Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences
Netherlands
fellow
Erella Grassiani
2023-2024
Home institution
University of Amsterdam
Country of origin (home institution)
Netherlands
Discipline(s)
Anthropology and ethnology
Sociology
Theme(s)
Contemporary violence & Justice
Globalization
Labor, Capital & Innovation
Fellowship dates
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Biography
Erella is a NIAS Theme Group Fellow (Re-imagining Security Labour) during 2023-2024.
Erella Grassiani is an Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology, University of Amsterdam. She currently serves as the director of the Amsterdam Centre for Conflict Studies (ACCS) at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR). She studies the Israeli security industry and its effects on human rights worldwide. She also works nationalist militias and social movements in Israel and she studies the politics of trees in her project on arboreal nationalism. In the past she has done extensive research on the Israeli military and published a book on the topic: Soldiering under Occupation processes of Numbing among Israeli soldiers in the Al-Aqsa Intifada (2013 Berghahn Books). She is the co-editor of Security Blurs: The Politics of Plural Security Provision (2019 Routledge) and of The Entanglements of Ethnographic Fieldwork in a Violent World (2023 Routledge). She further is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Conflict and Society: Advances in Research (Berghahn).
Research Project
Security Narratives
How can a deeper understanding of individuals in the security labor force shape the future of security work? There are myriad examples of how, in general, descriptions of security labour in the media tend to villainize or heroize the workers, criticising them as lazy and uneducated, or, celebrating them as patriotic and brave. This NIAS Theme Group will bring their own deeply informed practices and varied viewpoints regarding the global security enterprise to our collaborative investigation.
As member of the theme group, Erella Grassiani will explore how security narratives are (re)constructed within the Israeli security industry through its marketing, the organisation of security fairs and other events it plans for potential customers. She will especially look at the role of the people working in this industry in the construction of these narratives.
Research Interests:
Qualitative methods; Ethnography; Ethics; Fieldwork in violent settings; security labor; Israeli security industry; ethnography of violence industries