Sadeen Haddad
“Combined, Fellow presentations and the vibrant discussion amongst conference participants pointed to several new and exciting avenues of research that are both firmly situated in ongoing debates on the social dynamics of civil war, yet urge us to think beyond conceptual boundaries that have shaped dominant assumptions in the literature.”
The Civil War Paths project recently hosted its fifth Annual Conference, where outgoing Fellows presented their current research, which spanned numerous conceptual approaches and empirical case studies of armed conflict. The discussions included insights on civilian displacement and violence born through the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria, historical and ongoing cases of rebel governance, civilian protests in Myanmar, and displacement of Sudanese refugees in eastern Chad. Whilst last year’s Annual Conference focused on disaggregating intra- and inter-group relations, this year’s conference pushed us to consider how we can challenge conceptual boundaries around relations, territory, and actor agency. Engaging more deeply with the social relations that underpin patterns of conflict was another critical takeaway.
Social relations underpinning rebel order
What accounts for variation in governance structures deployed by an armed actor across different territories? Through the case study of rebel governance during the Italian civil war, Edoardo Corradi provided unique insights into the role of local dynamics, and territorial size and boundaries in shaping diverse rebel governance institutions. This discussion raised important questions around how we engage with rigid territorial boundaries and potentially overlapping social relations and infrastructure, which surpass territorial separation. Challenging conceptual boundaries was extended to the discussion of ‘actors’, and the increasingly blurred lines between ‘civilian’ and ‘rebel’ actors. Therefore, conference participants challenged rigid territorial lines to emphasise the potential role of broad horizontal social relations, whilst calling for a greater understanding of the vertical relations between armed actors and civilians.
This reflects the importance of a closer assessment of the social relations that underpin rebel governance orders, which was further discussed by Tony Neil, through the case of the micro-foundations of rebel order in Myanmar. Tony problematised inherent assumptions around power dynamics between armed actors and civilian communities, emphasising that power is not only imposed, but can also be enacted through ongoing relations. Civilian compliance with armed actors, therefore, is better understood not as an outcome of rebel coercion, but rather as underpinned by long-term relations that encompass civilian agency. This discussion challenged the conception of power as a static factor, and instead illuminated the continually evolving and relationally constructed nature of ‘power’.
The multifaceted nature of wartime civilian agency
The nature of civilian compliance in particular, and identifying the parameters of civilian agency more generally, was a critical question that continued into the second panel. Specifically, Imrana Buba presented insights on the interplay between civilian compliance and victimization in the case of Boko Haram. This discussion urged us to consider the varying forms that civilian ‘compliance’ can take, and how this variation shapes patterns of violence and displacement. Indeed, this highlighted the importance of thinking more deeply about civilian agency, stimulating discussion on how to discern the factors that influence civilian compliance and its different forms.
These themes were extended through Thao-Nguyen Ha’s research on migration and wartime civilian protests in the case of the Democratic Republic of Congo. This presentation stressed the interplay between collective action, territorial competition, and displacement of conflict-affected communities in the emergence of patterns of conflict-related protests. In particular, civilian decisions on whether to protest armed actors and how are shaped through relations with contending actors and their territorial advancements. This finding reiterates the importance of engaging with intersecting factors impacting – as well as the parameters surrounding and the repertoire underlying – civilian agency.
Seeing conflict dynamics through a gendered lens
In our concluding panel, Camille Laville shifted our attention to issues surrounding land access among Sudanese refugees in eastern Chad. These include the multilevel barriers that refugee women face in accessing land, including through systematic hurdles in Chadian land governance, as well as ambiguous local perceptions of women’s entitlement to land, which limit their ability to use land as a resilience strategy. This impact of land inaccessibility and the specific intersectional challenges shed light on the unique constraints of women refugees, especially widowed and pregnant women, as well as the centrality of this issue in the case of Chad.
Adopting a gendered lens also helps disentangle patterns of wartime violence. Promise Ejiofor’s research on gendercide in the case of Boko Haram addressed patterns of gendered violence against boys and men in the conflict-affected northeast region of Nigeria. These patterns, however, can be underpinned not only the perception of men as potential combatants but also other social perceptions and relations between various actors involved in the conflict.
Avenues for future research
Combined, Fellow presentations and the vibrant discussion amongst conference participants pointed to several new and exciting avenues of research that are both firmly situated in ongoing debates on the social dynamics of civil war, yet urge us to think beyond conceptual boundaries that have shaped dominant assumptions in the literature. More specifically, critical engagement with the permeable boundaries of ‘territory’ and ‘actorness’, and indeed the location of agency as we disaggregate actors, is needed to better grasp the complex relations that shape wartime dynamics. Further, considering territory both as an analytical lens but equally as an interactive dynamic of conflict can help get at the interplay between civilian compliance (and contestation) and armed actors’ territorial competition. Lastly, these discussions pointed to the importance of incorporating a temporal lens in our analyses of how patterns of conflict shift over time. Bringing these different dimensions into sustained dialogue is a promising next step in ongoing and future research on civil war as a social process.
