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War's Everyday: Normalizing Violence and Legitimizing Power

Bakonyi, Jutta

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Abstract

The article studies the everyday of violent conflicts and wars. It uses Somalia as a case study to explore how ordinary people experience and legitimize actors of violence. Building on biographic interviews, I show how violence became a normalized aspect of daily lives and was integrated in the habitus of people who developed the ability to routinely respond to it. However, I also show, that the specific temporality of violence impedes its full routinization and normalization. Legitimation processes in Somalia are marked by the tension of the routinized extraordinariness that protracted violence generates. Unsurprisingly, therefore, legitimation was mainly driven by experiences of security. These experiences were closely tied to four factors: clan membership, mobility, justice, and patriarchal conventions. These findings demonstrate the need to further develop a relational and processual understanding of legitimation that takes account of the everyday, as it is here that the actions of violent groups are felt, discussed, agreed-upon, rejected, or contested.

Citation

Bakonyi, J. (2022). War's Everyday: Normalizing Violence and Legitimizing Power. Partecipazione e conflitto, 15(1), 121-138. https://doi.org/10.1285/i20356609v15i1p121

Journal Article Type Article
Online Publication Date Mar 15, 2022
Publication Date 2022
Deposit Date Jun 21, 2022
Publicly Available Date Jun 21, 2022
Journal Partecipazione & Conflitto
Print ISSN 1972-7623
Electronic ISSN 2035-6609
Publisher Universita del Salento
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 15
Issue 1
Pages 121-138
DOI https://doi.org/10.1285/i20356609v15i1p121
Publisher URL http://siba-ese.unisalento.it/index.php/paco/article/view/25066

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