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Questions of what it means to be related pervade all sibling relationships in some way. Whether close or distant, linked by shared genes, upbringing or neither, siblings bring to the fore some of the conundrums of relationality. How are sibling relationships lived and experienced? How does the meaning and doing of siblingship change in different contexts and situations? What does it mean for siblings to be described as ‘close’ and how is the experience of being and having siblings embodied and sensorial? In addressing these questions, this
2 A class-relational approach Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations. (Marx 1973:265) While capitalism presupposes a structural opposition between capital and labour that is rooted in ownership of productive assets and acted out through the performance of surplus labour and its attendant forms of domination, actually existing class relationships are ‘almost infinitely more complicated’ (Harriss 2006:446). When viewed in concrete historical terms, class is a plural category in terms of its subdivisions (shaped by the
humanitarian crisis, there are contradictory ethical registers operating. These registers range from an individualist ethic in the professionalised humanitarian system to a more relational ethical register situated in civic and socially embedded humanitarian acts. We argue that the clashing rationalities that emerge from a tension between an individualist versus a relational logic should be part of the discussion on localisation of humanitarian practice and why it may not have
5 Relational thought, networks, circles The turn by Mitchell and Epstein to relational thought applied to stratification and personal ties of friendship and kinship – in brief, to the idea of ‘the network’ – came in the early 1950s following Manchester seminars convened by Max Gluckman and subsequent publications by John Barnes (1954) and Elizabeth Bott (1957). In the Introduction, I stressed the importance in the seminars and in the work arising from them of interdisciplinary collaboration. An example is in the link to relational thought through the American
This book started with the recognition that research thus far has not managed to fully understand what constitutes peace nor to explain the different varieties of peace that evolve after war. With the aim of contributing to research on peace beyond the absence of war, this edited volume has addressed this lacuna by specifying and developing the concept of relational peace and applying it to several cases at various levels of analysis. Thus, relational peace has been analyzed in several sites, including Cyprus, Cambodia, South Africa, Abkhazia
This book contributes to scholarly debates about what peace is and how it can be studied by developing a novel framework and tools for studying peace as relational. Drawing primarily on peace and conflict research and sociology, it defines relational peace as entailing non-domination, deliberation, and cooperation between actors in a dyad, that the actors recognize and trust each other, and that they conceive their relationship as one between fellows or friends. The book provides tools for empirical studies of relational peace and applies the framework in several sites: Cyprus, Cambodia, South Africa, Abkhazia, Transnistria/Russia, Colombia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Myanmar. It shows how the framework can be applied across cases, actors, geographical locations, levels of analysis, types of data, and stages of peace processes. The book offers guidance on how to use the framework empirically with a variety of methods. Each case study in the book also makes unique contributions to specific literatures, such as civil–military relations, frozen peacebuilding, nation-building, mediation, arts-based peacebuilding initiatives, post-war elite studies, ideational analysis, and post-Soviet studies and everyday peace. The book offers nuanced understandings of peace in particular settings and illustrates the multifaceted nature of peaceful relations. It shows how relationships are formed though repeated interactions, exchanges, and practices. The book also demonstrates that studying how actors understand these relationships is key for analyzing the nature of peace and its dynamic and processual character. By depicting relational peace practices, the book expands the field of studying peace beyond the absence of war.
return to intercommunal violence. They overwhelmingly frame the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities as unitary and static actors and focus more on political than societal tensions between the two groups. They often overlook cooperative initiatives that have emerged between the two communities in recent years, and they rarely consider variation within either society. This chapter applies a relational view of peace as an alternative way of understanding the Cyprus problem (Söderström et al. 2021 ; Jarstad et al., this volume
and local actors. This chapter suggests that research needs to focus more on the actors involved in the main conflict, and, in addition, to use tools that help us understand the peace in more detail, something which the relational peace framework can help with. The current categorization of Cambodia as a hybrid peace thus leaves the analysis lacking in details as to the state of affairs in Cambodia, and the long-term presence of one of the peace signatories in government makes the case particularly relevant from a relational peace perspective
Although Catherine Livingston Garrettson (1752–1849) initially encountered feelings of isolation upon converting to Methodism, she discovered that the written word allowed her to engage in relational rather than solitary religious experiences. Over time, the written word helped her create a web of meaningful ties with imagined and actual kin and motivated her to form, develop and foster additional relationships in multiple contexts. Garrettson’s story thus demonstrates the need to consider how the real and imagined communities encountered through reading and constructed through writing have played a role in the spiritual development of early American women. Indeed, women’s experiences serve not simply to explain aspects of American social development, but to illuminate their broader world of connections – familial, religious, social and literary.
In this article we explore the relational materiality of fragments of human cadavers used to produce DNA profiles of the unidentified dead at a forensic genetics police laboratory in Rio de Janeiro. Our point of departure is an apparently simple problem: how to discard already tested materials in order to open up physical space for incoming tissue samples. However, during our study we found that transforming human tissues and bone fragments into disposable trash requires a tremendous institutional investment of energy, involving negotiations with public health authorities, criminal courts and public burial grounds. The dilemma confronted by the forensic genetic lab suggests not only how some fragments are endowed with more personhood than others, but also how the very distinction between human remains and trash depends on a patchwork of multiple logics that does not necessarily perform according to well-established or predictable scripts.