Monthly Archives: February 2022

I found the selections from Deborah Thomas’s work, Exceptional Violence: Embodied Citizenship in Transnational Jamaica, incredibly thought provoking. I like how she starts out with a broad call to reframe anthropology’s role in defining and describing “culture.” When she calls … Continue reading →

Upon reading from Thomas’s book, I was fascinated by her view of the central role that history continues to play in our daily lives and our study of the world around us. Thomas consistently references colonialism and encourages her audience … Continue reading →

When reading Exceptional Violence, especially alongside the Murchison reading, I couldn’t help but break up my analyses into two distinct parts: the book’s content/main research and the formation/structure of the presentation of her argument. From the content perspective, I found … Continue reading →

One of Deborah Thomas’s central arguments is that “violence generally is not a cultural phenomenon but an effect of class formation, a process that is immanently racialized and gendered.” While I partly agree with this claim, since the attribution of … Continue reading →

My first impression of Exceptional Violence is that the subject is not what I expected in ethnographies. How can you study violence but be ethical at the same time? That’s the first question that came up to me. However, while … Continue reading →

The first portion of Thomas’ novel was a dive deeper into anthropologists’ traditional notions of what social and economic factors contribute to both the presence and persistence of violence in a community or culture. Her definition of the central concept … Continue reading →

I particularly thought it was interesting how Thomas acknowledges an anthropologist’s role in studying culture, but also clarifies that culture is a difficult concept to understand in the complex “institution of the academy and the politics of knowledge production” (4). … Continue reading →

Thomas’s ethnography on Jamaica’s violence works well as an example of an ethnography. Thomas is well-immersed in the community, and she does a fascinating job explaining the landscape (for example “up the road” and “down the road”) while still using … Continue reading →

It was a cool afternoon, I walked into Kissam and was met with the smell of dining hall, not really good or bad but definitely food. There was music playing pretty loud and I was first greeted by the sights … Continue reading →

The encounter that I had was when I went to Popeyes and bought me some food for me and my sister. Pulling up the Popeyes with is on Jefferson Street that I frequently go to is always packed. It is … Continue reading →

Field Notes Location The chosen field site where the food was purchased was at Grins cafe on Vanderbilt campus. Situated in between Branscomb residence hall, Memorial Gymnasium, and the first portion of greek row, Grins sits on an extremely accessible … Continue reading →

I went to get breakfast and coffee from Suize’s Cafe at Central Library last week. Suzie’s is located at a fairly easily accessible location on campus that is on main campus(where sophomores and upperclassmen who live on campus live) and … Continue reading →