Legacy Of Conflict Research Articles

How to Exhibit Competing Narratives: Confronting Legacies of Conflict or Sustaining Social Cleavages?

This contribution explores how museums contribute to or degrade peaceful relations in divided societies in light of ongoing disputes at the cultural-symbolic level. The case concerns the autonomous province of South Tyrol (Italy), which successfully settled a minority conflict. This inquiry into how museums confront historical legacies and persisting conflict-related tensions sheds light on the interplay between cultural expressions, institutions, and the socio-political landscape. Looking at three representative museum/exhibitions, we identify specific elements and strategies that either recontextualize debates or sustain divisive understandings of the minority conflict. We argue that museums/exhibitions play a critical role in the aftermath of conflict in ways that affect social cohesion and stability.

Punctuated Land: An Exploration of Conflict Through Photographic Practice

Punctuated Land (2019-2023) is a practice-led research project that, through photography, explores the enduring legacies of conflict and the historical and political forces that enable and perpetuate its normalization. Recurring visits to Israel/Palestine, tracing Israel’s de facto borders, and spending time in the occupied territories of the West Bank, were methods of observing how conflict gets inscribed on the verges and in the overlooked; including trees and other natural entities. This paper examines how living in ongoing conflict filters into the ground and into language, and how this informs how we view and interpret images. Traces and their photographic representation become the means to make visible the impact of maintaining dominance over the land. Practices of control and discrimination that appear in the landscape are reflected in the use of language, the interpretation of local laws, and the exercise of power over access and restrictions. While the mechanisms of violence and occupation promote a vision of this land as desolate and barren, this photographic project explores poetic and subtle visual methods to capture the traces of human presence that highlight the multiplicity of narratives and the entangled coexistence of collective memories.

The gendered costs of stigma: How experiences of conflict‐related sexual violence affect civic engagement for women and men

AbstractA common understanding emphasizes the destructive effects of conflict‐related sexual violence (CRSV) on social cohesion and community life. Stressing the agency of survivors, we present an alternative argument. Our theory predicts that survivors seek to counteract the stigma attached to CRSV by contributing to the community in the form of civic engagement. Drawing on three original surveys from Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Liberia, and Sri Lanka and relying on list experiments to reduce underreporting bias, we find that survivors of CRSV indeed show increased levels of civic engagement. This civic effect is consistent across the three contexts and very likely causal. We also rule out an alternative mechanism based on posttraumatic growth and dispel concerns that increased civic engagement comes at the expense of decreased intergroup relations. However, looking at sex differences, our results are more sobering. While in line with our prediction, they do not support the optimistic notion that survivors' mobilization results in female empowerment and the closing of existing gender gaps in civic behavior. Our findings have important implications for our understanding of CRSV, the legacy of violent conflict, and the gendered nature of politics.

Oil Transnational Corporations and the Legacy of Corporate-Community Conflicts: The Case of SEEPCO in Nigeria

Abstract This paper examines the nature, impact, ramifications, and root causes of the corporate-community resource conflict in Anambra’s oil-bearing communities. It approaches this objective from the standpoint that such a conflict may be appropriately termed “a legacy of oil transnational corporations” in Nigeria, given their antecedents in the Niger Delta region. Unlike the existing literature that blames such conflicts for the most part on environmental, socio-economic, and political factors, with limited emphasis on the legal factors, this paper takes the position that an unhealthy legal apparatus of the Nigerian state and regulatory gaps in Nigeria’s oil industry provide the enabling environment that makes the conflict inevitable. Essentially, this paper tweaks the “resource curse” theory as espoused by mainstream political economists by demonstrating that, apart from greed and grievance, the “curse” is equally underpinned by inept legal structures and regulatory gaps that show little regard for good governance and the well-being of the local people in host communities. But two possible solutions are proffered. One is the institutionalization of a statutory scheme for consultation with the local communities before appropriation of their lands for oil production projects, and the other is encouraging the participation of indigenous peoples or indigenous entities in the development of their natural resources, following the example of Orient Petroleum Resources Plc.

