CONGO · Hybrid Political Orders and Violent Exchanges in the Eastern Congo

Hybrid Political Orders and Violent Exchanges in the Eastern Congo

The eastern Congo (DRC) has experienced conflict and violence since 1994, with the death of more than 4 million people, mostly civilians. The blurring of state and non-state armed groups has created a hybrid political order where a myriad of armed groups fight for power, sovereignty over territory and populations and material resources. Combatants and entire fighting groups regularly shift their allegiances, revealing the interconnected social networks of trust and suspicion running throughout the region. Based on anthropological fieldwork, the aim of this study was to explore political orders, local governance and authority in the eastern territories of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). To do so the research applied the concept of ‘violent exchange’ (Jensen 2013). This concept is useful in explaining how violence opens up a space in which people are forced to engage with violent networks (such as armed groups, rebel groups, militias, local criminal groups, warlords) and enables an exploration of bottom-up relations and how authority yields profits through violent interactions. The study has a strong comparative and interdisciplinary approach as it will contribute to critical inquires of western assumption of state power. The study was part of a wider research project located at DIGNITY: Danish Institute against Torture (DGN) in Copenhagen, Denmark. A group of researchers carried out fieldwork in the DRC, Liberia, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Philippines and South Africa in order to examine violent exchanges in the Global South. The goal with the project was to collect new empirical data and to contribute to social science and anthropological theory and develop the concept of ‘violent exchange’. On the theoretical level the study moved beyond theories that conceptualize the state as a monolithic entity that seize monopoly and power over territories and populations. The study argued that in order to understand violence in the DRC it is necessary to explore structures of violence as they occur in the absence of a functional state and to move beyond the notion of a ‘failed state’. The research was complementing the failed state approach by building on recent literature that argued for an in-depth analysis that captured the emic understanding of everyday relationships and local notions of authority and power. In order to explore how residents negotiate and navigate unstable terrains the study also invoked the concept of ‘violent exchange’ to further explore the competing claims of power and how logics of order overlap and intertwine. Through the concept the study was able to re-conceptualize authority and power relations between state and non state actors and explore the relationships (the violent exchanges) that occurred between them. In order to explore the prism of violent exchanges the project asked: - How do local residents negotiate power, survival and livelihood within these hybrid political orders? - How does local authority govern and determine everyday life and everyday social realities and what role does violence (as real or imaginary) play in these relations? The project was based on 4 months of fieldwork in Goma and Kinshasa in the DRC. The overall objectives of the study were also to achieve a better understanding of everyday violence and political orders as they shape structures “beyond the state” through empirical development of the concepts of ‘violent exchange’. Apart from generating new empirical and comparative field data the objectives of this study were to support DGN interventions strategies and improve human rights work in fragile states. A critical examination of how fragile states are de facto functioning are important if we are to move away from assumptions based solely on western definitions and conceptualizations of the state. The results of the ‘Violent Exchange’ program will also support DGN intervention strategies and improve human rights in fragile states.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз