State of Suffering

How do ordinary people respond when their lives are irrevocably altered by terror and violence? Susanna Trnka was residing in an Indo-Fijian village in the year 2000 during the Fijian nationalist coup. The overthrow of the elected multiethnic party...

Susanna Trnka is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Auckland. She is the coauthor of Young Women of Prague and editor of Bodies of Bread and Butter: Reconfiguring Women's Lives in the Post-Communist Czech Republic.

State of Suffering (Cornell University Press, 2008) by University of Auckland anthropologist Susanna Trnka focuses on how ordinary people cope in extraordinary times, making it particularly relevant as we live through a global pandemic. Making use of her Fijian research, she is currently looking at the social ramifications of Covid-19 in New Zealand in terms of how we experience 'home' and 'family', as well as how citizens need to be reconsidered as active rather than passive participants in states of emergency.

Veena Das, Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology, The Johns Hopkins University:

This powerful book is original in its conception, rich in ethnographic detail, and very clearly written. Susanna Trnka has made a strong contribution to the larger issues pertaining to the analysis of violence, state of emergency, and reconstitution of everyday life. Trnka's book signals a new generation of scholarship in the study of violence—it is, indeed, a splendid achievement. I am sure it will become standard reading in courses on violence, diaspora, island societies, and social suffering.

Don Brenneis, University of California, Santa Cruz:

Subtle, deeply attuned alike to everyday talk and extraordinary circumstances, and beautifully written, State of Suffering is an exceptional contribution. Susanna Trnka draws broad themes of violence, pain, identity, and ongoing struggles to sustain life and community together with an exceptionally rich, compelling, and brilliantly particular understanding of Fiji and Fiji Indian lives.

John Kelly, University of Chicago:

An unflinching portrayal of politically engendered suffering, this vital book should open eyes across the Pacific and around the world to the real consequences of Fiji's ethnic division and the Fiji coups. This is an insightful and courageous ethnography, brushing history against the grain, essential reading for anyone who ever imagined Fiji as a paradise.