Work Packages (WP) with a focus on research
WP 3 Dynamics of violence
This WP focuses on the study of postcolonial hierarchies and how these affect dynamics of violence. The WP is subdivided into three projects investigating postcolonial hierarchies in the context of organized and everyday conflicts. How are transnational interpretations of these conflicts related to local dynamics of violence? This connection encompasses local and global relations, expressed in a local politicization of global norms or in the local embeddedness of transnational economic asymmetries. The WP pays attention to the limited spaces of possibility (agency) of local actors as well as to the distorted perceptions of state and non-state violence emanating from West-centered interpretations, which, for example, play a central role in group-based discrimination phenomena, such as racism.
This WP investigates postcolonial hierarchies through the concept of interpretive power. Local struggles over interpretation turn visible, for example, when inner cities in the Global North become the object of critique and resistance on behalf of civil society actors, who call for the decolonization of statues and street names, hence contributing to the decentering of global dynamics of conflict into local struggles of interpretation. Furthermore, Western-influenced ideas about the state, peace and violence are still applied as a universal template for interpreting non-Western settings while portraying these as imperfect and backwards. How, then, are postcolonial hierarchies politicized locally? Which conflict and violence dynamics open up as a result? Which latent colonial patterns of interpretation become locally manifest in resistance to decolonial protest as well as in the study of peace and conflict?
By means of comparing contextual, discursive, strategic, and spatial dynamics of protests in cities of Colombia and Chile, this WP analyses the dynamics of political agency and protests in urban settings characterized by postcolonial hierarchies and violence and their effects on urban order, governance, and processes of change. This research interrogates how social mobilization reflects, navigates, and challenges deep-seated structures of inequality, exclusion, and violence as well as the interplay between grassroots political agency, urban governance, and urban futures in moments of heightened social unrest and rupture through the lenses of coloniality of power.
This WP emphasizes postcolonial hierarchies as the process setting the boundaries of violence (and conceptualizations thereof), hence opening up a connection to questions of gender relations. The minibus taxi industry in South Africa serves as an example for one of the places where postcolonial and patriarchal hierarchies are emerging and where women’s experiences are particularly underexplored. In this research, conflict and violence are not reduced to ‚taxi wars.‘ The focus lies rather on the multidimensional and post-colonial forms of „everyday violence“ in which the taxi industry of South Africa is embedded. The study posits that patriarchy is an inherently violent power structure, with specific imprints on the post-colonial context in which the case study is situated. This research draws on decolonial scholarship as well as on literatures about racial capitalism and its patriarchal labor regimes.
WP 4 Security governance & peace consolidation
This WP studies the persistence of postcolonial hierarchies in security governance and peacebuilding processes. The WP engages with the critique that Western strategies in these fields follow colonial patterns of thought and practice. The project questions foreign policy assumptions by Western actors, including the alleged inability of „local“ actors to govern as well as the perceived necessity (and self-ascribed entitlement) to promote „liberal“ values alongside governance interventions. The WP addresses the hierarchical division of labor in both military and civilian peace operations by colonial powers in conflict-affected states. It also sheds light on the constitution and possible overcoming of postcolonial hierarchies in the context of South-South relations and interventions by authoritarian states.
The WP focuses on actors from the Global South and their concrete practices in the fields of security and peace. To what extent are alternative models replacing post-liberal interventions by Western states? The WP questions to what extent South-South interventions and practices of security governance and peacebuilding are different from or actually emulate post-liberal approaches. How does mimicry, i.e. the appropriation and passing on of colonially acquired repertoires of violence and repression, affect the reconfiguration and/or consolidation of postcolonial hierarchies? Conflict management such as the militarized interventions in Yemen and Syria (by Gulf- and other neighboring states), or hybrid interventions, such as those by Turkey in Azerbaijan or Russia in Ukraine will be analyzed.
This WP draws on postcolonial security studies, which increasingly question who is the actor and who is the ‚object‘ of particular security policies. This includes a critical engagement with the political construction of narratives and events, for example through practices of visualization, concealment and exclusion. Previous research has shown that peace and conflict research builds on historical reconstructions that reproduce Eurocentric conceptions of world politics (and security governance). These historical reconstructions emerge through periodizations of and emphasis on specific events, which leads to certain teachings and beliefs about world politics. The aim is to analyze the narratives, analogies and event constructions in peace and conflict research and to expose the way Eurocentric conceptions of conflict, security governance and peacebuilding develop across different contexts.
