In the research area Synergies, researchers aim to establish a joint terminology to guide interdisciplinary work, as well as common theoretical, methodological and normative backgrounds.
They examine the causes and effects of the conceptual changes in political violence, investigate the affectivity and materiality of violence, and synthesize TraCe’s research in a handbook.
The “Routledge Handbook on Transformations of Political Violence” is based on TraCe research and provides an interdisciplinary overview of current research political violence in a changing global context. The book delves into three key questions: How have forms of political violence evolved over time? What role do institutions play in shaping these changes? How do different stakeholders interpret and ascribe meaning to varying manifestations of political violence? Through the integration of diverse disciplinary, methodological, and empirical approaches, this anthology systematizes the current state of research, shedding light on recent trends and providing a nuanced understanding of political violence in our complex world.
Bonacker, Thorsten/Daase, Christopher/Driedger, Jonas J./Nguyen Pham Lam-Phuong/Pfister, Jannik (forthcoming) (Hrsg.):The Routledge Handbook on Transformations of Political Violence, London/New York: Routledge.
The work package Language and Language Change takes a semantic approach to political violence. Researchers trace the history of concepts, differentiate central terms to better capture new forms of violence, and take into account qualitative determinants of political violence. They aim at making visible the causes and effects of language change by means of concept-historical and concept-analytical reconstruction.
To what extent can recent research on violence from the social and cultural sciences be opened up for peace and conflict research and made fruitful as a useful complement to theories of violence? Researchers in the work package Theoretical Innovations address this question. Building on the linguistic nature of violence, they combine a theoretic approach with empirical case studies on violence in Germany in order to investigate the affectivity and materiality of violence as well as the effect of technologies on increasing individual and collective propensity to violence.
The work package Pacification or Transformation? focuses on bringing together the results of TraCe’s various research areas. Here, researchers attempt to answer the initial question of whether developments hint at a transformation of political violence rather than pacification.