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This paper ethnographically studies 'conflict resolution' initiatives in Cyprus led by the United Nations and other international bodies. Involving both 'local' and 'global' actors as agents operating on the same plane, conflict resolution projects and 'bi-communal' initiatives have been considered and enstaged as models of and for social relations among Turkish- and Greek-Cypriots in a future-projected peace. This paper studies this performance of social relations in bi-communal gatherings among activists from members of communities deemed to be 'in conflict' with one another. It then studies the Annan Plan proposed by the United Nations for the resolution of the Cyprus problem. Conclusions are drawn about the management and legal codification of 'local' social relations on a 'global'/international scale.

Paper short abstract:

The dichotomy violence-peace entraps our thought, and that dismantling it is a prerequisite for grasping the complexities of contemporary social realities. Cultural specificities of violence notwithstanding, Benjamin’s and Agamben’s ‘state of exception’ may prove an inspiring framework for this integration in the contemporary world.

Paper long abstract:

'Peace' and 'violence' constitute hegemonic modern (Western?) ideas and phantasies which are embedded in our very thinking of the social. Intertwined with images of civilisation and barbarism, they have become a fundamental tool-kit in othering non-Western societies up to the present, in their representation as sites of violence, Western societies being defined thereby as sites of peace. Although explicit zoning of violence and peace has not gained much currency in anthropology, a manifest tendency to focus on violence in its outstanding material occurences in non-Western contexts implicitly hints at that direction. At the same time, although several strands of social theory come to question this divide, and many anthropological studies document the blurring of boundaries between peace and violence in many contexts, it seems hard to integrate them in the same frame of analysis and to conceive of violence as an aspect of the social.

In this paper then, I will argue that the dichotomy violence-peace entraps our thought, leading to reproduction and legitimation of hegemonic ideas about the social order, and about violence itself, and that dismantling it is a prerequisite for grasping the complexities of contemporary social realities. Arguing for a shift of focus to the less impressive and perceptible manifestations of violence as a way to unravel its permanent presence in all societies, including the 'peaceful' West, I will suggest that cultural specificities of violence notwithstanding, Benjamin's and Agamben's 'state of exception' may prove an inspiring framework for this integration in the contemporary world.

Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at the complex and ambiguous interactions of cultural meanings of peace and war in a colonial context. In a "pacified" colony, discourses, symbols and practices represent peace both as the result of the war and as the continuation of the war against "barbarity" on a different level.

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This paper looks at the complex interactions of cultural meanings of peace and war in a colonial context where peace is represented both as the result of the war and as a continuation of the war. In the "pacified" Libyan colony (1932 - 1943), on the one hand, the conquest and subsequent use of violence was proclaimed to have come to a conclusion, while on the other hand, the colonizers were assigned the task of continuing the colonial war against "barbarity", on a different level. In this phase, the affirmation of colonial rule and the search for stability was pursued via the progressive imposition of a political, economic and cultural order. This paper sustains the hypothesis that, in a settlement colony, the level of peace and security depends not only on the capacity of colonial authorities to overcome the resistance of the local population, but also on the subjection of the colonizers as agents of the Empire. Language, symbols and practices adopted by Italian colonizers in land reclamation and agricultural colonization, foreshadowed the beginning of a phase of colonial violence, whose object was no longer the "Colonized" but rather Nature and the territory of the colony. Based on colonial texts, autobiographies and interviews with Italian ex-colonizers, this paper underlines that in a colonial context, although the notions of peace and war are presented as being mutually exclusive in official discourses, in reality, the construction of peace is the continuation of war via other means and with other subject matters.

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This paper focuses on the way young combatants, in Bissau, make sense of the prolonged period of turmoil, that has characterised political life in the country, and illuminates the effects that continuous conflict has had on their ideas of social and individual possibilities and potentials

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on conflict as potentia and presentia in Bissau, West Africa. It shows how conflict is perceived as a constantly present social condition and illuminates how war is understood as the manifestation of this underlying bellicose potential. War and peace are not sequential but coexisting political modalities in Bissau. Rather than being a normal state of affairs calm is seen as the uncertain period between turbulence. Focusing on the experiential effects of inhabiting such chronically unstable environments the paper examines how young combatants internalise the tumultuous social situation into negative self images. It illuminates how they have come to envision themselves as bearers of socially destructive potentials, rather than the unfortunate inhabitants of zones of prolonged conflict and scarcity, and dwells on the consequences of this negative social imaginary.

Paper short abstract:

Uganda: the Lord's Resistance Army and Africa's now longest running war; an example of the emplacement of emerging and merging global forces, violently connecting Africa with Europe (or vice versa). The presentation builds on research carried out in Uganda and with the Ugandan diaspora in Europe.

Paper long abstract:

Uganda: The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and Africa's longest running war. For some two decades, the war has rolled back and forth, like the changes from rainy season to dry season and back to rainy season. Even more, increasingly becoming a global project, perhaps the business of war is now slowly turning into an equally lucrative peace business. In this presentation I argue that the two concepts of peace and war are not absolute categories. Rather they represent quotidian moments along a lived and at times very uncertain continuum. In both peace and war life is continuously constituted and reconstituted in the search for a balance between the existential and the political, the local and the global, and the past and the future. At the same time, the Ugandan war/peace reality expands in time and space, violently connecting Africa with Europe (or vice versa). The massive influx of international aid has ended up being deeply entangled with local war realities. The US government included the LRA on its post-9/11 list of global terrorist groups when the Ugandan government joined the global war on terror. The rebel leadership is wanted by the International Criminal Court. This expansion in time and space, the presentation argues, exemplifies the painful and often violent emplacement of emerging and merging global war/peace realities. The presentation builds on recurrent fieldwork in war-torn Uganda, starting from 1997, combined with research carried out with the Ugandan diaspora in Europe.