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1

Drake Stutesman. "Connectivity: An Interview with Susan Meiselas." Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media 51, no. 1 (2010): 61–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/frm.0.0056.

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Davenport, Meredith. "House of Pictures: A Conversation with Susan Meiselas." Afterimage 41, no. 1 (July 1, 2013): 8–15. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/aft.2013.41.1.8.

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Pelizzari, Maria Antonella. "Towards an Impossible Closure—Susan Meiselas: In History." Photography and Culture 2, no. 2 (July 2009): 205–9. http://dx.doi.org/10.2752/175145109x12456654102966.

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Eggers, Tuane Maitê. "Descolonizando narrativas sobre mulheres: a fotografia como potência." Revista PHILIA | Filosofia, Literatura & Arte 2, no. 2 (November 10, 2020): 470–503. http://dx.doi.org/10.22456/2596-0911.104554.

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As narrativas sobre mulheres, mesmo dentro dos estudos feministas, podem ser entendidas como normativas e colonizadoras, especialmente quando se dão a partir de um olhar ocidental sobre as mulheres do terceiro mundo. A partir da análise do pensamento da autora indiana Chandra Talpade Mohanty, este artigo busca relacionar seu discurso com exemplos de mulheres fotógrafas que buscaram desconstruir essa estrutura hierárquica do olhar, como Claudia Andujar, Graciela Iturbide, Nair Benedicto e Susan Meiselas, além das reflexões da artista interdisciplinar Grada Kilomba, em diálogo com outros autores do campo da imagem. A fotografia pode ser considerada, assim, uma ferramenta de escrita de novas narrativas de resistência.Palavras-chave: Feminismo. Fotografia. Mulheres fotógrafas. AbstractNarratives about women, even within feminist studies, can be understood as normative and colonizing, especially when they are done from a western perspective on third world women. Based on the analysis of the thought of Indian author Chandra Talpade Mohanty, this article seeks to relate her discourse to examples of female photographers who sought to deconstruct this hierarchical structure of the gaze, such as Claudia Andujar, Graciela Iturbide, Nair Benedicto and Susan Meiselas, in addition to the reflections of the interdisciplinary artist Grada Kilomba, in dialogue with other authors in the field of image. Photography can thus be considered a tool for writing new narratives of resistance.Keywords: Feminism. Photography. Women photographers.
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Azoulay, Ariella. "Photography Consists of Collaboration: Susan Meiselas, Wendy Ewald, and Ariella Azoulay." Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies 31, no. 1 91 (2016): 187–201. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/02705346-3454496.

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León Cannock, Alejandro, Devadeep Gupta, and Sergio Valenzuela-Escobedo. "Representación y protesta en el sur global." FOT 6, no. 1 (September 4, 2023): 92–97. http://dx.doi.org/10.19083/fot.v6i1.1875.

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E ste año se celebra la edición número 54 de Les Rencontres de la photographie d’Arles, sin duda el festival de fotografía más antiguo y reconocido del mundo. En él se ha escrito una parte fundamental de la Historia del medio, haciendo desfilar por sus salas de exhibición desde fotógrafos míticos como Henri Cartier-Bresson, Ansel Adams y Robert Frank, hasta artistas que están marcado las tendencias actuales como Laia Abril, Taryn Simon y Smith, pasando por los grandes nombres de la fotografía de cambio de siglo como Joan Fontcuberta, Paul Graham y Susan Meiselas
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McInnes, Marion K. "Photographic Documents and Postmodern Fictions: Photobooks by Susan Meiselas and Gregory Crewdson." Mosaic: a journal for the interdisciplinary study of literature 45, no. 2 (June 2012): 73–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/mos.2012.a479201.

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KITLV, Redactie. "Book Reviews." Bijdragen tot de taal-, land- en volkenkunde / Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia 160, no. 2 (2004): 363–415. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/22134379-90003732.