Religion and Violence: Unraveling Ahmad Syafii Maarif’s Philosophical Thought on the Muslim Community’s Internal Conflict

This article outlines the philosophical view of Ahmad Syafii Maarif (ASM) in addressing internal conflicts within Muslims by tracing its root causes among Arab elites, starting from the time of the Prophet’s companions to inter-Arab conflicts in the contemporary era. This research is qualitative with a narrative approach using data from ASM’s writings and other related sources. The researchers collected, summarized, and presented data in a narrative format before concluding the data. Data analysis was conducted using Miles and Huberman’s thematic analysis technique. This article shows that the conflict among Muslims today, including in Indonesia, according to ASM, is the result of the legacy of conflict among Arab elites that began with the Prophet’s companions until the conflict between Arab nations in the contemporary era. The root of the problem in the conflict is the desire for political power by Arab elites. ASM’s post-Chicago studies resulted in substantial shifts in his attitude and philosophical perspective. He reevaluated the role of Islamic ethics in society concerning the concept of an Islamic state, encouraged interreligious tolerance among Muslims, questioned traditional female roles in Islam, and took a more critical stance toward sectarian differences within the faith. Indeed, ASM’s thought is supposed to be an alternative for resolving the internal conflict among Muslims worldwide.

Walking, storytelling and melancholy survivals: memorialization of the ‘Troubles’ in Belfast’s City Centre

This article explores the role of walking and storytelling as a mode of memory-making in Belfast’s City Centre, a ‘shared space’ that has largely been emptied of reminders of the 30-year conflict in Northern Ireland known as the ‘Troubles’. Memorialization remains a divisive and contentious process in Northern Ireland with two opposing narrative traditions and a lack of shared collective memory. In the absence of state-led and officialized memorials to the ‘Troubles’, I explore how urban heritage can be expressed in motion, through spatial stories told by place-based professionals (urban planners, architects, heritage practitioners, arts and community groups) in the City Centre. In particular, I employ David Lloyd’s idea of ‘melancholy survivals’ to describe the ways in which memories of conflict persist in the narratives we tell and in the small physical residues scattered throughout the City Centre, which we encounter through walking and spatial stories. I argue that walking go-along interviews with place-based professionals elicits storytelling that evokes a mobile mode of memorialization. I begin by discussing the context of memorialization in Belfast’s City Centre, its role during the ‘Troubles’, and its subsequent urban redevelopment as a ‘shared space’. I then map out critical discussions around my methodological framework, which considers spatial storytelling, geographies of affect and walking methods as ways to engage urban heritage in cities that have experienced conflict. This is followed by observations from the walking go-along interviews, which include stories of physical residues, the psychosomatic legacies of conflict and ways the difficult memories factor into narratives in Belfast’s City Centre.

Young protesters’ ambivalence about violence in the 2015 crisis in Burundi: local legacies of conflict and generational change

ABSTRACT April 2015, Burundi. What started as peaceful demonstrations against another term of president Nkurunziza, quickly turned into violent confrontations between mostly young male civilians and government forces. The demonstrations signalled the beginning of a new political crisis after a decade of peace. In this paper, we draw on eye-witness accounts of civilians to understand the escalation of violence. We argue that legacies of conflict informed the understanding and escalation of the violence. For instance, memories and skills learned by adults and older peers during the civil war were passed on to novices to organise protests and neighbourhood defence. Yet the legacies of conflict also juxtaposed with protesters’ ideals on ‘civil’ non-violent political dialogue. The ambivalence towards violence experienced and narrated by protesters and witnesses points to intergenerational change, but may also be understood as contradictions in how political dialogue and competition is generally envisioned in Burundi.

