Political conflicts in divided cities

In recent years, the period between ca. 1280 and 1330 has attracted a growing interest among scholars who study Italian communes. As regards in particular the greatest popular communes, a specific attention to institutional dynamics has allowed to develop a complex model to explain the transformations of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. However, there remain some difficulties in understanding fully the nature of the political conflicts that marked that phase. Popolani and magnati, guelphs and ghibellines, popolo grasso and popolo minuto, bianchi and neri: urban communities were traversed by multiple and overlapping lines of fracture, in a process of decomposition and recomposition of political identities in which horizontal “class” solidarities, family solidarities, conflicts of interest, clientelist logics and ideological claims acted simultaneously. The article puts forward the idea that a better understanding of these conflicts, of their protagonists – groups, families, individuals – and their political and discursive strategies would improve our ability to read the institutional evolution of the popular communes between the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth centuries.

This paper analyzes changes in regional electoral behavior and attitudes towards separatism and foreign policy orientation in Ukraine after the “Orange Revolution” and the “Euromaidan,” which turned into a violent internal conflict and one of the biggest international conflicts involving Western countries and Russia. The research question is whether the regional divisions concerning domestic politics, separatism and foreign orientation have changed significantly in Ukraine since the “Orange Revolution” in 2004 and the “Euromaidan” in 2014. This paper employs comparative and statistical analyses of voting results of the 2012, 2007, 2006, and 2002 parliamentary elections, and the 2014, 2010, and 2004 presidential elections, to examine effects of historical legacies, ethnicity, language, age, and economic factors on regional support for pro-nationalist/pro-Western and pro-Russian/pro-communist political parties and presidential candidates. The study also analyses support for separatism in Crimea and Donbas after the “Orange Revolution” and the “Euromaidan.” It uses a brief survey, conducted for this study by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) in April and May 2014, to examine determinants of pro-separatist attitudes. The paper also employs Razumkov Center and KIIS surveys to analyze changes in 2002-2014 in regional preferences for joining the European Union (EU), NATO, and a union with Russia. The analysis shows that Ukraine after the “Orange Revolution” remained divided along regional lines in terms of support for political parties and presidential candidates and attitudes towards joining the EU, NATO, and a Russia-led union. After the “Euromaidan,” such divisions in foreign policy orientation and, to a lesser extent, support for presidential candidates and political parties remained. A significant rise in separatist sentiments helped to fuel separatist takeovers of power in Crimea and Donbas and Russian military intervention in these regions.

This paper provides a reassessment on divided and ethno/nationally contested cities and a anthropological and historical discussion on the case of Mostar, Bosnia-Erzegovina, following a research made for the ethnographic film "About Mostar, the Old Bridge and Bruce Lee"

the privileged ethno-political status of indigenous Fijians. Following the 2006 military coup, Fiji embarked on a nation-building program designed, inter alia, to create unity by eliminating official categorization based on ethnicity. It is argued that national integration in the Fijian context has been an attempt to forge "unity in diversity," seeking to wish away sociocultural differences and imposing uniformity in spite of complex cultural, ethnic, and religious diversity. This "ethnically blind" approach has the potential to create more conflict and pose obstacles to unity, peaceful coexistence, progress, and stable development. It recommends that national integration and its benefits can be realized only with the development and entrenchment of a supportive public culture, understanding, respecting, and tolerating differences occasioned by sociocultural diversity.

The phenomenon of violence in late medieval Sicily appears to present in a significantly different manner. This article examines cases of conflicts in the communities of Piazza, Polizzi and Randazzo in the mid-fifteenth century during a time of rapid demographic growth. The intention is a focussed analysis of several events recorded during the mid-1400s, which although not entirely comparable to one another, are shown to have several aspects in common. Administrative and economic reasons (such as the overall management of the gabelle, or indirect taxes), control of the magistracies and an imbalance of representation in the government appear to have contributed to the causes of these events. The populus was constantly implicated and its composition is shown to change based on the context and the perspective – that of the royal court or the members of the community. The populus cannot be identified as a homogenous group; it is more appropriate to speak of strata of populares among which there were overlapping and differentiating features. Consideration of how violence was perceived and described in society at the time should go in tandem with the analysis of the causes and descriptions of these events. In some cases violence was deemed just and even greatly desired; in others, it was perceived as a threat to the common good. While in Polizzi, violence was a means for regulating the distribution of economic and political resources, in Piazza and Randazzo, the purpose was the control of resources for the benefit of one faction. In Polizzi violence appeared necessary in order to put an end to an improper wielding of power; in Piazza and Randazzo it was perceived with fear and anguish.

