Slaps in the face, kicks, beatings, and other forms of run-of-the-mill violence were a quotidian part of life in German Southwest Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century. Unearthing this culture of normalized violence in a settler colony, Violence as Usual uncovers the workings of a powerful state that was built in an improvised fashion by low-level state representatives.

Marie A. Muschalek's fascinating portrayal of the daily deeds of African and German men enrolled in the colonial police force called the Landespolizei is a historical anthropology of police practice and the normalization of imperial power. Replete with anecdotes of everyday experiences both of the policemen and of colonized people and settlers, Violence as Usual re-examines fundamental questions about the relationship between power and violence. Muschalek gives us a new perspective on violence beyond the solely destructive and the instrumental. She overcomes, too, the notion that modern states operate exclusively according to modes of rationalized functionality. Violence as Usual offers an unusual assessment of the history of rule in settler colonialism and an alternative to dominant narratives of an ostensibly weak colonial state.

About the Author

Marie A. Muschalek is Lecturer and Researcher in History at the University of Freiburg. She is co-founder of a public history project on German's colonial past, which can be viewed online at kolonialismusimkasten.de.

Reviews

Violence as Usual offers an important contribution to the role of localized violence and the evolution of the colonial state in German Southwest Africa... Marie Muschalek provides a compelling narrative that will hopefully inspire more scholarship on local actors and their role in Germany's global empire.

* Central European History *

[T]his is a timely book that offers a fine-grained and theoretically rich analysis of police violence in an imperial setting.

* Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books *

Violence as Usual is packed with illuminating information on the societies of the Herero, the Nama, and the German settlers themselves. Moreover, the book lays the groundwork for future studies.

* African Studies Review *

As a piece of historical research and writing, this book is a jewel. It is both historically rigorous and thoughtfully encompasses the perspectival issues which African history needs to engage in the twenty-first century.

* H-Net *



Book Information
ISBN 9781501742859
Author Marie Muschalek
Format Hardback
Page Count 270
Imprint Cornell University Press
Publisher Cornell University Press
Weight(grams) 907g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 25mm