scholarly journals Social-Ecological Peace – A framework to analyze the transition from violence to peace in post-conflict areas, applied to Aceh, Indonesia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yanuardi Yanuardi ◽  
Bettina Bluemling ◽  
Frank Biermann
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Structural Effects ◽  
Conflict Studies ◽  
New Era ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Cultural Violence ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Time Structures ◽  
Slow Violence ◽  
Ecological Dimension

While the analysis of peace often stops with "negative peace" in conflict studies (Shields 2017), critical structural analyses of a transition towards peace risk to analytically emphasize how wartime structures extend into post-conflict times (see e.g. Lee 2020). In this article, by engaging with the two fields of conflict studies and political ecology, a framework is developed that allows a critical analysis of resilient structures and discourses from times of conflict, as well as of possible leverage points that could support a transition towards what is here conceptualized as "social ecological peace". The framework hence helps to understand in how far dimensions of prior violence have transformed into peace, and if certain dimensions of violence have continued, even though they manifest themselves in a different way. The framework builds on Galtung’s conceptualization of violence and peace, but realigns "cultural violence" with Pierre Bourdieu's "symbolic violence". Additionally, for extending the framework with an ecological dimension and historical dimension, the notion of 'slow violence' by Rob Nixon is introduced. Applying the framework to Aceh, Indonesia, shows how cultural peace allows individuals to narrate and act out of a new identity, and in this way, enables them to put into effect structures of a new era of positivesocial-ecological peace. At the same time, discourses that are inherited from wartime and transform into peace time structures risk to carry violence in them. It becomes important to lay open the structural effects of the very discourses that have supported Aceh’s autonomy, so that they may not further extend structural violence into peace times. This is likely to remain a challenge in a context that is described as still negotiating and struggling to enhance its autonomy (Setyowati 2020a).

scholarly journals Online and Offline Representations of Biocultural Diversity: A Political Ecology Perspective on Nature-Based Tourism and Indigenous Communities in the Brazilian Pantanal

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 3643 ◽  
Author(s):  
Koen Arts ◽  
Maiara Rabelo ◽  
Daniela de Figueiredo ◽  
Georgina Maffey ◽  
Antonio Ioris ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Biocultural Diversity ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Counter Narratives ◽  
Conceptual Flexibility ◽  
Brazilian Pantanal

The concept of biocultural diversity is confronted with contemporary changes that impact on local communities, such as globalization and digital transformations. Engaging the conceptual flexibility of ‘biocultural diversity’, we studied nature-based tourism at the intersection of indigenous communities and the digital realm. We employed a political ecology perspective to examine online and offline representations of biocultural diversity in the Brazilian Pantanal, one of the biggest wetlands in the world, and home to groups of peoples known as the Pantaneiros. Data from interviews with 48 stakeholders in the tourist sector were structured along three ‘myths’—the Uncivilised, Unrestrained, and Unchanged—for which we have also constructed counter narratives. Each myth denoted the primacy of biodiversity, and ignored broader dimensions of the Pantanal as a bioculturally diverse landscape. The relationships of the Pantaneiros with their environment were found to be intricate and had clear repercussions for tourism, but ironically, reference to the Pantaneiro culture in nature-based tourism was superficial. Moreover, thriving on the myths, this form of tourism perpetuates skewed power structures and social inequalities. Lower-class Pantaneiros likely suffer most from this. We recommend stakeholder engagement with a biocultural design that facilitates the integration of other-than-biodiversity values, and that thereby promotes sustainability of the entire social-ecological system.

Collective Memory After Violent Conflict

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Markus Breitweg
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Conflict Studies ◽  
Ideal Types ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Effective Interventions ◽  
Peace And Conflict Studies ◽  
Peace And Conflict ◽  
Heuristic Device ◽  
The One ◽  
Violent Conflicts

This chapter develops a framework for the analysis of collective memory in post-conflict settings. It is argued that so far collective memory is not sufficiently theorized within peace and conflict studies, even though in the aftermath of violent conflicts competing memories easily become subject to salient struggles that may even result in yet another outburst of violence. It is these competing representations of the past that researchers should more thoroughly concern themselves with and that they lack an appropriate heuristic device for. Focusing on processual and multidimensional concepts from the fashionable field of memory studies, the author proposes a new framework for analysis that offers categories and ideal-types for practice-oriented research. Based on poststructuralist discourse analysis, the framework allows to link discursive structures and patterns of identity, on the one hand, to actual agency on the other hand, thus facilitating effective interventions.

scholarly journals Scalar fixes of environmental management in Java, Indonesia

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 565-589 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin C Lukas ◽  
Michael Flitner
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Environmental Conflicts ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Environmental Narratives ◽  
Segara Anakan Lagoon ◽  
Lock In ◽  
Cultural And Political Ecology ◽  
Knowledge Claims ◽  
Scalar Analysis

This paper analyses the emergence and fixing of scales in struggles over environmental issues. Using the example of watershed and coastal management in Java, we show how political framings of environmental matters and struggles over resources are linked to scalar regimes. We conceptualise these regimes as scalar fixes in which scales of intervention and scales of knowledge production are bound by environmental narratives and social–ecological processes to produce lock-in effects for prolonged periods of time. In our empirical case, particular scales were central in providing ‘problem closure’ and legitimising interventions while precluding other problematisations. Sedimentation of the Segara Anakan lagoon, first desired to support conversion into a rice bowl, was later framed as threat caused by upland peasants. The lock-in of interpretive framings and scales of observation and intervention, which was linked to politics of forest control, impeded debate on the various causes of sedimentation. With our newly defined concept of scalar fixes we contribute to understanding environmental narratives and related knowledge, providing a complement to the micro-perspectives on the stabilisation of knowledge claims currently discussed in cultural and political ecology. In doing so, we offer an approach to scalar analysis of environmental conflicts linking environmental narratives with the material social–ecological processes enrolled.