This paper examines the relation between ethno-nationalism and neoliberalism in urban space. Contrary to common views in urban studies, it argues that the 'ethno-nationally divided city' and the 'neoliberal city' are not antithetical, but that neoliberal nationalism is a new modality of urban conflict in a globalised world, which reshapes the relation between the local and the global and draws new urban geopolitics. By investigating practices of nation-branding in a divided city, this paper bridges different theoretical fields to shed light on an aspect of urban conflict that has largely been ignored by the literature on nationalism and urban divisions. It also complements existing research on neoliberal nationalism by emphasising the spatial and material aspects of nation-branding, and by showing how it can be used by competing ethno-national leaders to mobilise their communities and extend their control at the national and urban levels. By highlighting processes common to neoliberal and divided cities, this paper draws on recent calls within urban geopolitics to rethink current theoretical categories and labels attributed to cities. It develops this analysis by examining contemporary neoliberal urban policies in Skopje, Macedonia, which have become a new battlefield where interethnic conflicts unfold.

The spectre of exclusionary medical service provision, restricted clinic access and physician targeting in sectarian-divided Iraq underscores the crucial and timely need for qualitative research into the inter-relationship between conflict, identity and health. In response, this paper provides a critical ethnography of obstetric service provision and patient access during Shia-Sunni hostilities in Gilgit Town, capital of Pakistan's Northern Areas (2005). I analyse how services were embedded in and constrained by sectarian affiliation in ways that detrimentally impacted Sunni women patients and hospital staff, resulting in profoundly diminished clinic access, reduced physician coverage and a higher observed incidence of maternal morbidity and mortality. The paper first situates obstetric medicine at the interstices of contested sectarian terrain and competing historical projects of sectarian identity. Gilgiti Sunnis' high clinical reliance is argued to be a response to and consequence of, inter-sectarian dissonance and the ascendance of biomedicine during three decades of regional development. In 2005, conflict-incurred service deprivations and the enactment and strategic use of sectarian identity in clinical settings were associated with differential treatment and patient-perceived adverse health outcomes, leading Sunnis to generate alternative sect-specific health services. Obstetric morbidity and mortality during sectarian conflict are analyzed as distinctive manifestations of the wide range of direct harms routinely associated with violence and political strife.

This paper describes the evaluation of an educational project, delivered in a Bachelor in Social Work degree (BSW) program in Northern Ireland. The project aimed to equip social work students to be more culturally competent in this divided society, with a central focus on including victim/survivor service users in social work training. A number of pedagogical approaches are noted, with

This chapter aims to reflect upon the contested process of rebuilding Mostar, a topic that has been widely discussed within the growing scholarship on divided cities and contested states. The first section, ‘Rubbers’, explores Mostar’s destruction, taking in consideration the notion of urbicide, and will expand on the sig- nificance of erasing public spaces vis-à-vis the erasing of public memories. The second section, ‘Pens’, engages with the process of physical reconstruction and the re-writing of antagonistic and conflicting urban histories, thereby showing how the re- creation of public spaces is limited by the absence of a single, legitimised history of the city. The last section, ‘Crayons’, reflects upon the possibility for art interventions to rebuild public spaces, where the re-writing of histories, and the negotiation of memories, could be made public. The chapter draws on the example of ‘(Re)collecting Mostar’ to critically engage with its main goals, and to discuss its potential (political) impact.

