Evaluating the Variables that Drive and Sustain Human Conflict in Agrarian Contexts

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

Civil wars have taken place in 73 countries since World War II, costing an estimated 16 million lives. As scholars attempt to establish generalizable patterns for the drivers and sustainers of conflict, and the conditions that are necessary for conflict resolution, the reliability of many scientific studies has been nagged by a noticeable lack of pre-conflict and post-conflict data for the specific contexts that they study. This project has the unusual advantage of being able to draw on a longitudinal data set, because of the researcher's long history of engagement with the research site and local scientific collaborators. By focusing on a range of decision-making processes in contexts long turned to as models for studies of conflict, the research aims to answer questions about what variables drive and sustain human conflict. Dr. Mariane Ferme of the University of California, Berkeley, will collaborate with scholars based at Njala University, Sierra Leone (West Africa) to understand agrarian change in a number of "benchmark" rural contexts in that country, which have been the focus of prior research, or will be established as new sites for long-term study. While scholars agree that economic factors have at least some role in sustaining conflict, there is no widespread agreement on what drives it. The project seeks to answer this question by focusing on the decision-making processes involved in access to land and labor, property rights, and resource allocation through social institutions such as lineages, extended households, local political authorities and the courts, particularly in areas affected by large land deals with foreign investors. Sierra Leone is regarded as an important testing ground for theories about the drivers and sustainers of conflict, as its civil war represented a prima facie example of "extraversion", where a regime draws on external commercial and/or donor relationships rather than local taxation to maintain its political authority. Dr. Ferme's research focuses on three sites where she will conduct surveys, participant observation, and interviews, with an emphasis on access to justice, in areas where local grievances shaped the violence of the 1991-2002 civil war in Sierra Leone. This research will contribute to advance several bodies of social scientific knowledge: 1) on the drivers and sustainers of civil wars; 2) on agrarian change approached through novel interdisciplinary collaborations including archaeologists, geographers, experimental economists, and political scientists, in addition to cultural anthropologists, which offer insights over different temporal scales; and, 3) on the issue of so-called "land grabs" in Africa and elsewhere--large scale land deals, usually involving governments and business corporations, which displace small-holder, local farmers. Dr. Ferme also plans to study the impact of the legal empowerment movement, which in Sierra Leone places trained paralegals in rural chiefdoms to increase access to justice for the poor. Beyond its scholarly impact, this project promises to increase understanding of the social and intergenerational fragilities left in place in the aftermath of civil war, to shed light on the impact of new land policies which are rapidly changing the agrarian landscape, and to contribute to the training of a younger generation of Sierra Leonean social scientists.