Erella Grassiani
Biographic Data
| ID | 278773 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Erella Grassiani |
| GIVEN NAMES | Erella |
| FAMILY NAME | Grassiani |
| SIGNATURE | GRASSIANI E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Amsterdam |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0722-400X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 58 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 23 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Thinking through payment in fieldwork
Ethnographic research has long illuminated diverse economic relations. Yet ethnographers have said little about an economic relation that they themselves often rely on: payment in fieldwork. Indeed, the particularities of monetary exchange between ethnographers and their interlocutors often remain hidden—or taboo. This is so even though thinking through reciprocity is increasingly important in discussions of anthropological research ethics and th…
Civilian 'soft' militarism through informal education in Israel
The civil society organization HaShomer HaChadash (The New Guard) attempts to fill a security gap in Israel's periphery by tackling the continuous threat of what it frames as 'agricultural terrorism' by securing farms in combination with a wide array of educational activities that emphasize the importance of agriculture, and simultaneously include the teaching of military themes (such as leadership, heroism, and sacrifice) and military skills tra…
"Bromancing" at Yad Vashem
Diplomacy and the arms trade are no strangers; for many decades, arms have been exchanged as part of the creation of state alliances. The sale of guns, warplanes, knowledge, and, increasingly, (cyber) security technologies is, therefore, a politically embedded endeavor and part of the way states govern themselves. Here, I use the case of Israel and its vast global security industry to study the sale of weapons. I analyze the accompanying diplomat…
The Entanglements of Ethnographic Fieldwork in a Violent World
This book focuses on the emotional hazards of conducting fieldwork about or within contexts of violence and provides a forum for field-based researchers to tell their stories. Increasingly novice and seasoned ethnographers alike, whether by choice or chance, are working in situations where multidimensional forms of violence, conflict and war are facets of everyday life. The volume engages with the methodological and ethical issues involved and fe…
‘You are one of us', but I wasn't
Studying people of power is still not very typical for anthropologists, but it has been done for many years. Laura Nader already called upon her peers to study up and with this to gain more understanding in power relations in the United States in the 1970s. The author studied the Israeli security industry and its global reach. She wanted to understand how Israeli security as a commodity is marketed, how it sold and what messages are conveyed when…
Civil-religious policing in Israel’s periphery
The Israeli organisation HaShomer HaChadash (The New Guard) attempts to fill a gap of security in Israel’s periphery that, in the organisation’s words, falls prey to ‘agricultural terrorism’, such as theft and arson. This main mission is com-bined with education and cultural activities. The organisation has expanded into a conglomerate that provides security services to farmers and orchestrates countless educational and cultural programmes. We ar…
Weaponized volunteering' and re-considering the volunteering-weaponization divide
This introductory chapter to the monograph issue Weaponized Volunteering explicates and situates the theoretical and conceptual problems the collection addresses. It defines the concept of 'weaponized volunteering' and analyzes its importance for understanding the relations between contemporary trends of moralization and militarization or securitization. It does so by providing a brief genealogy of the concept of 'volunteering' and the rising pub…
Securitized volunteerism and neo-nationalism in Israel's rural periphery
Contemporary volunteering is often considered a neoliberal phenomenon that has become prevalent in an era of post-national sentiments and individualism. Although it is frequently depicted as non-political, it may serve the promotion of political agendas, such as neo-nationalism, outside the traditional frame of the state and its institutions. This becomes particularly salient when non-governmental organizations practice volunteering in ways that …
Liquid Legitimacy
During the past decades, militaries have increasingly used force against civilians and armed adversaries in operational settings other than war. Theories about legitimacy for the use of military force often focus on macro variables such as international law, government policy, and structural political contingencies. The strength of such theories in explaining military violence during conventional wars notwithstanding, this article argues that the…
Entanglements of Ethnographic Fieldwork in a Violent World
Soldiering Under Occupation
Often, violent behavior or harassment from a soldier is dismissed by the military as unacceptable acts by individuals termed, "rotten apples." In this study, the author argues that this dismissal is unsatisfactory and that there is an urgent need to look at the (mis)behavior of soldiers from a structural point of view. When soldiers serve as an occupational force, they find themselves in a particular situation influenced by structural circumstanc…
Performing politics at the Israeli security fair
Fairs, markets and bazaars are primarily commercial activities. Historically, however, through the accumulation of wealth they enable and due to their often strategic locations, they have also been sites at which political alliances are made and empires founded. Surprisingly, most debates on the politics of markets are consumer-oriented and rarely focus on their geopolitical importance. In this article, I analyse the Israeli security fair as a po…
