The spatial turn, reification and relational epistemologies in ‘knowing about’ security and peace

Abstract

How we approach knowing conflict and security makes a difference. This article first considers how reification, instrumental subject/object relations and the drive for certainty and control undermine effective knowledge and practice in questions of conflict and peace. It then turns to what the spatial turn and notions of emplaced security might offer to working against violence. As with any theoretical perspective, the spatial turn can itself be reified, repeating epistemological relations entrenched in much security analysis. The spatial turn and emplaced security explicitly highlight alternative, more relational knowledge practices, however. A relational epistemology approaches knowledge not only as information about a subject out there, but also as a form of practice with others which changes conditions of possibility for co-existence. If pursued, such approaches could help loosen the grip of narrow constructions of security, insecurity, the person, power and agency which dominate security analysis and obstruct understanding and the generation of alternatives in situations of entrenched conflict. An orientation to place could not only enable more nuanced accounts of peace and conflict, but support mutual recognition and exchange across division, assisting an ethic of attention and concrete peace and conflict resolution efforts.

"I Thank Greece for Being Our European Shield": Von der Leyen Commission's Spatial Imaginations During the Turkish-Greek Border Crisis in March 2020

“…6 The spatial turn's main argument is that space is not a preordained, static, natural category but instead a dynamic web of interactions and interconnections. 7 When recognizing space as a "product of social translation, transformation, and experience," 8 one can consider borders as the result of social and cultural processes that shape territories and their contentious meanings. 9 In this respect, geopolitical space is made through power and constructed through discourse.…”

A processual framework for analysing liberal policy interventions in conflict contexts

“…Boege and Rinck, 2019;Hirblinger and Landau, 2020;Jones, 2016), the processual aspect of the dyad has gained less attention. 4 Research that is situated within a processual relational approach, and aims to push the study of interventions towards more open empirical options, takes more seriously the 'epistemic commitment' (Danielsson, 2020b(Danielsson, : 1086; see also Brown, 2020) that acknowledges (policy) interventions as co-constituted processes, often places the relational at centre-stage (e.g. Danielsson, 2020aDanielsson, , 2020b.…”

Emplacing the spatial turn in peace and conflict studies

“…The spatial turn, then, brings significant generative potential to peace and conflict studies (Brown, 2020). However, as both Brown and Brigg point out in this special issue, realising the potential of the spatial turn also requires that scholars retain a critical orientation towards the capacity of dominant scholarship to engage with human difference.…”

“…However, as both Brown and Brigg point out in this special issue, realising the potential of the spatial turn also requires that scholars retain a critical orientation towards the capacity of dominant scholarship to engage with human difference. Dominant scholarship tends to reproduce and extend itself through processes of reification (Brown, 2020), reproducing dominant power relations – including the figure of the sovereign knowing subject – in the politics of knowledge by neglecting its own emplacement (Brigg, 2020). These patterns tend to recur regardless of how innovative new scholarly ‘turns’ initially appear to be.…”

“…These patterns tend to recur regardless of how innovative new scholarly ‘turns’ initially appear to be. Realising the full potential of the spatial turn thus requires the development of capacity to engage with the full range of human knowledge to counter long-standing patterns that reproduce European-derived concerns and foci (Brigg, 2020; Brown, 2020) and/or gendered ones (George, 2020).…”