Abstract
ABSTRACTCritical peace and conflict scholars argue that to understand fully conflict dynamics and possibilities for peace research should incorporate ‘the local’. Yet this important conceptual shift is bound by western concepts, while empirical explorations of ‘the local’ privilege outside experts over mechanisms for inclusion. This article explores how an epistemology drawing on feminist approaches to conflict analysis can help to redirect the focus from expert to experiential knowledge, thereby also demonstrating the limits of expert knowledge production on ‘the local’. In order to illustrate our arguments and suggest concrete methods of putting them into research practice, we draw on experiences of the ‘Raising Silent Voices’ project in Myanmar, which relied on feminist and arts-based methods to explore the experiential knowledge of ordinary people living amidst violent conflict in Rakhine and Kachin states.
Highlights
Knowledge production about conflict, violence and peace matters
This article explores how an epistemology drawing on feminist approaches to conflict analysis can help to redirect the focus from expert to experiential knowledge, thereby demonstrating the limits of expert knowledge production on ‘the local’
Critical peace and conflict studies have drawn attention to this construction of ‘truths’ and have shown how different frames and interpretations may lead to competing problematisations of violent conflict, which differ with regard to questions about its origins, its root causes, who the perpetrators and victims of violence are, and what potential conflict solutions arise from these problematisations
Summary
Violence and peace matters. Accepted or shared knowledge creates reality by shaping the norms that define what we think of as conflict and by framing what we look for or expect to see in conflict analyses. We begin with an analysis of critical scholarly literature in peace and feminist studies to illuminate how the use of the category ‘the local’ has not led to an inclusion (beyond mere recognition) of experiential knowledge in conflict analyses This enables us to critique the work of organisations who recognise the importance of ‘the local’, but whose epistemic practices lead to exclusions of local people’s experiences from organisational knowledge production. In much the same way that the study of practice challenges the norms of institutionalised politics, an understanding of the importance of everyday experience challenges the dominance of the outside expert in creating knowledge about conflict, violence and peace in several ways Inspired by these insights of feminist methodologies, underpinning the research agenda of ‘Raising Silent Voices’ was a strong commitment to developing and valuing experiential knowledge, which redefined what counted as ‘knowledge’ in understanding conflicts. These experiences had a profound effect on our local research associates, with B voicing a strong desire to become a healer, using art to help communities in her country.
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