Entanglements of Ethnographic Fieldwork in a Violent World
The Shifting Face of the Enemy
From checkpoints in Palestine and cities in other war-torn places to Istanbul, Ferguson and Paris: anti-riot and other so called ‘non-lethal’ weaponry is used worldwide against civilians by government forces. The use of such violence (even if framed as ‘non- or less-than-lethal’) against protestors in major cities, often turning the city streets into scenes from battle fields, is worrying as it shows an increasing disrespect for human and civil r…
Why Do We Need Your Research
The anthropology of security is slowly developing into a substantial sub-discipline of anthropology, yet there are only a few works that elaborate on how the research on security is conducted, what ethical issues emerge in this process, and how this differs from research on other topics due to the sensitive, political, and highly controversial nature of security itself. In this paper, we aim to contribute to this scholarly debate by providing a r…
Brazil-Israel Relations and the Marketing of Urban Security Expertise
The transnational (re)making of contemporary urban pacification practices, discourses, and technologies between Brazil and Israel is underpinned by coercive entanglements. The Israeli experience with the occupation of the Palestinian territories has brought the Israel Defense Forces and the country's private security industry international recognition for their urban warfare skills and related security technologies; Brazil has recently gained int…
Security Blurs
Based on fieldwork with the border police unit in Copenhagen Airport, the chapter describes the blurs that arise when, for one, facial recognition technology takes over the work of sorting travelers and, secondly, individual officers decide whom to inspect during random checks on intra-European flights.\n\nIn both cases, the chapter argues, the processes of decision-making and the allocation of responsibilities for border security are blurred and…
Between security and military identities
The relationship between private security professionals and the military in Israel is complex. While there is growing attention to the fact that security and military actors and their activities are becoming increasingly blurred, the Israeli case shows something different. In this ground-up analysis of the relationship between private security practices and the military, I investigate its constant negotiation by private security professionals thr…
Securitizing capital
In this article, we introduce the concept of ‘securitizing capital’ as a new analytical tool to understand the pluralized landscape of security. We define securitizing capital as a process whereby different forms of capital are, consciously and unconsciously, used to acquire legitimacy and power. While other approaches have been developed to understand pluralized security, such as security networks, nodal frameworks and assemblages, we argue that…
Intimidation, reassurance, and invisibility
Jerusalem is a city of extremes, where tourists and pilgrims come to see the sights and pray, but where violence is also a daily affair. In the square kilometer called the Old City, which is part of East Jerusalem and thus considered by the international community as occupied territory, the tensions accumulate as (Jewish) Israeli settlers move into houses in the middle of the Muslim and Christian quarters. In order to secure them, numerous camera…
Moral othering at the checkpoint
In many ways the Palestinian civilian is the ultimate or significant 'other' for the Israeli soldier serving in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). (S)he is the one who will be stopped, checked, controlled and at times arrested. (S)he is the one who negotiates, pleads, begs and sometimes curses the soldier. This other represents, amongst other things, disorder for the soldiers. (S)he becomes the 'face' of the hardship, the frustration, an…
Neoliberal individualism in Dutch universities
This article is based on our own experiences and that of several of our colleagues teaching social and cultural anthropology in different Dutch institutions for higher learning. We focus in particular on teaching and learning in two small liberal arts and science (LAS) colleges, where anthropology makes up part of the social science curriculum and/or is part of the core curriculum. The data collected from our own critical reflections developed du…
Introduction
At first sight, it might appear surprising that elites and other privileged groups are anxious about too much public attention. Their suspicion of, for example, media exposure and their efforts to shield much of their lives – professional and private – from the outside world is telling, however.1 This tendency to control media exposure and to avoid speaking to journalists, researchers and other non-insiders seems to contradict our notion of power…
Soldiering Under Occupation
Often, violent behavior or harassment from a soldier is dismissed by the military as unacceptable acts by individuals termed, “rotten apples.” In this study, the author argues that this dismissal is unsatisfactory and that there is an urgent need to look at the (mis)behavior of soldiers from a structural point of view. When soldiers serve as an occupational force, they find themselves in a particular situation influenced by structural circumstanc…
Between security and military identities
The relationship between private security professionals and the military in Israel is complex. While there is growing attention to the fact that security and military actors and their activities are becoming increasingly blurred, the Israeli case shows something different. In this ground-up analysis of the relationship between private security practices and the military, I investigate its constant negotiation by private security professionals thr…
