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for the transition to agriculture in Tuscany. CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY 33:328-31.

L E W T H W A I T E , J 1981. Ambiguous first impressions: A surveyof recent work on the early Neolithic of the West Mediterra-nean. Iournal of Mediterranean Archaeology and AnthropologyI :292-307.

M A L O N E , C. A. T., A N D S K . F . S T O D D A R T , n.d. Survey andexcavation of t he Neol ithic si te of San Marco, Gubbio (Peru-gia], Umbria, 1985-7. Papers of t h e British School at Ro me Inpress.

On Formations of Vio len ceA L L E N F E L D M A NNational Development and Research Institute, Ne wYork, N.Y. 11106, U S A v 92Jenkins's (CA 33:233-35) review of my Formations ofViolence (1991) grossly misrepresents the factual basisof the book and impugns my professional conduct andcharacter. Its distortions and bias may be attributable tounstated political views, which are contradicted by thevery oral testimony that the book presents. Jenkins be-gins by declaring that Northern Ireland is an integralif somewhat insecure part of the Uni ted Kingdom(p. 233, emphasis mine). This, like many other asser-tions in the review, is an ideological value judgmentposing as a statement of fact. It coincides with and im-plicitly endorses British state policy in Northern Ireland.Northern Irish Loyalist paramilitaries also commit sec-tarian violence for this principle. Large segments of theRoman Catholic population would view this principleas a denial of their cultural and political identity, and ithas had dehumanizing consequences for the majority ofworking-class Roman Catholics, who have been sub-jected to state and Loyalist paramilitary terror in itsname. Yet Jenkins identifies himself as a humanist andaccuses me of dehumanizing the victims of violence inNorthern Ireland (p. 235) Formations of Violence presents substantive data on British counterinsurgencypractice and community-based resistance to it that seri-ously challenge the position that Northern Ireland is anintegral part of the United Kingdom-unless it can beshown that the suspension of civil liberties, the tortureof British citizens, and clandestine state-sponsored as-sassination of these citizens are common practices inother parts of the United Kingdom. Like many other pastpious appeals to humanistic values, Jenkins's moralitydisguises colonial assumptions.Jenkins insinuates that I conducted parachute eth-nography. This unfounded assertion denigrates my in-formants. He displays his ignorance of the political con-ditions of fieldwork in Northern Ireland if he believesthat an outsider can simply parachute in and easilyextract in-depth oral history in quantity and quality

from a politicized population that has been subjected tomore than two decades of state surveillance, coerciveinterrogations, informers, and media misrepresentation.The oral histories of Formations of Violence account formore than a third of the 319-page text and represent adepth and diversity of local voices that is not found inany other scholarly treatment of the subject. These datacould have been obtained in the present political cir-cumstances only through the establishment of trust andconfidentiality with informants, which requires timeand empathy. Jenkins ignores my discussion of the timespent in the field and the interpersonal dynamics of myfieldwork (pp. 10-13). Between 1974 and 1986, I wasresident in Ireland for a total of eight and a half years,during which I conducted fieldwork on Ulster culturethat generated two books (including the present one] anda long-playing record of field recordings, wrote culturalcriticism for Hibernia Fortnightly Review, and was anactive participant in the traditional music scene in Dub-lin and Belfast. My first book was published in Belfast.My relationship to Ulster culture is an integral part ofmy intellectual biography.Tenkins claims that the number of mv informants isunclear, whereas I simply distinguish the number of in-formants whose narratives are presented in the bookfrom the total number of informants I met with (pp.10-11 . He takes me to task for not providing the con-versational context ( question, answers, etc. [p. 2351and implies that I spiked the narratives. How far do thepublished narratives depart from what was actually said,and to what extent was the original testimony a productof the research process? (p. 235) This reveals bothmethodological and political ignorance and superficialreading of the second half of chapter I . In what ethno-graphic practice are data from informants not a productof the transactional research process? And does he viewpolitical actors in Northern Ireland as puppets easilymanipulated by deft questioning? The oral histories inFormations of Violence show the existence of a fertile,autonomous, and politicized urban oral culture that hasreceived little prior documentation in the ethnographicliterature. If Jenkins's criteria were valid, the vast major-ity of Northern Irish studies would be much more edito-rially suspect than mine, for they rarely present morethan the occasional paragraph-length first-person voiceof an informant in support of their descriptions and anal-yses. There is much more room for editorial manipula-tion in the traditional narrative strategies of the canonthan in Formations of Violence.Jenkins never mentionsthe fact that many of the oral histories are of sufficientlength (some going on for pages] and/or narrative com-pleteness to make any that intrusive or manipulativeediting quite visible.As he admits, these narratives are expressions of astorytelling genre (p. 234) Storytelling in NorthernIreland is a formal performance not produced in ques-tion-answer format; that the latter does not generatemuch information from people who are compelled toanswer the questions of the sta te security apparatus on

