Violence shapes lives, choices, and possibilities.
How to deal with violence is an acute question, particularly so for international actors who want to support countries in becoming less violent places.
Yet, despite long-term and costly efforts to end violence, international development in violent contexts has had disappointing results and fails to prevent violence from recurring. Lives Amid Violence argues that this is because practitioners adhere to a mental model that emphasises linearity, certainty, and causality. This mental model assumes that violence is best addressed through work plans that deliver statebuilding, stabilisation and services.
Ten years of multi-method research by the Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium (SLRC) from, in, and on conflict-affected countries challenge this approach. Drawing on this significant collaborative body of work this book puts forward original and generalizable conclusions about how lives amid violence persist.
Offering a distinct language, it upends the status quo by extending an invitation to abandon restricting mental models and to embrace creative ways of thinking and working. These include paying attention to the long-term effects of conflict on individual behaviour and decision-making, the social realities of economic life, the role service delivery plays in negotiations between citizens and states, and to creating meaningful relationships.
Transformation also requires reflection. Thus, the book concludes with constructive ideas on how to practise these insights to better support those whose lives are shaped by violence.
www.transformingdevelopment.org