RT Article
T1 Dying to survive: Ransom piracy and ontologies of death in Coastal Somalia
JF International review of victimology
VO 30
IS 1
SP 151
OP 165
A1 Gilmer, Brittany
A2 Dewey, Susan 1976-
LA English
YR 2024
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1873363982
AB Interactions between long-term hostages and hostage takers remain undertheorized in criminology, and the present study attempts to fill this gap by utilizing testimonials from long-term hostages held aboard ships. We argue that seafarer hostages’ testimonials depict hijacked vessels as carceral sites that reflect and reproduce the global economic inequalities and racialized patterns of violence undergirding the broader geopolitics of piracy. Utilizing a threefold theoretical framework that unites and builds upon narrative inquiry, narrative criminology and victimology, and thanatopolitics, our analytical energies focus on the centrality of ontologies of death in hostages’ accounts of being held for ransom aboard ships. Our findings emphasize how ontologies of death evident in ransom piracy hostages’ accounts represent the hostage experience as encompassing different states of death, with hostages describing death as a real and ever-present threat that variously encompasses a psychological state of survival, a dehumanizing force, and a disciplinary tactic.
K1 hostages
K1 Ransom
K1 ontologies of death
K1 Violence
K1 Piracy
DO 10.1177/02697580221130369