This thesis presents an ethnographic analysis of the practice of swara marriage among the Pashtun people of Jalalabad, Afghanistan, based on nine weeks of fieldwork in 2015. Swara is a form of compensation marriage practiced by Pashtun people in Pakistan and Afghanistan through which disputes between men are resolved through the giving away in marriage of girls, often minors, by guilty parties to victim parties. By employing practice theory and the theory of sacrifice, swara marriages are analyzed through the conceptualizations of honor, revenge, and ghairat (“bravery”). Focusing on six swara cases, the first half of the thesis explores the concepts of honor, revenge, and ghairat during the time of feuds. The second half of the thesis directly focuses on swara marriages and analyzes them through the concepts of symbolic capital and sacrifice. / May 2016

[pt] A reciprocidade é um tema clássico nos estudos antropológicos, mais frequentemente abordada mediante perspectivas positivas de interação, como a troca de favores e dádivas; no entanto, a violência motivada pela troca de hostilidades e ofensas revela uma parte negativa, que insistimos em recalcar: os ciclos de vingança, as desforras. Tendo em vista entender vingança e honra enquanto elementos culturais, este trabalho procura diagnosticar como tais aspectos estão inseridos em um contexto de reciprocidade violenta, sobretudo na realidade brasileira. Para tal, examinaremos dentre outros fatores as lutas de famílias, o banditismo social, a relação entre os poderes público e privado ao longo da história e as representações culturais que simbolizam e reconstroem vingança e vingador no imaginário popular brasileiro. / [en] Reciprocity is a classical theme among anthropological studies, more frequently considered under positives perspectives of interaction, as the exchange of favors and gifts; however, the violence motivated by the exchange of hostilities and offenses reveals a negative part, strongly repressed: the cycles of revenge, the retaliations. Aimed at understanding vengeance and honor as cultural elements, this work seeks to diagnose how these aspects are inserted in a context of violent reciprocity, especially in Brazilian reality. Therefore, we will examine the blood feuds, the social banditism, relations between public and private powers throughout history and cultural representations that symbolize and helped to forge vengeance and avenger at people s imagination.

The aim of this study is to to look deeper into the subject of father’s rights to his child in relation to the rights of the mother in custody feuds. The hypothesis was that fathers were being discriminated in relation to mothers when it came to child-custody. This research has been done as a literature study with content analysis. The study has used to theoretical concepts to guide the focus in the analysis. The theoretical concepts are: the concept of Rights and the Gender Role Concept. The main results of the study showed that men were not being discriminated in legal context. However, a secondary result was that men could be considered to be discriminated from a gender role perspective. Gender role constructions and inequality was found to have effect on the outcome in custody feuds.

Since the regime collapse in 1991, Albania has been going through a democratization process. In contrast to government attempts to introduce a democratic system according to a western model, blood feuds based on Albanian customary law increased drastically and individuals began to seek their own justice by ignoring state and judicial institutions. The incidence of blood feuds increased exceptionally, not only compared with the situation under the communist regime but the crime rate in general. As a result, the Albanian state has appeared not only as weak and fragile but weaker in comparison with the previous communist regime.<p>Although a great deal of research on vendetta is carried out either in the fields of anthropology or sociology of law, this topic has not been studied by political scientists. As a consequence, studies of vendetta in relation to institutional weaknesses are missing. Thus, one of the contributions of this study will be to fill this gap in the literature by explaining the role of state institutions in the continuation and increase in blood feuds.<p>The Albanian case was chosen as a subject for study as it represents a country which following a harsh communist regime has made attempts at democratization with the aim of joining the European Union, and at the same time is characterized by the strong presence of customary law claiming revenge in cases of homicide, despite interventions by the judicial authorities.<p>Therefore, the aim of this study is to explain the reasons for the increase in blood feuds in Albania from 1991 to 2010 by identifying the structure and agency factors impacting the motivation of individuals to commit murders in the name of vendetta.<p>I will make use of historical institutionalism to identify the increasing returns of vendetta and explore the different factors and processes that trigger and underlie the institutional development of Albanian vendetta over time. Historical institutionalism is an approach to the analysis of the evolution of institutions and their outcomes in terms of formal and informal rules that shape the behavior of actors. Hence, understanding the causation and restraining factors in determining the high rates of blood feuds is indispensable. However, because of the lack of attention that historical institutionalism pays to the structure-agency dichotomy, the tools of criminology and more specifically, elements of ‘social control theory’ are required in this study. This theory enables/permits the study of vendetta by focusing on the motivation of the authors of vendetta, looking at the incidence and the forms of the criminal behavior. In order to explain vendetta and its causes, both fear of punishment (belief) and social bonds (attachment, commitment and involvement) have been taken into account.<p>For this study, both primary and secondary sources were combined, such as expert interviews, archival documents and police data, in order to assess the cases of vendettas brought before the courts, judicial proceedings, and the final sentences handed down.<p>The findings show that the weaker the bonds of trust in institutions such as state institutions and the legal system, the more individuals will be involved in blood feuds. The more trust is placed in institutions the less likely it is that individuals will be involved in vendetta.<p>This research contributes to the literature dealing with institutional change and the study of crime rates in transitional democracies. <p> / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

