Towards a new innovative methodology
Culture and identity are major drivers of conflict in the contemporary world, and so dealing with the tensions associated with disputed territory remains a pressing challenge worldwide. However, the solution to these tensions is not necessarily to formulate a ‘shared’ memory of such territories, which in any case may prove difficult to achieve.
The issue is a complex and multi-layered one: while historical memory is disputed at the national level, individual and societal perceptions of the past are extremely diverse, making it difficult to envisage a collective memory or even to define common historical landmarks.
Moving beyond: where next?
In order to address these challenges, DisTerrMem will develop a new transnational, interdisciplinary and multi-level theoretical and methodological model for understanding the successful management of competing memories of disputed territories.
A focus on the management of competing memories
The question of memory is often sidelined in conflict resolution practice on the grounds that painful pasts need to be overcome rather than re-visited. Also, conflict resolution has as its primary aim the ending of armed hostility, and therefore potentially neglects the longer-term necessity of facilitating non-antagonistic understandings of disputed territory.
Even where research has explored the ways in which societies construct a collective memory in relation to disputed territories, it has tended to focus on the national level.
The novelty of DisTerrMem lies in its intention to explore the management of competing memories in non‐conflictual ways in the context of peace-building, rather than seeking to impose shared narratives that fail to take into account the identities and interests of the actors involved.
Transnational analysis
In recent years, research has begun to explore the development of transnational memories, particularly around the Holocaust and in the search for a common European memory. Nevertheless, the focus of such work has remained relatively narrow and Eurocentric.
DisTerrMem works across three key regions: Poland, Armenia and Pakistan, along with their neighbouring states. These regions move the debate beyond the European frame, while equally drawing productively on the research already carried out on European cases. Research in the UK context will also explore diaspora organisations and the relationship between these communities and disputed territories and memory.
An interdisciplinary approach
Current research often overlooks the full complexity of the manifestations of competing memories in a coherent fashion, with the various disciplines involved lacking a shared terminology and methodology.
DisTerrMem’s partner organisations bring a variety of disciplines to the project. A structured programme of networking and knowledge sharing activities will ensure that a broad range of theoretical and methodological approaches are brought together in order to address the management of competing memories across disputed territories. This includes insights from:
Political science and international relations
Museum and heritage studies
Peace and reconciliation
Sociology and the study of deliberation
Anthropology.
Multi-level analysis
Much analysis up to this point has operated only at one level. However, to truly understand individual case studies and the relationships between them, and to develop effective new practices and policy recommendations, a multi-level approach is needed, involving engagement with a wider range of stakeholders.
DisTerrMem will focus on four key levels of analysis and on the inter-relationship between these levels: the role of civil society groups and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in managing competing memories of disputed territories; the role of cultural practitioners; the role of nation states, and the role of regional organisations.
Four transnational, interdisciplinary research groups will explore each of these levels.