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-Timothy P. Barnard, Cynthia Chou, Indonesian sea nomads; Money, magic, and fear of the Orang Suku Laut. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003, xii + 159 pp. -R.H. Barnes, Toos van Dijk, Gouden eiland in de Bandazee; Socio-kosmische ideeën op Marsela, Maluku Tenggara, Indonesië. Leiden: Onderzoekschool voor Aziatische, Afrikaanse en Amerindische studies (CNWS), Universiteit Leiden, 2000, 458 pp. [CNWS Publications 94.] -Andrew Beatty, Peter G. Riddell, Islam and the Malay-Indonesian world; Transmission and responses. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2001, xvii + 349 pp. -Peter Boomgaard, Richard H. Grove ,El Niño - history and crisis; Studies from the Asia-Pacific region. Cambridge: White Horse Press, 2000, 230 pp., John Chappell (eds) -Bernardita Reyes Churchill, Florentino Rodao, Franco y el imperio japonés; Imágenes y propaganda en tiempos de guerra. Barcelona: Plaza and Janés, 2002, 669 pp. -Matthew Cohen, Stuart Robson, The Kraton; Selected essays on Javanese courts. Translated by Rosemary Robson-McKillop. Leiden: KITLV Press, 2003, xxvi + 397 pp. [Translation series 28.] -Serge Dunis, Ben Finney, Sailing in the wake of the ancestors; Reviving Polynesian voyaging. Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 2003, 176 pp. [Legacy of excellence.] -Heleen Gall, Jan A. Somers, De VOC als volkenrechtelijke actor. Deventer: Gouda Quint, Rotterdam: Sanders Instituut, 2001, x + 350 pp. -David Henley, Harold Brookfield, Exploring agrodiversity. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001, xix + 348 pp. -David Hicks, Ernst van Veen ,A guide to the sources of the history of Dutch-Portuguese relations in Asia (1594-1797). With a foreword by Leonard Blussé. Leiden: Institute for the history of European expansion, 2001, iv + 378 pp. [Intercontinenta 24.], Daniël Klijn (eds) -Nico Kaptein, Donald J. Porter, Managing politics and Islam in Indonesia. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002, xxi + 264 pp. -Victor T. King, Monica Janowski, The forest, source of life; The Kelabit of Sarawak. London: British Museum Press, 2003, vi + 154 pp. [Occasional paper 143.] -Dick van der Meij, Andrée Jaunay, Exploration dans la presqu île malaise par Jacques de Morgan 1884. Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2003, xiv + 268 pp. Avec les contributions de Christine Lorre, Antonio Guerreiro et Antoine Verney. -Toon van Meijl, Richard Eves, The magical body; Power, fame and meaning in a Melanesian society. Amsterdam: Harwood academic, 1998, xxii + 302 pp. [Studies in Anthropology and History 23.] -Otto van den Muijzenberg, Florentino Rodao ,The Philippine revolution of 1896; Ordinary lives in extraordinary times. Quezon city: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2001, xx + 303 pp., Felice Noelle Rodriguez (eds) -Frank Okker, Kees Snoek, Manhafte heren en rijke erfdochters; Het voorgeslacht van E. du Perron op Java. Leiden: KITLV Uitgeverij, 2003, 103 pp. [Boekerij 'Oost en West'.] (met medewerking van Tim Timmers) -Oona Thommes Paredes, Greg Bankoff, Cultures of disaster; Society and natural hazard in the Philippines, 2003, xviii + 232 pp. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003, xviii + 232 pp. -Angela Pashia, Lake' Baling, The old Kayan religion and the Bungan religious reform. Translated and annotated by Jérôme Rousseau. Kota Samarahan: Unit Penerbitan Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, 2002, xviii + 124 pp. [Dayak studies monographs, Oral literature series 4.] -Anton Ploeg, Susan Meiselas, Encounters with the Dani; Stories from the Baliem Valley. New York: International center of photography, Göttingen: Steidl, 2003, 196 pp. -Nathan Porath, Robert W. Hefner, The politics of multiculturalism; Pluralism and citizenship in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2001, ix + 319 pp. -Jan van der Putten, Timothy P. Barnard, Multiple centres of authority; Society and environment in Siak and eastern Sumatra, 1674-1827. Leiden: KITLV Press, 2003, xvi + 206 pp. [Verhandelingen 210.] -Jan Piet Puype, David van Duuren, Krisses; A critical bibliography. Wijk en Aalburg: Pictures Publishers, 2002, 192 pp. -Thomas H. Slone, Gertrudis A.M. Offenberg ,Amoko - in the beginning; Myths and legends of the Asmat and Mimika Papuans. Adelaide: Crawford House, 2002, xxviii + 276 pp., Jan Pouwer (eds) -Fridus Steijlen, Kwa Chong Guan ,Oral history in Southeast Asia; Theory and method. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian studies, 2000, xii + 172 pp., James H. Morrison, Patricia Lim Pui Huen (eds) -Fridus Steijlen, P. Lim Pui Huen ,War and memory in Malaysia and Singapore. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian studies, 2000, vii + 193 pp., Diana Wong (eds) -Jaap Timmer, Andrew Lattas, Cultures of secrecy; Reinventing race in Bush Kaliai cargo cults. Madison/London: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998, xliv + 360 pp. -Edwin Wieringa, Kartika Setyawati ,Katalog naskah Merapi-Merbabu; Perpustakaan Nasional Republik Indonesia. Yogyakarta: Penerbitan Universitas Sanata Dharma, Leiden: Opleiding Talen en Culturen van Zuidoost-Azië en Oceanië, 2002, ix + 278 pp. [Semaian 23.], I. Kuntara Wiryamartana, Willem van der Molen (eds) -Julian Millie, Jakob Sumardjo, Simbol-simbol artefak budaya Sunda; Tafsir-tafsir pantun Sunda. Bandung: Kelir, 2003, xxvi + 364 pp. -Julian Millie, T. Christomy, Wawacan Sama'un; Edisi teks dan analisis struktur Jakarta: Djambatan (in cooperation with the Ford Foundation), 2003, viii + 404 pp. -Julian Millie, Dadan Wildan, Sunan Gunung Jati (antara fiksi dan fakta); Pembumian Islam dengan pendekatan struktural dan kultural. Bandung: Humaniora Utama Press, 2002, xx + 372 pp.
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Fontcuberta, Joan. "IZAS, RABIZAS Y COLIPOTERRAS: UN ÀLBUM FURTIU." Catalan Review 18, no. 1-2 (January 1, 2004): 181–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.3828/catr.18.1-2.12.

