Contents:
1. Welcome to the seventh MICROCON Newsletter
2. Publications
    Research Working Papers
    Policy Briefings
3. News from partners
    International Research Workshop on the Global Costs of Conflict
    Workshop on the fate of the Jews in Germany, 1933-45
4. Other news

Dear Colleague,

This is the seventh MICROCON Newsletter. It contains news on our new publications and news on upcoming events hosted by MICROCON partners.

If you haven't done so already, you can also sign up for alerts of publications in your area of interest as soon as they are published.

2. Publications

Research Working Papers
RWP17: UN Peacekeeping Economies and Local Sex Industries: Connections and Implications - Kathleen Jennings and Vesna Nikolić-Ristanović

“Peacekeeping economies” have not been subject to much analysis of either their economic or socio-cultural and political impacts. This paper uses a gendered lens to explore some ramifications and lasting implications of peacekeeping economies, drawing on examples from four post-conflict countries with past or ongoing United Nations peacekeeping missions: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Liberia, and Haiti. The paper is particularly concerned with the interplay between the peacekeeping economy and the sex industry. It examines some of the characteristics and impacts of peacekeeping economies, arguing that these are highly gendered – but that the “normalization” of peacekeeping economies allows these effects to be overlooked or obscured. It also contends that these gendered characteristics and impacts have (or are likely have) broad and lasting consequences. Finally, the paper considers the initial impacts of UN efforts to tackle negative impacts of peacekeeping economies, particularly the zero-tolerance policy against sexual exploitation and the effort to “mainstream” gender and promote gender equality in and through peacekeeping. The paper suggests that the existence and potential longterm perpetuation of a highly gendered peacekeeping economy threatens to undermine the gender goals and objectives that are a component of most peace operations.

RWP18: Religion versus Ethnicity as a Source of Mobilisation: Are There Differences? - Frances Stewart

The root causes of most violent conflicts lie in economic and political factors, often horizontal inequalities of various types. Yet people are organised, united and mobilised by identities, in particular ethnic or religious ones. Most conflict analyses treat religion as a subset of ethnicity. This paper explores differences between these two identities, both by reviewing literature and by analysis of some recent surveys of perceptions in a number of conflict-affected countries. It finds many similarities in mobilisation, with both identities used instrumentally by leaders, but both ‘essentialised’ and ‘believed in’ by those who are mobilised. Yet in both cases, leaders have to cultivate the identity of those mobilised, and that of the ‘other’, to induce violence on any scale. Religious organisation and external support are often stronger than in the case of ethnicity, but there is no evidence that religious conflicts are more deadly than ethnic ones. Preliminary evidence suggests that in the many cases where both identities are present and overlapping, the identity along which mobilisation occurs is determined by demographics and according to the identity which is perceived as being used politically in the allocation of government jobs and contracts. The need for both religious and ethnic leaders to work at mobilisation for some time preceding a conflict gives rise to possibilities of monitoring and intervention to prevent conflict occurring.

RWP19: How Do Ethnic Militias Perpetuate in Nigeria? A Micro-level Perspective on the Oodua People’s Congress - Yvan Guichaoua

The paper discusses the recently promoted view that organized insurgent violence should either be conducted by activists bonded together by social capital ties or self-interested quasi-mercenaries, depending on the type of financial resources available to the group. We contrast this perspective with the study of an ethnic Nigerian militia, the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC). It appears that the success of this militia over time was jointly sustained by important preexisting social connections and numerous opportunities for economic gains. The perpetuation of OPC, we argue, is ensured by a ‘moral economy’ whose members enjoy selfinsurance in an environment perceived as unsafe.

Policy Briefings
PB5: How Can We Prevent Violence Becoming a Viable Political Strategy? - Patricia Justino

A basic issue that conflict analysis investigates is how non-peaceful ways of living and governing become viable political strategies. Macro-level studies provide some important insights but micro-level analysis is vital to understand the mechanisms that make violence possible. This briefing outlines some preliminary findings in this respect from MICROCON. It also discusses their implications for policies aimed at preventing the (re-)eruption of violent conflicts. An important overall insight is the variety and combination of motives involved in each case. Given this complexity, policy strategies need to be based on a micro-level appreciation of people's strategies for coping with vulnerabilities to both poverty and violence.

3. News from partners

International Research Workshop on the Global Costs of Conflict
The German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) and the Households in Conflict Network (HiCN) are organizing an international research workshop on calculating the costs of conflict. The purpose of this workshop is to bring together researchers from different institutes and to compare cutting-edge theoretical, empirical and methodological research on how to calculate the costs of conflict and on related themes. The workshop will take place on 1-2 February 2010 at DIW Berlin. The deadline for paper submissions is 1 December 2009.

Workshop on the fate of the Jews in Germany, 1933-45
The Junge Akademie and DIW Berlin are organising a German-language workshop on the fate of the Jews in Germany from 1933-45, involving interdisciplinary discussion of methods and micro-level questions. It will take place on 3 December 2009, and you can download the programme here.

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4. Other news:

Adam Cooper publishes paper on xenophobic violence in Cape Town

International Day of Peace: Monday, 21st September 2009

Tilman Brück to chair session on 'Violent Development', at Germany Day on Development at the World Bank