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a daily basis. My distaste for replicating sta te methods ofdocumentation is the reason that, contrary to Jenkins'scharges, I do not treat the oral histories as event history(seep. I and offer an extended critique of the idea of theunmediated event (pp. I 1 1 6).There are no ideologicallyneutral descriptions of events in Northern Ireland, asJenkins's review inadvertently demonstrates. The edit-ing protocols required of me by informants and th e polit-ical situation are discussed in detail (pp. 11-14)) andthey say a good deal about conversational contexts. Jen-kins chooses to ignore this section, entitled the Politicsof Narration. The social and historical context for theseoral narratives is extensively documented with qualita-tive and quantitative data from my own research andthe research of others throughout the book.What disturbs Jenkins is that my analytical conceptsare confused with the common-sense or lay conceptsof my research subjects (p.235). Yet the two exampleshe gives pertain not to th e mental intentions, or formalideologies of the political actors referred to (police inter -rogators and protesting Republican prisoners) but to theautonomous semantic content and effects of their ac-tions; they are taken from long sections of explicit per-formance analysis. Jenkins fails to mention that Formations of Violence is a study of a performance culture ofviolence. I propose and demonstrate chasms, contradic-tions, surplus meanings, and semantic slippage betweenthe official ideologies of political actors (which inflecttheir commonsense perception) and the tacit ideologicalforms embedded in their violent praxis. In violent politi-cal history, action can be more definitive than officialdiscourse or intent (pp. 1-4). In the social sciences thisused to be termed the contradiction between theoryand practice. In Northern Ireland's military culture,common sense is a historical, political, and symbolicconstruct that frequently authorizes violence. When Isubject the political culture of violence to a comparativeconceptual analysis, Jenkins accuses me, and not theBritish state or Northern Ireland's paramilitaries, of de-humanizing victims. To describe how the internal logicof violent objectification works, how i t congeals into amaterial culture, and how it fashions political percep-tion is not to endorse it . My use of conceptual toolsother than those used by the political culture of North-ern Ireland is intended to universalize a conflict fre-quently dismissed as idiosyncratic, archaic, and irratio-nal, no t to display my cultural elitism. Hannah Arendt,Theodor Adorno, and Zygmunt Bauman all felt com-pelled to devise and deploy philosophically informed an-alytic language to explore and to critique the common-sense vernacular that mobilized and legitimized theNazi Holocaust. These humanists were left ponderingthe system of objectification deployed by political terrorbecause the depth experience of victims is ultimatelybeyond all representation. Contrary to the implicationsof Jenkins's perspective, humanism does not mean thedenial of meaning to violence; nor do his moralistic ges-tures substitute for analyzing violence, no matter howhorrific its consequences.

R I C H R D J E N K I N SDepartment of Sociology and Anthropology,University College of Swansea, Swansea S A 2 8PPWales, U.K. 4 VII 92I did no t expect Feldman to like my review of his Formations of Violence. However, th e ferocity of his responseto it seems disproportionate and demands a defence.First, however, I must reiterate the positive things I saidabout Formations of Violence in reviewing it: an un-usual and welcome contribution to t he social anthropol-ogy of Northern Ireland inasmuch as it does not shyaway from political violence, it says much that is valu-able and worthwhile, despite my impatience with thelanguage in which i t is written. Anybody who is inter-ested in either Ireland or violence ought to read it.

Feldman's objections to my review seem to be four-fold, although it is reassuring to note that he nowheresays that I have misunderstood his theoretical positionor the book's arguments. First, he suggests that my de-scription of Northern Ireland as an integral part of theUnited Kingdom (he is not objecting to my use of theword insecure ) reveals unstated political views thatcolour my judgment with respect to his book. I am ac-cused explicitly of endorsing British state policy in thesix counties and denying the cultural and politicalidentity of many Northern Irish Catholics and implic-itly of supporting loyalist sectarian violence.Now, i t is true that my political views about Irelandwere unstated in the review. They are not, however,those which Feldman takes them to be. On the onehand, to describe Northern Ireland as an integral part ofthe United Kingdom reflects a)the day-to-day realitiesof life in Northern Ireland, b ) the territory's constitu-tional identity within the British state, c)the positionwhich is recognised in international law, and (d) ,giventhe recently redefined aspirational nature of Articles2 and 3 of the Consti tution of the Republic of Ireland,the formal as well as the de facto stance of the presentDublin government. In fact, it is the six counties' mem-bership of t he U.K. which provides some of the firmestgrounds for rejection of the British government's secu-rity policies and criticism of i ts human and civil rightsrecord. On the other hand, however, to describe theprovince's membership of the U.K. as insecure seemsadequately to communica te the uncertainty and contin-gent nature of the si tuat ion. Feldman's own talk aboutBritish citizens and other parts of the United King-dom is, by his logic, evidence of his own colonial as-sumptions. It is indicative of the weakness of his re-sponse to my critique that he should have primary resortto the insubstantial-it is only one word, integral,which bothers him-and the ad hominem. As furtherand final evidence, however, that I am not what Feld-man takes m e to be and, most inconveniently for him,that I did not allow prejudice to colour my view of his

