Conflict Analysis
Beschrijving
Course goals
- Knowledge of theoretical approaches to analyse contemporary violent conflict.
- Capacity to apply abstract theoretical ideas and concepts to selected case studies of contemporary violent conflict. The ability to engage in a dialogue between theory and evidence.
- Basic knowledge of a case study approach as a research method.
- Capacity to conduct a case study of a violent conflict. You will become better conflict analysts.
- Capacity to give oral presentations for a disciplinary mixed and international audience of students.
Learning objectives and skills:
- To introduce you to key texts on the causes of contemporary violent conflict.
- To introduce you to analytical approaches that help you analyse the actors, issues, dynamics and technologies involved in 21st century violent conflict.
- To acquaint you with new analytical vocabularies on collective violent action, rebel
- governance, paramilitaries, remote warfare, and algorithmic warfare.
- To improve your ability to apply abstract theoretical approaches to actual contemporary
- cases of violent conflict.
- To learn by doing: by actively applying knowledge to concrete contemporary case studies.
- To strengthen your research and analytical skills through weekly assignments and writing a conflict map.
- To strengthen your capacity to give verbal and written presentations on the issues mentioned above.
- To improve your conceptual and analytical capacity to critically question conventional ideas and accepted courses of action, and to define your own position.
- To train you to become better conflict analysts
Content
Rarely a day passes without the media reporting on violent uprisings, military coups, international interventions, suicide bombings, drone attacks, and civilian casualties all over the world. In conflict studies, these events are often discussed using a range of concepts such as ‘civil war’, ‘protracted social conflict’, ‘invasions’, and ’terrorism’. Despite this proliferation of terms, clarifying the complexity of violent conflict in the 21st century remains a challenging task.
Rather than choosing one of these labels, this course presents a variety of theoretical approaches that aim to understand why and how different actors resort to violence in internationalised intrastate conflict. Each of these theories use different analytical categories to study different aspect of the phenomena under investigation. The course respectively focuses on the non-state, state, paramilitary, and international actor.
The main aim of this course is to teach you to become better conflict analysts and help you to understand, and explain to others, the complex array of actors, interests, and dynamics involved in the violent conflicts we see around the world today.
Throughout the course we will address pressing issues in contemporary warfare like: How are terrorist and insurgency organisations able to mobilize people towards violent action? Why do states deploy starvation and sieges as a weapon of war in response? Why do states outsource violence to paramilitaries? How and why do international actors forge transnational alliances to intervene in theatres of war?
We will focus on a broad range of contemporary case studies Collectively, grappling with these different layers of analysis in isolation and in relation to one another and different case studies will sharpen your conceptual and analytical capacities greatly. This course is essential for those who plan to participate in upcoming courses of the Conflict Studies minor.
Additional information
- Are enrolled in the Conflict Studies minor
- Are an exchange student and meet the course’s entry requirements
Please note that you need to enrol separately for both the Minor Conflict Studies and the individual courses.
Enrolling in the Minor does not automatically register you for its courses.
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