Atmospheric Violence: Disaster and Repair in Kashmir

Atmospheric Violence explores the afterlife of environmental disasters and armed conflict, focusing on the possibilities for imagining life otherwise in a landscape of violence. Through ethnography in the borderlands of Kashmir, the book reveals the movements, flows, and intimacies sustained by a landscape that enables alternative modes of life. It blurs the distinctions between story, theory, and activism and offers a decolonial approach to disaster studies centered on repair, the social labor through which communities living with disaster refuse the conditions of death and create viable lives.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 296 pages
Publication date: 04 June 2024
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Atmospheric Violence delves into the aftermath of environmental disasters and armed conflicts, exploring how individuals strive to thrive amidst ongoing violence. Departing from traditional approaches to studying disaster and conflict, Omer Aijazis ethnography of life in the borderlands presents alternative possibilities for envisioning life in a pervasive atmosphere of violence. Through extensive fieldwork in the region of Kashmir under Pakistani control and its surrounding mountainous landscapes, the book transports us to two secluded mountainous valleys shaped by recurring environmental disasters and the landscape of no-go zones, army barracks, and security checkpoints of the contested India/Pakistan border.

Through a series of interconnected scenes from the lives of five protagonists, all precariously situated within their families or societies and rarely enjoying the expected protections of state or community, Aijazi unveils the movements, flows, and intimacies sustained by a landscape that enables alternative modes of life. Blurring the boundaries between storytelling, theory, and activism, he explores what emerges when theory becomes a project of seeing and feeling from the non-normative standpoint of those who, like the book's protagonists, do not subscribe to the rules by which most others have come to know the world.

By bringing the critical study of disaster into conversation with radical humanist anthropology and the expansive reach of affect theory, held accountable to Black studies and Indigenous studies, Aijazi offers a decolonial approach to disaster studies centered not on trauma and rupture but on repair—the social labor through which communities rebuild and heal after catastrophic events. Atmospheric Violence is a groundbreaking work that challenges our understanding of disaster, conflict, and resilience, offering a fresh perspective on the ways in which individuals and communities navigate the complexities of a violent world.

Weight: 440g
Dimension: 229 x 153 x 19 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781512823608