International Relations: the Era of Anthropologists
Both perpetrators and forms of violence change. States are no longer the central referents of contemporary conflicts. We can no longer understand them as the outcome of a linear history starting from tribal societies and leading to Western political structures.
In the future, different worlds will exist alongside one another: anthropologists are uniquely placed to help understand and manage conflicts taking place within frameworks that do not correlate with our state-based logic.
Article published in Politique étrangère, Vol. 79, No. 3, Fall 2014