This volume calls for an empirical extension of the “local turn” within peace research. Building on insights from conflict transformation, gender studies, critical International Relations and Anthropology, the contributions critique existing peace research methods as affirming unequal power, marginalizing local communities, and stripping the peace kept of substantive agency and voice. By incorporating scholars from these various fields the volume pushes for more locally grounded, ethnographic and potentially participatory approaches. While recognizing that any Ethnographic Peace Research (EPR) agenda must incorporate a variety of methodologies, the volume nonetheless paves a clear path for the much needed empirical turn within the local turn literature.

While many have argued in the past decade that peace and conflict studies must engage more with local actors and communities, and scholars regularly describe the importance of local context and culture for building sustainable peace, there are substantial challenges methodologically to fulfilling this 'local turn'. Many peace and conflict studies scholars are inexperienced with methods appropriate for engaging with local communities, contexts and cultures, and many of the important institutions in the field, from key journals to important funders, exhibit a continuing preference for quantitative studies. The Ethnographic Peace Research (EPR) agenda has recently been developed in response to these challenges and is one of the key avenues to providing a methodological complement to the more theoretically-focused local turn literature. This volume explores the application of the EPR approach in a number of post-conflict and conflict-affected societies around the world. While some chapters take a largely theoretical approach, most consider the practical application and the different kinds of methods that may be useful components of an EPR project. Together, the authors provide new insights into the benefits, challenges, and ethics of the emerging EPR agenda. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal International Peacekeeping.

This encyclopaedia provides a comprehensive overview of major theories and approaches to the study of peace and conflict across different humanities and social sciences disciplines. Peace and conflict studies (PCS) is one of the major sub-disciplines of international studies (including political science and international relations), and has emerged from a need to understand war, related systems and concepts and how to respond to it afterward. As a living reference work, easily discoverable and searchable, the Palgrave Encyclopedia of Peace and Conflict Studies offers solid material for understanding the foundational, historical, and contemporary themes, concepts, theories, events, organisations, and frameworks concerning peace, conflict, security, rights, institutions and development. The Palgrave Encyclopaedia of Peace and Conflict Studies brings together leading and emerging scholars from different disciplines to provide the most comprehensive and up-to-date resource on peace and conflict studies ever produced.

While many have argued in the past decade that peace and conflict studies must engage more with local actors and communities, and scholars regularly describe the importance of local context and culture for building sustainable peace, there are substantial challenges methodologically to fulfilling this ‘local turn’. Many peace and conflict studies scholars are inexperienced with methods appropriate for engaging with local communities, contexts and cultures, and many of the important institutions in the field, from key journals to important funders, exhibit a continuing preference for quantitative studies. The Ethnographic Peace Research (EPR) agenda has recently been developed in response to these challenges and is one of the key avenues to providing a methodological complement to the more theoretically-focused local turn literature. This volume explores the application of the EPR approach in a number of post-conflict and conflict-affected societies around the world. While some chapters take a largely theoretical approach, most consider the practical application and the different kinds of methods that may be useful components of an EPR project. Together, the authors provide new insights into the benefits, challenges, and ethics of the emerging EPR agenda. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal International Peacekeeping.

"The Oxford Handbook of Peacebuilding, Statebuilding, and Peace Formation offers an authoritative and comprehensive overview of peacebuilding, statebuilding, and peace formation. With contributions from over thirty distinguished and leading scholars, the Handbook provides a timely, engaging, and critical overview of conceptual foundations, political implications, and tensions at the global, regional, and local levels. It examines the key policies, practices, examples, and discourses underlining various segments of peacebuilding, statebuilding, and peace formation both as discursive formulations and as policy practices. Organized around four major thematic sections, the Handbook offers a state-of-the-art synthesis of the most pressing contemporary peace and conflict issues and charts new pathways for responding to transnational insecurities"--

This book tells the story of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, an emblematic grassroots social movement of peasant farmers, who unusually declared themselves ‘neutral’ to Colombia’s internal armed conflict, in the north-west region of Urabá. It reveals two core narratives in the Community’s collective identity, which Burnyeat calls the ‘radical’ and the ‘organic’ narratives. These refer to the historically-constituted interpretative frameworks according to which they perceive respectively the Colombian state, and their relationship with their natural and social environments. Together, these two narratives form an ‘Alternative Community’ collective identity, comprising a distinctive conception of grassroots peace-building. This study, centered on the Community’s socio-economic cacao-farming project, offers an innovative way of approaching victims’ organizations and social movements through critical, post-modern politics and anthropology. It will become essential reading to Latin American ethnographers and historians, and all interested in conflict resolution and transitional justice. Read the author's blog drawing on the book here: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/latamcaribbean/2018/06/07/colombias-unsung-heroes/

Ethnography as Risky Business: Field Research in Violent and Sensitive Contexts offers a hands-on, critical appraisal of how to approach ethnographic fieldwork on socio-political conflict and collective violence, focusing on the global south. The volume’s contributions are all based on extensive firsthand qualitative social science research conducted in sensitive--and often hazardous--field settings. The contributors reflect on real-life methodological problems as well as the ethical and personal challenges such as the protection of participants, research data and the ‘ethnographic self’. In particular, the authors highlight how ‘risky ethnography’ requires careful maneuvering before, during, and after fieldwork on the basis of a ‘situated’ ethics, yet also point to the rewards of such an endeavor. If these methodological, ethical and personal risks are managed adequately, the yields in terms of generating a deep understanding of, and critical engagement with, conflict and violence may be substantial.