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This essay examines the work of Joan Colom, a Catalan photographer who has come to receive a welter of honors, including the National Prize in Photography, but whose career has been anything but easy and uninterrupted. Colom’s fame derives largely from Izas, rabizas y colipoterras, a photo-book produced in collaboration with Camilo José Cela that focuses on the prostitutes of the Barri Xino of Barcelona and that quickly acquired a cult status among members of the “divine left” critical of Franco’s morally smug regime. Addressing tensions between amateurism and professionalism, art and documentation, the studio and the street, and the image and the word, Fontcuberta presents Colom’s work as a radiography in which the camera serves as an instrument of political critique and the vibrancy and sordidness of street life come to the fore. Inimitable as the book is, it nonetheless allows for productive comparisons with more recent, feminist inflected work on streets, streetwalkers, and sex workers from beyond Barcelona: Susan Meiselas’s Carnival Strippers; Elisabeth B’s Das ist ja zum Peepen; Merry Alpern’s Dirty Windows, and Erika Langley’s The Lusty Lady.
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Binford, Leigh. "Revolution: The Central American War: Photography of Susan Meiselas and Adam Kufeld." EIAL - Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe 9, no. 1 (January 6, 1998). http://dx.doi.org/10.61490/eial.v9i1.1096.

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Barring the conflict in Chiapas, which has been portrayed more like theater (though deadly serious theater) than as warfare, the Central American civil wars of the 1980s and 1990s have ended, at least for the foreseeable future.
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11

Bouveresse, Clara. "Le renouveau de l’approche documentaire, exemple d’une archive collaborative : Susan Meiselas, Kurdistan (1991-2009)." Transatlantica, no. 2 (December 30, 2014). http://dx.doi.org/10.4000/transatlantica.7144.

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Meiselas, Susan, and Iza Pevec. "I Want the Viewer to Ask Himself – What Am I Not Seeing?" Membrana – Journal of Photography, Theory and Visual Culture 8, no. 1 (November 12, 2023). http://dx.doi.org/10.47659/mj-v8n1id158.

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An interview with renowned photographer Susan Meiselas, President of the Magnum Foundation and a member of the Magnum Agency, reveals the breadth of her 50-year career, which has seen her document social, ethnic, religious and wartime conflicts, expose the stigmatized work of strippers before that, and later focus on documenting domestic violence against women. In doing so, she has always sought to continuously expand the field of photography, to remind us of its context and of what remains left out. She keeps coming back to her subjects, incorporating their narratives into her projects, establishing long-term relationships and pointing to what is happening beyond the moment captured in the photographs. Her exhibitions combine photography, video, sound and installation, and she publishes updated editions of her sold-out books to broaden the view. She became known for her work in Latin America in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when she followed, among other things, the unrest and revolution in Nicaragua. We spoke on the occasion of the opening of her exhibition Mediations at the Jakopič Gallery.
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13

"Pictures from a Revolution. Produced, directed, and edited by Susan Meiselas, Richard P. Rogers, and Alfred Guzzetti. 1991; color; 93 minutes. Distributor: Kino International." American Historical Review, October 1992. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/ahr/97.4.1166.