De la Deffence, et illustration de la langue françoyse (1549) au tombeau de Ronsard réuni par Binet (1586), la sociabilité littéraire mise en scène dans quelque trois cents recueils d’environ soixante-dix poètes est envisagée comme le support de constructions identitaires à la fois collectives et individuelles. En effet, le foisonnement des pièces de contact valorise l’émulation lettrée et donne de la visibilité à l’émergence d’un « champ poétique » où le positionnement de chacun est fait, tout à la fois, d’identification à des groupes et de différenciation pour défendre un style singulier. L’identité valorisée collectivement est celle de « Poète ». Dans un élan commun et à la suite de Marot, il s’agit de donner tout son prestige à ce « mestier » – dont la visibilité est favorisée par la publication imprimée – ainsi que de convaincre les grands de son utilité politique. L’étiquette fédératrice se subdivise en identités collectives aux contours plus restreints, par exemple autour d’un genre pratiqué (les « Amours »), autour d’une langue (« poëtes françoys »), ou encore autour d’une implantation géographique (les poètes du Clain, les poètes gascons, etc.). Ce morcellement s’accompagne de tentatives de classements de valeur. Cela provoque des mouvements d’humeur (des poètes de province contre le milieu parisien naissant, par exemple), voire des conflits (poètes nouveaux contre poètes vieux, poètes chrétiens contre poètes païens, etc.), ainsi qu’une démultiplication des figures de chefs de file. Dans le même temps, chaque auteur essaie de faire valoir sa singularité, notamment en développant l’ethos du poète solitaire ou du poète mélancolique, et s’attache à ouvrir des voies nouvelles, dans un mouvement collectif de valorisation de l’originalité. Entrent ainsi en tension la structure pyramidale hiérarchique et l’affirmation d’un droit à la différence qui rend inclassable. / From the Deffence, et illustration de la langue françoyse (1549) to Ronsard's tomb texts collected by Binet in 1586, the literary sociability depicted in some three hundred volumes of poetry gathering together about seventy poets is regarded as the mean to construct identities both collective and individual. Indeed the flurry of common topics is at the origin of a literary emulation and makes the emergence of a "poetic field" noticeable; so the position of each poet is both defined with an identification to groups or with a differentiation to defend their proper styles.Being "a poet" is the identity collectively valued. Altogether on Marot's tracks, the point is to make this "craft" prestigious - printed publication makes it visible - and to convince the greats of its political importance. The unifying label is subdivided in collective identities with restricted outlines like a popular topic (the "Amours"), a language ("poëtes françoys") or eventually a location (the poets from the river Clain, the Gascon poets, etc). Therefore this fragmentation leads to an attempt of classification of value. This is at the origin of disagreements (some provincial poets against the emerging Parisian milieu for instance), even conflicts (modern poets against old poets, Christian poets versus pagan poets, etc), as well as an increase of leading figures. Meanwhile each author attempts to defend their own singularities, notably by working on the ethos of the solitary poet or of the melancholic poet and endeavours to open new poetic paths, within a collective movement defending originality. Hence the tension opposing the hierarchical organisation and the assertion of the right to be different and thus unique.