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 reading the Introduction, I got a more concrete sense of what Thomas is trying to express.
In the Introduction, one thing I found interesting is that he stated: “citizenship is a set of performances and practices directed at various state and non-state institutions or extraterritorial or extralegal networks.” I have never perceived citizenship in that way, especially not in the way that takes global practices into consideration. Format wise, I related this introduction to what Murchison suggests the format of a project proposal. Although the Introduction is not as structured, it is still obvious that Thomas discussed previous works of related subjects and stated his argument. When he mentioned “each of the chapters that follow focuses on a different temporal and conceptual moment regarding the ways violence, citizenship, public representation, and counter-narratives have suffused the development of Jamaican subjectivities.” This is different from what I perceive that ethnographies are usually written chronically. I am interested to see how he executes that. It’s also interesting to me that he said his topic exceed the conventional methods, so he varied his way of explaining. This inspires me that ethnographic methods are not limited to a certain types of method, but can be expanded (in an ethical way, of course). It also reminds me that ethnographies don’t have to be written in a specific way. My understanding is that here is not a structured set of “rules” in ethnographic research.
In Chapter 1, it is interesting to me how Thomas started the chapter with first person voice, but included a section of introducing the situation right afterwards. He also separated his explanation into sections, while making each section more separated and distinguishable. I also discovered techniques that were mentioned in the Murchison chapter regarding confidentiality and using pseudonyms.