Challenging Fieldwork Researching Large-Scale Massacres in Algeria

This paper is based on my research experience in an area that was the scene of a massacre: Bentalha, a hamlet, 30 km away from the Algerian capital Algiers. This massacre took place on September 22-23, 1997 during the “black decade” (1991-2001), a period of the civil war during which 150,000 people were killed, 7,000[i] disappeared and 1 million internally displaced. After a background section on the history of this conflict, the paper describes the setting where my fieldwork took place. This article discusses my experience on the field as well as the emotions such as frustration, fear, anxiety and vicarious traumatization that I experienced in the process. It also addresses questions of self-reflexivity, positionality and the insider/outsider status. I am writing from the perspective of an Algerian sociologist trained in France, yet my experience in doing fieldwork “at home” can be useful to other scholars who do or plan to do fieldwork in dangerous places in their countries or societies.Notes[i]. It is very hard to obtain an accurate estimate of the total number of victims. However, the Algerian President, Abdelaziz Bouteflika declared during a press conference in Paris on June 2000 that the number of victims was 150,000.

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XXIV. Buddhism in the Shan States

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society ◽

10.1017/s0035869x00042295 ◽

1911 ◽

Vol 43 (4) ◽

pp. 917-934

Author(s):

J. George Scott

Keyword(s):

Civil War ◽

Early History ◽

Folk Tales ◽

Early Literature ◽

History Of ◽

At Home

In a very excellent book on the Shans at Home, recently published by a member of this Society, Mrs. Leslie Milne, it is stated that “the chief source of early Shan Buddhism was probably the Talaings and Cambodians”. This is the opinion of the Rev. Wilbur Willis Cochrane, who at the same time states that it is his conviction that the Tai got their alphabet and early literature probably from the same sources. Mr. Cochrane is an American missionary, who has spent something like twenty years among the Tai and is an accomplished Tai scholar. There is a quite considerable Tai literature, mostly of a religious kind, but with a very creditable amount of folk-tales. Unfortunately there is nothing that throws any light on the early history of their country. Previous to our occupation of the Shan States, as a consequence of the annexation of Upper Burma, the whole of the States had been involved in almost incessant civil war, and for a century before that the wars between China and Burma and Burma and Siam had led to the marching and counter-marching of armies through the hills. The troops were Buddhists, no doubt, but they had very little regard for sacred things, and the result is that most of what writings there may have been on the history of the country perished with the monasteries.

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A History Of The American People To The Civil War, Can America Stay At Home? and Interpretations, 1931–32

International Affairs ◽

10.2307/2603254 ◽

1933 ◽

Keyword(s):

Civil War ◽

American People ◽

History Of ◽

At Home

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Cultural and educational work in the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army during the front-line Civil War: Soviet historiography of the 1920s - the first half of the 1930s (a brief review of the history of the problem)

Samara Journal of Science ◽

10.17816/snv2021103209 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 10 (3) ◽

pp. 186-192

Author(s):

Sergey Aleksandrovich Tribunsky

Keyword(s):

Civil War ◽

Large Scale ◽

Armed Forces ◽

Front Line ◽

Educational Work ◽

Soviet State ◽

Political Work ◽

Red Army ◽

History Of ◽

Historical Phenomenon

The researcher highlighted (in the format of a lapidary historiographic review) historiographic sources published in the 1920s - the first half of the 1930s, which dealt with the topic of cultural and educational work in the Workers and Peasants Red Army (RKKA) during the front-line Civil War (1918-1920). In the historiographic period, the chronological framework of which is indicated above, a relatively large number of historiographic sources appeared on the history of the Russian Civil War (at the front stage of its course). They reflected, among other things, many aspects of the historical phenomenon of party political work in the Armed Forces of the young Soviet state, that historical phenomenon, within the framework of which cultural and educational work in the Red Army was born and strengthened. Moreover, such studies were carried out immediately as the Civil War continued until the end of 1922 on the outskirts of the Soviet state, although it was not so large-scale. Such historiographic sources require understanding and rethinking from the standpoint of new theoretical and methodological approaches, established in modern Russian historical science. For a lapidary historiographic review the author has selected, first of all, a complex of historiographic sources that have both direct and indirect relation to the topic of cultural and educational work in the Red Army during the front-line Civil War, which were published in the chronological framework indicated above. Of course, there are no copyright claims in the work for the completeness of coverage of the topic under consideration. This, in fact, cannot be achieved in the format of a historiographic survey, especially lapidary.

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Confrontation and Conflict

10.1093/oso/9780198846161.003.0003 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 60-84

Author(s):

Dieter Gosewinkel

Keyword(s):

Civil War ◽

Large Scale ◽

The Political ◽

Social Significance ◽

The First World War ◽

The Everyday ◽

History Of ◽

Existential Dimension ◽

Social Importance ◽

First World

The First World War revealed an existential dimension of citizenship that remains hidden in peacetime. Hostilities between states intensify the politico-social significance of citizenship and raise awareness of citizens’ duty to put their lives at risk for the good of their home country. The war introduced an epoch in which the political and social importance of citizenship in the everyday lives of Europeans increased greatly, as did, however, its delimiting and exclusionary impact as well. The extreme depletion of the reservoir of—male—conscripts sharpened the dividing line between the sexes and, during large-scale conquests, incited conflicts between ethnic and national loyalties, between ethnicity and nationality, as was seen, for example, in the areas occupied by Germany in France and Russia. The emerging European civil war, which would become a world civil war, had one of its battlefields in the immensely contradictory and conflict-ridden history of citizenship.

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An Environmental History of the Civil War

10.5149/northcarolina/9781469655383.001.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Judkin Browning ◽

Timothy Silver

Keyword(s):

Civil War ◽

Environmental History ◽

National Parks ◽

Large Scale ◽

Weather Forecasting ◽

Natural World ◽

Military Conflict ◽

Conservation Movement ◽

New Thinking ◽

History Of

This sweeping new history recognizes that the Civil War was not just a military conflict but also a moment of profound transformation in Americans' relationship to the natural world. To be sure, environmental factors such as topography and weather powerfully shaped the outcomes of battles and campaigns, and the war could not have been fought without the horses, cattle, and other animals that were essential to both armies. But here Judkin Browning and Timothy Silver weave a far richer story, combining military and environmental history to forge a comprehensive new narrative of the war's significance and impact. As they reveal, the conflict created a new disease environment by fostering the spread of microbes among vulnerable soldiers, civilians, and animals; led to large-scale modifications of the landscape across several states; sparked new thinking about the human relationship to the natural world; and demanded a reckoning with disability and death on an ecological scale. And as the guns fell silent, the change continued; Browning and Silver show how the war influenced the future of weather forecasting, veterinary medicine, the birth of the conservation movement, and the establishment of the first national parks. In considering human efforts to find military and political advantage by reshaping the natural world, Browning and Silver show not only that the environment influenced the Civil War's outcome but also that the war was a watershed event in the history of the environment itself.

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