'Seeing' conflicts at the margins: understanding community experiences through social research and digital narrative in Kenya and Madagascar

该项目使用参与性视听方法来探索社区在新资源投资与长期抵抗、抗议和暴力历史纠缠的地方的冲突中所扮演的角色。随着投资者寻求获得令人垂涎的石油、天然气、矿产和地热田矿藏，东非正在经历一场资源热潮。各国政府将新的投资和相关的基础设施描述为有利于增长、改变农村边缘并增加社区的谋生机会。然而，在实地实现这些目标往往会因为争夺资源控制权、腐败和政治权力不均衡而受到破坏。有证据表明，新的采掘作业经常加剧农村边缘地区的紧张局势，加剧现有的财富和权力竞争，并影响新的冲突模式。事实上，在撒哈拉以南非洲(SSA)的许多农村地区，围绕新资源开发的政治正在重新配置冲突动态，即使在暴力和动乱遗留下来的地方也是如此。为了解决这些问题，该项目将社会科学(社会人类学和人文地理学)、人文科学(历史、数字艺术和视觉研究)和社区参与性研究(CBPR)联系起来，以考察不同的行为者“社区”如何“看到”和体验肯尼亚和马达加斯加的资源冲突。我们问，不同的观点、价值观和战略如何使对资源的索取权合法化，如何塑造围绕资源开发的关系，促进冲突动态，并更广泛地反映SSA中资源冲突的变化特征。不同形式的冲突始终是不同行为者群体之间谈判的一部分--在不同的政府、私营部门和当地社区利益攸关方对重要资源进行估值和处理的方式大不相同的地方更是如此。虽然新的大规模资源开发可能会在一些地方引发新的冲突或重新引发紧张局势，这并不令人惊讶，但被边缘化社区的人们的关切和观点往往对更广泛的行为者来说是看不见的或难以理解的。政府和投资者可能会引入地方补偿计划，并利用地方看门人来支持“发展”，但往往没有充分掌握社区对国家和非国家行为者增加存在和控制的经验和应对措施，这意味着新的采掘业开发活动。该项目的中心主张是，必须承认、理解、对话和分享各种不同的、“隐藏的”冲突叙述，以开发途径，通过这些途径将冲突从内部转化，从而在资源开发背景下促进更和平的结果。该项目通过与当地研究人员、社区倡导者和当地居民的不同成员深入合作，侧重于两个项目国有争议的具体资源开发地点，将使用定性实地考察、各种参与性视听方法和文本分析来记录和分析不同主要行为者群体的观点(和不同观点)。我们还询问，抵抗、抗议、增选和同意的历史如何与围绕资源开发的当代冲突交织在一起。国际小组将与冲突利益攸关方合作，制作多媒体数字叙述，这是社区一级、国家一级和国家间就冲突问题举行对话的主要成果。要形成关于冲突的共同愿景，不仅需要将其视为国家(采掘业的变革潜力)或私人投资者(需要通过各种手段获得当地同意)，而且还需要以各种方式将其视为生活在一个资源被发现、开采和资源主张以复杂方式存在争议的地方的人。

This project uses participatory visual and audio methods to explore the roles of communities in conflicts in places where new resource investments become entangled with longer histories of resistance, protest and violence. East Africa is experiencing a resource boom as investors seek to access to coveted deposits of oil, gas, minerals and geothermal fields. National governments portray new investments and associated infrastructure as beneficial for growth, transforming rural margins and enhancing livelihood opportunities for communities. Yet, achieving these goals on the ground is often undermined by competition for control of resources, corruption and uneven political power. There is evidence that new extractive operations often worsen tensions at the rural margins by aggravating existing contests for wealth and power and influencing new patterns of conflict. In fact, in many rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), politics around new resource developments are reconfiguring conflict dynamics, even in places with legacies of violence and unrest. To address these issues, this project bridges the social sciences (social anthropology and human geography), the humanities (history, digital arts and visual inquiry) and community-based participatory research (CBPR) to examine how different 'communities' of actors 'see' and experience resource conflicts in Kenya and Madagascar. We ask how different views, values and strategies for legitimising claims to resources shape relations around resource developments, contribute to conflict dynamics and reflect the changing character of resource conflicts in SSA more broadly. Conflict, in different forms, is always part and parcel of negotiating among different communities of actors - more so in places where ways of valuing and relating to important resources varies dramatically across different groups of government, private sector and local community stakeholders. While it is unsurprising that new large resource developments could spark new conflicts or renew tensions in places, the concerns and views of people in marginalized communities are often unseen or illegible to a wider range of actors. Governments and investors may introduce local compensation schemes and use local gatekeepers to champion 'development', though often without fully grasping community experiences of and responses to the increased presence and control of the state and non-state actors that is implied in new extractive development. The central proposition of this project is that varying, 'hidden' narratives of conflict must be recognised, understood, dialogued and shared to develop pathways through which conflict can be transformed from within and thus promote more peaceful outcomes in resource development contexts. Focusing on specific, contested resource development sites in the two project countries through deep collaboration with local researchers, community advocates and diverse members of local populations, the project will use qualitative fieldwork, a variety of participatory visual and audio methods, and textual analysis to document and analyse the views of (and differing perspectives within) different key groups of actors. We also ask how located histories of resistance, protest, co-option, and consent intersect with contemporary conflicts around resource developments. International teams will collaborate with conflict stakeholders to produce multimedia digital narratives, key outputs around which community-level, national and cross-national dialogues on conflict will be convened. Developing shared visions of what conflict is about requires 'seeing' not only as a state (the transformative potential of extractive industries), or as a private investor (need secure local consent through various means), but also the various ways of 'seeing' as someone who lives in a place where resources are found, extracted and resource claims are contested in complex ways.