Interpreting Political Violence

This Section explores the cutting edge of new interpretive approaches to the study of political violence. Recent years have seen the introduction of several new interpretive approaches into this highly contested space, approaches that choose different places at which to draw the boundaries between war and terror, between politics and violence, and between ideology and interests. While different interpretations overlap much more than they did in the past, each has its own epistemological presumptions, methodological tendencies, and canonical truths. The Section will be structured to emphasize enduring and influential interpretations in the literature on political violence, while drawing attention to key, contemporary debates. This should serve as both a theoretical grounding and a map of the field, with the intention of highlighting exciting areas for further investigation. The Section aims to bring together distinguished scholars and younger researchers not only from political science, but from related disciplines, including economics, sociology, geography, anthropology, psychology, historical science, international relations, and area studies. It seeks to further the development of research on political violence in Europe and globally, to contribute to the further development of an international network of scholars in this field and to promote collaborative publication of books and/or journals issues. Six Panels, listed below, have been selected from proposals by Standing Group members. Two additional Panels will give other scholars the opportunity to propose panels.  1. Narratives on Violent Groups: Reconciling the Contentious Politics and Interactionist Paradigms ? Chair: Marie-Christine Doran, University of Ottawa Co-Chair: M. A. Adib Bencherif, University of Ottawa Research on political violence and radicalization in both the English and French-speaking worlds has recently seen the emergence of Social Movement Studies interpretations. However, one has been influenced by the contentious politics paradigm centered around contextualizing violence in order to understand the broader political processes, the reciprocal adaptations of the repertoires of action and the construction of collective identity. While the other has seen the emergence of the interactionist paradigm. While the contentious politics approach seeks to identify processes and dynamics that can help us explain causal links, the interactionist approach focuses on the sequences of actions in situ and is more attentive to the lived experiences of actors and their contingency. Our Panel seeks to engage a discussion surrounding these two approaches in the study of political violence and radicalization, in order to identify innovative ways to interpret these phenomena. 2. Reinterpreting Political Violence in History Chair: Leena Malkki, University of Helsinki Co-chair: Florian Edelmann, Aberystwyth University Understanding the promises and challenges of historical research on political violence and the process of history-writing has not always been a strength of theoretical literature on political violence. While the literature on civil wars has stronger traditions on studying historical events, terrorism studies, on the other hand, is famous for its excessive focus on current events. This means in effect that the views on the historical terrorist campaigns tend to be based on hopelessly outdated information. The problem is strongly visible e.g. in how the terrorism literature remains largely untouched by the recent transnational turn in the “1960s literature”. This Panel welcomes Papers approaching political violence from the point of view of memory and history(writing), e.g. politics of memory, historiography, new interpretations of historical violent conflicts and methodological questions (e.g. use of oral history interviews and archival material). 3. Political Violence in the Information Age Chair: Niall Ó Dochartaigh, National University of Ireland Galway Co-chair: Sarah Marsden, Lancaster University New information and communication technologies are working deep changes in patterns of political violence and the dynamics of civil war in the most directly material ways. This Panel welcomes Papers on all aspects of the relationship between new technologies and political violence, including papers on the way in which new technologies interact with temporal and spatial contexts, with ideology and with organisational structures. It also welcomes Papers that deal with the changing character of negotiation and mediation of political violence in the information age. 4. Civilian Agency in anti-Civilian violence Chair: Francis O’Connor – COSMOS Co-chair: Bahar Baser Coventry University This Panel draws on the overlap between the literature on communal violence and on political violence. Recent work has focused on the strategic logic of insurgent targeting of civilians, emphasising competition for resources and territorial control. Arguably such approaches fail to account for civilian agency both as victims and perpetrators. This panel will address a number of key questions: How can we understand the status of civilians in instances of insurgent and communal violence? Are insurgent – civilian distinctions useful in disaggregating collective violence? At what point does civilian resistance to or participation in armed groups and militias render them no longer civilians? Under what conditions can civilian mobilisation prevent or inhibit violence against civilians? 5. A Socio-Spatial Relational Approach to Political Violence Chair: Lorenzo Bosi, Scuola Normale Superiore Co-Chair: Stefan Malthaner, Aarhus University Armed groups, even clandestine ones, do not operate in isolation but are embedded in different forms of socio-spatial relationships that include interactions with broader movements, supportive milieus, and constituencies; notions of safe territories and territorial control, as well as economic exchange relations. This panel aims to explore how socio-spatial relations shape armed groups’ communication, information sharing, solidarity actions, networks coordination, and resource mobilization that enable and constrain their political and strategic options, including the resort to different violent repertoires, which, in turn, can re-configure the socio-spatial settings in which armed groups operate. 6. Gender, Inequality, and Political Violence Chair: Stacey Scriver, National University of Ireland, Galway Co-Chair: Jennifer McCleary-Sills, International Centre for Research on Women, Washington DC This Panel welcomes both theoretical and empirically grounded Papers that consider political violence through a gendered lens. Areas of consideration include, but are not limited to: the relationship between violence in the private sphere and political violence; gender and political decision-making in contexts of conflict; intersections of political violence, gender and other forms of inequality (economic, ethno-nationalist, class, sexuality); masculinities and political violence; reconfigurations of political violence through a gendered perspective.