Living on the Margins: Using literary comics to understand the role of borderland brokers in post-war transitions

该项目使用文学连环画来促进对尼泊尔和斯里兰卡边境经纪人作用的了解。边境地区的经纪人在调停中部和外围地区之间的关系，进而塑造战后过渡进程方面发挥着重要但鲜为人知的作用。这些经纪人包括当地的政治或军事精英、商人或商人和妇女，或在中心和边缘之间和/或跨越国际边界进行调解的宗教人士。该项目将对来自尼泊尔和斯里兰卡边境或边境地区的一系列男性和女性的生活史进行研究，这两个南亚国家最近结束了战争。该项目建立在现有的两个研究项目(“斯里兰卡和尼泊尔的边界、经纪人和建设和平：从边缘看战争向和平过渡”(由ESRC资助，2015年12月至2017年11月)和“亚太地区的国家、边境和冲突”(2014-18年，由墨尔本大学资助)以及通过这些项目建立的几个学术和政策网络所产生的巨大势头的基础上。它探讨了经纪人的生活史，以便更好地了解这些人物如何塑造和应对与国际和国内建设和平和国家建设干预措施有关的不断变化的战后动态。我们将从两个研究站点收集受访者的多个口述历史，并从这些口述历史中选择尼泊尔和斯里兰卡两个不同地区的四个故事(各2个)进行说明。这些漫画将与政策包和教育资源一起使用，以传达研究产生的关键政策信息。我们将经纪理解为一种社会关系，通过关键个人跨越社会边界和在不同规模之间进行调解的能力，塑造权力的施加和谈判。经纪人是“网络专家”，他们跨越多个生活世界的能力使他们能够充当把关人，协调权力并过滤对资源的访问。我们专注于那些实际位于该州边缘的经纪人。我们最初的假设是，经纪业务是战后转型的核心。军事、政治和经济中间人在中心和外围以及边境之间调停有价值的资源和思想。在战后的过渡中，他们的角色可能会发生变化；例如，军事演员可能会成为政党领导人，或转变为商人或发展经纪人。这些数字可能在决定边界地区在多大程度上融入战后解决方案方面发挥关键作用。例如，尼泊尔南部塔赖地区的政治领导人利用他们的筹码实施跨境封锁，以抗议新宪法。因此，他们的故事有助于阐明冲突与和平不断变化的社会、政治和性别动态，并描绘出一幅令人信服的图景，说明为什么冲突持续存在或如何建立和平关系。该项目将制作文学漫画和书籍，展示与一系列经纪人记录的第一人称证词，其中包括斯里兰卡的穆斯林政客，他们努力在核心选民的利益和中央国家的要求之间进行调解，为尼泊尔被边缘化的村民提供海外工作机会的“人力”代理人，以及斯里兰卡前准军事叛军领导人，他们在战争期间转而效忠，后来在省政府担任关键职位。我们将致力于在国际主流媒体以及斯里兰卡和尼泊尔的各种媒体平台上发表这些图文并茂的故事。该项目将批判性地考察文学漫画在边疆和经纪人研究中的潜在作用，产生的结果将与从事冲突和发展工作的广泛研究人员和学者有关。

This project uses literary comic strips to promote understanding of the role of borderland brokers in Nepal and Sri Lanka. Borderland brokers play an important but little understood role in mediating relations between the centre and periphery and in turn shaping the course of post-war transitions. These brokers include local political or military elites, traders or businessmen and women, or religious figures who mediate between centre and periphery and/or across international borders. The project will conduct life histories of a range of men and women from borderland or frontier regions in Nepal and Sri Lanka, two South Asian countries that have recently seen wars end. The project builds on the considerable momentum generated by two existing research projects ('Borderlands, Brokers and Peacebuilding in Sri Lanka and Nepal: War to Peace Transitions viewed from the margins' (funded by ESRC Dec 2015- Nov 2017) and 'State, Frontiers and Conflict in the Asia-Pacific' (2014-18, funded by the University of Melbourne), and several academic and policy networks established through these projects. It explores the life histories of brokers in order to better understand how these figures have shaped and responded to changing post-war dynamics linked to international and domestic peacebuilding and statebuilding interventions. We will collect multiple oral histories of respondents from the two research sites and from those, choose four stories from contrasting regions in Nepal and Sri Lanka (2 from each) to illustrate. The comics will be used in tandem with policy packs and educational resources to communicate key policy messages stemming from the research.We understand brokerage as a social relation that shapes how power is imposed and negotiated through the capacity of key individuals to mediate across social boundaries and between different scales. Brokers are 'network specialists' whose ability to straddle multiple life-worlds enables them to act as gatekeepers who mediate power and filter access to resources. We focus on brokers who are physically located at the margins of the state. Our starting assumption is that brokerage is central to post-war transitions. Military, political and economic brokers mediate valued resources and ideas between centre and periphery and across the borderline. In post-war transitions their roles may change; for example military actors become political party leaders or morph into businessmen, or development brokers. These figures may play a critical role in determining the extent to which borderland regions are integrated into the post-war settlement. For example, political leaders in the southern Tarai region of Nepal used their leverage to impose a cross-border blockade in protest at a new constitution. Their stories can therefore help to shed light on the shifting social, political and gender dynamics of conflict and peace, and paint a compelling picture of why conflict persists or how peaceful relationships are built. The project will produce literary comic strips and books, illustrating first person testimonies recorded with a range of brokers including Muslim politicians in Sri Lanka who struggle to mediate between the interests of their core constituency and the demands of the central state, 'manpower' agents who provide opportunities for marginalised villagers in Nepal to work overseas, and former para-military rebel leaders in Sri Lanka who switched allegiances during the war and went on to take up key positions in the Provincial administration. We will aim to publish these illustrated stories in the international mainstream media and through a variety of media platforms in Sri Lanka and Nepal. The project will critically examine the potential role of literary comics in research on borderlands and brokers, generating findings that will be of relevance to a wide range of researchers and scholars working on conflict and development.