Publications
Articles peer-reviewed
2024
Dijkema, Claske, Priscyll Anctil Avoine, and Sara Koopman. 2024. “Making
Space for Peace in Contexts of ‘Non-War’ Violence: Challenging
War-Peace Binaries Through Feminist, Spatio-Temporal, and Decolonial
Approaches.” Geopolitics 29 (5): 1511–37.
Peace is often represented as a matter of time, as a political state that happens after war. This special issue contests this linear and binary view by giving an account of being and thinking between the boundaries of peace and war. It challenges mainstream ideas, political discourses, and collective imaginaries about the location of violence, peace, and peacebuilding. It does so by providing empirical and theoretical arguments as to why Peace and Conflict Studies and Geographies of Peace should widen their scope of empirical sites to include contexts of non-war violence, such as military urbanism, counterterrorism, police violence, migration, environmental struggles, and continued everyday violence and peacebuilding in different locations such as Bosnia-Herzegovina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Kenya, Lebanon, and Northern Ireland. To do so, the special issue presents four theoretical lines of inquiry: 1) spatiality; 2) temporality; 3) feminist phenomenology and; 4) decolonial thought. Collectively, the articles make a strong case, epistemologically, theoretically, and methodologically, about peace as a complex embodied experience that should be analysed in time and space. The special issue concludes by calling for ‘making space for peace’ through in-betweenness, care, and non-violent resistance.
2024
Wilopo, Claudia; Dijkema, Claske (2024). Unpacking Silencing to Make Black Lives Matter: Ethnographies of Racism in Public Space Social Inclusion, 12, pp. 1-16.
This article focuses on the debates surrounding decolonisation and antiracism in the wake of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests in Switzerland. They sparked new discussions within Swiss institutions, particularly city governments, about racism, colonialism, and physical changes to the material environment for which activists have advocated. Based on an empirical example in Zurich, the article examines the dynamics of (un)silencing when city governments respond to demands by local antiracist groups who ask for the removal of racist street names in public spaces. We draw on postcolonial and subaltern studies to examine practices of silencing and being heard, combining it with Rancière’s understanding of depoliticisation. The empirical case study shows that the actions and voices of people directly affected by racism were key in advocating for institutional change as well as addressing colonial remnants in urban spaces. This case shows how the demands of social movements can amplify marginalised voices and how they can also lead to new forms of silencing. This article explores the complexity of silencing practices that disregard the plurality of voices, and political movements focusing on the depoliticising of interpretations of antiracism in public debates while simultaneously neglecting the diversity of voices affected by racism. It contributes to debates on how racism is voiced and silenced in progressive and liberal urban institutions.
2024
Dijkema, Claske (2024). Challenging Silencing in Stigmatized Neighborhoods Through Collaborative Knowledge Production Social Inclusion
Researchers are always potential traitors when they represent what they see or hear. This is of particular concern in the case of people in subaltern positions, who lack the power to challenge possible misrepresentations. This article deals with an old dilemma in critical social science: How to use language when research objects are silenced through dynamics of domination? Is it possible for research to create space for marginalized people to speak for themselves? This was one of the questions of the Université Populaire, a group initiative by actors in a marginalized social housing neighborhood in Grenoble. The community‐based people’s education initiative was created in a double context of violence and silence. As a result of incidents of violence, media coverage participates in depicting the neighborhood as a place of danger and otherness, which impedes voices from the neighborhood from being heard. The initiative of the Université Populaire made space for speech in this marginalized and racialized area of Grenoble dealing with the consequences of terrorist violence in France. It is an initiative the author has been involved in since its inception in 2015. This article explains how the author sought ways to reduce power asymmetry in research relationships, why she steered away from using interviews for data collection and organized public debates instead, and how this made space for speech.
2023
Dijkema, Claske; Djontu, Herrick Mouafo (2023). Geographies of peace in the wake of non-war violence in the city: Agir pour la Paix in a marginalised neighborhood in France Peacebuilding, 11(4), pp. 463-481.
