Interpretive struggles over responsibility
The research network explores the role of interpretive struggles over responsibility and their consequences for transition processes. Foremost, we ask how responsibility for violence is defined politically, legally, and morally in different contexts, which actors are involved in shaping these definitions, and what kinds of disputes arise in this regard. Since responsibility draws on ideas of justice, we also examine how meanings of justice are produced and attributed.
The subprojects examine responsibility both as a source (i.e. how historical and contemporary actors speak about responsibility) and as an analytical category. Particular attention is paid to countervailing tendencies within discourses on responsibility. Thereby, our research contributes to current debates and challenges in peace and conflict research, especially those concerning the “lessons of war”, corporate responsibility, and different concepts of justice. At the same time, the two subprojects on responsibility for arms exports and sexualized violence provide insights into historical and political attributions of responsibility, as well as into divergent notions of peace in ongoing societal debates.
Freight containers for arms exports
Source: Iain
Contests over Responsibility in the Arms Sector
Dr. K. Andra Avram, Prof. Dr. Jana Hönke & PD Dr. Julia Eichenberg
Lehrstuhl Soziologie Afrikas & Institut für Fränkische Landesgeschichte, Universität Bayreuth
The subproject examines how responsibility for arms exports and their consequences in armed conflicts is interpreted and negotiated. It focuses on the war in Yemen. The case is particularly instructive because questions of responsibility are negotiated across a range of arenas – from political debates over export decisions and embargoes to civil society initiatives and national and transnational legal proceedings. It thus provides a suitable lens through which to examine different practices and understandings of responsibility in the arms sector.
Conceptually, the project takes the idea of a “zone of non-responsibility” (Azarova 2021) as an analytical point of departure. It asks under what conditions responsibility becomes visible, how it is attributed, limited, or shifted among state, corporate, and societal actors, and how such attributions change over time. To this end, the project combines narrative approaches with historical and social-scientific perspectives and examines responsibility as an object of social and political negotiation, through which understandings of violence, justice, and accountability also evolve.
Picture will be added soon
Source: XX
Interpretive Struggles over Sexualized Violence
Dr. Rebecca Gulowski & Prof. Dr. Christoph Weller
Lehrstuhl für Politikwissenschaft, Friedens- und Konfliktforschung, Universität Augsburg
The project addresses the issue of sexualized violence against children and adolescents, which – despite its global relevance – long received only limited attention in Germany. Sexualized violence is neither merely an individual nor a criminal problem but raises fundamental social, political, and structural questions and is deeply embedded in society. Closely linked to power relations and gender order, sexualized violence often serves to maintain social hierarchies – whether in family contexts, educational institutions (e.g. boarding schools and residential care), or peer contexts.
Over the past 15 years, revelations of abuse in institutions, as well as the #MeToo movement and the resulting engagement of activists from survivor-led organizations, have changed both the sociopolitical discourse and institutional responses concerning the investigation, processing, and prevention of sexualized violence. These revelations were followed by sociopolitical debates and conflicts within society over appropriate recognition, acknowledgment, disclosure, addressing, and allocation of resources, against the backdrop of taking or shifting responsibility. The project aims to expose the fields of tension, lines of conflict, and interactions within these struggles between attributions of responsibility, social norms, and social and institutional practices. Moreover, it seeks to demonstrate how responsibility in this context has been negotiated socially and (not) implemented politically.
