Spatialising Peace and Conflict

de Annika Bjorkdahl, Susanne Buckley-Zistel

There has been no sustained inquiry into the relationship linking peace and conflict with space and place. This innovative edited volume explores conflict and peace through spatial approaches, and proposes a new research agenda investigating where peace and conflict take place. All chapters employ space as an analytic category and develop strong theoretical contributions alongside new empirical insights. From battlefields to memorials, places of encounter shape how agents relate to each other and how their actions are enabled or constrained. Moreover, spaces such as the international peacekeepers camps or sites of atrocity would not exist if it were not for the conflict. Drawing on concepts such as spatial governmentality, scalar politics, relational spatial theory and spatial narratives the authors investigate case studies reaching from divided cities such as Belfast, Dili and Jerusalem, via rape camps and karaoke bars, to war-torn countries