Researching the everyday practices of people living in situations of violence can contribute to conflict reduction and peacebuilding. However, a simplistic approach to gender roles and intersectionality in such cases jeopardizes this potential.
This is what Elizabeth Pügel, the project leader of the “Caring to Survive, Surviving to Care” project, writes in the article “Gender and the micro-dynamics of violent conflicts, in co-authorship with Rachel Kunz.
Their observations are based on examples of community work in Indonesia and Nigeria.
As the authors note, unlike traditional macro-theories that explain conflicts through state interests, economic factors, or political regimes, this approach allows us to see how conflicts are reproduced, transformed, or contained in everyday interactions.
“Without a focus on the micro-dynamics of violent conflicts, the realities, knowledges, and practices of people in violence-affected communities remain hidden,” they say.
Thus, the micro-perspective opens up access to the “invisible” aspects of conflict that remain unaddressed by structural explanations. A key element of this approach is the analysis of gender roles, which can both contribute to the escalation of violence and act as a resource for its containment. However, the researchers warn against simplification.
“Masculinities have taken a central stage and scholarship has run the risk of establishing violence as an essential characteristic of men,” they emphasize.
This criticism is directed against simplistic notions of an allegedly “natural” connection between masculinity and violence and emphasizes the need to understand masculinity as variable, contextual, and capable of taking different forms.
An important analytical tool in this approach is the concept of intersectionality, which allows us to take into account the interaction of various social factors – gender, ethnicity, class, age, religion, etc. This approach shows that the experience of conflict is not universal, but is formed at the intersection of different structures of inequality and identities. This, in turn, allows for a more precise analysis of both the causes and dynamics of violence at the local level.
Despite its analytical value, the micro-approach poses a number of theoretical and methodological challenges for researchers. These include the risk of overgeneralization, the difficulty of taking into account all relevant factors, and the danger of reproducing the very categories that the study seeks to deconstruct. At the same time, the authors emphasize that it is precisely by addressing the everyday practices and “embedded” knowledge of people living in conflict that more relevant and practical knowledge can be generated, particularly for peacebuilding initiatives.