CONFLICTS AS TRAPS & CONFLICTING ENTRAPMENTS: WHY ELITE PEACEBUILDING MODELS FAIL VICTIMS

The intellectual debt for the title of my presentation, "Conflicts As Traps & Conflicting Entrapments", I owe to the anthropologist, Alfred Gell, whose powerful ideas still continually inspire me in all things anthropological.1 Here, rather than thinking of traps as art, or even art as traps, we may use some of Gell’s (1999) notions to explain conflict, particularly intractable conflict and conflict theory. My concern is with human entrapment. I employ metaphors of traps as a means of understanding how human actors become entrapped in conflict, and moreover, how researchers have become entrapped in a language of entrapment. By this I mean to explain on the one hand, the dilemma all humans face when confronted with conflict, particularly of the protracted kind, but importantly on the other hand, why intellectuals fall prey to theorizing in abstractions which have little to do with human experience. As both an anthropologist and conflict resolutionist my critique stems in large part to an examination of a body of theory driven by researchers from the fields of political science, international relations, and conflict resolution. The dilemma here is unsnarling some theoretical propositions from these areas of study by exploring the role of culture in conflict resolution, the how-to aspects of peacebuilding, and some meanings surrounding peace-making models. For a more nuanced approach to intractable conflict I am suggesting a closer scrutiny of ethnography to provide a more humanist conceptualization of memory, suffering, and the meanings of violence. Further, I address the divergent interpretations of human rights with a special emphasis of self-determination movements but more predominantly with a mind toward the applicability of deliberative democracy theory and ideas associated with freedom and liberty. Lastly, I address the Basque conflict and what lessons can be gained from the above in moving forward with the pending peace process.