In a new special issue of the journal Peacebulding IDS researchers call for policymakers and practitioners to rethink security, peacebuilding and violence reduction in the light of Sustainable Development Goal 16 on ‘promoting peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development’.
The special issue – entitled ‘Security in the Vernacular’ – presents new analysis and case studies, which aim to challenge and refresh the established policy consensus around violence reduction and security.
“The prevailing emphases on narrow causation of civil wars, aggregate indicators, rebel motivations, and so-called ‘external stressors’, conceal a more complex multi-causal, multi-level story”, explain IDS’s Jeremy Lind and Robin Luckham in their introduction to the issue.
Articles are distinctive in focusing upon the vernacular or local understandings of those at the receiving end of direct and structural violence; and in analysing the insurgent margins where violence and insecurity are most concentrated. The idea of ‘insurgent margins’ enables focus on violence that occurs in states and areas not normally considered fragile or experiencing open violent conflict in addition to those torn apart by such conflict.
The special issue, edited by Dr Jeremy Lind and Emeritus Professor Robin Luckham, includes contributions from seven IDS researchers working across five different thematic IDS research and knowledge clusters, and builds on a rich body of IDS work that contributes to one of IDS’s core strategic themes: building secure and inclusive societies.
All articles are accessible online for free:
- Introduction: security in the vernacular and peacebuilding at the margins; rethinking violence reduction, By Jeremy Lind & Robin Luckham
- Whose violence, whose security? Can violence reduction and security work for poor, excluded and vulnerable people? By Robin Luckham
- ‘Killing a mosquito with a hammer’: Al-Shabaab violence and state security responses in Kenya, By Jeremy Lind, Patrick Mutahi & Marjoke Oosterom
- Marginalisation, insurgency and civilian insecurity: Boko Haram and the Lord’s Resistance Army, By Caitriona Dowd & Adam Drury
- Black sands, green plans and vernacular (in)securities in the contested margins of south-western Madagascar, By Amber Huff
- Invisible power and visible everyday resistance in the violent Colombian Pacific, By Rosie McGee
- Gendered (in)security in South Sudan: masculinities and hybrid governance in Imatong state, By Marjoke Oosterom
- ‘These streets are ours’: Mumbai’s urban form and security in the vernacular, By Jaideep Gupte
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