Ethnographic Peace Research

Approaches and Tensions

Gearoid Millar

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9783319655628
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319655635
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Pace e sviluppo globale

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.

© The Author(s) 2018

Gearoid Millar (ed.)Ethnographic Peace ResearchRethinking Peace and Conflict Studieshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65563-5_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: The Key Strengths of Ethnographic Peace Research

Gearoid Millar¹

(1)

Department of Sociology, Institute for Conflict, Transition, and Peace Research, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK

Gearoid Millar

End Abstract

This volume is about understanding experiences of conflict , of peace, and of transitions between the two. It is inspired by the failure of scholars to analyse, explain, and understand conflict —its causes, implications, and potential remedies—as well as peace and the related failure to formulate and disseminate sustainable approaches to transition . The book starts from the potentially controversial claim that our analyses of and solutions for conflict are fundamentally limited by our failure to understand how it is experienced by those who live through it. In response, the contributors to this volume propose, illustrate, and defend a broad approach to peace research which seeks to focus more time, resources, and attention on exactly that; the experience of conflict and peace. This approach, which I will call Ethnographic Peace Research (EPR), works to consolidate efforts from various disciplines which have been striving for some time—but in parallel—to gain a more inclusive, holistic , fine-grained, and, in this way, more accurate understanding of violent or potentially violent conflict and how it might be avoided or overcome. I argue, therefore, that it is only by consolidating these ongoing efforts into a forceful EPR approach that we can begin to understand conflict and peace and better support pertinent, salient, and grounded activity to transition from one to the other.

This effort to consolidate an EPR approach—and so to provide a new empirical focus within the “ethnographic turn” in peace research (Mac Ginty and Richmond 2016: 5)—should not be seen as an impulsive response to a quixotic fad, but as the necessary evolution of debates in the literature concerning post-conflict intervention that have played out over the past 20 years. Post-conflict intervention became a driving motivation of the international community in the immediate post-Cold War period (Boutros-Ghali 1992; Brahimi 2000), and the initial parameters of what would build into a robust UN peacebuilding agenda were developed at this time (Doyle and Sambanis 2000). It was in this process that the “liberal peace”—based on the “three pillars” of democratization, free markets, and the rule of law —came to be seen as a viable model by which to ensure global security (Doyle 2000, 2005; Paris 2004). However, by the mid-2000s a critical response emerged which saw peace interventions following this model labelled as neo-colonial impositions of global power on disempowered societies (Ignatieff 2003; Chandler 2006) and elements of a neo-liberal reordering of transitional societies (Tadjbakhsh 2009). It was recognized that those who plan, fund, and administer interventions were becoming ever more professionalized (Sending 2009: 3) and peace interventions themselves were ever more standardized elements of “tool-kit” (Shaw 2005; Donias 2009: 23) or “Cookie-Cutter” approaches (Call and Cousens 2008: 14).

This now quite robust critical literature has shown the peace intervention process to be disconnected from local needs (Millar 2011), administered by peacebuilding professionals with little understanding of local social or cultural dynamics (Autesserre 2014: 116), and as the application of technocratic solutions (Mac Ginty 2010: 408) to what are inherently more complex and multi-dimensional problems (Millar 2016). In response, critical peace scholars have attempted to theorize about peace processes that might be less an imposition of global power and serve more to facilitate the liberation of local actors. These efforts are captured in the vigorous literatures regarding “local ownership” (Donais 2009; Richmond 2012; Lee and Özerdem 2015) and “hybridity” (Richmond 2009; Mac Ginty 2011; Peterson 2012; Millar 2014) which frequently attempt to conceive of an “emancipatory peace” (Richmond 2006; Leonardsson and Rudd 2015), and recently in the deployment of the concept of “friction”, which recognizes the complex and unpredictable nature of global /local interactions and the agentic manner in which local actors can resist and respond to these interventions (Tsing 2005; Björkdahl and Höglund 2013; Millar et al. 2013; Börkdahl et al. 2016).

There is no doubt that this work has done a great amount to push forward academic debates regarding the role, importance, and influence of the “peace kept” during peace interventions (Marten 2004), but these efforts are not the first to have brought such arguments to the fore. Indeed, within the more social-psychological field of conflict resolution , there has long been a demand for local actors to play a much more central role in peace processes . This is rooted in John Paul Lederach’s plea for more elicitive approaches to peacebuilding in war-torn societies (Lederach 1995) which was the initial impetus for the move towards “conflict transformation ” as a process driven by and for the benefit of local actors as opposed to the earlier notion of conflict resolution as an externally and elite-driven interventionary process (Fetherston 2000; Paffenholz 2015). But perhaps because it has stayed rooted primarily in social-psychological theory and seems more pertinent to civil society-based approaches to peace as opposed to speaking directly to international relations, international law , or international economics, this earlier turn to the local has had little impact on the interventionary visions of the national and supra-national organizations which plan, fund, and administer the majority of post-conflict peacebuilding processes today—the UN, World Bank, OECD, EU, USAID, DfID, GTZ, and so on (see Paffenholz 2015: 891).

Similarly, there is a tradition within anthropology of examining experiences of violence and recovery (Das 2007, 2008; Nordstrom 1997, 2004; Shaw 2007; Sluka 2009; Theidon 2013) and of studying local conflict resolution or mediation processes (Dillon 1976; Hamer 1980; Podelefsky 1990; Al-Krenawi and Graham 1999; Theidon 2000). In addition, a number of significant contributions have exhibited the value of anthropological research for understanding dynamics of conflict and peace, and the processes of transition between the two (Avruch 1998; Wilson 2001; Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois 2003; Honwana 2006; Vigh 2006; Theidon 201...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Introduction: The Key Strengths of Ethnographic Peace Research
• 2. Contextualizing Ethnographic Peace Research
• 3. Feminist Ethnographic Research: Excavating Narratives of Wartime Rape
• 4. Institutional Ethnography as Peace Research
• 5. The Impetus for Peace Studies to Make a Collaborative Turn: Towards Community Collaborative Research
• 6. Conflicting Boundaries and Roles: Impressions of Ethnographic Fieldwork in the French Banlieues
• 7. Violent Spirits and a Messy Peace: Against Romanticizing Local Understandings and Practices of Peace in Mozambique
• 8. Understanding Reconciliation Through Reflexive Practice: Ethnographic Examples from Canada and Timor-Leste
• 9. Researching Peace Peacefully: Using Ethnographic Approaches in Timor-Leste
• 10. How Much Peace Can the Military Instigate? Anthropological Perspectives on the Role of the Military in Peace Intervention
• 11. Beyond “Being There”: Space and Mobility in Ethnographic Peace and Transitional Justice Research
• 12. Conclusion: The Constructive Tension of Interdisciplinary Endeavours
• Backmatter