Short Abstract

This panel explores how basic services are delivered, denied, or disrupted in crisis-affected contexts, and how this shapes power, agency, and imagined futures. We welcome contributions, especially from those working in or from conflict- and crisis-affected settings.

Description

In conflict- and crisis-affected contexts, the delivery of basic services — such as health, education, water, and infrastructure — is often profoundly disrupted, politicised, or instrumentalised. Rather than stabilising governance, service delivery may reflect or deepen violence, fragmentation, and exclusion. Yet these same services remain deeply desired by crisis-affected communities, and continue to offer spaces for agency, negotiation, and hope.

This panel invites critical reflection on service delivery in crisis settings — whether shaped by armed conflict, displacement, political instability, or institutional collapse. We ask: How is power exercised through the delivery or denial of services? Who acts, adapts, or resists in fractured systems? What kinds of futures are imagined, enabled, or foreclosed through service provision in crisis?

We welcome papers that explore themes such as:

– The co-production or obstruction of services by state, non-state, and customary actors

– The moral and practical dilemmas of frontline provision in violent settings

– The weaponisation of essential services

– How services are used to claim legitimacy, build resilience, or resist authority

We are particularly keen to include contributions from researchers and practitioners working in or from crisis-affected contexts, and encourage diverse methodological and disciplinary approaches. The panel aims to foster dialogue between scholars and practitioners to reimagine what service delivery means — and does — in contexts of enduring uncertainty and crisis.

This Panel has 6 pending paper proposals.
Propose paper