Institutional Legacies and the Decision to Commit Genocide

Despite their striking similarities, which include population demographics, size, and a legacy of inter-group conflict, the collapse of democratization in Rwanda and Burundi in the early 1990s led to genocide in Rwanda and a different type of violence in Burundi. This study suggests that to better comprehend why risk factors lead to genocide in some cases and not others, focus must be placed on howthese factors are perceived by those in power of the state experiencing them. This study introduces a model that uses Comparative Historical Analysis (CHA), process tracing, and the inclusion of a decision model built on the assumptions of prospect theory to explain this variegated outcome. This study is unique from others in that there has been no attempt made by genocide scholars to combine prospect theory and historical institutionalism to explain variations in the occurrence of genocide.

Time, source, and responsibility: understanding changing uses of the past in ‘post-conflict’ South African history teaching, 1998 and 2019

ABSTRACT We propose a new framework for understanding post-conflict history education based on ethnographic fieldwork in the same South African school two decades apart. We explore how and why teachers engage with the legacies of conflict in 1998 and 2019 by investigating how they draw boundaries around 1) time, what the conflict period is and how stark lines are between past and present; 2) source, where knowledge resides and legitimacy of expertise and lived experience; and 3) responsibility, who creates and who benefits from social change, particularly vis-à-vis individual and collective action. We suggest that by looking at why, how, where, and by whom these lines between past/present, historiography/experience, and individual/structural responsibility are drawn, we can strengthen comparative approaches to understanding post-conflict history education.

Japan's foreign policy in the settlement of territorial disputes

Territorial disputes are a key element of Japanese security, directly aff ecting Tokyo's relations with all three of its closest neighbors: China, Russia and South Korea. Because of its complex history of repeated invasions as well as militaristic expansion, Japan has accumulated a tangled legacy of confl icts and disputes with its neighbors over the three contiguous territories, namely Senkaku, Dokdo, and the Kuril Islands, claiming or disputing sovereignty over them. The disputes discussed in the article are a direct result of Japan's involvement in World War II and the often ambiguous language used in treaties and other documents signed at the end of it. The article presents Tokyo's position based on Japanese documents and the positions of Beijing, Seoul and Moscow based on the Cairo Declaration, the Potsdam Declaration and the San Francisco Peace Treaty. The author illustrated her arguments with maps. During the analysis physiographic and historical approaches were used. The author's examination of these disputes provides a clear picture of how the changing security environment has aff ected the position of Japan and its neighbors over time. In the 2000s, Tokyo introduced a special term — territorial diplomacy "redogayko" which goal was international recognition of the legitimacy of Japanese sovereignty over disputed territories. The Ministry of Foreign Aff airs of Japan conducts an active policy to inform the world community about the rights of Tokyo to the Senkaku Islands, Takeshima, and the socalled "Northern Territories". During the analysis of the positions of the concerned countries the author concludes that Japan successfully defends the ownership of the Senkaku Islands, but so far has no proper results with Dokdo and the Kuril Islands. Russia's attitude to these disputes cannot be passive. First, Moscow is a direct party to one of them. Second, South Korea and China are basing their arguments on Japan's imperial past and, like Russia, on World War II documents.

Resilience and conflict: rethinking climate resilience through Indigenous territorial struggles

ABSTRACT Resilience to climate change demands a transformation in social and political relations, but the literature has largely neglected how these are embedded within legacies of conflict. We explore the roles socioenvironmental conflicts play in the scaling up of transformation amidst ongoing settler colonial projects in Indigenous territories in Nicaragua. Drawing on insights from resilience, climate change, and critical agrarian studies, this article reframes resilience as a process produced within socioenvironmental conflicts, placing contestation and negotiation in the centre frame. By re-signifying the meanings and practices of resilience, Indigenous agrarian struggles contribute to ‘eroding capitalism’ and its entwinement with climate change.

