Conflict, Violence and Peace: Critical Perspectives

1. Conflict, Violence and Peace: Critical Perspectives 12 week, 36 credit 3rd year option Anthropology and Development Studies

2. Main Themes • Compare different theoretical perspectives on the understanding, analysis and representation of conflict, violence and peace. • Understanding different forms of conflict and violence and their effects, including on different social groups • Critical review of local and international interventions to “prevent” and “manage conflict” and “build peace”. • Ethical and methodological issues involved in working and researching in contexts affected by conflict and violence.

3. Key topics A: Understanding Violence: Researching, analysing, representing conflict and violence • Understanding conflict and violence: Key concepts and perspectives • Representations of conflict and violence and their consequences • "Fieldwork under fire": Conducting research in violent places B: Living with violence: Why, how and who? • Collective violence in the name of identity (Religion, ethnicity and nationalism) • Everyday violence, fear, suffering and resistance • Gender, conflict and violence • Children, childhood and violence

4. Key topics (cont…) C: Beyond violence? Conflict transformation and recovery • Conflict management and transformation • Recovery, reconstruction and reconciliation • Conflict prevention & peacebuilding: Local and international "actors" and "approaches” • Interventions in violent contexts: Aiding violence or building peace?

5. Teaching methods • Integrated seminars comprising mini-lectures, student presentations, group work / tasks, plenary discussion and debate • Use of range of materials – books, articles, reports, policy statements, novels/plays, newspaper articles, image, video “This course is for students who are willing to participate in critical analysis and debate about how and why violence continues to blight the lives of millions of individuals and societies across the world and to examine where and when human beings have prevented, resisted, encouraged and used violence.” Dr Lyndsay McLean Hilker, Course Convenor, part-time Lecturer in Anthropology and Development and Consultant in International Development

6. Example readings • Scheper Hughes, N. and P. Bourgois, eds. (2003) Violence in War and Peace. Oxford: Blackwell • Nordstrom, C. (2004) Shadows of War: Violence, Power, and International Profiteering in the Twenty-First Century. Berkeley: University of California Press. • Gasper, D. (1999) ‘Violence and Suffering, Responsibility and Choice: Issues in Ethics and Development’, European Journal of Development Research, Vol.11, No.2, pp.1-22. • Nordstrom, C. & A.C.G.M. Robben (eds). (1995) Fieldwork Under Fire: Contemporary Studies of Violence and Survival. Berkeley: University of California Press • Sen, A. (2006) Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny. London: Allen Lane. • Das, V. (2001) Remaking a World: Violence, Social Suffering and Recovery Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. • Moser, C. O. N. and Clark, F. C., Victims, Perpetrators or Actors ? Gender, Armed Conflict and Political Violence, Zed Books, London • Abu-Nimer, M. ed. (2001) Reconciliation, Justice and Coexistence: Theory and Practice. Maryland: Lexington Books. • Lederach, John Paul, 1998, Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies United States Institute of Peace Press. • Uvin, P. (1998) Aiding Violence: The Development Enterprise in Rwanda. West Hartford: Kumurian Press.