Didier Fassin & João Biehl: Death of a Traveller -- A Counter Investigation
It is a simple story. A 37-year-old man belonging to the Traveller community is shot dead by a special unit of the French police on the family farm where he was hiding since he failed to return to prison after temporary release. The officers claim self-defense. The relatives, present at the scene, contest that claim. A case is opened, and it concludes with a dismissal that is upheld on appeal. Dismayed by these decisions, the family continues the struggle for truth and justice. Please join us for a conversation between two acclaimed anthropologists about Didier Fassin's fascinating counter-investigation of this case with many current resonances in the U.S.
Giving each account of the event the same credit, Fassin re-examines all the available details and interviews the protagonists. A critical reflection on the work of police forces, the functioning of the justice system, and the conditions that make such tragedies possible and seldom punished, Death of a Traveller is also an attempt to restore to these marginalized communities what they are usually denied: respectability.
Didier Fassin, anthropologist and sociologist, is the James D. Wolfensohn Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. He began his career as a physician in the field of infectious diseases and public health before turning to the social sciences. His books include Enforcing Order: An Ethnography of Urban Policing; Prison Worlds: An Ethnography of the Carceral Condition; and Life: A Critical User’s Manual.
João Biehl is Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University, where he is also Director of the Brazil Lab. His influential books areVita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment; Will to Live: AIDS Therapies and the Politics of Survival; and the co-authored Unfinished: The Politics of Becoming.
This event is cosponsored by the Institute for Advanced Study and Princeton University's Anthropology Department.
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