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"Undocumented Migration and Political Community in Susan Meiselas’s Crossings Photographs." Panorama, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.24926/24716839.10850.

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Marquis, Nicolas. "“What Can I Do to Get Out of It?”: How Self-Help Readers Make Use of the Language Game of Resilience." M/C Journal 16, no. 5 (August 20, 2013). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.693.

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Introduction Resilience is, as a concept and as a discourse, a cultural resource that has experienced a growing importance over the last two decades, especially in the field of psychology. In September 2013, the most important database for scientific productions in psychology (www.psycinfo.org) contained more than 14,000 references concerning resilience. In French-speaking countries, for example, each new book by Boris Cyrulnik, the famous neuropsychiatrist who imported the notion of resilience into the psychological field, sells like hotcakes, with total sales of several million copies (see Marquis). Generally considered as the individual’s tendency to cope with stress and adversity, resilience is not only a successful but also a much-debated concept. Is every human potentially resilient, as Masten puts it, or should this notion only apply, in a Darwinian perspective, to the strongest of us? Should resilience be understood as a process in which culture and environment play important roles, as Ungar shows, or as an individual ability? Should we make a distinction between resilient and non-resilient? Does resilience automatically imply having been deeply traumatised, as Cyrulnik puts it? The main reason why these debates have taken such an important place in psychology is that using the concept of resilience is likely to take on, except for its scientific use, a normative or an evaluative dimension. To avoid this shortcoming, most recent works on resilience clearly insist upon the fact that being resilient is not a character trait or an indicator of the power of a person's will (Rutter). It is a multidimensional ecological process. However, nowadays resilience has become a common sense notion, a cultural resource mobilised by the layman or by self-help (SH) books. Accordingly, “resilience” will not be considered here as a scientific concept but rather as a common sense category. Drawing on an analysis of the success of such books, this article intends to show why a description of the common sense uses of this cultural resource is of prime importance when it comes to understanding some salient characteristics of liberal-individualistic societies, especially by comparison with traditional societies. In fact the success of the discursive category of resilience tells something about ourselves, as people living in societies where personal autonomy is highly valued. Therefore, the description of these common sense uses will show how the “resilience” category also constitutes a resource to evaluate both oneself and others as well as an tool to measure one’s own will or the others’, which is exactly what most psychologists try to avoid doing in their theorisation of resilience. Confidence and Breach in Everyday Life Risk management is part of human life. Actually, we spend most of our time minimising the risks we are running when engaging with the world. This attitude is neither a rational action nor a conscious one. It is, in fact, quite the reverse. In everyday life, we simply trust the world. As Luhmann says, confidence is a sine qua non condition of our existence. Our everyday life turns into a close-meshed fabric that makes us feel secure as it ensures consistency over time. This security enables us to avoid the issue of the relevance of our expectations or of the success of our acts. The common sense attitude we are describing here refers to what the American pragmatists call the “practice regime”, in which our main concern is to make sure that life goes on. But a breach might arise (in the form of a more or less tragic event, a change in one’s routine, a vague unease, etc.). What used to be obvious (and above all unquestioned) now becomes uncertain. Such a breach may seriously lead us to question our involvement with a world that has suddenly become strange, threatening, or complete nonsense. The Reading of Self-Help Books: Mobilising Resilience as a Cultural Reaction to Breaches It may be interesting to observe what people do, in the moments when disquiet has invaded their existence, in order to overcome misfortune, both at a symbolic and operative level. My hypothesis is that our attitude towards misfortune is in line with a specific cultural context. Like Illouz, I understand culture as the way we make sense of who we are through actions shaped by values, key images and scenarios, ideals, and habits of thought; through the stories we use to frame our own and others’ experience; through the accounts we use to explain our own and others’ failures and successes; through what we feel entitled to; through the moral categories we use to hierarchize our social world. (8) In other words: in order to allow life to come back to normal after a breach, people resort to the resources their own culture makes available to them. Nowadays resilience has become one such cultural resource that we use to construct our attitude towards misfortune. The question put here is not whether people are really resilient or not, but why this category experiences such traction in