Research Programme
Holder of the special chair
On 21 April 2005, Prof. Dr. Mient Jan Faber became holder of the IKV/VU special chair on Citizens’ involvement in War Situations, at the Faculty of Social Sciences.
Research projects
PhD Research-Human Security from below
Drs. Martijn Dekker.
Since the 1994 release of the UN Human Development Report, the concept of Human Security has offered policy makers a new paradigm to assess security issues and scholars an interesting new dimension to peace and conflict studies. Praised and contested alike, it has proven to be a versatile concept – applied to initiatives dealing with poverty reduction, enforcing the rule of law or with environment-related issues – but despite all the attention, until now, not much has been said about bottom up human security initiatives, human security from below. With this research project we wish to add the perspective of the people who are actually living in a conflict situation, to the growing body of academic literature on human security, and to the discussion on how to efficiently bring security to besieged people.
The results of this research will be based on empirical findings from fieldwork in Gaza and Iraq, two regions where the collapse of state institutions has caused tensions between social groups that had always been present under the surface, to suddenly erupt into violence. Like in other conflicts, amid the daily violence, groups of people started to organise their own security and form so-called security communities, the focus of this research. The two specific case studies also offer the opportunity to look into how the presence or quite sudden absence of an occupying force influences the security situations in these regions and the consequences for security communities.
Making use of a wide range of research techniques, mainly derived from the anthropological toolkit, two periods of approximately six months will be spent in Gaza and Iraq respectively. The most important themes that are to be explored are:
The grounds on which security communities are formed, and the ways these communities develop over time, ranging from ad hoc security arrangements to pseudo state formation.
The actual security strategies that are employed by different communities and their subsequent effects on other communities.
The boundaries of security communities are also of interest. What do communities provide their members and what not? Which economic activities are employed and what are the consequences for the community members and the larger conflict? Furthermore, when does security from below become security from above – when does pseudo state formation lead to national aspirations and the founding of actual state institutions? Or how can security communities transfer power to broader security zones, in particular the formal states to which they belong?
We will look at the consequences of security operations from above, and their influences on the security communities. Also of interest is how people in security communities talk about security operations from above and how communities try to make use of, and influence them.
