Contemporary Geopolitics of Israel-Palestine: Conflict Resolution and the Construction of Knowledge

An introductory essay by a noted Israeli geographer and prominent specialist in geopolitics examines patterns of knowlege construction concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, noting that much research has been influenced by national narratives of the Israeli and Palestinian practioners, unequal access to sources of knowledge, the recent critical turn in social sciences research in Israel, and the strong focus on territory/boundary demarcation in conflict resolution. Commenting specifically on the three papers that follow in this issue of Eurasian Geography and Economics (EGE), he argues that they demonstrate the utility of moving beyond traditional narratives to develop alternative approaches based on a pragmatic assessment of prospects for conflict resolution.     

Partition,consociation, border‐crossing: some lessons from the national conflict in Ireland/Northern Ireland

ABSTRACT. Outlining Ireland's long history of ethno‐national conflict, and the recent protracted ‘peace process’ in Northern Ireland, contextualises a critique of the problems underlying such conflicts, and the difficulties in transforming externally imposed conflict management into self‐sustaining conflict resolution. It is argued that the problems and difficulties are deeply rooted in a thoroughly modern complex of nationalism, ethnicity, sovereignty and representative democracy. These are knotted together in a common denominator of territoriality, and the nub of the problem is the ‘double paradox’ of democracy's undemocratic origins in the present. Territoriality, the use of bordered geographical space, is a powerful and ubiquitous mode of social organisation which simplifies social control. But it can grossly oversimplify and distort social realities, particularly at borders and especially where territory is contested, thereby reinforcing other distorting simplifications typically found in ethno‐national conflicts. In consequence, radical remedies are needed if the problems are to be overcome. Making ethno‐national peace paradoxically calls for more creative border‐crossing conflicts around other issues.     

Displacement,memory and home(less) identities: Turkish Cypriot women’s narratives

Abstract

This study is an analysis of the narratives of Turkish Cypriot women in the north of Cyprus who were displaced during the ethnic conflict between the 1950s and 1974. We have conducted 21 interviews with Turkish Cypriot women who were living in different parts of Northern Cyprus. We used oral history, both as a method and as an epistemological stance to re-phrase the near past of Cyprus and the Cyprus issue from the perspective of gender/women’s studies. The study follows the traces of modernity, patriarchy, and nationalism in women’s narratives, about the place, home, belonging and homelessness. The narratives describe Turkish Cypriot women’s experiences of being a woman in conflict and displacement (‘göçmen olmak’ in daily talk in Turkish) making a home out of a house and undertaking daily routines for their families. The study also reveals that ethnic conflict and displacement have empowered women to a certain degree.     

John Burton versus international relations: the costs of criticism

This article explores the intellectual legacy of John Wear Burton, who died in June 2010. Widely lauded as a pioneer in the fields of conflict resolution and peace studies, Burton's legacy in the broader study of international relations (IR) is more ambiguous. The author argues that Burton is best remembered as a critic of IR rather than as a contributor to the discipline, particularly as it evolved from the mid 1980s to the present. Burton's most trenchant criticisms of IR in the 1960s and 1970s were really directed against a superficial version of realism. Burton's work on human needs and conflict resolution, in contrast, has had a more enduring legacy.     

Heritage under attack: motives for targeting cultural property during armed conflict

Although attacks on cultural property have caused international outcry, our understanding of this phenomenon is still limited. In particular, little research has been directed towards exploring the motivations for such attacks. Therefore, we ask: What are the motives for attacking sites, buildings or objects representing cultural heritage? By combining insights from peace and conflict research with findings from heritage studies we present a typology of motivations for attacking cultural property. We identify four, not mutually exclusive, broad groups of motives: (i) attacks related to conflict goals, in which cultural property is targeted because it is connected to the issue the warring parties are fighting over (ii), military-strategic attacks, in which the main motivation is to win tactical advantages in the conflict (iii), signalling attacks, in which cultural property is targeted as a low-risk target that signals the commitment of the aggressor, and (iv) economic incentives where cultural property provides funding for warring parties. Our typology offers a theoretical structure for research about why, when, and by whom, cultural property is targeted. This is not only likely to provide academic benefits, but also to contribute to the development of more effective tools for the protection of cultural property during armed conflict.     