Swords into ploughshares? Why human rights abuses persist after resistance campaigns

Human rights abuse tends to increase during national crises, such as civil wars and mass nonviolent uprisings. Under what conditions does this abuse abate or persist? I argue that violent challenges provoke much more coercive state responses, exposing more personnel within the security forces to extreme forms of repression and priming them (both leaders and followers) to reproduce these behaviors after the conflict has terminated. This effect is mitigated or avoided when challengers rely on nonviolent tactics instead of violence, leading to less post-conflict abuse. I test this argument with several quantitative methods, which establish a positive association between nonviolent resistance campaigns and subsequent freedom from political killings. Results also suggest that democratization can partially – but not fully – counteract the repressive legacies of violent conflict. By choosing to specialize in nonviolent tactics, therefore, resistance leaders avoid a repression trap that not even democratization can fully disarm.

The Children of Death Never Die: Specters of the Early Zionist Past

Abstract: This chapter considers the curious and perennial recurrence, in Zionist periodicals, memoirs and historiographic literature, of the claim that Palestinian Arabs referred to Jews in Palestine in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as " Awlad al-mawt " (Children of Death). Invocations of this term are typically paired with ideologically laden statements of Zionists overcoming this characterization by demonstrating their capacity for physical strength and willingness to employ violence. Evoking a legacy of conflict with Palestinian Arabs, a longstanding European trope of Jews lacking vitality, and the promise of Jewish revival, Awlad al-mawt , in multiple dialectical variations and transliterations, became a byword for Jewish transformation but also for a lingering anxiety about its ultimate impossibility. By tracing the usages and context of this term throughout the twentieth century, from its first known appearances just before the Kishinev Pogrom of 1903 through 1948, it argues that ambivalence about early Zionist strength informs evolving anxieties about the Zionist-Palestinian conflict, the inherent precarity of Zionism as a settler project, and the attendant militarization of Zionist and Israeli society.

Remembering Ypres. Post- War Reconstruction, Land and the Legacies of Shock and Conflict

We consider the case of the Flemish city of Ypres and its reconstruction after World War I to analyze the legacies of war, as a violent shock to social- ecological systems for the meaning and organization of land. We argue that these legacies can only be understood when considering the multiple meanings of land, including its association with identity, and when distinguishing between the effects on the land itself, on the community inhabiting that land and the governance system in that community. We demonstrate that war, in its diversity of effects reinforces some path dependencies while erasing others and creates space for reinvention. If a city and its countryside are entirely devastated, as with Ypres, actors in governance come and go, old institutions lose their binding powers, some stories and forms of knowledge remain persuasive and locally rooted, while others whither. The necessity to decide on the future, in a landscape that requires rebuilding, triggers debate, discursive production and options for reinvention. We reflect on the lessons of Ypres for other communities forced to contemplate reconstruction.

Allan Pinkerton: Informed Scot or Scottish Informer?

Allan Pinkerton (1819–1884) has a conflicted legacy. To some, the founder of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency (PNDA) pioneered law and order on the American frontier, upheld principles of racial equality, and prepared the way for better public police forces including the FBI. To others, Pinkerton betrayed the values of his Scottish youth: he had been a champion of militant workers in Scotland, and participated in revolutionary uprisings in Wales and England, yet was instrumental in crushing organised labour in the United States. In truth, Pinkerton never played a part in Wales’ Newport uprising, and took with him, when he crossed the Atlantic in 1842, knowhow about repression that he had acquired on his native soil. He may have learned about informers because he was one of their victims, or he may have promoted labour espionage in Pennsylvania in the 1870s because he had been himself an informer before he emigrated. The Scottish authorities’ deliberate abstinence from record-keeping and the serial, defensive destruction of PNDA records mean it is impossible to prove or disprove the informer hypothesis, but the role of the informer in Scottish political culture does help to explain Pinkerton’s behaviour and apparent hypocrisy.

