Introduction: The Key Strengths of Ethnographic Peace Research

Abstract

This volume is about understanding experiences of conflict, of peace, and of transitions between the two. It argues that a forceful Ethnographic Peace Research (EPR) agenda can provide the necessary empirical focus for progressing the local turn in peace studies. The Introduction discusses the weakness of the local turn, as well as its complementarity with other streams of literature in anthropology, conflict transformation, and feminist international relations. It then presents five key strengths of EPR as evidenced in the contributions to the volume and describes how these are mutually constitutive. The Introduction concludes by noting also the interdisciplinary tensions to which an EPR agenda gives rise, but notes that this must be seen as a constructive tension that will spur creative interdisciplinary thinking and solutions.