This WP examines the dynamics of hierarchization of the intra-European colonization and the colonization originating from Europe as well as their mode of action in current conflicts. Regarding the first type of intra-European colonization, the research may focus on Ireland or Cyprus, where a significant potential for conflict can be identified. Regarding the second type of colonization, the case of Pakistan will probably be examined, which is characterized by a high level of internal and regional conflicts. The aim is to examine how anti-colonial resistance affects questions of security governance in post-colonial states and how these continue to shape state-society relations. Regions characterized by anti-colonial resistance are often still seen as dangerous and restless until the present day. Central governments pay special attention to them when it comes to security issues, often resulting in the establishment of special security bodies or ongoing political securitization of certain regions and actors. Our assumption is that this leads to a consolidation of internal hierarchies.
The WP examines post-colonial hierarchies in conflict-related development cooperation and humanitarian aid. Studies drawing on postcolonial perspectives and critical race theory have exposed the racial bias of development cooperation. This WP builds on this literature and explores the possibility of decolonizing humanitarian aid, hence contributing to close research gaps on race and power in the humanitarian sector. Humanitarian organizations face growing critiques of postcolonial inequalities in their practice, without offering a sound solution, but also without solid empirical knowledge of past and present inequalities within their own ranks. With projects on the historical sociology of aid agencies, we aim to contribute to the burgeoning literature and the discussions on practice about racialized relationships in externally induced peacebuilding and relief.
WP 5 Transformative Justice
This WP studies the persistence of postcolonial hierarchies in security governance and peacebuilding processes. The WP engages with the critique that Western strategies in these fields follow colonial patterns of thought and practice. The project questions foreign policy assumptions by Western actors, including the alleged inability of „local“ actors to govern as well as the perceived necessity (and self-ascribed entitlement) to promote „liberal“ values alongside governance interventions. The WP addresses the hierarchical division of labor in both military and civilian peace operations by colonial powers in conflict-affected states. It also sheds light on the constitution and possible overcoming of postcolonial hierarchies in the context of South-South relations and interventions by authoritarian states.
This WP focuses on negotiation, localization and decentralization of gender justice within transitional justice and the peace architecture. The WP addresses gender issues as elementary components of transformative justice on the basis that gender already has assumed a significant role in peace and conflict practice and in making global asymmetries visible. At the same time, women’s and LGBTIQ* rights have become the subject of broader cultural struggles that not only permeate all societies, but in which global asymmetries become visible. Yet the question of coming to terms with the colonial past is a key issue. In societies in the Global South, in particular, there is a growing demand that the former colonial powers assume their responsibilities, apologize and pay reparations. What can responsibility look like in this context? This WP investigates how our own societies can come to terms with the colonial past through practices of transitional justice. This requires a rethinking of justice and an elaboration of how of such justice can be applied, as well as how former colonial powers can show responsibility e.g., in the form of reparations.
This WP seeks to develop a normative conception of global justice, to which the complex intersectional entanglement of postcolonial hierarchies with other global inequalities, such as ethnicized and gender hierarchies in the constitution of transnational „cycles of vulnerability“ (Jaggar 2014), can be applied. An additional focus lies on the influence of postcolonial hierarchies on concepts of justice. This WP examines the politics of protection, focusing on postcolonial hierarchies of knowledge related to security, peace and conflict. In particular, the factors and knowledge systems that decide when and how international(ized) or regional actors decide to intervene are analyzed. A key sight of analysis is the Anglophone conflict in Cameroon, through which a decolonial perspective to peace and conflict research can be articulated.
This project examines how imperial/colonial epistemes contributed to the development of ‚postcolonial reason‘ (Spivak 1999) and how this reason shaped the postcolonial constitution of the postcolony (cf. Mbembe 2001, 2021; Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2018, 2021). It asks how this postcolonial modernity informed processes of postcolonial state formation and nation building as well as concepts of identity, citizenship, belonging and resource ownership. The project pursues a transformative justice approach to the decolonization of the political community. This is to think and imagine a civil state that is itself decoupled from the nation, by focusing on the cases of South Africa and Zimbabwe. Transformative justice acknowledges social inequalities, while calling for a reappraisal of social marginalization, which is closely linked to colonial power structures and according exercises of power. In addition, intersectional perspectives have long argued in favor of an epistemic move towards decolonization, which includes the reception of various resistance movements, the questioning of existing historiographies and the construction of alternative archives. A long-term goal is to create inclusive political stories, which are transnational, transregional and intersectional, as a way to better understand transformation processes in post-conflict societies and post-autocratic regimes.
