ABSTRACT

This article discusses an episode of open antagonism and violence that erupted between Orthodox Christians and Muslims in Gondar Ethiopia in 2009. In Gondar, a perceived symbolic attack on the Ark, a holy object with the qualities of the Ark of the Covenant, created an intersubjectively legible and affectively resonant impetus for escalating action. Conventions of Muslim–Christian coexistence appeared to be overturned, resulting in an alternative social (dis)order of open antagonism. I argue that a focus on values, in many cases, can sharpen our understanding of how quantitative change transforms into qualitative change, because such a focus trains our attention on continuous, and changing, fields of affective and conceptual import that frame collective action. Not that values determine action, or that escalations are predictable, but that novel articulations between different values that create new imaginative horizons of action that change the grounds of change. In such periods of escalation, novel courses of action can be framed within, and justified by, conservative value structures. The value relevance of some escalations enables these events to have a lasting, transformative impact.

摘要

本文讨论了2009年埃塞俄比亚贡达的东正教徒与穆斯林之间发生的公开对抗和暴力事件。在贡达，人们对象征方舟的象征性攻击，即具有圣约方舟特质的圣物，在主体间形成了一个主体间的冲突。清晰且情感上的共鸣推动力不断升级。穆斯林与基督教并存的习俗似乎被推翻了，导致了公开对抗的另一种社会（混乱）秩序。我认为，在许多情况下，对价值的关注可以加深我们对定量变化如何转变为质变的理解，因为这种关注将我们的注意力集中在构成集体行动的情感领域和概念领域的持续变化领域。不是说值决定行动，还是说升级是可预测的，但是不同价值之间的新颖结合创造了新的，富有想象力的行动视野，改变了变化的基础。在这种不断升级的时期，可以在保守的价值结构内构筑新颖的行动路线并为其辩护。某些升级的价值相关性使这些事件能够产生持久的变革性影响。