Identity, space and the political economy of conflict in Central Africa

Abstract

This article examines the current war in the Congo (Democratic Republic of; formerly Zaire) by incorporating recent theoretical work from the sub‐fields of International Political Economy (IPE), Identity Theory, and Critical Geopolitics. This article places the current conflict in a larger historic context, emphasising a lengthy tradition of resource extraction, identity formation and spatial definition. The essay argues that existing explanations of the conflict over‐emphasise the supposed greed of the actors involved, without sufficient attention paid to the discursive aspects of the conflict. The essay constructs a theoretical approach that integrates the material and the discursive by exploring how identity and space shape the political economy of violence in the region. The essay concludes with a ‘first cut’ analysis of the crisis in Central Africa utilising this framework, organised along local, regional and global levels of analysis.