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Notes
1 By “Latvians” I mean here the inhabitants of Latvia without a strong demarcation of ethnic groups.
2 Van den Dennen includes in the list of peaceful or unwarlike people only “primitive (pre-industrial, acaphalous, band-level, tribal)” societies and “peoples (ethnies)” that have been described by travelers and ethnographers as lacking offensive warfare or internal physical violence or having the ethic of nonviolence (Dennen Citation1995, 506). Van den Dennen’s list contains some 150 societies. Bonta includes various kinds of “peoples” (“a group of human beings who live in the same area, who have common beliefs and value systems, who share basically the same culture, and among whom there are substantial kinship ties”) (Bonta Citation1993, 4–5). Bonta’s list contains 47 “peoples”, including rural North Ireland, Tahitians, Tristan Islanders and parts of Zapotec. Douglas Fry bases his list of nonviolent societies on anthropological information “about the non-violent beliefs and low levels of physical aggression expressed within the culture” (Fry Citation2006, 65). Fry’s list contains about 80 societies, including contemporary Danes, Icelanders and Norwegians.
3 Names of places and persons are changed to protect privacy.
4 According to Trujillo, culture is “the complex system of socially constructed and generationally transmitted patterns of meaning, aspiration, and behaviour”.
5 To quote the exact words Šmidchens uses: “Even if these three disarmed national heroes [Kalevipoeg, Lāčplēsis, and Mindaugas] emerged out of pre-existing norms, they nevertheless provide an intriguing example of evolving (or devolving) aggressive drives and the civilizing process in Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian national cultures.” (Šmidchens Citation2007, 487). Šmidchens never actually refers to Elias’s work, quoting Freud instead, but the influence seems clear.
6 Information about earlier years was not available at the parish level. Statistics available from the Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Latvia database.
7 As one can see from the description of Mierpils, it cannot be separated from processes that originate outside the place and time that I describe here. The post-Soviet transformations, neo-liberal onslaught, access to the EU, or globalization all have an impact on what happens in Mierpils to some degree. These all are valid perspectives from which to analyze life in Mierpils. Among those the post-Soviet or post-socialist perspective perhaps is the most obvious. However, in this article I do not explore the post-socialist perspective, because I believe the emphasis on the post-socialist character of Mierpils here can block more than reveal. On a more general theoretical level I suggest that it is time to move on from post-socialist studies as the legacy becomes less and less relevant for description of life in the Baltics.
8 Altogether during this project I interviewed more than 70 people in various places in the Latvian countryside.
9 Pēteris, interviewed in Mierpils, 21 September 2010.
10 Madara, interviewed in Mierpils, 20 December 2011.
11 Skaidrīte, interviewed in Mierpils, 18 January 2012.
12 Jāzeps interviewed in Mierpils, 17 January 2012.
13 Madara, interviewed in Mierpils, 12 January 2012.
14 Vaira, interviewed in Mierpils, 14 January 2012.
15 Reinis, interviewed in Mierpils, 15 January 2012.
16 Skaidrīte, interviewed in Mierpils, 12 January 2012.
17 Vaira, interviewed in Mierpils, 14 January 2012.
18 Kārlis, interviewed in Mierpils 13 January 2012.
19 Reinis, interviewed in Mierpils, 15 January 2012
20 Madara, interviewed in Mierpils, 12 January 2012.
21 Madara, interviewed in Mierpils 12 January 2012.
22 Vaira, interviewed in Mierpils, 14 January 2012.
23 Reinis and Maira, interviewed in Mierpils, 16 January 2012.
24 Madara, Liene and their father, interviewed in Mierpils 12 January 2012.
25 Anna, interviewed in Mierpils, 03.03.2012.
26 Skaidrīte, interviewed in Mierpils, 18 January 2012.
27 Anna, interviewed in Mierpils 03 March 2012.
28 Rūta, interviewed in Mierpils 16 July 2010.
29 Apart from Mierpils, the only other community that uses mediation as a routine is a Roma community in Latgale, Eastern Latvia, several members of which I interviewed in 2010.
30 Anna, interviewed in Mierpils, 03 March 2012.
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Klāvs Sedlenieks
Klāvs Sedlenieks holds an MPhil degree in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. He currently works as a researcher at the University of Latvia and as a lecturer in social anthropology at Riga Stradins University. His main research interests: economic and political anthropology, anthropology of peace, the Baltics and western Balkans.