Research on violently contested cities has focused on cities in the global South and on civil war contexts. This article makes the case for broadening this empirical scope to cities in non-war contexts, which are considered ‘at peace’ but where politicians regularly declare war on e.g. drugs and terrorism. Experiences of violence, such as riots, youth violence and the aftermaths of terrorist attacks in a marginalised social housing neighbourhood in Grenoble (France) serve as the empirical grounding of this argument. Participatory action research with different collectives in this neighbourhood shows that community initiatives were able to have a positive impact on the destructive consequences of different forms of paroxysmal violence. These collectives initiated action in the aftermath of paroxysmal violence. One of them placed peace at the heart of its approach. By weaving everyday relationships its members could repair the social tissue that violence had destroyed.
2022
Dijkema, Claske (2022). Being black but not Black? Diasporic identities in France, across the Atlantic, and across the Mediterranean Geographica Helvetica, 77(4), pp. 499-504.
2022
Dijkema, Claske (2022). Creating space for agonism: making room for subalternised voices in peace research Conflict, Security & Development, 22(5), pp. 475-494.
How can researchers do more than ‘do no harm’ and have a positive impact in the contexts in which they intervene? These are classic questions of PAR, which also apply to peace research. How can research practice contribute to peace? There is an intimate relationship between power, violence and silence. Hence, working with subalternised voices, subject to epistemic violence, poses a methodological challenge for social sciences in which words are data. This paper presents a research method that allows for constructive confrontation in contexts of terrorist violence in European cities, generally considered to be at peace. This method consists of organising public debate in collaboration with community organisations in a neighbourhood directly affected by the aftermath of a wave of terrorist attacks in France. In the case of the Université Populaire, the organisation of public debates allowed for the public expression of agonism, and was a source of hope and prefigurative politics. Exploring this case, this article contributes to discussions about how to deal with the challenges of pluralism within current peace research.
2022
Dijkema, Claske (2022). Claiming space, when Muslim women of marginalised social housing neighborhoods declare themselves citizens Justice spatiale - Spatial justice (17), pp. 1-19. Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, UMR.
After the attacks against Charlie Hebdo in January 2015, the slogan “I am Charlie” (Je suis Charlie) spread all over the world through social media and was everywhere on banners during the demonstration that followed nationwide, in which 400,000 people participated (Houllier-Guibert, 2016). Islamophobia or generalised anti-Muslim feelings increased concerningly in this period (Beaman, 2021), a rift was formed between, on the one hand, Republican France (“us”) and, on the other hand, Muslims (“them”) and the marginalised areas they were associated with (Niang, 2019). “Charlie” came to be synonymous with freedom, equality, democracy, and laïcité, while those that were opposed to Charlie were associated with obscurantism, barbarism and violence. As a result, Muslims in France could not make themselves heard. Spivak’s expression that subalterns cannot speak resonates therefore very strongly with the quote above.
2021
Dijkema, Claske (2021). What is urban about urban violence in France? Violence in marginalised neighborhoods as body politics. Explorations in Space and Society (59), pp. 17-20.
In France, urban violence is associated with juvenile violence that concerns certain marginalised spaces of the city and certain, specifically racialised, inhabitants.1 In comparison to British and American contexts, the term is used mostly to address anti-institutional violence: what is called violences urbaines in France corresponds to ‘race riots’ on the other side of the Atlantic. The term ‘urban’ violence is problematic for three reasons. First, it is used as a euphemism for a racialised representation of juvenile violence. Second, the seemingly neutral term ‘urban’ underplays the political significance of these forms of violence. Third, the term renders other forms of violence invisible, by symbolically confining violence to certain spaces.
2019
De Backer, Mattias; Dijkema, Claske; Hörschelmann, Kathrin (2019). Preface: The Everyday Politics of Public Space Space and Culture, 22(3), pp. 240-249
While in the past two decades a rich literature has emerged about the politics of public space, many of these theoretical works and empirical studies consider public space interactions and behaviors against the backdrop of deliberative or representative politics. In this special issue, to which this article is the preface, we offer some reflections on how the everyday and the micro-level can be sites of political expression, leading inevitably to a critical discussion of the central assumptions regarding private/public space and its generational, gendered, classed, and “culturalized” construction. This analysis takes place with three theoretical axes in the background: Katz’s minor theory, anarchist theory on prefigurative politics, and Foucault, de Certeau, and Lefebvre’s work on power, knowledge, and place.
2019
Dijkema, Claske (2019). If You Can’t Hear Me, I Will Show You: Insurgent Claims to Public Space in a Marginalized Social Housing Neighborhood in France Space and Culture, 22(3), pp. 250-262.
