No war, no peace? The "knots" of violence and law in the formation and transformation of political orders – (NI)²

The nature of (NI)2 has determined a particular organization of work within it. The team brought together researchers specialized in the study of certain particular objects that are especially relevant to the project. Everyone has been invited to reinvest its object of study in the light of the common problem, that is, both to feed this problem and to reflect on it in and through each case. In such a two-level system, the collective work consisted in bringing the approaches together and placing them in a space of variation. This operation was conducted in accordance with four regulatory methodological principles: (1) a comparison of the “incomparable” (Détienne 2000), since it was a matter of capturing heterogeneous situations with common conceptual instruments; (2) a systematic historization, to the extent that we wanted to give ourselves the means to take the exact measure of recent transformations in conflict; (3) controlled interdisciplinarity, because, since the researchers involved belong to different social science disciplines, the comparison between objects of study required a joint interdisciplinary dialogue; (4) assumed reflexivity, given that we considered that the knowledge of our disciplines was not detached from the processes studied. This approach has proved successful despite the difficulties it has at times brought (especially in the interdisciplinary dialogue).

In addition to the progress made by the specific inquiries carried out within the context and with the support of (NI)2, three important general results can be mentioned, which could provide hypotheses for future research: (1) In a scientific and intellectual context where contemporary transformations of conflict give rise to judgements on the “end of the state”, suggesting either a “return to the Middle Ages” or projection into a “liquid postmodernity”, our work indicates the plausibility of a continuance of modernity, through greater refinement in the categorical distinctions that underlie public action and, correlatively, a deepening of the division of labour in the domain of state violence. (2) The indeterminacy between war and peace that armed violence increasingly reflects today can finally be reduced to a growing indeterminacy between war and crime. Considering, as the work carried out under the project suggests, that the separation of war and crime is the major branching in the historical trend of regulating legitimate violence, recent evolutions tend to show that the intensification of the division of labour will consist of reproducing this distinction at lower levels of public action. (3) Terrorism is not simply an aspect of the transformations of conflictuality and the increase of “no war, no peace” situations; it is the name given to these processes in modern societies. As such, attempts to define, study and deal with terrorism are doomed to failure as long as the means employed seek to reintegrate the phenomenon within the scope of a strict separation between war and crime.

The ambition (NI)2 was high, probably too high in view of the forces involved. But this ambition has made it possible to make significant progress, to explore issues that open up new perspectives and to begin to shift the categories of research on violent conflicts and political and legal orders. The project has especially seen the establishment of collaborative relationships between researchers from different disciplines, which is consistent with continuity and is invested in new projects, both in France and in the international context.
Particular emphasis will be placed on the link established between historians, lawyers and sociologists involved in the project who continue the work begun jointly within the framework of the project. Five members of the project team (NI)2 received funding from the FMSH for two years (2018-2019) to further explore the link between “no war, no peace” situations and terrorism. In addition, the two coordinators were asked to join a temporary research team from the University of Bielefeld on the subject of «comparative praxéography«. This research group pursues methodological objectives based in part on the experience of the project (NI)2. The expected contribution in this context will be to develop observation methods to document how actors and institutions make or fail to make the distinction between war and crime in action.

(NI)2 has led to eight national and international scientific events and numerous collective and individual publications. Beyond the scientific production itself, it is worth noting the great variety of forms of restitution of the work carried out in the project, a variety that is quite rare for a fundamental research project. For example, there is an international summer school for French and Canadian students, as well as several presentations to public institutions (police institutions, the National Assembly, Human Rights Defenders, diplomatic institutions, the Ministry of Justice). The terrorist attacks of 2015 and 2016 had a strong impact on the project and this resonance was reflected in numerous solicitations, on the occasion of public events or in the press.

(NI)² is a research project in the fields of social, historical, political, and legal sciences, led by an young interdisciplinary team of anthropologists, historians, philosophers, political scientists, and legal scholars, whose endeavor is to contribute to the study of the formation and transformation of political orders. The project relies on the central hypothesis that a political order may be characterized by the specific knots it produces between violence and the law. These political orders will be studied through the careful observation of moments of test, when the knots between violence and the law sustain dislocations which introduce some degree of uncertainty and call for positive actions to reestablish a stable situation. Our objective is to reduce the existing confusion on the qualification of the situations that are currently labeled as “new conflicts”. In this perspective, our intention is to address with the same analytical framework different kinds of knots that are usually treated separately, most notably refusing to oppose the security issues encountered by democratic, economically-advanced societies and the endemic problems of violence often considered as peculiar to less-advanced nations.
(NI)²’s approach is characterized by:
1. A commitment to empirical studies: this collective project primarily relies on studies of specific socio-political configurations.
2. An articulated, comparative approach, based on explicit criterions identified through investigations.
3. A careful attention to historical perspective: although the project is informed by the problematic posed by the “new” violent conflicts that emerged in the context of “globalization”, an historical perspective is deemed essential to adequately measure what is genuinely “new” in recent configurations.
4. An effort toward conceptual investigation, giving that notional reconfigurations in the existing descriptive frameworks are an essential part of what has to be considered.
5. A reflexive effort, giving that the descriptive, analytical, as well as conceptual notions of social, historical, political, and legal sciences must be understood in their relations with vocabularies forged by the actors when and while previous configurations stand the test.
6. A demanding understanding of the implications of interdisciplinary research: everyone will contribute to the collective enterprise while respecting the particular methodological requirements of their respective disciplines, a condition we believe to be essential to the existence of an authentic, common field of dialogue and exchange.

Several elements may also help to define (NI)²:
1. This project is the offspring of a two-year-old research seminar, during which the common problematic was elaborated and the research team formed.
2. This team is composed of scholars of different fields who will contribute their respective expertise for the benefit of the collective project.
3. This project is attached to the Laboratoire interdisciplinaire d’études sur les réflexivités (LIER), a recently created research center of the EHESS whose intellectual objective is to associate philosophical, sociological, and historical approaches to inquire social reflexivity phenomena.
4. This project is at the heart of Labex TEPSIS’s fields of interests, a structure to which the associated members of the LIER are affiliated.
5. This project intends to take part in the international research community, where it aims at conquering strong positions by investigating what constitutes a weak point in existing works: the methodological control of investigative processes and conceptual uses.
6. Finally, this project answers a strong social demand expressed by numerous institutions (national, European, and international, public as well as private, focusing on civilian, law enforcement, or military issues) regularly involved in conflicts but lacking a general framework to understand those situations.