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While many have argued in the past decade that peace and conflict studies must engage more with local actors and communities, and scholars regularly describe the importance of local context and culture for building sustainable peace, there are substantial challenges methodologically to fulfilling this ‘local turn’. Many peace and conflict studies scholars are inexperienced with methods appropriate for engaging with local communities, contexts and cultures, and many of the important institutions in the field, from key journals to important funders, exhibit a continuing preference for quantitative studies. The Ethnographic Peace Research (EPR) agenda has recently been developed in response...
This volume calls for an empirical extension of the “local turn” within peace research. Building on insights from conflict transformation, gender studies, critical International Relations and Anthropology, the contributions critique existing peace research methods as affirming unequal power, marginalizing local communities, and stripping the peace kept of substantive agency and voice. By incorporating scholars from these various fields the volume pushes for more locally grounded, ethnographic and potentially participatory approaches. While recognizing that any Ethnographic Peace Research (EPR) agenda must incorporate a variety of methodologies, the volume nonetheless paves a clear path for the much needed empirical turn within the local turn literature.
This book aims to outline and promote an ethnographic approach to evaluating international peacebuilding interventions in transitional states. While the evaluation of peacebuilding and transitional justice efforts has been a growing concern in recent years, too often evaluations assess projects based on locally irrelevant measures, reinforce the status quo distribution of power in transitional situations, and uncritically accept the implicit conceptions of the funders, planners, and administrators of such projects. This book argues that evaluating the effects of peacebuilding interventions demands an understanding of the local and culturally variable context of intervention. Throughout the b...
This book aims to understand the processes and outcomes that arise from frictional encounters in peacebuilding, when global and local forces meet. Building a sustainable peace after violent conflict is a process that entails competing ideas, political contestation and transformation of power relations. This volume develops the concept of ‘friction’ to better analyse the interplay between global ideas, actors, and practices, and their local counterparts. The chapters examine efforts undertaken to promote sustainable peace in a variety of locations, such as Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, and Sierra Leone. These case analyses provide a nuanced understanding not simply of local processes,...
A rigourous analysis of context in transitional justice, examining the successes and failures of truth and reconciliation commissions in post-conflict settings.
This unique companion is a much-needed guide for those who are embarking on field research in conflict-affected countries. In a break with academic tradition, the chapters are mainly written in the first person and contain personal accounts of the ethical and practical challenges of fieldwork. In the book, over thirty scholars reflect on the complexity of dealing with human subjects in conflict-affected contexts. This indispensable book provides insider knowledge and gives confidence to researchers - both those at the very start of their careers or during their studies, and experienced researchers who want to consider positionality, responsibility and the moral obligation of the researcher in new ways. Essential reading for students and scholars embarking upon fieldwork in International Relations, Politics, Sociology, Political Geography and Anthropology.
“Contesting Peace in the Postwar City is key reading for urban and peace and conflict scholars. In this impressive and meticulously researched book, Gusic reflects on the ways in which divisions are routinised in the everyday landscape of divided cities and skilfully investigates how change and continuity are governed in postwar urban spaces. The book provides rich empirical material from the cities of Mostar, Mitrovica and Belfast, drawing on nuanced fieldwork insights.” —Stefanie Kappler, Durham University, UK “Ivan Gusic sets out a powerful, theoretically critical and empirically rich account of the trajectories of cities after war. The strength of the work is that it brings an un...
This book focuses on the ethical, aesthetic, and scholarly dimensions of how genocide-related works of art, documentary films, poetry and performance, museums and monuments, music, dance, image, law, memory narratives, spiritual bonds, and ruins are translated and take place as translations of acts of genocide. It shows how genocide-related modes of representation are acts of translation which displace and produce memory and acts of remembrance of genocidal violence as inheritance of the past in a future present. Thus, the possibility of representation is examined in light of what remains in the aftermath where the past and the future are inseparable companions and we find the idea of the untranslatability in acts of genocide. By opening up both the past and lived experiences of genocidal violence as and through multiple acts of translation, this volume marks a heterogeneous turn towards the future, and one which will be of interest to all scholars and students of memory and genocide studies, transitional justice, sociology, psychology, and social anthropology.
This book seeks to examine the causes of escalation and de-escalation in intrastate conflicts. Specifically, the volume seeks to map the processes and dynamics that lead groups challenging existing power structures to engage in violent struggle; the processes and dynamics that contribute to the de-escalation of violent struggle and the participation of challengers in peaceful political activities; and the processes and dynamics that sustain and nurture this transformation. By integrating the latest ideas with richly presented case studies, this volume fills a gap in our understanding of the forces that lead to moderation and constructive engagement in the context of violent, intrastate conflicts. This volume will be of great interest to students of conflict management, peace studies, conflict resolution, ethnic conflict and security studies in general.
Rebel Courts presents an argument that it is possible for non-state armed groups in situations of armed conflict to legally establish and operate a system of courts to administer justice. Neither the concept of the rule of law nor the general principle of state sovereignty stands in the way of framing an understanding of the rule of law adapted to the reality of rebel governance in the area of justice. Legal standards applicable to non-state armed groups in situations of international or non-international armed conflict, including international humanitarian law, international human rights law, and international criminal law, recognise their authority to regularly constitute or establish non-...