La ricerca di un disciplinamento degli spazi di propria pertinenza, secondo strategie diverse, sembra costituire il fine principale delle città del tardo Medioevo ad esempio nella razionalizzazione degli organigrammi di governo, nei diritti e doveri dei residenti, nelle strategie di inclusione e di esclusione. Da questo punto di vista in Sicilia la comunità di Randazzo offre una conferma e alcuni elementi peculiari dovuti fra l’altro a una composizione sociale differenziata per radici culturali e per attività professionali.
Un mezzo efficace per evocare una città è quello di identificarla con un luogo simbolo che ne richiami i caratteri distintivi. Non è un procedimento agevole per Randazzo, che sembra scomporsi in diversi spazi egualmente centrali, le parrocchie e i quartieri, le fiere e i villaggi rurali (casali) di sua pertinenza. In base a una visione di insieme emerge l’immagine di un centro, da un lato, radicato all’interno delle sue mura e geometricamente diviso in zone convergenti sulle tre maggiori chiese, d’altro lato, non delimitato da rigidi confini ma con una marcata proiezione esterna attraverso le fiere e in particolare per mezzo di un controllo sul territorio circostante. Luoghi apparentemente distinti ma in realtà correlati in modo speculare a una progressiva maturazione della identità cittadina. Con questo studio si intende prendere in esame le forme organizzative messe in essere dalla universitas sia sul territorio tradizionalmente di propria pertinenza sia su quello di nuova acquisizione, definito dalle fonti districtus, su cui gradualmente impone la propria giurisdizione. Un ulteriore aspetto, al centro della mia indiagine, riguarda la serrata comunicazione esistente fra le universitates, che vede emergere Randazzo in maniera significativa e originale: non si limita a recepire le molteplici influenze esterne ma interagisce in maniera attiva con il fine di assumere una identità quanto più autonoma.

This paper explores the use of Islamic doctrine and jurisprudence by family planning organizations in the Gilgit-Baltistan region of northern Pakistan. It examines how particular interpretations of Islam are promoted in order to encourage fertility reductions, and the ways Muslim clerics, women and their families react to this process. The paper first discusses how Pakistan's demographic crisis, as the world's sixth most populous nation, has been widely blamed on under-funding for reproductive health services and wavering political commitment to family planning. Critics have called for innovative policy and programming to counter ‘excessive reproduction’ by also addressing socio-cultural and religious barriers to contraceptive uptake. Drawing on two years of ethnographic research, the paper examines how family planning organizations in Gilgit-Baltistan respond to this shift by employing moderate interpretations of Islam that qualify contraceptive use as a ‘rational’ reproductive strategy and larger families as ‘irrational’. However, the use of Islamic rhetoric to enhance women's health-seeking agency and enable fertility reductions is challenged by conservative Sunni ulema (clergy), who seek to reassert collective control over women's bodies and fertility by deploying Islamic doctrine that honors frequent childbearing. Sunnis’ minority status and the losses incurred by regional Shia-Sunni conflicts have further strengthened clerics’ pronatalist campaigns. The paper then analyses how Sunni women navigate the multiple reproductive rationalities espoused by ‘Islamized’ family planning and conservative ulema. Although Islamized family planning legitimizes contraceptive use and facilitates many women's stated desire for smaller families, it frequently positions women against the interests of family, community and conservative Islam.

Carte "Les cimetières dans la ville de Kosovska Mitrovica/Mitrovicë en 1998 : des espaces de la mort au cœur des enjeux des espaces des vivants" accompagnant la photographie du cimetière serbe de Mitrovicë/Kosovska Mitrovica (Mitrovica - Kosovo) publiée et commentée dans l'article : Bénédicte TRATNJEK, "Carte postale du cimetière serbe de Mitrovicë/Kosovska Mitrovica (Kosovo)", Cafés géographiques, rubrique Cartes postales du monde, 28 août 2011, en ligne: http://www.cafe-geo.net/article.php3?id_article=2242

This book is about the trajectories of urban conflict and peace in the politically polarized cities of Jerusalem and Belfast since 1994 – how sometimes there has been hopeful change while at other times debilitating stasis and regression. Based on extensive research, fieldwork, and interviews, Scott Bollens shows how seeking peace in these cities is shaped by the interaction of city-based actors and national elites, and that it is not just a political process, but a social and spatial one that takes place problematically over an extended period. He intertwines academic precision with ethnography and personal narrative to illuminate the complex political and emotional kaleidoscopes of these polarized cities. With hostility and competition among groups defined by ethnic, religious, and nationalistic identity on the increase across the world, this timely investigation contributes to our understanding of today’s fractured cities and nations.