Securitizing capital
In this article, we introduce the concept of ‘securitizing capital’ as a new analytical tool to understand the pluralized landscape of security. We define securitizing capital as a process whereby different forms of capital are, consciously and unconsciously, used to acquire legitimacy and power. While other approaches have been developed to understand pluralized security, such as security networks, nodal frameworks and assemblages, we argue that…
Neoliberal individualism in Dutch universities
This article is based on our own experiences and that of several of our colleagues teaching social and cultural anthropology in different Dutch institutions for higher learning. We focus in particular on teaching and learning in two small liberal arts and science (LAS) colleges, where anthropology makes up part of the social science curriculum and/or is part of the core curriculum. The data collected from our own critical reflections developed du…
Moral othering at the checkpoint
In many ways the Palestinian civilian is the ultimate or significant 'other' for the Israeli soldier serving in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). (S)he is the one who will be stopped, checked, controlled and at times arrested. (S)he is the one who negotiates, pleads, begs and sometimes curses the soldier. This other represents, amongst other things, disorder for the soldiers. (S)he becomes the 'face' of the hardship, the frustration, an…
Brazil-Israel Relations and the Marketing of Urban Security Expertise
The transnational (re)making of contemporary urban pacification practices, discourses, and technologies between Brazil and Israel is underpinned by coercive entanglements. The Israeli experience with the occupation of the Palestinian territories has brought the Israel Defense Forces and the country's private security industry international recognition for their urban warfare skills and related security technologies; Brazil has recently gained int…
Intimidation, reassurance, and invisibility
Jerusalem is a city of extremes, where tourists and pilgrims come to see the sights and pray, but where violence is also a daily affair. In the square kilometer called the Old City, which is part of East Jerusalem and thus considered by the international community as occupied territory, the tensions accumulate as (Jewish) Israeli settlers move into houses in the middle of the Muslim and Christian quarters. In order to secure them, numerous camera…
Introduction
At first sight, it might appear surprising that elites and other privileged groups are anxious about too much public attention. Their suspicion of, for example, media exposure and their efforts to shield much of their lives – professional and private – from the outside world is telling, however.1 This tendency to control media exposure and to avoid speaking to journalists, researchers and other non-insiders seems to contradict our notion of power…
Civilian 'soft' militarism through informal education in Israel
The civil society organization HaShomer HaChadash (The New Guard) attempts to fill a security gap in Israel's periphery by tackling the continuous threat of what it frames as 'agricultural terrorism' by securing farms in combination with a wide array of educational activities that emphasize the importance of agriculture, and simultaneously include the teaching of military themes (such as leadership, heroism, and sacrifice) and military skills tra…
The Shifting Face of the Enemy
From checkpoints in Palestine and cities in other war-torn places to Istanbul, Ferguson and Paris: anti-riot and other so called ‘non-lethal’ weaponry is used worldwide against civilians by government forces. The use of such violence (even if framed as ‘non- or less-than-lethal’) against protestors in major cities, often turning the city streets into scenes from battle fields, is worrying as it shows an increasing disrespect for human and civil r…
Civil-religious policing in Israel’s periphery
The Israeli organisation HaShomer HaChadash (The New Guard) attempts to fill a gap of security in Israel’s periphery that, in the organisation’s words, falls prey to ‘agricultural terrorism’, such as theft and arson. This main mission is com-bined with education and cultural activities. The organisation has expanded into a conglomerate that provides security services to farmers and orchestrates countless educational and cultural programmes. We ar…
Weaponized volunteering' and re-considering the volunteering-weaponization divide
This introductory chapter to the monograph issue Weaponized Volunteering explicates and situates the theoretical and conceptual problems the collection addresses. It defines the concept of 'weaponized volunteering' and analyzes its importance for understanding the relations between contemporary trends of moralization and militarization or securitization. It does so by providing a brief genealogy of the concept of 'volunteering' and the rising pub…
Securitized volunteerism and neo-nationalism in Israel's rural periphery
Contemporary volunteering is often considered a neoliberal phenomenon that has become prevalent in an era of post-national sentiments and individualism. Although it is frequently depicted as non-political, it may serve the promotion of political agendas, such as neo-nationalism, outside the traditional frame of the state and its institutions. This becomes particularly salient when non-governmental organizations practice volunteering in ways that …
Liquid Legitimacy
During the past decades, militaries have increasingly used force against civilians and armed adversaries in operational settings other than war. Theories about legitimacy for the use of military force often focus on macro variables such as international law, government policy, and structural political contingencies. The strength of such theories in explaining military violence during conventional wars notwithstanding, this article argues that the…
