VIOLENCE AS USUAL
POLICING AND THE COLONIAL STATE IN GERMAN SOUTH WEST AFRICA
Marie Muschalek
ISBN 9789991642550
University of Namibia Press, 2020
Slaps in the face, kicks, beatings, and other forms of run-of-the-mill violence were an everyday part of life
in German South West Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century. Unearthing this culture of
normalized violence in a settler colony, Violence as Usual uncovers the workings of a powerful state that
was built in an improvised fashion by low-level state representatives. Marie Muschalek’s fascinating
portrayal of the daily deeds of African and German men enrolled in the Landespolizei, the colonial police
force, is a historical anthropology of police practice and the normalization of imperial power. Replete with
anecdotes of the everyday experiences of the policemen, as well as of the colonized people and settlers,
Violence as Usual re-examines fundamental questions about the relationship between power and
violence.