'Seeing' conflicts at the margins: understanding community experiences through social research and digital narrative in Kenya and Madagascar

This project uses participatory visual and audio methods to explore the roles of communities in conflicts in places where new resource investments become entangled with longer histories of resistance, protest and violence. East Africa is experiencing a resource boom as investors seek to access to coveted deposits of oil, gas, minerals and geothermal fields. National governments portray new investments and associated infrastructure as beneficial for growth, transforming rural margins and enhancing livelihood opportunities for communities. Yet, achieving these goals on the ground is often undermined by competition for control of resources, corruption and uneven political power. There is evidence that new extractive operations often worsen tensions at the rural margins by aggravating existing contests for wealth and power and influencing new patterns of conflict. In fact, in many rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), politics around new resource developments are reconfiguring conflict dynamics, even in places with legacies of violence and unrest.

To address these issues, this project bridges the social sciences (social anthropology and human geography), the humanities (history, digital arts and visual inquiry) and community-based participatory research (CBPR) to examine how different 'communities' of actors 'see' and experience resource conflicts in Kenya and Madagascar. We ask how different views, values and strategies for legitimising claims to resources shape relations around resource developments, contribute to conflict dynamics and reflect the changing character of resource conflicts in SSA more broadly.

Conflict, in different forms, is always part and parcel of negotiating among different communities of actors - more so in places where ways of valuing and relating to important resources varies dramatically across different groups of government, private sector and local community stakeholders. While it is unsurprising that new large resource developments could spark new conflicts or renew tensions in places, the concerns and views of people in marginalized communities are often unseen or illegible to a wider range of actors. Governments and investors may introduce local compensation schemes and use local gatekeepers to champion 'development', though often without fully grasping community experiences of and responses to the increased presence and control of the state and non-state actors that is implied in new extractive development.

The central proposition of this project is that varying, 'hidden' narratives of conflict must be recognised, understood, dialogued and shared to develop pathways through which conflict can be transformed from within and thus promote more peaceful outcomes in resource development contexts. Focusing on specific, contested resource development sites in the two project countries through deep collaboration with local researchers, community advocates and diverse members of local populations, the project will use qualitative fieldwork, a variety of participatory visual and audio methods, and textual analysis to document and analyse the views of (and differing perspectives within) different key groups of actors. We also ask how located histories of resistance, protest, co-option, and consent intersect with contemporary conflicts around resource developments. International teams will collaborate with conflict stakeholders to produce multimedia digital narratives, key outputs around which community-level, national and cross-national dialogues on conflict will be convened. Developing shared visions of what conflict is about requires 'seeing' not only as a state (the transformative potential of extractive industries), or as a private investor (need secure local consent through various means), but also the various ways of 'seeing' as someone who lives in a place where resources are found, extracted and resource claims are contested in complex ways.

Key non-academic project beneficiaries include participants and other residents of communities involved in rural resource conflicts, advocacy-oriented actors, government ministers and employees, investors, and aid and civil society actors with a stake in understanding drivers of conflict and building peace in marginal rural areas of Kenya and Madagascar. More broadly, because our dissemination strategy aims to engage with and realise impacts across a number of different stakeholder groups through unique textual and multimedia outputs, the uptake of practical methods and knowledge impacts from this project may incur benefits for similar actors and groups in countries across SSA in settings facing similar challenges related to rural resource conflicts.

Generating impact begins in participant communities, built in to the participatory project methodologies. Exchanges and discussions of multimedia outputs across the study sites, countries and stakeholder groups will be a key platform to engage communities in comparative analysis and discussion of experiences of and responses to conflicts. Researchers in a number of fields have demonstrated how this process of 'horizontal exchange' of participatory media outputs, which involves learning, dialogue, and knowledge production and sharing, can lead to transformative changes in the lifecycle of conflicts through facilitating understanding of shared challenges and the development of collaborative grassroots engagement strategies across different communities.

These methods can also contribute to transformative impacts on wider public and policy debates and influence practical approaches to conflict and peace building. To do this, our broader impact plan is implemented through a unique international partnership and communications strategy designed to engage policy, advocacy and activist networks, in the project countries and internationally, who are addressing related issues of conflict prevention, peacebuilding, social justice and minority rights in rural development contexts. In the inception phase of the project, the research teams will complete stakeholder mapping, Participatory Impact Pathways Analysis (PIPA) and local and national key informant interviews to narrow the range of key stakeholders and identify the most effective types of engagement based on their interests and objectives. The stakeholder maps and PIPAs will be discussed at community workshops / reflection meetings meant to assess the research objectives, capture key findings as they emerge and integrate these findings into plans for ensuring the project's longer-term impacts. Based on this process, we will be able to plan highly accessible textual and multimedia outputs and engagement events. These include an immersive online storytelling website, online events, policy briefings and roundtables, digital multimedia exhibitions and blogs that are specifically designed for the needs of and accessible to different stakeholders.

These accessible outputs will contextualise larger policy and economic trends in deeper histories and socio-political dynamics of conflict. Thus, beneficiaries gain new understandings and a better grasp of 'vernacular' perspectives and the complexities at play in conflict settings. This is useful to stakeholders interested in 'lessons learned' and in identifying broader trends at play regarding conflict dynamics in similar settings throughout SSA. Thus, the empirical knowledge and policy evidence that we generate can support and strengthen efforts to promote accountability and redress mechanisms for communities affected by large development projects. At the same time, our methods could result in greater opportunities for historically marginalised actors to amplify their voices to articulate their interests, perspectives and needs, make appeals and settle disputes, and improved opportunities for substantive participation in policy and project planning.