IKG Blog

Peace is a contested concept in social science as in everyday life. For instance, the social representation of peace is much more diversified compared to war. Besides, Cortright (2008) recently argued in his seminal work that in fact, peace refers to a process, not a ‘state’. He suggests using a more operational term to define a process whereby societies move towards a peaceful state, such as peace-making or peace-building. Yet, the pathway towards peace is not free from obstacles or problems and it is not always linear. For instance, there have been methodological, ethical and security issues even for researchers in regions where peace is desired utmost importance: conflict zones (Haer & Becher, 2012; Kacen & Chaitin, 2006: Sriram, et al. 2009; Wood, 2006). In line with these efforts, a recent book entitled ‘Researching Peace, Conflict, and Power in the Field: Methodological Challenges and Opportunities’ from Springer Peace Psychology series, brings together a collection of the field experiences of researchers around the world. Together with Aslı Aydemir, we contributed to this collection a chapter focusing on changes in our role as a researcher, with a reflexive assessment during a non-linear peacebuilding process in Turkey commonly referred as the “Resolution Process”.

You can find the full text here.

Bayad, A. & Aydemir, A. (2020). When Research, Identity and Context Merge: A Reflexive Assessment on Studying Peace during Conflict. In, Y.G. Acar, S. M. Moss & Ö. M. Uluğ (Eds) Researching Peace, Conflict, and Power in the Field: Methodological Challenges and Opportunities. Springer.