ASCL Seminar: Subjective dimensions of peace- and statebuilding across Africa

When we look at peace, security and politics in Africa, we often study the supposedly factual: how many people die, when and where, or what the state does and does not do. In this sense, peacebuilding is the process of reducing the number of people killed. Statebuilding is about making political institutions effective, often according to the European or North American model. Yet, Tim Glawion’s studies in marginal areas of several conflict-affected countries in Africa show that people do not perceive the world as “objective” facts would suggest it – they build their world collaboratively and “subjectively”.

He thus asks: “How do people living in these places imagine making peace and what do they expect from the state? How does this differ from what the “numbers” might suggest they need and why?” Among other examples, he will discuss, how locals felt the war coming to supposedly “unaffected” parts of South Sudan, why a young camel herder in Somaliland just could not wrap his head around the fact Glawion did not belong to a clan, or how people lived in a rebel stronghold in the Central African Republic and what changed for them when the state recaptured it.

By sharing the insights of people in some of Africa’s most remote and conflict-ridden areas, Glawion sketches out a framework for how we can study issues of peace, development, and security by taking people’s subjective insights seriously – even when they seem to contradict “objective fact.”

This event takes place in Leiden. For registrees who cannot travel to Leiden a link to an online platform will be sent one day before the start of the event.