This article is concerned with public space as a place of contestation, of confrontation, and insurgency. It situates these everyday forms of confrontation in France’s postcolonial history, arguing that the occupation of communal spaces by groups of youths should be understood as part of a larger conflict about the place that those called “of immigrant origin” can occupy in French society. The article seeks to explain why youths involved in the unsanctioned use of space rely on means that are widely interpreted as uncivil or violent in order to make themselves visible and to be heard. It argues that these claims to space may be interpreted as subaltern claims to citizenship. As second-class citizens, they lack “a place” in society, as subalterns their discourse is not heard, so they seek alternative ways to exist. The neighborhood proves to be an eminent place to be somewhere and someone.
Books
2019
Gatelier, Karine; Dijkema, Claske; Djontu, Herrick Mouafo (2017). Transformation de conflit: Retrouver une capacité d’action face à la violence DD: Vol. 208. Paris: Editions Charles Leopold Mayer.
Le conflit est un phénomène sociétal normal dans la mesure où il résulte de la rencontre d’opinions et de positions opposées et incompatibles. Il devient problématique quand il génère de la violence mais sans cela, il a tout intérêt à émerger et à s’exprimer pour réclamer d’être traité. À ce titre, cet ouvrage se propose de décrire le conflit comme un fait social porteur d’opportunités. Il s’appuie sur une approche, théorisée dans la littérature anglo-saxonne sous le nom de Conflict transformation, qui vise à transformer les relations et les structures à la base du conflit. Elle est ici étudiée et mise en pratique par les auteurs sur différents terrains : les violences dans la ville, les violences produites par les politiques publiques sur l’asile et les migrations ou encore les réponses politiques aux menaces du terrorisme.
2011
Dijkema, Claske; Gatelier, Karine; Samson, Ivan; Tercinet, Josiane (eds.) (2011). Rethinking the foundations of the State, an analysis of post-crisis situations Brussels: Bruylant.
Consensus is growing that the application of the western model of the Nation-State in post-crisis contexts is problematic. Rather than on methods of State reform or Statebuilding, the focus of this volume is on the model of the State and its transformation. While international and national actors are undoubtedly the major players in State formation, they are not the only actors in this process. Local and regional actors at the sub-State level have received much less attention, but are central players in forming or re-forming governance structures. The authorities that take over when States fait, and ultimately collapse, include the conflicting parties such as military faction leaders ; remnants of the former State administration ; revitalized traditional authorities ; religious courts ; and local businessmen. These actors will continue or begin to exercise authority as " functional equivalents " of State structures, for example in the sectors of security and social services, and at times will aspire to replace the State. Civil conflict fragments State power away from the centre andbenefits private actors such as political, military, religious, social leaders on the basis of sub-national communities. At the regional or international levels the presence of cross-border identities (be it of an ethnic, religious, linguistic or other nature) may represent further competition for the State and can increase interference in State affairs, for example through military interference or diaspora support from outside State borders. The concept of "transformation" is used rather than"reform" to describe the changes a post-crisis State goes through. The 'trans' in transformation implies that the form a State takes cari go beyond the pre-existant State and that this is in many ways is an involuntary process. This volume attempts to rethink the foundation of post-crisis States in four parts and an epilogue.
Book chapters
2023
Dijkema, Claske; Cohen, Morgane (2023). Madame Ruetabaga’s Prefigurative Politics at the Urban Fringes of Grenoble In: Gülen, Hande; Sungur, Ceyda; Yeşilyurt, Adem (eds.) At the Frontiers of Everyday Life. The Urban Book Series (pp. 119-133).
During its practice of critical social pedagogy in street workshops, Madame Ruetabaga has shown that it is able to create a space that is radically open, where groups form and dissolve over a period of two hours every week. The workshops lay the basis for a form of prefigurative politics in an area generally to be perceived as anomic and as a place of violence and tensions. During the street workshops, Madame Ruetabaga temporarily challenges power relations and suspends rules to replace them with new ones for the specific period of time and in a specific space of the square. The association provides a space for children to experiment with new kinds of freedom and limits that differ from those at home or in institutional spaces. This example provides an alternative view to both the pessimism of the death of public space and the utopian idea of mass movements challenging global capitalism à la Lefebvre and Harvey. The focus is on the everyday, the mundane, the micro and how they can sometimes produce extraordinary situations.