The Perpetrator-Bystander-Victim Constellation: Rethinking Genocidal Relationships
Robert M. Ehrenreich and Tim Cole
The actions, reactions, and motivations of perpetrators, victims, and bystanders are the focus of Holocaust and genocide research. The greatest emphasis has always been on the perpetrators, however, and the examination of the role of bystanders—and even the definition of the term itself—has been relatively neglected. This article explores the complex interrelationships within and among these three groups, with the groups being viewed as covering broad and dynamic spectra of levels of involvement, resistance, agreement, and opposition vis-à-vis the destruction process as opposed to being distinct, static entities. The authors begin by elucidating our understanding of the roles, relationships, and attributes among and within the different groups through the development of a model of the inherent system. Each component of the perpetrator-bystander-victim model developed by the authors is then examined and discussed in generic terms, stressing the scalable nature of the model. The usefulness of this model is then analyzed through its application to a brief empirical case study of the interrelationships among actors involved in the implementation of ghettoization in one city—Budapest—in one month—June 1944—in Second World War Europe.
Key words: Holocaust, genocide, complexity, applied anthropology
Adaptations by Long-Term Commercial Fishing Families in the California Bight: Coping with Changing Coastal Ecological and Social Systems
Joanna Endter-Wada and Sean P. Keenan
Our case study explores how 51 long-term commercial fishing households adapted to changing ecological and social systems of the California Bight from the 1960s to the 1990s. We explore fishing operation, household, and collective action strategies for adapting to change. While long-term fishermen expressed some similar motivations for commercial fishing, strategies that they and their families pursued to remain in fishing were highly individualized. Only a little over half of this group fished full-time continuously since they began fishing, with some leaving fishing and returning, or supplementing their fishing effort with other employment. At the household level, most spouses were employed outside of fishing and most made contributions to support the fishing operation. At the collective action level, few of these households were actively involved in fishing organizations and most were dissatisfied with cooperation among fishermen. Consistent with other literature, we observe that fisheries managers and scientists have not adequately accounted for the adaptability of fishermen. At the same time, difficulties fishermen have confronted in the policy arena may partly reflect their success in adapting to broader social and ecological changes at the individual and household levels.
Key words: California, fisheries management, fishing occupations, human ecology, household economies
Co-Management: Managing Relationships, Not Resources
David C. Natcher, Susan Davis, and Clifford G. Hickey
Conclusions drawn from the body of co-management research generally agree that cultural diversity can enhance the pool of human resources from which management decisions are drawn. Based on the belief that group heterogeneity will generate a diverse set of problem-based solutions, co-management is being heralded as an emergent intellectual tradition to guide the stewardship of natural resources. However, research has yet to show under what conditions and at what cultural consequence indigenous representatives are able to express themselves. Nor has it been shown how cultural biases, including perceptions of the ‘other,’ influence group behavior. Based on research involving the Little Salmon Carmacks First Nation (Yukon Territory), this paper explores whether cultural differences either enhance or hinder the working-group effectiveness of resource co-management boards established under Canada’s comprehensive land claims process. In doing so, we identify some of the ‘hidden’ conflicts that can occur when culturally diverse groups, with fundamentally different value systems and colonial histories, enter into a coordinated resource management process.
Key words: co-management, Yukon, cross-cultural relations
Will the Market Set Them Free? Women, NGOs, and Social Enterprise in Ukraine
Sarah D. Phillips
During 1999, Counterpart International, Inc., a global partnership organization with its headquarters in the United States, introduced “social enterprise” to Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Ukraine via a training and granting program that lasted until 2002. This article explores the potential benefits and risks that taking up strategies of social enterprise present for NGO leaders in Ukraine, examining in particular the possible effects for women NGO activists as they struggle to navigate post-socialist political, social, and economic transformations. As it has unfolded in Ukraine, social enterprise is an NGO development strategy implicitly directed towards women, who dominate in certain types of caring-focused NGOs. It is thus important to assess the potential of social enterprise initiatives to empower women in Ukraine’s emerging civil society and market economy.
Key words: NGOs, women, social enterprise, post-socialism, Ukraine
How Do We Know What We Know about the Impact of AIDS on Food and Livelihood Insecurity? A Review of Empirical Research from Rural Sub Saharan Africa
Laura L Murphy, Paul Harvey, and Eva Silvestre
This article reviews nearly 40 selected empirical studies of AIDS’ impacts on rural livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa, highlighting how study design, analytical units, and other research choices contribute to our understanding of the problem and of appropriate responses. While stock images of child-headed households and neglected farmlands in rural Africa dominate discussion of how to mitigate the impacts of AIDS, these incomplete portraits disguise wide variation within and between households, communities, and regions over the diverse stages of the epidemic. A locally contingent and differentiated picture is emerging from empirical studies, and more study is merited to build on the lessons from research to date and overcome problems of impact attribution and lack of wider generalizability of study findings. Such research will also help inform policies and practice to mitigate the impacts of this continental emergency.
Key words: HIV/AIDS, social impacts, livelihoods, rural households, sub-Saharan Africa
The Elementary Structures of the Family Firm: An Anthropological Perspective
Andrew M. Jones
A majority of the companies in the world, including approximately one third of the S&P 500, can be defined as ‘family firms.’ Yet, in mainstream management education, research, and publishing, family businesses are woefully under-represented. This paper attempts to understand the elliptical status of family firms in mainstream management thought via structuralist and poststructuralist analysis. It is suggested that, because family firms resist participation in the symbolically potent space of ‘public’ finance and capital markets, they exist, at a certain level, outside of the ‘masculine’ arena of competitive capitalism. Because they compete with other public firms, family firms’ (implicit and culturally constructed) association with the ‘private,’ ‘domestic’ domain complicates their positioning in the economy and necessitates the development of multiple logics that must mediate ‘hearth’ and ‘market.’ Critical management theory (CMT) is introduced to provide a framework in which to make sense of the ‘subversiveness’ of family firms and their subsequent neglect in mainstream management theory. It is suggested that despite the socially constructed ‘femininity’ of family firms, family firms often provide greater career opportunities for women than their public firm counterparts.
Key words: family firms, critical management theory, gender, poststructuralism
Discovering the Rules: Folk Knowledge for Improving GM Partnerships
Tracy L. Meerwarth, Elizabeth K. Briody, and Devadatta M. Kulkarni
Partnership collaboration, a critical emerging strategy for General Motors (GM) and for organizations in general, is a way to combine resources and complementary expertise to create new knowledge, products, or services. Since partnerships are a relatively new organizational form, our team was commissioned by the head of GM Research and Development (GM R&D) to understand how private-sector research partnerships functioned and how we might offer suggestions for improving their effectiveness. Participants and organizations engaged in partnerships represent a vast population that stands to benefit from social science research. Understanding partnerships involves examining aspects of the culture of the partnering organizations, as well as the historical context of the partnership, partnership structure and dynamics, activities undertaken, and partnering outcomes. Through our analysis of interview data from the Alcan-GM and BP-GM partnerships, we discovered the concept of partnership rules – prescriptions offered by partnership participants for how partnerships should work. In this report, we develop and validate a methodology for uncovering these unwritten rules. We discuss the methodological and organizational contributions from this methodological analysis and describe the impact of this methodology on all types of GM’s research partnerships.
Key words: Partnership rules, unwritten rules, methodology, partnership cycle, partnership structure and dynamics