Establishing the Bougainville Mining Workers' Union, 1969–1976

Bougainville Copper Limited's Panguna mine was a huge and complex undertaking that, despite its potential for creating social disruption, operated successfully for two decades before the outbreak of armed conflict in 1988. One source of conflict, common in mining but neglected in previous research on Bougainville, is labour relations and, in particular, how a local workforce was integrated into a system of negotiation that facilitated the operation of the mine by limiting the level and intensity of workplace conflict. Between 1969 and 1988, the Bougainville Mining Workers’ Union (BMWU) played a key role in this structure of accommodation of conflicting interests. This paper uncovers the history of how the BMWU developed the capacity to represent its members' interests successfully and play a positive role in conflict resolution.     

Christianity and Justice in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission: A Case Study in Religious Conflict Resolution

Abstract

Historically, international conflict resolution theorists have largely adopted the position that organized religion is an instigator of violence. As a result, these theories have tended to exclude religion as a force for peacebuilding. Recently, however, scholars have suggested that religion can contribute constructively to a theory of conflict resolution. Their general thesis is that, if religion played a significant part in people's lives, and if religion played a part in fuelling the conflict, then when resolving the conflict, religion must be at least taken into account. An example of a conflict resolution process in which religion, specifically Christianity, played a central role was South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). In dialogue with leading critics of the TRC process, particularly Richard Wilson, this article examines the ambiguous role that Christianity played in influencing concepts of justice in the TRC.     

Street child spaces: belonging,conflict and resistance in the city of Durban through the eyes of street youth

ABSTRACT

This article is concerned with the everyday ‘spatial tactics’ deployed by children in a street situation in order to deal with notions of public space that define them as ‘out of place’, marginal and deviant. Using photovoice, we reconstruct former street children’s definitions of and feelings about their spaces in the city, bringing into view a complex set of social problems, attitudes and strategies that moves beyond the traditional binary notion of street children as either deviants or victims. This work points to the importance of finding ways to ensure the voices of marginalized and disadvantaged children are heard and presents the narratives that are important to our understanding of their worlds. Analyzing their spatiality in contexts of conflict, belonging and resistance, we found that children and youth in a street situation are mainly concerned with empowering themselves and resisting dominant labels and police repression.     

Traumatic echoes of memories in child survivors' narratives of the Holocaust: the Polish experiences of Michał Głowiński and Henryk Grynberg

Drawing upon the important contribution brought by literary testimonies to humanitarian work delineated by Susan Rubin Suleiman (2002) and Leigh Gilmore (2011), this paper analyses two Polish Jewish authors' autobiographical narratives, Micha? G?owiński's The Black Seasons (1999) and Henryk Grynberg's The Jewish War (1965) and Victory (1993), as instances of literary child-witnessing the Holocaust. The two authors' narratives represent two different cases of child survivors' testimonies given their situation during the Second World War: G?owiński being encamped in the Warsaw Ghetto, Grynberg living in hiding. The author argues that their narratives present the case of child survivors whose Holocaust experiences and aftermath memories in Communist Poland spring from their primarily scattered and painful memories foregrounding the importance of vulnerable lenses. In light of this, the main question the author addresses is: to what degree do these children's war memories take specific stances as a function of the age they were during the Holocaust and their location (either being encamped or living in hiding)? The main contention of the paper is that Second World War children's literary testimonies contribute to present-day scholarship by their complex understanding of the multi-faceted character of humans whose specific bulwarks are the simultaneous exposing and acknowledgement of individual occlusions, ambivalences, limitations or randomness.     

‘What’s left of the flag’: the Confederate and Jacobite ‘lost cause’ myths,and the construction of mythic identities through conflict commemoration

The use of battlefields and associated conflict sites provide tantalising hooks upon which to hang tapestries of grand narratives relating to regional and national identities, often defined by what the identities are not. This paper examines the unlikely connection between Jacobite and Confederate romanticism, and how battlefields, conflict related sites, and symbolic material culture are mobilised through active commemoration by some heritage groups in support of a created, mythic identity of a ‘Southern Celt’. Furthermore, it examines the production of a mythic history that whitewashes and recasts the Confederacy, the reality of the Civil War, and the Confederate Flag, while at the same time minimising, hiding, or ignoring competing narratives.     

