Reproduction Of Conflict Research Articles

The Eventful Places of Occupy Wall Street and Tahrir Square: Cosmopolitan Imagination and Social Movements

In 2011, social movements occupied parks and squares around the world. Occupy Wall Street and the Egyptian uprising were among the most spectacular. In this article, I investigate the physical, symbolic, and performed relationship between these social movements and their occupied places. I claim that these movements (re-)created their occupied places as eventful places where cosmopolitan (re-)creations of collective identity and social relations were imagined, enacted, and became prefigurative microcosms of an alternative communal world. First, based on a critique of mainstream social movement studies, I develop the concept of eventful place and link this to cosmopolitanism. The bulk of the article then examines the eventful (re-)creations that took place in Tahrir Square and Zuccotti Park through first-hand accounts. A critical discussion of the reproduction of conflict in the eventful places then follows. I conclude by suggesting that the eventful and cosmopolitan imagination may live on and inspire future mobilisation.

Reproduction of Conflict in History Teaching in Ukraine: A Social Identity Theory Analysis

Based on 60 semistructured interviews with history teachers in Ukraine, the ways in which social identity impacts reproduction of intergroup prejudice and conflict on the level of secondary education are explored. This involves an analysis regarding how salience and meaning of social identity of the teachers affect how they present the in-group and other groups to school pupils. The analysis reveals how teachers create conflict narratives in their classrooms by altering the teaching program and textbooks to promote their vision of a nation and the rights of specific groups to participate in nation-building processes and to define enemies and allies. The major channels of this influence are specific concepts of national identity (ethnic, multicultural, and civic), social boundaries, and collective axiology.

Peace education and childhood

Peace studies and peace education are multifaceted processes focusing on diverse audiences from children in elementary grades to those involved in political negotiations at the highest levels. This paper addresses the foundational importance of including conflict embedded in adult-child relationships in peace education. It conceptually grounds assignments for university level courses designed to teach concepts linked to peace education through the vehicle of understanding violence against children. Such learning is designed to liberate students from the hegemony of adultism, the colonial relationship between adults and children and in turn to contribute to the advancement of peace education. Such pedagogy reflects the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child’s call for educational measures to protect and support children’s human dignity. Such an approach is especially relevant for peace education, as a large body of research across disciplines has provided substantial evidence of a significant relationship between childhood experiences of violence and subsequent juvenile and adult behavioral and social problems including conflict and violence. The approach and assignments described in this paper reflect insights about the use of narratives of childhood experiences, the etiology and effects of violence against children and the reproduction of conflict and violence across generations.

Exploring the reproduction of conflict through narrative: Israeli youth motivated to participate in a coexistence program.

Contemporary Israeli youth are socialized in the context of intractable nationalist conflict with Palestinians, characterized by a “master” historical narrative of Jewish Israeli identity that exacerbates the conflict. This exploratory study examines the relation between this master narrative and the personal narratives of youth motivated to participate in a coexistence program. Narratives of youth suggest points of both convergence and divergence with the master narrative in their form, thematic content, and ideological settings. Like the larger story of Jewish Israeli identity, the stories of youth assumed a redemptive form and integrated themes of existential insecurity, historical persecution, exceptionalism, and delegitimization of Palestinian identity. Divergence with the master narrative suggested the significance of local communities and the growing pluralism of Israeli society, as well as policy shifts in Israel regarding the legitimacy of Palestinian statehood. Despite motivation to participate ...

The Liberal Peace Is Neither: Peacebuilding, State building and the Reproduction of Conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo

This article discusses the attempts at state-building by international actors in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It uses this experience to discuss some of the obstacles and dilemmas facing external state-builders. I argue that attempts at state-building by foreign actors in the DRC have not had much success, and point out four reasons. First, insufficient resources have been provided. Second, donors have used a standardized approach that does not take local context sufficiently into account. Third, domestic power relations have been such that state-building has not served the interests of key actors. Finally, the policy has been based on a fixed, non-negotiable conception of what the state eventually should look like. Although all these factors have contributed to the failure to create a liberal state in the DRC, the last two appear to be more fundamental than the first and the second.