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Photo courtesy of Quang Tri based journalist Phan Tân Lâm
Violence and the Environment
As a research institute specialising in the study of war, genocide, and violence, the NIOD has a particular position to contribute to the study of the environment and climate change. At the NIOD, researchers examine violence and warfare, in their many diverse forms, histories, and legacies across the globe. Drawing on research methods from history and the social sciences, we provide a long-durée, multi-generational perspective, as well as an attentiveness to the on-the-ground lived experiences of people affected by mass violence, warfare, and genocide. With this expertise on violence across the global North and global South, NIOD researchers can offer valuable theoretical and methodological insights into research on and debates about the environment and climate change.
The project, ‘Violence and the Environment’, is aimed at bringing the environmental/climate perspective into current NIOD research, while also developing new research, along the following themes:
1. Slow violence and multi-species justice/care: Warfare in the last century has resulted in tremendous social, multi-species, and environmental harm. Explosives and toxics used during wars and conflicts continue to enact ‘slow violence’ (Nixon 2011, see reference 1. below) as they lie dormant in and contaminate the soil, waterways, and the bodies of humans and other species. These war-time technologies fundamentally alter the physical nature of the bodies, the landscape, and the socio-cultural relationships among the different species. At the NIOD, this focus on slow violence and multi-species justice can help broaden the scope of the current research on transitional justice. What might transitional and reparative justice look like if we depart from a fundamentally multi-species perspective? How can we engage the fundamental interconnectedness of humans and other species and thus of their experiences of (legacies of) mass violence? Besides compensation, what alternative forms of care might be available?
2. ‘Military-industry complex’, resource scarcity, and inequalities: Discourses about the climate crisis in recent decades have ushered in large-scale international technical interventions and regulations to mitigate the effects of climate change. While these efforts are important, many have been shown to be linked to the increasing militarisation of our world and the environment, further exacerbating global inequalities and domination (Guarasci and Kim 2022, see 2.) The linkages between the military/militarism and industry/science, particularly technical solutions invented to ‘improve’ environmental and physical conditions, have a long historical precedent. NIOD’s historical expertise can highlight the limits and potential danger of the contemporary investment in technical solutions to environmental and climatic issues, including its linkages to historical, colonial legacies of violence and extractivism.
3. Ecological grief/trauma, migration, remembrance: Human-induced climatic and environmental changes, through colonial resource extraction, industries, warfare, and other interventions, have resulted in large-scale ecological loss and mass displacement of people. Witnessing the destruction of their homelands, many people have to flee and migrate to other places, where they are subjected to racial discrimination, regimes of citizenship and exclusion, and other challenges. How do they grieve for the loss of their lands and the ecologies? How do we expand the scope of trauma studies and transitional justice studies to account for ecological grief? What forms of commemoration for ecological loss have emerged, and how do they relate to grieving ‘the lost homeland’, including potentially highly contested and violent political ideas and aims with regard to this lost homeland? These questions can provide an important venue for the NIOD’s research interests in trauma, transitional justice, and restitution/heritage studies.
One important goal of this project is to develop a research infrastructure within the NIOD, composed of colleagues from the research and the collection departments who are interested in developing the themes above. The NIOD has taken steps toward this goal, for example, through a multi-day workshop ‘Toxic and Explosive Legacies: Living with War Pollution Across the Globe’ (October 11-13, 2023) and the organisation of a monthly discussion series Climate/Violence.
The NIOD is also partnering with other KNAW’s institutes, universities, and the Netherlands Climate Research Initiative (KIN) to critically engage with issues connected to climate change, environmental degradation, and inequalities.
References:
1. Rob Nixon. 2011. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
2. Guarasci, Bridget, and Eleana J. Kim. 2022. ‘Introduction: Ecologies of War.’ Theorizing the Contemporary, Fieldsights, January 25. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/introduction-ecologies-of-war.
