Conflicts – Violence – War
Conflict as a form of human interaction both constitutive of societies and a product of their constitution are a central object of the human, social and cultural sciences. Conflict functions both as an explicit topic of research as well as an inherent element of scientific enquiry. The research area 'Conflicts – Violence – War' groups together research projects that examine the concept and the function of 'conflict', and that analyse concrete empirical questions concerning conflicts. It focuses on two features of the resolution and the escalation of conflict: violence and war.
From a historical perspective, focusing in particular on the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, two understandings of conflict dominate. On the one hand, conflictuality appears as a societal failure that, in concepts of progress, is abolished through an evolutionary or revolutionary process, leading to the elimination of all differences of ideology and interest. The contrary tendency is expressed in notions of an inevitable 'struggle for existence' as motor for social and natural process, on the basis of a distinction between 'strong' and 'weak'. Today, in light of contemporary theories of democracy, the understanding largely prevails that the recognition of conflict constellations as the consequence of the plural constitution of post/modern societies is a condition of freedom. It is therefore not the avoidance of conflicts that is considered to be the crucial difference between democratic and authoritarian concepts of order, but the establishment of the permanent negotiation of fair modes of conflict resolution.
Violence as a form a conflict resolution must first be analysed in its diversity. Its definition, i.e. the description of certain actions as 'violent', is variable and depends on historical, social and cultural conditions. An interdisciplinary handbook published in 2013 (eds. Christian Gudehus and Michaela Christ) treats ‘practices of violence’ as a spectrum ranging from insults through slaps to bombardment. Alongside the interdisciplinary analysis of acts of violence – here the human, social and cultural sciences are addressed as well as law and political science – the question must therefore be asked as to which human interactions and forms of relationship are historically judged and recognized – particularly in the interests of victims – as violent. At the same time, the perpetuation and therefore the normalization of violence in 'spaces of violence' or, in socio-cultural terms, 'communities of violence' is an aspect that connects the three basic concepts of this research area. Violence is to be treated both as an individual and a collective mode of action, with the collective aspect potentially ranging from spatially and numerically small social groups to states.
The phenomenon of war is therefore embedded in the context of conflict and violence as a further specification of national and international conflict resolution. As the object of research, war has a long tradition. Until a few decades ago, however, it was primarily the domain of political, diplomatic and military history, and particularly the history of military operations. The 'cultural turn' led to a enormous extension of research questions on the topic of war. This research area engages with these more recent perspectives and combines questions of the cultural sciences – such as the cultural and artistic representation of wars – with gender research, cultural anthropology, peace and conflict studies, and international law.
The working group 'Graz research on World War One', set up in 2011 in connection with the research area, meets regularly for the purpose of interdisciplinary exchange and organizes international research colloquia and lectures.
Coordinators
Petra Ernst-Kühr, Werner Suppanz
