The ‘Local’ in Global Understandings of War and Peacemaking
Anthropological and inter-disciplinary perspectives
PACSA-PRIO CYPRUS CENTRE JOINT CONFERENCE
1-2 September 2011, Nicosia, Cyprus
The last century has seen a proliferation of conflict in different sites, and of varying scale and form – from civil and revolutionary/liberation struggles, to inter-communal and global wars and, as the case of Cyprus clearly shows, combinations of the above.
While much enquiry about the background of these conflicts, their nature and not least the so-called ‘war on terror’ have brought the international world order and the discourse of liberalism and democracy into question, ‘the local’ still retains a rather parochial position within mainstream peace and conflict studies, remaining the curious exemplar that may confirm or refute the efficacy of ‘international norms’. New approaches in anthropology attempt to break away from the local/global dichotomy by focusing on the interconnectedness and trans-locality of peace and conflict, or by exploring the everyday of conflict through ethnographies of violence and subjectivity.
See for the full report on this event: PACSA-report-2011