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Journal Article
Humanitarian Fables: Morals, Meanings and Consequences for Humanitarian Practice
This article describes how events are turned into fables in humanitarian organisations. It explores how these fables circulate, the lessons they come to embody and their influence in maintaining an organisational status quo. The article argues that such stories teach…
Journal Article
Humanitarian Shapeshifting: Navigation, Brokerage and Access in Eastern DR Congo
This article examines the experience of Congolese humanitarians negotiating access with armed groups in eastern DRC. It describes how humanitarians become shapeshifters: they play different roles for different audiences as a tactic of social navigation in a context of uncertainty.…
Journal Article
From Rebel to Humanitarian: Military Savoir Faire and Humanitarian Practice in Eastern DR Congo
This article explores the experience of ex-rebels who have become humanitarians in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. It describes how rebel-cum-humanitarians navigate a turbulent political environment, integrating the knowledge they acquired through military experience into a career in…
Background Reports
Guidance for Applied Cross-National Research in Under-Resourced Countries: Lessons from a Gender-Based Violence Intervention in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Via a personal account of our experiences in conducting a study on a gender-based violence intervention in Congo, we share our lessons and offer recommendations (e.g., using multiple methodologies) for conducting applied cross-national research. We hope that as a result…
Journal Article
Borderlands, Identity and Urban Development: The Case of Goma (Democratic Republic of the Congo)
This paper challenges traditional studies that explore border sites from a central or capital city perspective. Focusing on expressions of identity in the border city of Goma, it illustrates how the struggle for political, social and economic control affects local…
Blog
The story of Kitchanga: Spatial politics of presence, refuge and return in North Kivu, Eastern DRCongo
In the Kivu provinces of the Eastern Congo, permanent semi-urban towns emerge from the protracted presence of refugees and internally displaced persons. Using the example of Kitchanga in North Kivu, Gillian Mathys and Karen Büscher (Ghent University) show the importance…
Book Chapter
“Économie de la débrouille à Kinshasa informalité, commerce et réseaux sociaux” fr
Comment, dans un contexte de crise économique et sociale durable, les citadins réinventent-ils les moyens de leur survie à Kinshasa ? C’est à cette question que cet ouvrage s’attache à répondre. On y trouve une description ethnographique minutieuse des dispositifs…
Journal Article
War, Displacement and Rural–Urban Transformation: Kivu’s Boomtowns, Eastern D.R. Congo
This article addresses rural–urban transformations in the war-torn Kivu provinces. The spectacular growth and development processes of fast-expanding boomtowns in Kivu’s rural areas serve as an entry point to investigate the relationship between conflict, displacement, urbanisation and development in Eastern…
Journal Article
Authority that is customary: Kitawala, customary chiefs, and the plurality of power in Congolese history
This paper uses the history of the religious/healing movement Kitawala in the Democratic Republic of Congo as a lens to explore the relationship between forms of state-sanctioned “customary” authority and alternative nodes of “authority that is customary.” Focusing on three…
Journal Article
The Politics of Return: Understanding Trajectories of Displacement and the Complex Dynamics of ‘Return’ in Central and East Africa
This introductory essay reflects on what studies of return can tell us about the ‘life cycle’ of conflict and displacement dynamics in war-affected Central and East Africa, with particular focus on Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, and Uganda.
Journal Article
Competition, patronage and fragmentation : the limits of bottom-up approaches to security governance in Ituri
People are affected by different kinds of insecurity in the Ituri Province in the northeastern DRC. This article investigates donor-driven attempts to improve security governance there. More specifically, it investigates bottom-up approaches to security governance in Ituri’s capital of Bunia…
Book Chapter
Urbanisation and the Political Geographies of Violent Struggle for Power and Control: Mining Boomtowns in Eastern Congo
This chapter addresses rural–urban transformations in the Kivu provinces, DRC, and more particularly focuses on the complex relationship between dynamics of violent conflict and the emergence of urban mining ‘boomtowns’. Mining towns offer fascinating sites from which to investigate the…