On exposure,vulnerability and violence: Spatial distribution of risk factors for climate change and violent conflict across Kenya and Uganda

Recent studies discuss the link between climate change and violent conflict, especially for East Africa. While there is extensive literature on the question whether climate change increases the risk of violent conflict onset, not much is known about where a climate-conflict link is most likely to be found. We address this question by analyzing the spatial distribution of the factors commonly associated with a high exposure and vulnerability to climate change, and a high risk of violent conflict onset in Kenya and Uganda. Drawing on recent literature and quantitative data for the period 1998–2008, we develop various specifications of a composite risk index (CRI) with a spatial resolution of half a degree for Kenya and Uganda in the year 2008. A quantitative comparison with conflict data for the year 2008 provides support for the composite risk index. Finally, the composite risk index is contrasted with the findings of three qualitative case studies, which provide mixed support for the index and help to identify its strengths and weaknesses as well as conceptual needs for further quantitative studies on climate change and violent conflict.     

Demography,diversity and nativism in contemporary Africa: evidence from Uganda

ABSTRACT. The relationship between population growth, ethnic diversity and conflict in the developing world is little understood but highly relevant to a large number of countries. In order to understand this relationship, I focus on a case study of local conflict in the district of Kibaale in western Uganda. Uganda's unusually high population growth rate and high level of ethnic diversity are often seen to have led to communal violence in Kibaale. Yet I claim that while this conflict was indeed sparked by population growth and resultant internal migration, it has nothing to do with ethnic diversity per se. Rather, the conflict in Kibaale has much more to do with nativism and the salience of claims to indigeneity at the local level. Kibaale may thus prove something of a warning sign for other parts of Uganda and other developing countries with similar high population growth and little success in nation‐building.     

Pain,Personhood and the Collective: Dalit Life Narratives

Dalit life narratives have gained prominence in the last two decades in line with the increasing visibility of Dalits in the Indian public sphere and their vociferous demands for a more just political and social order. This can be productively situated not just in the contemporary global context of the proliferation of narratives and testimonios of human rights violations in other parts of the world, but also in the context of an emerging conversation on the nature of “Dalit personhood” in the Indian public sphere, a category infinitely more complex than legal subjectivity and abstract citizenship. The Dalit narratives analysed here are rich illustrations of this double movement: they witness on behalf of a suffering community and keep alive the singular, non-universal nature of Dalit pain through an aesthetic that is not wholly translatable into the lexicon of rights and justice. By invoking the historical and rhetorical force of two prose fictional genres, the Bildungsroman and the picaresque, the analysis has sought to recast the testimonio less as a proxy for the legal witnessing and amelioration of Dalit pain than as a rich and expressive medium of Dalit personhood. This way of reading Dalit lives accords India's ex-untouchables a stature beyond that of victims at the mercy of the capricious sentimentality of upper-caste solidarity.     

Maritime territorialisation as performance of sovereignty and nationhood in the South China Sea

The South China Sea (SCS) is a conflict‐ridden international arena of rivalry between China, the USA, India, and the other ASEAN countries over sovereignty, resources and security. In this geopolitical clash China is the dominant force and Vietnam its main challenger. While most analysts assume that the various claims to the mostly uninhabited islands are motivated by the presence of submarine mineral resources, the conflicts evoke strong nationalist feelings in Vietnam and China, fuelled by narratives of the historical presence of fisheries and navies. By analysing the tension between complex territorial claims, new technologies and forms of knowledge applied by these states to delineate their material borders on the sea and vernacular notions of social space, this paper explores how sovereignty and nationality is enacted on a day‐to‐day basis. Thus, I argue that maritime territorialisation is a paradox of treating the sea as ‘land’ produced by the performance of a socially constructed image of the state geo‐body capitalising on strong nationalistic sentiments in China and Vietnam.     

