The geography of war and peace
RGS-IBG 2014 Paper Session Proposal
“War and peace – what’s the difference?” asked David Keen (2000) some time ago. And indeed, war is a slippery concept. Where does war end and peace start? What is war and what is “only” a riot, violence, struggle or uprising? And what does war tell us about peace? Or politics? It was Michel Foucault who once asked the question: isn’t politics the continuation of war by other means – putting Clausewitz on his head (or on his feet). Foucault alerts us to the entanglement of state making and war making (Tilly) and to the many facets of political power, violence and warfare. This panel approaches the problematique of war as a present condition not through a philological reading of Foucault’s lectures, though, but through an empirical, ethnographic, contextual exploration of the spatial configurations of technologies, conduct, experiences and practices of war in its military, political, economic and social conditions. Such “warscapes” are multi-local, transnational, entangled landscapes of violence, destruction, coercion, suppression, fear, suffering and of excitement, enrichment, opportunity, technological advancement and social transformation. If we look at war in this way, the question about the difference of war and peace has to be re-phrased: what is it about war that is not peace, not politics? In other words: we arrive at understanding the geography of war and peace by looking at the spectacle of war in its full military might as much as at its unraveling and fuzzy boundaries and transitions to “post-war” conditions and the intricate relations between the main theatre of war, its spectacular and hidden spaces and the continuation of the “social condition” of the non-military world in the shadow of the war. We encourage paper submissions that engage with these questions by looking at 1) contemporary or historical wars, 2) different varieties of wars in the present, or 3) with processes of post-war transitions.
References:
Keen, D. (2000) ’War and peace: What’s the difference?’, International Peacekeeping, 7 (4), 1-22.
Instructions for submission of paper proposals:
Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words by 7 February 2014 to benedikt.korf@geo.uzh.ch and craig771@gmail.com
#guerre #paix #conflits #géographie