A conference on "Disaggregating the Study of Civil War and Transnational Violence", will be held at the University of California, San Diego, 7–8 March 2005, sponsored by the University of California Institute of Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC).
Civil war and related concepts such as state failure have traditionally been studied at the level of nation states, where the nation states are either “at war” or not, and treated as phenomena to be explained by state-level characteristics. Existing studies have generally neglected how local-level characteristics can differ notably from global or aggregate characteristics. Studying civil war and transnational conflict in a more disaggregated fashion offers considerable promise of providing insights into the micro-level processes that make up the aggregate phenomena that are labeled "civil war," "state failure," or "transnational violence."
Project organizers hope to foster research disaggregating the study of civil war along three broad lines:
- studies that examine local level attributes and how these are related to the onset, duration, and outcomes of violence;
- studies that detail the micro-level process of interaction among actors that make up what we call violence and “peace” at the aggregate level; and
- studies that examine the differences in individual values associated with “peaceful” communities and “violent” communities where neighbors engage in the use of force against one another.
image(arrow) See the workshops external website for more information.
