SDC-34306 Studying Crisis: Conflict, Disaster and the Social (SDC34306)
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Summary SDC-34306 Studying Crisis: Conflict, Disaster and the Social
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SDC-34306 Studying Crisis: Conflict, Disaster and the Social (SDC34306)
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Wageningen University (WUR)
ENGLISH SUMMARY OF THE ARTICLES FOR SDC-34306 Studying Crisis: Conflict, This course is part of the Master International Development at the WUR.
- Summary of all 23 articles that were part of the course literature. 1 page per article = 23p.
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SDC-34306 Studying Crisis: Conflict, Disaster and the Social (SDC34306)
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Richards (2005): No war, no peace: an anthropology of contemporary armed conflict
Richards explains a dominant narrative which marks a shift that has taken place from traditional wars towards “new
wars”. Traditional wars are fought between different states (WW2). A rash of small wars are experienced in
Africa/Balkans/other parts of the former communist world.
Clausewits argued that war should be understood as the calculated use of violence for national political ends.
However, these new wars are seen as mindless mass action, and have become a behavioural phenomenon. The rich
countries thus cannot risk leaving these ‘new wars’ in poor, uncomfortable regions to blaze unattended. The tools
for ending these new war are not diplomacy and hard bargaining (like it used to be) but the peace keeping mission,
‘grassroots’ conflict resolution, police work and humanitarian aid. It is dangerous to analyse war as a disorderly ‘bad’
because it tends to take war out of its social context. War is foregrounded (first and foremost) as a thing in itself,
Richards argues that war is just one social project among many competing social projects. Foregrounding (make
most imp feature) of war risks disabling precisely the strategies and tools of social organization, culture, and politics
through which violence can be reduced and its adverse effects mitigated. To understand war, we must first deny it
special status and instead grasp its character as one among many different phases or aspects of social reality.
Richards defines war (and new wars) as long-term struggle organized for political ends, commonly but not always
using violence. War does not break out because conditions are right (‘environmental’ factors, ‘clash of cultures’ etc.)
but because they are organized. War is inescapably sociological. Richards is critical of the dominant new wars
discourse and looks at the new wars differently, he advocates for an Ethnographic approach. He stresses that war is
a social project among many competing social projects and thinks in in terms of a continuum (does not accept the
categorical distinction between ‘war’ and ‘peace’).
Richards gives 3 explanations for the emergence of new wars (in the 1990s).
o Malthus with guns: wars are caused by a competition of scarce resources (as a consequence of increased
population pressures).
o In line with homer-Dixon who finds that environmental scarcity causes violent conflict.
o Ex: Nile region = political tension not conflict or the privatization of water in Colombia = no war but
unrest.
o New barbarism: The cold war super-powers kept the lid on many local conflicts but once the cold war ended
space for contestation open up. Endemic hostilities reasserted themselves illustrating that ‘culture’ and
‘ethnicity’ are ineradicable (unable to get rid of) ‘things-in-themselves’.
o Violence is seen as barbarism: the irrational use of violence just to hurt and destroy not to fight for a
just cause. The irrational stirring up of old hatred.
o Ex: suppression of Hutu and Tutsi culture, once colonizers left space was opened up and conflict
erupted in Rwanda. Boko haram, internal terrorism
o Greed not grievance: conflict is not caused by grievance (injustice to a part of the population who want to
claim revenge) but only by economic interests and the will to expand (greed). These wars are seen as
apolitical, and thus do not need diplomacy but international policing. This explanation has become the global
explanatory summary of choice.
o Ex: Current Mozambique conflict with IS presence. They want to terrorize the region for economic
reasons (drug cartel).
Richards disagrees with these 3 explanations and suggests that new wars needs to be understood in relation to
patterns of violence already embedded within society, he calls this the ethnographic perspective. He stressed 2
themes: war belongs within society and mono-causal perspectives (focus on a single source) are unsatisfactory. He
concludes that comparative evidence establishes no single explanation for war. He argues for less emphasis on what
triggers war but more emphasis on exploring how people make war and peace. In denying the irreducible social
content of war and peace we risk disabling the ‘smartest’ of all assets for transcending a state of war.
Own Critique on the 3 explanations: it is not possible to give exact examples of each of these explanations/kinds of
wars. Hence, we need a more nuanced look and consider minor cleavages too. link to Kalyvas
,Cramer (2003): Does inequality cause conflict?
This paper suggests that economic inequality is important to explaining civil conflict, but that the links are not as
direct as is often supposed. There is a growing literature claiming that there is a general pattern according to which
inequality is bad for growth. Cramer is critical of this orthodox economics analyses and proposes an alternative
perspective that is determinedly relational and historical. This alternative perspective stresses that it is not so much
the extent of inequality as the kind of inequality that is likely to matter, inequality and conflict do not have a linear
relationship. Furthermore, such a perspective on inequality may offer greater insights for the understanding of
violence.