liberal-individualistic societies. Therefore, I have made a sociological study of a well-know social phenomenon: in particular, the reading of SH books, in which the discursive tropes of trauma and resilience are indeed very present. Sociologists too often refer to SH books as having hypothetical effects, or consequences. However, unlike what one might find in a literature review, I haven’t tried to make the success of these books a sign or a cause of the decline of society or of the individual, or of a more reflexive society with happier citizens. As numerous authors shown (including Barker and Petley), it is extremely difficult to assess the impact of cultural resources (for example cinema, books, and all forms of media) on individuals and a fortiori on groups of human through scientific procedures. Needless to say, these books have a bad reputation in academic circles, and this negative reputation is maintained because we actually know very little about how they are used by their readers. To overcome this shortcoming, I have tried to provide an answer to the apparently naïve question as to how reading SH literature can make sense to people who praise the virtues of these books, and the claim that they “have changed their life”, readily resorting to the tropes of resilience and trauma. To put it another way, I tried to understand how readers could know “how to go about” these books and have the expertise “to perform these texts” (Alexander) so they can bring them a degree of help, relief and satisfaction. With this objective in mind, I have explored an empirical field of about a hundred SH books, conducted 50 in-depth conversations with readers of SH books, and examined around 300 letters to three well-known authors of such texts. So why do people that read SH books containing such specific content have no trouble finding a meaning, as well as a symbolic and operative effectiveness, in them? My hypothesis is that these books make use of what Wittgenstein calls a “language game”. A “language game” is constituted by a set of (common sense) words and concepts that we mobilise when confronted with specific situations. In contemporary societies, people experiencing a breach in the fabric of their life will probably summon up a particular “language game” influenced by a psychological vision of the world to express and explain what has happened, what the consequences of this breach are, and what possibilities there are to get out of this situation. “Resilience” is one of the most prominent notions of this “language game”. It is not only to be found in the SH books, but also in the discourse of the readers of such books. What does this particular “language game” look like? What role does resilience play in it ? Two characteristics can be observed. First, this “language game” seems to give an extremely important signal of "interiority", an entity that pervades SH readers’ discourse. More precisely SH readers experience (and explain) that they are being inhabited by a “true self” that is the guardian of the “truth” about themselves, but is also the source of an unsuspected power of action. In a supposedly democratic anthropology, people making use of this “language game” consider that all human beings have such interiority, and can therefore harness the hidden resources it contains. In such narratives the pursuit of and engagement with this “true self” are endowed with important qualities. In short, these actions are considered to be the solution to most of our problems. The second characteristic, leading from the first, is that when faced with misfortune, be it big or small, the readers of SH books place great value on "working on the self”. Generally speaking, only efficient action in dealing with our problems finds favour in their eyes. To be precise, in such people’s discourses, having been traumatized is endowed with the power of revealing who we really are and what we are really capable of. Furthermore, such people come to believe that having suffered makes you a survivor, from now on entitled to become a reference for other people on their road to their “true self”. Let us look at a letter to a famous French-speaking SH book author: I want to thank you for your book “Being Genuine: Stop Being Nice, Start Being Real”, which allowed me to identify two problems that stop me from being who I really am: my lack of self-esteem and of self-confidence. Your book was a revelation to me. At the age of 39, I have at last understood how the 26 years spent with my parents created an attitude of submission and passivity in myself, which caused my lack of self-esteem and self-confidence. I have now decided to tackle these problems and to begin a therapy, in order to get rid of all these limiting issues. I feel that it will offer me a rebirth. Thank you so much. (my translation) This letter illustrates clearly how the “language game” is mobilised. It is used first to translate (or to put words on) a vague unease that relies on interiority (“who I really am”, “lack of self-esteem”, “in myself”, etc.) and secondly to create possibilities action to deal with the unease that has now been defined (“tackle the problem”, “begin a therapy”, “get rid of”, etc.). To sum it up, there is no doubt that, contrary to the stance often observed in the scientific literature on resilience, in the SH readers’ eyes, resilience is first a personal capacity, and even more precisely a question of will, and only second a process depending on contextual elements. The Discourse around Sorcery in Azande’s Society as a Point of Comparison I would