Olivier J. Walther and David G. Russell will chair a paper session at the American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting, April 20, 2024, from 3:00-4:20 PM in room 302B (Makiki), Third Floor, Hawai’i Convention Center, Honolulu, Hawai’i.
Abstract
Africa has, in recent decades, experienced a growing number of conflicts that are challenging to monitor and even more difficult to resolve peacefully. The goal of this session is to examine the rapidly changing geography of armed conflicts on the continent. We are particularly interested in understanding which regions are the most likely to experience political violence, which factors encourage the spread of armed conflicts across countries, and how military interventions affect the spatial dynamics of armed conflicts in Africa. We encourage the submission of conceptual papers that examine the spatial and temporal evolution of armed conflicts, from the moment they emerge in specific regions, until they eventually end. We also welcome empirical papers that leverage spatially disaggregated conflict data to model the impact of distance, borders, and other geographical features on armed conflicts. The session is also open to policy-oriented papers that examine which civilian and military responses are the most adapted to counter the rise of political violence on the continent.
Paper presentations
1. The Spatial Conflict Life Cycle in Africa
Olivier Walther, University of Florida, Steven Radil, U.S. Air Force Academy, and David Russell, University of Florida
The growing availability of geospatial data that document both how violent actors are connected and where their attacks take place offers a unique opportunity to produce a more integrated approach to the evolution of armed conflicts. The goal of this paper is to contribute to this agenda, by introducing the concept of “spatial conflict life cycle.” This new concept allows for spatializing conflict networks over time by bringing together three approaches that have been developed separately: spatial analysis, network analysis, and temporal analysis. After reviewing the literature, the paper discusses several techniques that have been developed to study how space, networks and time interact two by two. The paper then discusses how the concept of “spatial conflict life cycle” can conceptually bring them all together and how it can be applied to study the evolution of armed conflicts in Africa using disaggregated data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) Project. Our results suggest that African armed conflicts express regularities in the way violence is spatially and temporally distributed. Conflicts tend to follow a certain number of common temporal stages in their geography that resemble a cycle, from the moment they emerge in specific regions, until they end.
2. Areas of Operations: An Application of Spatialized Social Network Analysis to Conflict Actors
David Russell, University of Florida
Conflicts involving non-state actors frequently involve a vast array of armed groups arranged in a constantly shifting network of alliances and rivalries. A growing body of literature addresses how the social network of these actors’ relationships with each other affects the evolution and characteristics of the conflict overall. With a few exceptions, this literature does not, however, consider the geographic proximity of actors relative to each other as a key driver of the conflict’s social network structure. To address this deficiency, this project introduces the concept of “Areas of Operations,” a new method of spatializing actors in a conflict region. At any given moment in time, the spatial extent of an actor’s range can be estimated by fitting a polygon or polygons around the events in which the actor has participated. Using this method, this project compares the co-presence of actors in space with their social network ties to produce a new analogue of the classic network density measure. Finally, these metrics are applied to case studies of recent and ongoing conflicts in North and West Africa.
3. We Need To Talk: Borderless Interventionism in the 2023 Libyan Flood
Andrea Bartolucci, Silvia D’Amato and Alessia Tortolini, Leiden University
International humanitarian interventions are intended to alleviate extensive human suffering within defined or internationally recognized borders of a sovereign state. According to the UN resolution 57/150 each state has, first and foremost, the responsibility to take care of the victims of natural disasters occurring within its borders and that this affected state has primacy, ‘in the initiation, organization, coordination and implementation of humanitarian assistance’. Yet, more often than not, recent humanitarian interventions are implemented in countries experiencing internal conflicts or civil wars, questioning existing sovereign authority. Plus, in many formal colonial territories across Africa, borders are often questioned and de facto blurred and porous. From a multidisciplinary perspective, this research presents fresh empirical insights from a mixed-method analysis based on surveys (questionnaires and semi-structures interviews) with practitioners of the ground in the case of the humanitarian intervention after the flood that severely hit the city of Derna, Eastern Libya on September 11, 2023. We specifically ask, what is the impact of the status of the border on the effectiveness of the intervention and the possibility to assist the population in need?
4. Eco-socio-political Framework: Analyzing Farmer-Grazier Conflict in Central Nigeria
Cletus Famous Nwankwo, University of Leicester
Existing studies of farmer-herder conflicts have paid little attention to the moral economy and critical geopolitics dimensions. This paper fills these gaps and proposes a novel eco-socio-political framework that comprehensively integrates perspectives from political ecology, political economy, moral economy, and critical geopolitics to explain the farmer-grazier conflict in Central Nigeria. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and grounded theory, it argues that changes in the moral economy, influenced by the neoliberal agenda within the larger political economy structure, are at the core of the conflict, exacerbated by territoriality and identity construction. It argues that the monetization of resource access driven by the neoliberal agenda of the Nigerian state is a fundamental cause of the conflict, challenging the predominant explanations. The conflict arising from this process exacerbates existing tensions related to identity and territoriality, rooted in colonial and post-colonial territorialization practices. Therefore, understanding larger political-economic processes and changes in everyday moral economies is crucial in managing the conflict and addressing the exclusion of pastoralists. Among other contributions, it offers theoretical insights into the intersection of political ecology and critical geopolitics in explaining resource-related conflicts. It argues that incorporating these perspectives contributes to the emerging field of geopolitical ecology, which seeks to bridge critical geopolitics and political ecology. This approach to geopolitical ecologies takes moralities seriously and offers a deeper understanding of the complex determinants shaping lived realities foregrounding resource conflicts.
Sponsored by the Political Geography and Africa Specialty Groups.