Conflict Prevention and Sustainable Peace

General Required Reading

The reading list gives guidance on reading arranged according to the lecture program. It is essential you read widely for seminars. The assigned readings will at times be challenging and you should budget a sufficient amount of time. Reading for specific assignments such as seminar presentations should begin with the sources listed under the relevant lectures. These lists are NOT exhaustive and you are encouraged to use additional material from the Library or elsewhere if it is appropriate. Keyword searching academic e-journals for the latest research is good practice. Your module conveners can offer guidance on your use of sources. Note: much of the literature for this module is written by scholars from the global north. We can do something about this: 1. We can think about issues of epistemology and decolonising the curriculum and 2. We will maintain a google document throughout the module in which we can add material to it – thus decolonising the curriculum as we go along. In addition to the readings in the lectures section, please also read the texts below, which are the general reading required for the course

Lecture 1: Conflict Prevention and Sustainable Peacebuilding: A critical approach

This lecture will outline the module content and introduce key debates, terms, and concepts related to conflict prevention and peacebuilding. The lecture invites students to reflect on what it means to build ‘sustainable’ peace in relation to justice, fairness and equality, and what this might mean for peace initiatives and global governance. We will then look more specifically at the development of the notion of ‘liberal peacebuilding’ and its critique over time, with a view on the academic discourses it gave rise to, its practical approaches and actors involved in it. The lecture concludes by highlighting some of the most recent conceptual and theoretical development on peacebuilding, especially those advanced by feminist and postcolonial approaches.

Lecture 2: Perceptions of peace and security: What does this mean for (positive) peace?

This session will have more of a flipped classroom character and will involve participant observation: reflection on your (our) perceptions of peace and security, and a discussion on what that means for so-called 'positive peace' or 'sustainable peace'.

Lecture 3: Peace Operations and the Aim to Achieve Sustainable Peace

Peacekeeping is commonly associated with images of blue helmets, white UN vehicles, soldiers shaking kids’ hands in war-torn countries especially those in the global South, and female UN peacekeepers smiling into the camera. With the changing environment of peace operations moving from monitoring and implementing peace agreements to multi-dimensional missions, and more recently, to an increase in stabilisation mandates and robust peacekeeping, different professional groups and nations have joined the peacekeeping arena, fulfilling a variety of roles. Yet, we often take the spectrum of knowledge and skills required for the complexity of peace operations for granted, as well as the impacts of such operations on the host and contributing countries, and global order. The lecture and seminar in week 3 will reflect on the complexities and challenges encountered in peace operations from different perspectives, including the experiences of peacekeepers.

Lecture 5: Northern Ireland Peace Process

The Belfast Agreement (1998) brought an end to the conflict in Northern Ireland after 30 years. The Northern Irish peace process is widely considered to be one of the most successful peace processes of the post-Cold War period, albeit it is certainly not perfect and problems remain in Northern Ireland today. In this session, we will look at two particular issues that were central to the peace process: (1) the decision of Sinn Fein and the IRA to give up violence and engage in exclusively peaceful politics, and (2) the role of power-sharing in securing peace. In considering these issues we will confront fundamental questions for peacebuilders today, like 'why do rebels become political parties?', 'what impact does the inclusion of former rebels have upon post-war politics?', and 'can power-sharing transform a conflict or does it merely manage it?'

Lecture 6: Gender and Peacebuilding

Lecture 7: Urban Geopolitics: Cities, Violence and Architecture

In this session, we look at how cities are increasingly not only the centre-stage on which violence and insecurity are enacted, but also how their urban fabric and built environment is enlisted in urban geopolitics. In this session, we look at the concept of ‘urbicide’ and how it plays out in different contexts.

Lecture 8: Environmental Politics and Peacebuilding

Lecture 9: Peacebuilding in times of terror(ism)

In this lecture we will look at the similarities, connections and, often exaggerated, differences between peacebuilding and counter-terrorism. Doing so is important not least because, on the one hand, it encourages us to think about the relationship between 'conflict' and 'terrorism', and how we understand – and apply – these concepts or frameworks. Yet, on the other hand, taking this connection seriously allows for further interrogation of certain assumptions and practices related to liberal peacebuilding and state-building, as well as contemporary counter-terrorism practices such as regarding the refusal to negotiate with terrorist groups.