like now to give an indication of the way reading such books and drawing on this “language game” constitute a practical attitude towards everyday risks, and how this is particularly adapted to our liberal-individualistic culture, in which the question of personal autonomy and individual responsibility is of unprecedented importance (Ehrenberg): in such cultural contexts each individual is expected to be the entrepreneur of his own life. To make this point clearer, I will briefly sketch a comparison with another practical attitude that has been well-documented in anthropological work: the “language game” of sorcery, which is practiced in many traditional societies but also in some parts of the western societies (Favret-Saada). The first anthropologist to have gone beyond the issue of the reality of magic was Evans-Pritchard. During the first half of the 20th century, he studied the use of sorcery in a tribe of South Sudan: the Azande. Evans-Pritchard thought that such a phenomenon could only be understood if the social institutions making a form of magical thinking plausible were taken into account. On the basis of his fieldwork, he considered the types of situations in which the Azande resorted to magic. His answer was that magic (which is notably present in accusations of sorcery) only intervenes in difficult times and more precisely when two things coincide. The first is the fact that an event (even a totally explicable one) arises, the second is the fact that it happens to the person in question, at that precise moment. For example the Azande understand that it was lightning that made the tree fall down, but they wondered why lightning struck in that place, at that time, above the head of that person in particular. For them, such phenomenon could not remain unexplained. They understood what caused their misfortune, but they needed to find a reason for it all the same. When faced with adversity, the Azande will always wonder: "who is holding a grudge against me”, and “who has got reasons to cast a spell on me?" The discourse around sorcery is what Winch later called an "attitude towards contingencies", which he defines as the “way of dealing (symbolically) with misfortunes and their disruptive effect on a man’s relations with his fellows, with ways in which life can go on despite such disruptions” (321). In this sense, reading SH books and mobilizing the category of resilience both have a similar function, just as praying does: this practice and the corresponding “language game” also testify of an attitude towards contingencies. As is the case with magical practices, both are socially instituted systems of interpretations that enable the people in question to find some meaning to misfortune and to go on living after it (in this matter, Masten’s consideration of resilience as “ordinary magic” is interesting). Nevertheless, the ways these two attitudes towards contingencies enable people to make sense and to set up possible actions are very different. The two systems of accountability are not alike. The Azande’s attitude is fundamentally projective (the responsibility or blame for a misfortune is shifted to somebody else, most of the time to a sorcerer). On the other hand, the attitude of the readers of SH books is introspective: the question that is socially valued is not “who is holding a grudge against me?”, but “what can I do to get out of it?”. In SH readers’ eyes, this is the very question to be answered in order to be considered as a resilient person. The sorcery system makes it possible to consider that the responsibility for the misfortune and the responsibility for the end of it go to the same entity: the sorcerer. In the SH readers’ attitude towards contingencies, these two responsibilities are uncoupled: while “another” is often held responsible for the misfortune, the person that experienced the misfortune is always considered responsible for getting over it: they are supposed to pick themselves up and improve themselves. Likewise, the projective attitude (which is characteristic of the discussions on sorcery) is highly discredited in the “language game” of resilience used by the SH readers. It is considered as the sign of a fake resilience. This is obvious from the distrust that is present in their discourse towards the character of the "victim", as well as towards the figure of the “complaint”, as the following excerpts from interviews with readers clearly show:Woman, 64 years old: People reading SH books are people who want to feel good, find their place in the world and solve the problems arising from their past. They are people who try to get over victimisation and to responsibilise themselves. Woman, 35 years old: I find it a good thing that more and more people read SH books. But a lot of other people continue to consider themselves as the genuine victims of their parents or of their education, and they need a lot of time to get through it. As for me, I believe that we have what we need in ourselves: we choose what we want, and we have what we want. Man, 40 years old: We need to get out of the vicious circle that makes us consider that “the others” are always responsible for our problems. For example: “Oh if I am unemployed, it is because society does not provide me with a job”. Well, maybe, but the good question is “why don’t you have a job while other people do?” It is useless to accuse society. The question is: “which actions do you take to get a job? (my translation for the three quotes) This “language game”, which so enhances both interiority as the resource of meaning and