Performing politics at the Israeli security fair
Fairs, markets and bazaars are primarily commercial activities. Historically, however, through the accumulation of wealth they enable and due to their often strategic locations, they have also been sites at which political alliances are made and empires founded. Surprisingly, most debates on the politics of markets are consumer-oriented and rarely focus on their geopolitical importance. In this article, I analyse the Israeli security fair as a po…
Soldiering Under Occupation
Often, violent behavior or harassment from a soldier is dismissed by the military as unacceptable acts by individuals termed, “rotten apples.” In this study, the author argues that this dismissal is unsatisfactory and that there is an urgent need to look at the (mis)behavior of soldiers from a structural point of view. When soldiers serve as an occupational force, they find themselves in a particular situation influenced by structural circumstanc…
Neoliberal individualism in Dutch universities
This article is based on our own experiences and that of several of our colleagues teaching social and cultural anthropology in different Dutch institutions for higher learning. We focus in particular on teaching and learning in two small liberal arts and science (LAS) colleges, where anthropology makes up part of the social science curriculum and/or is part of the core curriculum. The data collected from our own critical reflections developed du…
Introduction
At first sight, it might appear surprising that elites and other privileged groups are anxious about too much public attention. Their suspicion of, for example, media exposure and their efforts to shield much of their lives – professional and private – from the outside world is telling, however.1 This tendency to control media exposure and to avoid speaking to journalists, researchers and other non-insiders seems to contradict our notion of power…
Moral othering at the checkpoint
In many ways the Palestinian civilian is the ultimate or significant 'other' for the Israeli soldier serving in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). (S)he is the one who will be stopped, checked, controlled and at times arrested. (S)he is the one who negotiates, pleads, begs and sometimes curses the soldier. This other represents, amongst other things, disorder for the soldiers. (S)he becomes the 'face' of the hardship, the frustration, an…
Securitizing capital
In this article, we introduce the concept of ‘securitizing capital’ as a new analytical tool to understand the pluralized landscape of security. We define securitizing capital as a process whereby different forms of capital are, consciously and unconsciously, used to acquire legitimacy and power. While other approaches have been developed to understand pluralized security, such as security networks, nodal frameworks and assemblages, we argue that…
Intimidation, reassurance, and invisibility
Jerusalem is a city of extremes, where tourists and pilgrims come to see the sights and pray, but where violence is also a daily affair. In the square kilometer called the Old City, which is part of East Jerusalem and thus considered by the international community as occupied territory, the tensions accumulate as (Jewish) Israeli settlers move into houses in the middle of the Muslim and Christian quarters. In order to secure them, numerous camera…
Security Blurs
Based on fieldwork with the border police unit in Copenhagen Airport, the chapter describes the blurs that arise when, for one, facial recognition technology takes over the work of sorting travelers and, secondly, individual officers decide whom to inspect during random checks on intra-European flights.\n\nIn both cases, the chapter argues, the processes of decision-making and the allocation of responsibilities for border security are blurred and…
Between security and military identities
The relationship between private security professionals and the military in Israel is complex. While there is growing attention to the fact that security and military actors and their activities are becoming increasingly blurred, the Israeli case shows something different. In this ground-up analysis of the relationship between private security practices and the military, I investigate its constant negotiation by private security professionals thr…
Brazil-Israel Relations and the Marketing of Urban Security Expertise
The transnational (re)making of contemporary urban pacification practices, discourses, and technologies between Brazil and Israel is underpinned by coercive entanglements. The Israeli experience with the occupation of the Palestinian territories has brought the Israel Defense Forces and the country's private security industry international recognition for their urban warfare skills and related security technologies; Brazil has recently gained int…
Why Do We Need Your Research
The anthropology of security is slowly developing into a substantial sub-discipline of anthropology, yet there are only a few works that elaborate on how the research on security is conducted, what ethical issues emerge in this process, and how this differs from research on other topics due to the sensitive, political, and highly controversial nature of security itself. In this paper, we aim to contribute to this scholarly debate by providing a r…
Entanglements of Ethnographic Fieldwork in a Violent World
Soldiering Under Occupation
Often, violent behavior or harassment from a soldier is dismissed by the military as unacceptable acts by individuals termed, "rotten apples." In this study, the author argues that this dismissal is unsatisfactory and that there is an urgent need to look at the (mis)behavior of soldiers from a structural point of view. When soldiers serve as an occupational force, they find themselves in a particular situation influenced by structural circumstanc…
