Description
Book SynopsisAfter El Salvador's brutal civil war ended in 1992, crime rates shot up. People began to speak of the peace as "worse than the war." This study examines how narratives of post-conflict violence, told by ordinary people, offered ways of coping with uncertainty during a stunted transition to democracy.
Trade Review"Moodie's study provides a fascinating account of how daily micro relations between individuals permeate macro features of a society. The book also demonstrates the possibilities opened up by the kind of qualitative methodological approach adopted by Moodie, going beyond the statistical data on El Salvador's rates of crime and homicide, to tell the story of how ordinary people's experiences of violent crime are constructed and the hidden and changing political consequences of such constructions." * Bulletin of Latin American Research *
"In this compelling and original book, anthropologist Ellen Moodie analyzes crime stories that circulated in El Salvador in the postwar period. Her goal is not to understand crime per se, or even public perceptions of crime, but rather to make sense of the postwar period itself. . . . Beautifully written,
El Salvador in the Aftermath of Peace moves in time and space, returning repeatedly to sites and moments that symbolize hopes and disappointments." * Susan Bibler Coutin, University of California, Irvine *
Table of ContentsIntroduction
1 Big Stories and the Stories Behind the Stories
2 Critical Code-Switching and the State of Unexception
3 "Today They Rob You and They Kill You"
4 Adventure Time in San Salvador
5 Democratic Disenchantment
6 Unknowing the Other
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
