Parin Dossa

The complex linkages between corporeal, structural and epistemic forms are well theorized. Less attention has been given to the existence of violence in the weave of everyday life. As an elusive phenomenon, this form of violence may be understood through interrelated questions: how do we recognize and acknowledge forms of social suffering that have been normalized following decades of violence? How do people reoccupy spaces of devastation? What role can anthropologists play in uncovering everyday violence linked with the geopolitics of war? Based on my ethnographic research with the women of Afghanistan, I engage with these questions to map pathways to understand the impact of violence on the lives of people, discursively linked with “entangled encounters” on a global scale. Anthropologists, with their penchant for documenting thick description/narratives are positioned to address the issue of global justice from the point of view of participants.