RECENT STUDIES ON VIOLENCE: WHAT'S IN AND WHAT'S OUT

Focusing on four recent books about violence gives a reader an idea of what current anthropological wisdom is and what it tends to omit (peace, domestic violence). Since most studies deal not with direct observation of violence but with representations of it, questions of representation loom large in terms of how anthropologists represent violence in these books and elsewhere in the literature, and what possibilities of representation might round out readers' understanding.