Travelling Models in African Conflict Management

Travelling Models offers a theoretical concept for comparative research on conflict management in Africa in processes of globalization: how is change in one place related to developments in other places? Why are certain issues that are important in one place taken up in other places, while others are not? The authors examine how the travel of models enact changes, particularly in African conflict situations, most often in unexpected ways. They look at what happens when a model has been put into practice at a conflict site, and they pay attention to the forms of social (re-)ordering resulting from this process. The authors look, among others, at conflict managing models of power- and revenue sharing, mediation, freedom of expression, disaster management, community involvement and workshopping.

Contributors are: Andrea Behrends, Lydie Cabane, Veronika Fuest, Dejene Gemechu, Mutasim Bashir Ali Hadi, Remadji Hoinathy, Mario Krämer, Sung-Joon Park, Tinashe Pfigu, Richard Rottenburg, Sylvanus Spencer and Kees van der Waal.

The Introduction of this volume is being offered in Open Access

Andrea Behrends, Dr. phil., is Principal Investigator of a cooperative research project on "Oil and Social Change in Niger and Chad". Her publications focus on political anthropology and Africa.

Sung-Joon Park, is Research Fellow at Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg. He has published on mass HIV treatment in Uganda.

Richard Rottenburg holds a Chair in Anthropology at the University of Halle, Germany. His research focuses on the anthropology of law, organisation, science and technology (LOST).

"Understanding the relationship between the local and the global has caught the imagination of so many researchers before. This book is a new addition with a new perspective on this debate. It is based on case studies of conflict management situations from six African countries (Liberia, Sierra Leone, Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia and South Africa) that are all characterized as post-conflict communities. Each situation deals with a model that has moved or “traveled” from another local or global context. By trying to understand the dynamic interconnections underlying such intricate relationships, the authors of the book have skilfully used the concept of “translation” to discuss the process by which models travel from one context to another (de-contextualized and re-contextualized). Starting from different disciplinary backgrounds, such as anthropology, sociology, history, and political science, and dealing with diverse topics the book is a vivid demonstration of how both multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches can be successfully married. The book is appealing to wider readership both for its theoretical thrust and ethnographic richness." – Musa Adam Abdul-Jalil, University of Khartoum, Sudan
"In spite of numerous pleas for a "symmetrical approach" in field studies, research on Africa has suffered from seemingly unavoidable exoticism, framed into the space and time of "the Other". "Travelling Models" breaks out of this framework decisively, applying an analytical frame well known from organisation studies to scrutinise conflict management in African countries. The results are an important contribution to globalisation studies, revealing both the unyielding traits of global models and the intricate nuances of local translations; unexpected similarities and unanticipated differences. A collection of studies that is a source of new knowledge as well as a template for new kind of global studies." – Barbara Czarniawska, University of Gothenburg, Sweden