Land Rights under Stress in Darfur: A Volatile Dynamic of the Conflict

Abstract

The aggravation of land rights over time in Darfur was a primary factor in the initiation of the conflict, and has emerged as a particularly dif?cult set of issues in the search for viable peace. While the prospect of being able to keep land acquired in course of the conflict was a primary factor in recruitment for the Janjaweed, it came on the heels of a set of changes in the environment, land use and population patterns, institutions, law and governance that produced a highly unwieldy and volatile land rights scenario. This article explores the role of land tenure in the Darfur conflict, examining the aggravation of rights, custom, and law over time, and then focusing on two of the primary war-related tenure problems currently facing Darfur — use of land rights as tools of belligerence, and the land dispossession — secondary occupation problem.     

“Hold This for Me”: Counter Memory and Trauma in Dionne Brand’s At the Full and Change of the Moon

ABSTRACT

African Caribbean Canadian author Dionne Brand’s At the Full and Change of the Moon augments many African diasporic narratives’ efforts to counter and rewrite exclusive histories. While Brand’s novel challenges and nuances dominant historical narratives by offering counter memory of African diasporic experiences, particularly experiences of enslavement, it also simultaneously illuminates the conflicts that emerge when “holding” and passing on memories that are traumatic. Therefore, Brand’s text emphasizes both the importance of employing counter memory to revise hegemonic historical narratives and the necessity of assessing the impact of trauma on individual and collective remembrances.     

Close-up on renewable resources and armed conflict: The spatial logic of pastoralist violence in northern Kenya

Methods of spatially disaggregated conflict analysis are becoming increasingly popular and open avenues for systematic micro-level research. Especially within the field of environmental security research they bear the promise of a better assessment of environment–conflict linkages at the sub-national level. Yet, this branch of research lacks a thorough theoretical involvement with the spatial logic of armed contests over renewable resources and this hampers the use of highly disaggregated data. To address this shortcoming, the present contribution proposes an actor-centred approach, which allows determining the precise locations of violent events in armed contests over renewable resources. It is developed by analysing the spatial logic of pastoralist violence in northern Kenya, a frequently cited example of scarcity-related struggle over renewable resources. The analysis demonstrates that pastoralist violence in northern Kenya has frequently occurred close to well sites and in locations of higher rainfall, which offer favourable conditions for livestock raiding. These results lend support to narratives of pastoralist violence, which emphasise the strategic use of violence with regard to the ecological opportunities and constraints of African rangelands. They also highlight more generally that conflict locations reveal more about the strategic choices made by armed groups in a given conflict situation than about the ultimate causes of their struggle. This calls for a more conscious use of disaggregated data in environmental security research.     

What can María Zambrano contribute to mediation and to the philosophy of mediation?

ABSTRACT

From a specific point of view, mediation is the process whereby a third party helps to change their attitude from an adversarial one to a collaborative one which allows them to work together in finding and creating solutions to their conflict. Mediation deals with conflict from its own perspective and it has its own status as a dispute resolution process in the systems of justice, where it is recognized. The Philosophy of Mediation has been developing as a discipline, which analyses the status of mediation as knowledge. It studies its nature, its constituent elements, its ontological foundations and its connection with other disciplines. This article argues that it is possible to include certain basic principles of the philosophy of María Zambrano in the Philosophy of Mediation framework. Those elements are essential for understanding the world of human conflict since they provide a new perspective from which to see dispute resolution methodologies. They can be summed up in the idea of including the hidden as the substrate of the visible, revealing the underlying forces of human existence. Within the context of the mediation, the understanding of these forces could help to resolve conflicts.     

The Basque power‐sharing experience: from a destructive to a constructive conflict?

ABSTRACT. Neither the devolution of powers to the Basque Autonomous Community in Spain nor more than a decade of power‐sharing within this region has led to a peaceful settlement of the Basque conflict. Combining Kriesberg's approach to conflict resolution and consociational theory, past power‐sharing experiences are analysed. The lack of overarching loyalties, traditions of compromise, comprehensive participation and the continuation of violence have frustrated power‐sharing. After the 2006 ceasefire, the conditions for giving the conflict a constructive turn have not fundamentally changed. The potential for alternative forms of power‐sharing as a way out of the Basque conflict, combined or not with innovative territorial arrangements cannot be employed because of multi‐scale polarisation. De‐escalation as a prerequisite for new types of power‐sharing arrangements requires relearning democratic pluralism and a recognition of ethnic hybridity in this politically and geographically fragmented society.