Review: Religious Violence in the Ancient World: From Classical Athens to Late Antiquity, edited by Jitse H. F. Dijkstra and Christian R. Raschle

Review: <i>Religious Violence in the Ancient World: From Classical Athens to Late Antiquity</i>, edited by Jitse H. F. Dijkstra and Christian R. Raschle

Exclusive victimhood, higher ethnic and lower national identities predict less support for reconciliation among native and Chinese Indonesians through mutual prejudice

Although the colonial era in Indonesia has ended, the legacy of conflict persists. Current conflicts between native and Chinese Indonesians has a colonial underpinning as well. The Dutch classified Chinese Indonesians as middle class, having higher status than natives which changed in the post-colonial era. This classification and the consequent status changes created competitive victimhood beliefs among both groups and impacted each other’s perception, which evolved into stereotypes and persisting conflicts. This paper is based on an online survey study conducted among native and Chinese Indonesians (N = 656) who are divided by ethnicity, religion, language, and their different histories of collective victimhood but united by being part of the Indonesian nation. Using structural equation modeling, we hypothesized and found that exclusive victimhood and ethnic identity predicted higher, whereas Indonesian national identity predicted lower prejudice, and in turn, higher prejudice predicted lower support for reconciliation. These findings have theoretical implications for research on social identity and collective victimhood and practical consequences for understanding intergroup relations in multi-ethnic post-colonial contexts.

Investigating how historical legacies of militarized violence can motivate COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy: Evidence from global dyadic survey

BackgroundIn almost all countries, COVID-19 vaccines available for public use are produced outside of that country. Consistent with recent social science research, we hypothesize that legacies of violent conflict from vaccine-producing against vaccine-consuming countries may motivate vaccine hesitancy among people in targeted countries that purchase vaccines produced by the erstwhile aggressor. MethodsOur analyses draw on data from the Correlates of War project and a large, representative survey of 18,291 adults that asked respondents in 16 countries to self-report their attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccines originating from 12 potential vaccine-producing countries in December 2020 (184 country-pairs, 208,422 ratings). For the main analysis, we used random-effect linear probability models and turned to Bayesian Model Averaging to probe the robustness of the main findings. ResultsWe demonstrate that elevated levels of historical violence between vaccine-producing and vaccine-consuming countries are associated with increased negative feelings toward a COVID-19 vaccine produced by the vaccine producer. ConclusionGlobal vaccine hesitancy may result, at least in part, from public perceptions of historical conflict between vaccine-producing and vaccine-consuming countries. These results can help public health practitioners better preempt and adjust for cross-national vaccine resistance.

The ‘Unforgivable’?: Irish Republican Army (IRA) informers and dealing with Northern Ireland conflict legacy, 1969-2021

ABSTRACT The case of Northern Ireland and ex-IRA informers demonstrates the difficulty of dealing with the informer legacy post-conflict. We explain why Sinn Féin and the UK state have dealt with some conflict legacy cases involving informers but not with others. Contemporary political and reputational reasons are an important explanation, but there are also legal considerations and communal pressures at play. Divisions amongst alleged and self-confessed informers further facilitate this unstructured approach to legacy. These difficulties with informers’ legacy are not unique to Northern Ireland. Similar challenges in reconciling former state agents with paramilitaries are evident across other conflicts.

Abortion access and Colombia's legacy of civil war: between reproductive violence and reproductive governance

Abstract In 2022, Colombia decriminalized abortion, making it ostensibly a site of progressive abortion politics. Within hours, however, the ruling was met with intense, high-level backlash that positioned abortion as a threat to the Colombian family and gestured to gendered conflict harms past and present. Colombia's legal framework on abortion has emerged largely due to campaigning that unfolded during periods of intense political violence and insecurity, in a setting where conflict and (post-)conflict exist on a continuum. Combined, this points to the significance of (post-)conflict politics to understanding abortion politics, and vice versa, in the Colombian space. Here, we use interview data gathered in 2018 to argue that the two should be understood in tandem—and, indeed, that one cannot be properly understood without the other, shaped as they both are by a militant conservative nationalism inflected by religion, machismo and natalism, and by the material legacies of conflict. Decriminalization should therefore be understood as part of resurgent conservative reproductive governance, and abortion politics itself as an agonistic space of contestation rather than straightforwardly progressive. Beyond Colombia, it is also indicative of the rich insights on gender justice in conflict spaces that can be drawn from analysing abortion politics.