Performing politics at the Israeli security fair
Fairs, markets and bazaars are primarily commercial activities. Historically, however, through the accumulation of wealth they enable and due to their often strategic locations, they have also been sites at which political alliances are made and empires founded. Surprisingly, most debates on the politics of markets are consumer-oriented and rarely focus on their geopolitical importance. In this article, I analyse the Israeli security fair as a po…
Entanglements of Ethnographic Fieldwork in a Violent World
The Shifting Face of the Enemy
From checkpoints in Palestine and cities in other war-torn places to Istanbul, Ferguson and Paris: anti-riot and other so called ‘non-lethal’ weaponry is used worldwide against civilians by government forces. The use of such violence (even if framed as ‘non- or less-than-lethal’) against protestors in major cities, often turning the city streets into scenes from battle fields, is worrying as it shows an increasing disrespect for human and civil r…
The Entanglements of Ethnographic Fieldwork in a Violent World
This book focuses on the emotional hazards of conducting fieldwork about or within contexts of violence and provides a forum for field-based researchers to tell their stories. Increasingly novice and seasoned ethnographers alike, whether by choice or chance, are working in situations where multidimensional forms of violence, conflict and war are facets of everyday life. The volume engages with the methodological and ethical issues involved and fe…
‘You are one of us', but I wasn't
Studying people of power is still not very typical for anthropologists, but it has been done for many years. Laura Nader already called upon her peers to study up and with this to gain more understanding in power relations in the United States in the 1970s. The author studied the Israeli security industry and its global reach. She wanted to understand how Israeli security as a commodity is marketed, how it sold and what messages are conveyed when…
Civil-religious policing in Israel’s periphery
The Israeli organisation HaShomer HaChadash (The New Guard) attempts to fill a gap of security in Israel’s periphery that, in the organisation’s words, falls prey to ‘agricultural terrorism’, such as theft and arson. This main mission is com-bined with education and cultural activities. The organisation has expanded into a conglomerate that provides security services to farmers and orchestrates countless educational and cultural programmes. We ar…
Weaponized volunteering' and re-considering the volunteering-weaponization divide
This introductory chapter to the monograph issue Weaponized Volunteering explicates and situates the theoretical and conceptual problems the collection addresses. It defines the concept of 'weaponized volunteering' and analyzes its importance for understanding the relations between contemporary trends of moralization and militarization or securitization. It does so by providing a brief genealogy of the concept of 'volunteering' and the rising pub…
Securitized volunteerism and neo-nationalism in Israel's rural periphery
Contemporary volunteering is often considered a neoliberal phenomenon that has become prevalent in an era of post-national sentiments and individualism. Although it is frequently depicted as non-political, it may serve the promotion of political agendas, such as neo-nationalism, outside the traditional frame of the state and its institutions. This becomes particularly salient when non-governmental organizations practice volunteering in ways that …
Liquid Legitimacy
During the past decades, militaries have increasingly used force against civilians and armed adversaries in operational settings other than war. Theories about legitimacy for the use of military force often focus on macro variables such as international law, government policy, and structural political contingencies. The strength of such theories in explaining military violence during conventional wars notwithstanding, this article argues that the…
Civilian 'soft' militarism through informal education in Israel
The civil society organization HaShomer HaChadash (The New Guard) attempts to fill a security gap in Israel's periphery by tackling the continuous threat of what it frames as 'agricultural terrorism' by securing farms in combination with a wide array of educational activities that emphasize the importance of agriculture, and simultaneously include the teaching of military themes (such as leadership, heroism, and sacrifice) and military skills tra…
"Bromancing" at Yad Vashem
Diplomacy and the arms trade are no strangers; for many decades, arms have been exchanged as part of the creation of state alliances. The sale of guns, warplanes, knowledge, and, increasingly, (cyber) security technologies is, therefore, a politically embedded endeavor and part of the way states govern themselves. Here, I use the case of Israel and its vast global security industry to study the sale of weapons. I analyze the accompanying diplomat…
Thinking through payment in fieldwork
Ethnographic research has long illuminated diverse economic relations. Yet ethnographers have said little about an economic relation that they themselves often rely on: payment in fieldwork. Indeed, the particularities of monetary exchange between ethnographers and their interlocutors often remain hidden—or taboo. This is so even though thinking through reciprocity is increasingly important in discussions of anthropological research ethics and th…
Political science (17 works) · Law (15 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies (11 works) · Politics (11 works) · Law (7 works) · Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture (5 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Criminology (5 works) · Middle East Politics and Society (5 works)