power, and efficient work on one’s own self, allows us to consider others or the environment as responsible for our own misfortune. Yet, it certainly doesn’t allow us to wait passively for things to improve on their own. In the common sense use of resilience, improvement must be caused in a proactive way by exploring our inner resources. In the end, this “language game” is indeed what people try to put into practice when they read SH books: these books build up their conviction that, whatever the situation they find themselves in (and whoever is responsible for it), they can always do something to it, they can always make use of this event to improve themselves. SH books and the “language game”, which resilience is a part of, enable the readers to consider all their problems as finding a solution in a more efficient practice of their interiority. Conclusion: The Evaluative Dimension of Resilience The “language game” of SH books is not only employed by readers as a means to make problems manageable. It is also experienced as a powerful resource for assessing oneself and others. The main finding of this article is the hiatus that exists between the scientific interpretations of resilience as an analytic (thus not normative) resource and the way this notion is mobilized in the common sense by laypeople in their everyday lives order to evaluate responsibilities. It is exactly as if people could not help asking the question: “if this person is not resilient and can’t cope with adversity, isn’t it, at least partly, their own fault?” The reason of this hiatus is that resilience is used in a cultural context where autonomy has taken an unprecedented importance. The key message of SH books, which is endorsed by most readers, is that happiness, well-being and resilience are a matter of personal choice. Behind the democratic proposition of SH books: “everybody has the ability to manage, everybody might be resilient,” lurks a much more meritocratic attitude: namely, “if you cannot come to terms with a problem, it is because you don’t really want to”. In the world of SH books, people who do not “put on a brave face”, or who do not work at being consistent with themselves, who content themselves with the secondary benefits of a life that does not really suit them, who expect solutions to drop down from heaven, – in a word people who do not show what SH readers consider as a genuinely resilient behaviour – only have themselves to blame. This phrase (“only have themselves to blame”), has negative connotations in French-speaking sociological discourses, but is not attached to such negativity in the mind of SH readers that get the most out of such books. “Blaming oneself as the only one responsible”, not for what happened but for what we do/don’t do to get through it, is exactly what the “language game” mobilising resilience and its emphasis on interiority and efficient activity allow. This is what readers are seeking when reading SH books. Indeed, people seeking a solution to their problems would ask: what is the use of reading books saying there is nothing to do to improve our situation? Thus, when using the “language game” of resilience, the SH book readers willingly accept the consequence that their problems have now been brought out into the open: the consequence being that people should take the responsibility for the fact that their problems persist (due to their own failure to act) or disappear (due to their actions). This theory of the consequence of one’s actions is today criticised by sociologists, notably French-speaking ones. References Alexander, Jeffrey. “Cultural Pragmatics: Social Performance between Ritual and Strategy.” Sociological Theory 22 (2004): 527–573. Barker, Martin, and Julian Petley, eds. Ill Effects: The Media/Violence Debate: London: Routledge, 2001. Cyrulnik, Boris. Parler d’Amour au Bord du Gouffre. Paris: Odile Jacob, 2004. Ehrenberg, Alain. La Société du Malaise. Paris: Odile Jacob, 2010. Evans-Pritchard, Edward E. Sorcellerie, Oracles et Magie chez les Azandé. Paris: Gallimard, 1972. Favret-Saada, Jeanne. Les Mots, la Mort, les Sorts. La Sorcellerie dans le Bocage. Paris: Gallimard, 1977. Hazleden, Rebecca. “Promises of Peace and Passion: Enthusing the Readers of Self-Help.” M/C Journal 12.2 (2009). 1 Aug. 2013 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/viewArticle/124>. Illouz, Eva. Saving the Modern Soul: Therapy, Emotions, and the Culture of Self-Help. Berkeley: U of California P, 2008. Luhmann Niklas. La Confiance: Un Mécanisme de Réduction de la Complexité Sociale. Paris: Economica, 2006. Marquis, Nicolas. “Se Remettre en Jeu quand Rien ne va Plus: Une Réflexion Sociologique sur la Catégorie de la Résilience. ” Recherches Sociologiques et Anthropologiques 40.1 (2009): 93–110. Masten Ann S., “Ordinary Magic: Resilience Processes in Development.” American Psychologist 56.3 (2001): 227–238. McGee Micki. Self-Help, Inc.: Makeover Culture in American Life. New York: Oxford UP, 2005. Rutter, Michael. “Resilience Reconsidered: Conceptual Considerations, Empirical Findings, and Policy Implications.” Handbook of Early Childhood Intervention. Eds. Jack P. Shonkoff and Samuel J. Meisels. New York: Cambridge UP, 2000. 651–682. Ungar, Michael. “Resilience across Cultures.” British Journal of Social Work 38.2 (2008): 218–235. Winch, Peter. “Understanding a Primitive Society.” American Philosophical Quarterly 1 (1964): 307–324. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Recherches Philosophiques. Paris: Gallimard, 2005.
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