The multifaceted relationship between land and violent conflict: the case of Apaa evictions in Amuru district, northern Uganda

2017 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 455-477 ◽  
Author(s):  
Doreen Nancy Kobusingye ◽  
Mathijs van Leeuwen ◽  
Han van Dijk
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Resource Scarcity ◽  
Violent Conflict ◽  
Northern Uganda ◽  
Land Conflicts ◽  
Land Access ◽  
Post Conflict

ABSTRACTThis paper argues that violent conflict prominently impacts on land governance and so contributes to land conflicts in post-conflict settings. In the natural resources literature, the relationship between land and conflict is often explained in terms of environmental security or political ecology, and many have pointed out that the way land is governed in itself may be a source of conflict. However, less attention has been given to the effects of violent conflict on land and its governance in post-conflict situations. This paper argues that violent conflict affects land governance in many ways and that this in turn might contribute to further violent conflict. The argument builds around an extended case study of the Apaa evictions in Amuru District in Northern Uganda. The case illustrates how conflict around land is not just the result of resource scarcity and competition, but is the outcome of a combination of political, historical and social dynamics. Past policies on land and practices of land governance play a critical role in this. However at the same time, violent conflict has a critical impact on land access, transforms land governance authority and the rules applied. The land conflicts resulting from this, in turn, fuel ethnic tensions between local population groups, and grievances about those in power and the institutions that govern natural resources. The ways in which such problematic conflict-induced changes in land access and governance are dealt with by policymakers is critical for post-conflict stability.

scholarly journals Reading Trauma in History through Post-Conflict Narrative: Thakuri’s “The Descending Mountain”

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Badri Prasad Pokharel
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Democratic Movement ◽  
New Era ◽  
Elite Group ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
History Of ◽  
Perpetrators And Victims ◽  
The Voice

Maya Thakuri’s “The Descending Mountain,” is a testimony of an event that might have happened during the People’s War instigated by the Maoists towards the end of the 20th century. It has unfolded the truth hidden behind the curtain, that is, how Nepal’s geopolitical development in the post-democratic movement has made one mass depart towards the forest and raise the voice against those who were still marginalized in the name of caste, gender and ethnicity; which ultimately caused the death of more than fifteen thousand Nepali citizen and hundreds of thousands other displaced from their own homes. The theme of this article is to show a bitter truth that happened in history - the compulsion of perpetrators and victims to sabotage physically and to mourn in trauma. It is to bring the fact of Nepal’s hinterlands’ people’s history of traumatic life – how much traumatic their life was, as well as the reluctance of the civil society to such grave tale. The end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the new era, in political development to grab the power from the elite group have been remarkable to heed for the historians and academicians to knit the very emotional facts in the form of narratives, which is called here post-conflict narrative. Mrs. Thakuri, to some extent, is successful to weave a plot of a mother and her daughter on the background of the People’s War – a historical turning point in the history of Nepal and narrativize the painful traumatic story to the readers.

Social–ecological dynamics in irrigated agriculture in dry zone Sri Lanka: a political ecology

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 629-637 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sören Köpke ◽  
Sisira Saddhamangala Withanachchi ◽  
Ruwan Pathiranage ◽  
Chandana Rohana Withanachchi ◽  
Angelika Ploeger
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Irrigated Agriculture ◽  
Ecological Dynamics ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Dry Zone

Transforming wood energy in Sweden and Chile

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 361-377
Author(s):  
Cristián Alarcón
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Renewable Energy ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Environmental Communication ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Wood Energy ◽  
Critical Approaches ◽  
International Forestry

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to critically analyse and problematize the relations between international forestry companies and wood energy in the context of climate change in Chile and Sweden. Design/methodology/approach Based on interviews, field observations and analysis of documents, case studies of international forestry companies and wood energy in local areas of Chile and Sweden are examined comparatively. A conceptual framework combining political ecology and environmental communication is developed to approach the cases. Findings The paper finds that the two international forestry companies studied here have widely incorporated the use of wood energy as a renewable and carbon neutral energy strategy for their forestry business. Second, the paper finds that wood energy is used as a way to reproduce forestry development in the two countries, which is contested by NGOs and activists which are today articulating critical approaches to forestry development in the two countries. Third, related to the former finding, the paper finds that the incorporation of wood energy into the forest sector’s interests in Chile and Sweden takes place in the context of important social-ecological conflicts related to industrial forestry development. Originality/value The paper’s analytical framework helps to analyse the social-ecological nature of international business and the way they organise material practices and communicative meaning around renewable energy. The paper’s findings and analysis shed light on important problematic aspects of the material and symbolic struggles around renewable energy in the context of climate change. The comparative dimension of the analysis has the value to offer a cross-border analysis to improve the understanding of some of the most important aspects of international businesses concerning wood energy today.

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