GEO seminar: Why do certain people die during conflicts? Identifying socio-spatial factors producing heterogeneous vulnerabilities to violence during the Malian conflict

We will meet physically, but you can follow the presentation via Zoom, too. See the details below!

Speaker: Matthew Pflaum, PhD
Topic: Why do certain people die during conflicts? Identifying socio-spatial factors producing heterogeneous vulnerabilities to violence during the Malian conflict
Time: 21 Nov, 12:15-13:00
Place: Room 744 or ZOOM

The conflict and violence scholarship has mostly examined conflict from the perspective of violent actors in conflicts, rather than victims of it, via studies on borders (OECD/SWAC, 2022; Walther & Miles, 2017), networks, rebels (Salehyan, 2009; Weinstein, 2007), resources (Morelli & Rohner, 2015; van der Ploeg & Rohner, 2012), actor strategies (Liu & Eisner, 2024), and alliances (Christia, 2012; Phillips, 2018), few of which study civilians, vulnerabilities, or heterogeneities. Thus, the conflict scholarship has treated conflict violence as completely determined by actors, utterly disregarding civilian communities and vulnerabilities.  This study challenges the orthodox approaches to studying violence in the case study of the Malian civil war by 1) arguing for heterogeneities in impacts of violence against civilians (VAC), 2) identifying the role of vulnerabilities to these insecurities, and 3) comparing impacts of VAC across civilian communities. This study provides some of the incipient empirical evidence to clarify the impacts of VAC on civilian groups, by identifying and comparing impacts across civilian communities like farmers, traders, herders and different socio-cultural dimensions like gender, perceptions of insecurity, indigeneity, and social status. It demonstrates spatial and statistical variations and heterogeneity in impacts of VAC on civilian communities, identifies several key vulnerabilities to violent impacts, and elucidates the interplay between socio-cultural and spatial factors in violent outcomes. Overall, it provides significant evidence that conflict scholarship must examine heterogeneities in impacts of violence and vulnerabilities of civilians to violence rather than solely emphasizing actors involved in violence. During violence, certain civilians are affected, and this is determined through a combination of actor strategies, targeting, spatiality, and civilian vulnerabilities to violence.