Session D.
Learning from Territories in Conflict / Teaching Territories in Conflict
Co-chairs: Caroline ROZENHOLC-ESCOBAR (LAVUE-CRH / ENSA Paris-Val de Seine) & Claire ARAGAU (Lab'Urba / UPEC)
This session aims to take the opportunity offered by the conference to examine the concept of territory by looking at issues of conflict and contestation from an international perspective. While conflict situations are highly specific, they are also particularly instructive when it comes to “learning from territories”, whether it be in terms of scale and temporality, or intensity and types of dispute. They also serve to show how politicians, institutions and citizens can “learn” from these conflict territories –whether they are in periods of crisis or more generally– and from the socio-spatial forces that traverse them, whether the trade-offs that are made arise from dynamics of empowerment or authoritarian forms of dispute resolution.
This session welcomes submissions from academics who draw on what they learn from territories in conflict in their own teaching, with a focus on the following three areas:
- The first is concerned with territories at war: What do these situations –each of which is unique, albeit part of a phenomenon that is widespread across space and time– teach us about territory(ies), and how is research conducted in these various contexts? Research conducted in Kurdish, Syrian, Israeli-Palestinian and, more recently, Ukrainian territories comes to mind, in which the complexity of social divisions within officially constituted groups is analysed in order to get beyond political posturing and partisanship. Another aspect of this issue is the way in which certain cultural monuments have been targeted (or how they have been protected), and what this tells us about war-torn territories, such as Bamyan (Afghanistan) or Lalibela, situated close to the Tigray region of Ethiopia.
- The second area is less concerned with situations of open warfare than with conflicting uses and long-standing conflicts over use that lead to the (re)structuring of territories and to their division into territories to be occupied. These include forms of appropriation that assert the primacy of use over property rights: the Landless Workers' Homeless Workers Movements in Brazil and the Zadist movement in France, groups that demand a right to housing, the right to land that can be farmed and that is not expropriated by the state in territories that have become the standard-bearers for these demands. Both the existence of these groups and their names are of key importance to these movements.
- The third area concerns conflicts and disputes related to the most coveted resources, such as water and wheat, gas and oil, etc. Resources have the potential to make and break territories caught up in a geopolitical decision-making process that stems from the shortage and frequently inequitable distribution of vital commodities that are the driving force behind contemporary human activities (dams, gas pipelines, water management planning, etc.). The analysis of the relationships between neighbouring communities that the sharing of these resources entails enables us to learn from territories and to gain an understanding of how spatial boundaries fluctuate when it comes to accessing, securing access to or depriving a neighbour of access.
Thanks to these three approaches (involving various levels of analysis, of conflict and of potential instructional methods) the session aims to help us understand the highly mutable geographies of these territories, and the reality of the conflicts that shape them and transform them, sometimes permanently.
Selected Bibliographical References
Baaz M.E., Utas M., 2019, “Exploring the Backstage: Methodological and Ethical Issues Surrounding the Role of Research Brokers in Insecure Zones”, Civil Wars, 21(2), p. 157-178.
Baczko A., Dorronsoro G., Quesnay A., 2021, “Le privilège épistémologique du terrain. Une enquête collective dans la Syrie en guerre”, Bulletin of Sociological Methodology, 151(1), p. 96-116.
Blanchon D., 2019, Géopolitique de l’eau. Entre conflits et coopérations, Paris, Le Cavalier Bleu.
Bridonneau M., 2014, “Déplacer au nom de la sauvegarde patrimoniale et du développement économique ?”, L’Espace politique, 22(1) [doi.org/10.4000/espacepolitique.2941].
Deboulet A., Douay N., Dupont V., Gangneux-Kébé J., Rassat F., 2020, “Des pratiques urbaines ordinaires aux mobilisations citadines”, in F. Adisson, S. Barles, N. Blanc, O. Coutard and L. Frouillou (eds.), Pour la recherche urbaine, Paris, CNRS éd., p. 243‑263.
Ostrom E., 1992, Crafting Institutions for Self-Governing Irrigation Systems, San Francisco (CA), ICS Press.
Rozenholc C., Yankel F., 2016, “D’une tente à l’autre. ‘Crise du logement’ et mobilisations sociales en France et en Israël”, Annales de géographie, 707(1), p. 5-27.
Tonnelat S., 2021, “Comment le Triangle de Gonesse devint une ZAD. L’improbable devenu nécessaire”, Métropolitiques.
Torre A., Caron A., 2005, “Réflexions sur les dimensions négatives de la proximité : le cas des conflits d’usage et de voisinage”, Économie et institutions, no. 6-7, p. 183-219.
Zetlaoui-Léger J., Macaire E., Tcherkassky C., 2022, “Architect Collectives and the Coproduction of Places in the ‘Grey Zones’ of Urban Development Planning: The Educational Institution as a Mediation Framework”, Architecture, 2(1), p. 67-94.
