Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenors:
-
Valentina Zagaria
(University of Manchester)
Veronica Ferreri (Ca' Foscari University)
Maya Avis (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology)
Send message to Convenors
- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- 9 University Square (UQ), 01/006
- Sessions:
- Friday 29 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Armed conflict often disrupts established hierarchies and ways of structuring social, political and economic life. This panel explores both the temporary and more long-lasting social arrangements and practices of commoning emerging in these contexts despite violence looming large.
Long Abstract:
Times of insurrection or siege, as well as protracted conflict, disrupt established ways of structuring social, political, and economic life. New solidarities and collectivities can form around needs and resources, as well as in reaction to political commitments, both in moments of open fighting and in their aftermath. These modes of collective organising and practices of commoning can also endure or re-emerge in the context of drawn-out, unresolved conflict. Experiences of peer-governance can nurture collectivities through time. This panel will reflect on the social, political, and economic experimentation occurring during and after conflict, including in the nearby sites to which the displaced have fled. It will also consider the ways in which those involved in forging different social arrangements conceptualise their shared efforts.
We are interested in papers about such diverse responses as organising around access to land, water, mobility, electricity or care, the use of space and housing, as well as papers on the administration of law, order, and education in contexts where these institutions no longer function. Who are the different actors involved in these collective projects, and what practices bring them together? What terms do those involved use to define their reconstitution of social relations? How do these relations and practices relate to and exist alongside those of the state, humanitarian actors, or families?
Our research is based in the Middle East and North Africa, but we hope to engage with papers reflecting the broad range of contexts in which people (re)organise in and beyond violent conflict.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 29 July, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the lived experiences of Rwandan youth conceived from genocide rape as they move between their attachments with the past, present social worlds, and collectively imagined futures. The role of NGOs in creating spaces of togetherness to shape ‘collective identities’ is interrogated.
Paper long abstract:
This paper details the lived experiences of Rwandan youth conceived from rape during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. It is based on 30 months of ethnographic research that explored the social worlds and family relations of young people and their mothers. The research was conducted in close collaboration with NGOs that organize ‘youth camps’ to bring young people together to share experiences and create social support networks. The ‘collective identities’ that are formed in these ‘youth camps’ are influenced by national narratives around unity and reconciliation that are transmitted by NGOs and state actors to ‘teach’ forgiveness. The study found that young people used ‘taught’ language around ‘forgiveness’ and ‘reconciliation’ to give meaning to their fraught and fragile positions within kinship ties and social communities. In finding commonality within their lived experiences – in which loneliness and isolation was often central – these ‘youth camps’ allowed young people to find strength and self-acceptance as a collective, which in turn allowed them to adopt and adapt discourses around hope for their futures and the peaceful future of Rwanda. Therefore, this paper highlights how language ‘taught’ by NGOs impacts the ways in which young people conceived from violence understand and perceive their (common and individual) past, present and future. Importantly, this paper also asks scholars to reflect on how academic discourses around children and young people conceived from violence imposes a ‘collectivity’ upon them that may not be experienced by them as such.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores feelings of hope and hopelessness, which are influenced by embodied experiences of past and present violence, among social workers in post-conflict Belfast. It addresses how the memory of the past connect to the imagined future the social workers want for themselves and the others.
Paper long abstract:
“I’ve lost too many kids”. Since the conventional end of the latest Northern Irish conflict (1998), social workers have been at the forefront of social and health interventions to ease those wounds of the past (Fassin and Rechtman 2009) that were still affecting many (Tomlinson 2012). This contribution focuses on feelings of hope and hopelessness among social workers in post-conflict Belfast that are influenced by embodied experiences of past and present violences (Kleinman 2000). The work builds on ethnographic data collected in a youth centre in one segregated working-class area of Belfast. Social workers’ past and personal experiences of the conflict are shared with the young people and mothers in their care. Moreover, experiences of a violent past and present reveal the social workers’ emotions towards an uncertain future. This influences how social workers provide ‘care’ and construct ‘hope’, helping them to imagine a future where young people will not experience the suffering of the past. This paper also discusses how feelings of hopelessness obstacle the social workers’ ability to do their job. Thus, it also looks at ‘failure’. The high rates of suicide among young people in the area are referred to as one important example and one of the major challenges that the social workers have to face in their line of work. In this context, feelings of hope are constructed both individually and collectively, revealing a particular relationship between the memories of the past and the imagined future the social workers want for themselves and the others.