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work, in the review I talk (p. 2 3 5 about his obvioussympathies. In the context of my original sentencethose sympathies are represented as a potential, albeitan unsuccessful, obstacle to the objectification of t hehuman subject for which I criticize him. This is hardlythe approach of t he unionist/loyalist bigot whose handhe seems to detect in the review.His second objection does at least have the great vir-tue of being a response to something I actually said. Idid say that the data looked and felt like parachuteethnography. To me, they still do. Feldman's lack ofcomment upon the two specific examples of errors offact or interpretation which I gave in support of thisjudgment (pp. 234-35) does nothing to discourage me inthis view. Perhaps eight-and-a-half years was not longenough.As for his third concern, on rereading the relevant pas-sages of the book I consider the problem of the numberof interviewees sti ll unresolved, although now m y objec-tions are a lit tle different. Why, in particular, were onlya quarter of the interviewees selected for appearance inthe final product? What is the relationship between theIOO and the z5? It is not clear. This seems to me to bean important issue if we are to know how to evaluatethe material as ~rese nt ed .As to the presentational criticisms I offered in the re-view, nothing i n Feldman's response goes any distancetowards allaying them: in the sanitised form in whichit i s presented, we cannot know whether what is beingsaid is, for example, an answer to a direct question or towhat degree the words on the page depart from the exactwords which were uttered. Nor does the length or appar-ent narrat ive completeness of the testimonies have anyimplicat ions for the visibility of intrusive or manip-ulative editing. Feldman's discussion of his editingprotocols in the book does not meet my objections.In a study which derives so much of i ts claim to episte-mological author ity from the use of oral testimony-inthe absence of documentary, statistical, or other ethno-graphic data-these are not minor objections. Paren-thetically, i t may make for good rhetoric to assimilatethe interviewing approaches of the anthropologist or so-ciologist to state methods of documentation, butit doesn't, given the different power relations withinwhich the two interrogatory approaches are situated,make m uch sense.Finally, Feldman suggests that what disturbs me isthe confusion between analytical concepts and commonsense/lay concepts. This is untrue. It is merely oneof the things which disturbs me about his work. As tothe interpretation of the two examples which I cite in

the review, Feldman's insistence that neither pertainsto the intentions or ideologies of the actors concernedseems, at best, perverse: in the first we have a prisoncollective which remains faithful to an ideology(Formations, p. z ~ s ) ,nd in the second the history ofthe person under interrogation is defined by the interro-gators (p. 136) in a particular way. In each case onehas to abandon any sense of the English language as arepository of shared meaning in order to accept Feld-man's interpretation of his own words. This is HumptyDumpty insisting, When I use a word i t means justwhat I want it to mean.As to Feldman's claim to have demonstrated differences between the official ideologies of politicalactors and the tacit ideological forms embedded intheir violent praxisu-which I take to be another wayof distinguishing what people say from what they do-Ihave to reiterate that he can do so only by overlookingthe content of the words the actors are using. In otherwords, he appears to know better what they mean thanthey do. And he may. His argument in this case, how-ever, rests on also knowing what his subjects' praxisis. Since the only data he offers are the decontextualisedoral testimonies, and since those, by his own admission,are not offered by him as event histories (although Iwould stil l insist that this is exactly how he uses them),the source(s) f his knowledge remain unclear. Whateveris the case, however, the use of th e word demonstratecomes disturbingly close to the notion of proof andsuggests a subterranean and more than residual realistpositivism in Feldman's thinking.None of what Feldman has to say in his response haschanged my mind about his Formations of Violence. Vi-olence should be analysed and its meaning(s) investi-gated. Feldman's book, however, objectifies the peopleabout whom it is written to a degree which I still findunpalatable. Thi s is in part because of his theoreticalposition and in part because of the language in whichit is written. As his references to Arendt, Adorno, andBauman might also suggest, both theoretical perspectiveand language bespeak an authorial arrogance which istruly breathtaking and does little to enhance the poten-tial of anthropology for enlarging our understanding ofconflict or violence.

References CitedF E L D M A N A L L E N . 1991. Formations of violence: The narrativeof the b od y and political terror i n Northe rn Ireland Chicago:Un ivers i ty of Chicago PressJ E N K I N S R I C H A R D . 1992. Doing violence to th e subject CUR-

RENT ANTHROPOLOGY 3 3 : 2 3 3 3 5 .