Premium
Microbus crashes and Coca‐Cola cash
Author(s) -
MOODIE ELLEN
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.2006.33.1.63
Subject(s) - crash , politics , valuation (finance) , cash , coca cola , value (mathematics) , agency (philosophy) , sociology , power (physics) , political economy , law , law and economics , economics , political science , criminology , social science , business , advertising , finance , physics , quantum mechanics , machine learning , computer science , programming language
In this article, I explore valuation of dead bodies in postwar El Salvador. Taking the view that human‐rights violations are, in Paul Farmer's words, “symptoms of deeper pathologies of power,” I start with the seemingly random violence of a fatal bus crash. I then broaden the focus to other categories of suffering undervalued by institutional discourses. The shift in death's meanings comprises a political project undermining the collective agency that sustained revolutionary efforts. The value of death has been (re)privatized and individualized in a way that has extended anguish. These changes in value index links between violence and the position of states and citizens in the world market.