This is a study on divided and contested cities where ethnic differentiation is linked to nationalist claims that endanger the sovereignty of the state. The cities I discuss, in particular the city of Mostar (Bosnia-Herzegovina) in its modern history, were or are inhabited by people of different language or religion and all had to cope with the problems of 19th-21st century European and Mediterranean experience of nationalization. The focus is on the rivalry between different ethnic groups, which occurs within a nationalist ideological framework and deploys discourses and practices used in disputes about hegemony in the political and public space.

https://issuu.com/lefkos/docs/mostar

This photo essay is part of a series initiated by the 'Conflict in Cities and the Contested State' research project in 2011.
The city of Mostar is normally acknowledged as divided along the Bulevar from North to South, between the Croatian and Bosniak parts of the city. This photo essay challenges this social-spatial understanding by reading the city through a section that cuts the city from East to West. The area under analysis goes from Musala Square to Rondo passing through main focal points for the two communities. This photo essay aims at presenting both a historical excursus throughout the changes happened in the physical environment of this section and expanding on the relevance of the area under study in present political and social life.
The material here presented comes both from my PhD fieldwork research in Mostar (2009-2011) and the archive put together by Abart as part of the '(Re)collecting Mostar' project (www.abart.ba) where I worked as research consultant.

In the second half of the XIII century, the Commune of Milan was lead by the “pars populi” and the family della Torre. They opposed Ottone Visconti and other rival nobles (“pars nobilium”) that had been exiled from the city and were living in the surrounding countryside (contado). In order to better contrast their rivals, the family della Torre decided to acquire the lands and the rights (“honor et districtus”) over several countryside places, including the village of Trezzano sul Naviglio. The policy of the family della Torre in the countryside is here investigated by the mean of three documents from the archive of the Canonica of S. Ambrogio of Milan. The help given by the Canonica was fundamental to the consolidation of della Torre’s hegemonic power in Trezzano sul Naviglio and more generally in the countryside.

My paper reflects on fourteen-months of anthropological fieldwork in Gilgit Town, capital of Pakistan’s semi-autonomous Northern Areas, where I examined the impacts of Shia-Sunni hostilities, health service exclusions and Sunni conservatism for Gilgiti Sunni women’s reproductive and maternal health. This paper draws on a selection of fieldnotes, my research participants’ narratives and portions of my in-progress dissertation to re-visit a crucial series of issues.

Recent Shia-Sunni carnage and exclusionary practices in war-torn Iraq and Afghanistan, where employees of faith-based NGOs have been targeted and killed, call our attention to the impacts of inter-sectarian discord for Islamic humanitarianism. In this research paper, I use ethnographic data  from my fieldwork in Pakistan’s embattled, multi-sectarian Northern Areas (2004-2005) to work through a number of under-investigated research questions: How is conflictive, Muslim sectarianism expressed through everyday interactions between Islamic NGOs and client populations? Can deliberate disadvantages, themselves reflective of inter-sectarian dissonance, be built into everyday operations and policy, or be used to justify when and if ‘other’ communities are covered by organizational outreach? Are ostensibly culture-neutral modern/traditional ‘development’ binaries used to cloak pre-existing sectarian prejudices? 

By invoking the spectre of sectarian conflict, my presentation attempts to problematize available research of faith-based humanitarianism in practice.  Paraphrasing Jacques Bertrand, I will argue that in certain contexts faith-based non-governmental organizations (NGOs) “reinforce rather than defuse group identities”  (2002: 57). This is especially problematic for settings destabilized by religious warfare where, as anthropologist Martijn Van Beek notes, “the politics of identity is a symptom and cause of conflict” (2000: 550). By drawing on Van Beek’s critical analysis of ‘identity discourse’, my memo argues that faith-based ‘development discourse’ (see Little & Painter 2005) is equally likely to signal both “’community and contestation’” (Roseberry 1996: 71 in Van Beek 2000: 527).