Cramer does not have much confidence in mainstream economic analysis of the role of inequality in the origins of
conflicts. She problemises the way in which we define and analyze inequality and identifies shortcomings in our
ability to measure it. The link between inequality and economic growth and the distribution/conflict relationship are
unstable empirically. Another weakness lies in the quality of the data on inequality itself. There are also the
weaknesses in data on violence and war, stemming from complex problems in defining and categorizing violent
conflict. Instead, we need to ask what kind of inequality prevails. because economic inequality for example has
different effect than resource/social inequality
Two case studies are given, that of Angola and Rwanda, countries that share dramatic inequalities and both have
periods of extremely violent conflict, but their histories are substantially different.
o Angola: inequality is a hugely important factor in the prolonged history of violent conflict in Angola, but only
if conceived from the outset in these political economy terms, in which the ‘economic’ is internally related to
the social and political: economic inequality exists by virtue of the social and political forces that give rise to
it, just as material forces shape the social and political.
o Rwanda: Inequality took three particular forms: one is reflected in the behavior of an elite clique, another is
reflected in the Hutu/Tutsi categorical pairing, and the last one is evolved on the edge of survival in rural
population, land and policy dynamics. It was the relation between these particular kinds of inequality was
what gave a murderous passion to the point-blank relations of envy, grievance, greed and fear
The authors concludes that economic inequality is hugely important to explaining civil conflict, but only insofar as
the economic is considered inseparable from the social, political, cultural and historical. This allows the significance
of varying kinds of inequality to become clearer. It is thus important to focus on the variety of ways in which
inequalities are managed and the ways in which some progressive changes can be achieved within structures of
enduring categorical difference.
, Kalyvas (2003): The Ontology of "Political Violence": Action and Identity in Civil Wars
Kalyvas discusses several problems regarding our current understanding of political violence related to actions,
motivations, and identities in civil wars. There is a disjunction between dynamics at the top and at the bottom which
weakens the pre-vailing assumptions about civil wars, which are most often informed by two competing interpretive
frames described as "greed and grievance.". The actions "on the ground" often turn out to be related to local and
private conflicts rather than the war's “master" cleavage. Prevailing perception on Civil wars are often informed by
rigid, binary categories Kalyvas looks beyond these and point to the interaction between political and private
identities and actions. Wars are complex and ambiguous processes that foster the "joint" action of local and
supralocal actors, civilians, and armies, whose alliance results in violence that aggregates yet still reflects their
diverse goals.
Kalyvas critique’s the most recent greed and grievance in line with Richards
Greed: wars are motivated by motivated by greed and looting. It stressing an ontology of civil wars
characterized by the breakdown of authority and subsequent anarchy. Civil wars encourage the privatization
of violence, and prioritizes the private sphere at the exclusion of the political
Grievance: entails an ontology of civil wars based on abstract group loyalties and beliefs, whereby the
political enemy becomes a private adversary only by virtue of a prior collective and impersonal enmity. It
stresses the fundamentally political nature of civil war
Rather than posit a dichotomy of greed vs. grievance, Kalyvas points to the interaction between political and
private identities and actions. Kalyvas looks beyond the binary and combines greed AND grievance = they are
intertwined.
A civil war is never just about 1 thing there are multiple motivations to participate in war. Civil wars are not binary
conflicts but complex and ambiguous processes that foster an apparently massive, though variable, mix of identities
and action. in line with Nordstrom
Kalyvas talks about the Ontology (nature of being) of "Political Violence": she argues that there is no real ‘core’ or
single element that fuels war, instead there are interlocking agenda’s (interlocking politics) and there are many
different layers that fuel war (like an onion). So violent conflict happens at multiple levels. There are local and
master cleavages
master cleavages: the bigger/dominant story about what a conflict is about.
o Ex: Tigray conflict is seen as a border or ethnic conflict fought between the powers in Tigray and
Addis Abba. in reality so much more complex.
local cleavages: explanations of a conflict at a lower level, which are diverse and intertwined (there are
many local cleavages in a conflict)
o ex: struggles over land/water/ethnicity/personal rivalries/etc.
Dynamics of civil war are substantially shaped by local cleavages (but often neglected- 4 reasons). Civil wars are
imperfect and fluid aggregations of multiple, more or less overlapping, smaller, diverse, and localized civil wars.
The widely observed ambiguity in civil wars is fundamental rather than incidental. Kalyvas traces the theoretical
source of this observation (ambiguity) to the disjunction between identities and actions, which takes 2 forms:
o actions "on the ground" are often more related to local or private issues than to the war's driving (or
"master") cleavage
o individual and local actors take advantage of the war to settle local or private conflicts often bearing little or
no relation to the causes of the war or the goals of the belligerent local actors using the master cleavage
in order to rectify their own grievances/motivations.
ex: Hutu/Tutsi war was an “ethnic war” but on the ground people uses this narrative to solve their own disputes
(to solve disputes between Tutsi neighbors)
Little theory on the interaction between supralocal and local actors, and the private and public spheres. Kalyvas
outlines the missing theoretical account.
Cleavage: a symbolic formation that simplifies, streamlines, and incorporates a confusing variety of local
conflicts. Creating a view compatible with the way outside observers who rely on a "master narrative" to tell
a straight compelling story out of many complex one
Alliance: transaction between supralocal and local actors, whereby the supralocal supply local actors with
external muscle allowing them to win crucial local advantage. In exchange the supralocal rely on local
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