Simultaneously inhabited lifeworlds: A phenomenological approach to understanding peace and conflict

Abstract

This article seeks to show the value of a phenomenological lens in understanding conflict-affected societies. In particular, it uses a phenomenological lens to unpack how individuals and communities simultaneously inhabit a number of lifeworlds as part of navigating through life in conflict-affected contexts. A lifeworlds approach, and its emphasis on the micro-dynamics of everyday life, sheds light on the apparent contradictions experienced and lived in conflict-affected contexts. The article utilises Van Manen’s four-part framework of ‘existentials’: lived space (spatiality), lived body (corporeality), lived time (temporality) and lived human relations (relationality or communality) to show how people construct lifeworlds that hold contradictions. In one reading, these contradictions help perpetuate division. In another reading, this ability to inhabit multiple and often contradictory lifeworlds represents everyday diplomacy or a non-escalatory conflict management that allows society to function, even in a dysfunctional way. The article draws on detailed and highly localised research in Colombia, Lebanon and Northern Ireland.