The role of sectarian ‘identity politics’ in faith-based humanitarianism raises a number of concerns: If Islamic humanitarian projects are definitively aligned with sectarian-specific world views, do competing ideals of faith, sociality and practice reduce the possibilities for success in multi-sectarian communities? What happens when they tacitly participate with sectarian discord? When faith-based organization employees are from the ‘local’ community, can they use institutional structures as mechanisms not only to initiate ‘good’, but also to enact subtle exclusions and harms? Moreover, under which contexts might Islamic humanitarian organizations be a participant, or contributory factor to conflict ? What are the implications for how Islamic humanitarianism is delivered and perceived?  How do these more awkward realities affect Islamic NGOs’ “ethical commitment” and “humanitarian imperative” (MacFarlane 2001: ix)?

L'inscription spatiale de la guerre dans les villes ne se mesure pas seulement au prisme des ruines et des destructions, qui laissent des empruntes dans les paysages urbains. En effet, l'approche territoriale se trouve particulièrement opératoire pour comprendre les recompositions des liens sociaux et des pratiques spatiales des habitants dans les villes pendant la guerre et dans le long terme de la pacification. La géographe Elisabeth Dorier-Apprill a proposé le concept de "quartiers-territoires" pour expliquer la stratégie particulière des milices qui s'ancrent dans des quartiers contrôlés par la mise en place de check-points qui construisent une discontinuité territoriale entre un "dedans" et un "dehors", défendus contre les acteurs "intrusifs" jugés comme "indésirables" dans le territoire approprié, et identifiés par des marqueurs spatiaux et symboliques. Une telle stratégie (qui s'oppose à celle des acteurs insurrectionnels qui ne repose pas sur l'appropriation d'un territoire doté d'une identité discursive) reconstruit les pratiques spatiales des habitants dans les villes en guerre, notamment en brisant la continuité spatiale dans leurs déplacements, mais également en transformant des logiques de distanciation inhérentes à la ville de l'immédiat avant-guerre en logique de différenciation (par des processus d'enclavement des habitants dans des territoires dans lesquels ils se sentent en sécurité). Ainsi, il est nécessaire de s'interroger sur les mobilités et les représentations spatiales des acteurs syntagmatiques et des habitants pour comprendre combien le "vivre ensemble" est mis à mal le temps du conflit. En quoi ces fragmentations urbaines (culturelles, sociales et/ou politiques) s'ancrent-elles dans le paysage urbain de l'après-guerre et dans l'imaginaire spatial des différents opérateurs spatiaux qui y vivent ou y agissent ? Cette proposition s'appuie sur des travaux empiriques et des réflexions menées dans le cadre d'une thèse de géographie sur les recompositions sociospatiales dans les villes en guerre, au prisme d'une approche comparative. On postule que la guerre recompose des territorialités spécifiques et on se propose d'en interroger la durabilité et les impacts sur le "vivre ensemble" dans l'après-guerre. A travers des exemples divers (principalement Abidjan, Beyrouth, Mitrovica et Sarajevo), il s'agit d'analyser le temps de l'immédiat après-guerre comme un défi posé aux acteurs de la pacification pour décloisonner des "quartiers-territoires" et reconstruire la ville comme un espace partagé par tous les habitants, alors même que le jeu des acteurs déstabilisateurs tend à renforcer les fragmentations territoriales comme des poursuites de la guerre dans le temps de la paix.

Tratnjek, Bénédicte, 2010, "Se déplacer dans les villes en guerre : mobilités restreintes, mobilités contraintes et mobilités forcées", communication au colloque 'Les mobilités éprouvantes. (Re)connaître les pénibilités des déplacements ordinaires', 26 mars 2010, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Bruxelles.