From the “Kabila-Tshisekedi deal” to the challenges of conceptualising political transition in the DRC

Congolese politics have drastically changed since the installment of the new President, Felix Tshisekedi, almost one year ago now. But have our views on Congolese politics equally shifted or do analysts tend to rely on existing approaches and narratives

Décoloniser les regards pour affronter l’urgence écologique ?

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La révolution verte au Rwanda : au-delà de la dichotomie domination et émancipation

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Global crisis and research production:COVID-19 as shaper and shaker or micro-interruption?

This special issue asks what happens to international research and collaboration when the research community becomes temporarily immobilized. The COVID-19 global pandemic powerfully disrupted normal ways of doing research and, therefore, created a perfect natural experiment of the “otherwise” for digital qualitative research in sensitive contexts. The collected papers argue that the lessons extracted from this recent global health crisis should shape our thinking on qualitative research amid crisis and research on the crisis. The authors speak to core themes like the digital platforming of research, continued inequality in research relations, and the concept of compounding crises. The special issue reflects on the authors’ own experiences with international collaborations during COVID-19 in a multiplicity of contexts from Peru, to Pakistan, Mexico and the Great Lakes Region of Africa. This introductory essay argues that the uniquely rapid and global context of COVID-19 offered a glimpse into one possible alterity of research production. It extracts lessons for the present and future, not only for other global crises, but for willed disruptions of research relations so that these are marked by less inequality and more balanced power relations

What explains popular resistance to Ebola humanitarian responses in the DRC?

The humanitarian response to the DRC’s Ebola health emergency between 2018-20 was met with popular resistance by local populations, drawing attention to the perceived failures of humanitarian responses in the country over decades. To declare Ebola a health disaster was to reveal the disease’s connections with politics, in sharp contrast to the lack of protection provided to those living through daily violent atrocities

Aproximación al Antropoceno en el contexto del conflicto armado: el territorio como espacio de producción cognitiva, participación afectiva e imaginación discursiva

This article reflects on the Anthropocene against the backdrop of armed conflict. To this end, it analyses two mining projects: one in southwestern Antioquia in Colombia and the other in the Luhwindja Chiefdom in the Democratic Republic of Congo. After examining the post-agreement and post-war political contexts of each country, this paper describes the extraction projects implemented in the territories, as well as the forms of resistance of the local populations. It also depicts the reconstruction of the territory as a place for cognitive production, affective participation, and discursive imagination. The very concept of territory is re-signified, beyond its geographical definition, as a territory of life.Este artículo ofrece una aproximación al Antropoceno en el contexto del conflicto armado. Para ello, se centra en dos proyectos mineros ubicados en el suroeste de Antioquia (Colombia) y Luhwindja (República Democrática del Congo). Tras examinar los contextos políticos de posacuerdo y posguerra de cada país, se describen los proyectos de extracción que se llevan a cabo en cada territorio, así como las formas de resistencia de las poblaciones locales. También se hace una reconstrucción del territorio como espacio de producción cognitiva, participación afectiva e imaginación discursiva. En este sentido, se da un nuevo significado al concepto de territorio, trascendiendo su definición meramente geográfica para concebirlo como un territorio de vida

From Biolegitimacy to Antihumanitarianism: Understanding People's Resistance to Ebola Responses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

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