Violence in El Salvador

Abstract

This article engages Philippe Bourgois's analysis of the continuum of violence from wartime to post-war El Salvador in Ethnography (2:1). Acknowledging the utility of the violence model proposed by Bourgois, it contends that a general theory of structural relations and everyday violence requires mediating concepts in order to be usefully applied in any concrete situation, and that Bourgois has not supplied them. As a consequence, Bourgois's application of the model to Salvadoran wartime and post-war reality is excessively mechanical. Study of the unfavorable peace settlement, which preserved unequal structural relations, is probably necessary in order to shed light on the high levels of post-war violence. The shortcomings of Bourgois's analysis is further related to an over-reliance on personal narrative, discussed here in terms of the `testimonial function'.