10th AJEI Workshops in Social Sciences
Pondicherry, February 27- March 2 2007
International Session: Thursday March, 1st

Conflict, Negotiation, Cooperation.
Challenges and Methods for Studying Social Relations
in South Asia.

(Proposals should be submitted before January 10th and should not exceed 200 words. You are requested to determine the themes on which you wish to participate. Communications should fit in 15 minutes to allow discussions. Please send your proposals to this address: ateliers2007@ajei.org.
The selection will be favourable to papers emphasising methodological and epistemological dimensions of the topic.)

The French Association of Young Researchers in Social Sciences in South Asia organizes four days of workshops, among which one day will welcome communications in English for increasing exchanges between young researchers from different countries. For these workshops, we propose that a deliberation be started on the issues and methods, which make possible a comprehension of social relations in South Asia.

According to Max Weber, ‘conflict cannot be removed from social life (…) “peace” is nothing more than a different form of conflict, a shift in the identity of its protagonists, in the purpose of the conflict or even in the process of selection’. If this idea is accepted, conflict and cooperation can then be conceived not as being antithetical but rather as being indissolubly related. In Georg Simmel’s opinion also, conflict - that can be latent as well as explicit, violent as well as non-violent, creative as well as destructive - and cooperation – built on continuous dialogue and negotiation – cannot be dissociated, as they are inherent to each other and latent in each other. Thus, conflict, which is defined as an antagonistic relationship between various individual or collective entities pursuing contradictory objectives, would not constitute a malfunctioning of the social order resulting in disorder but on the contrary, it would be a form of extensive social dialogue in itself and even give rise to social changes. Seen in this light, conflict cannot any more be considered only as destructive but on the contrary, it becomes an instrument of socialisation. Every social group in conflict would tend to, in fact, produce its own ‘lifestyle’, as per Weberian terminology, through an organisation, an imagination and specific means of gratification. As for cooperation, widely considered as a peaceful and concerted management of social tensions, it would be defined as the capacity of stakeholders for dealing with their conflict without letting them degenerate. Finally negotiation would represent a medium for making demands and a tool for pacification that can allow one to shift from conflict to cooperation. Therefore, the idea of negotiation questions the two concepts simultaneously.
These workshops should motivate a reflection about the accuracy of these concepts in South-Asian context. To what extent are they likely to inform us about the nature and the modalities of social relations in this region? The deliberation shall revolve around the three transversal themes: defining social relations, talking about them, and reading into them.

Theme 1: Defining social relations

The extreme diversity of origins, expressions, results and consequences of conflicting and cooperative social relations demands an effort of definition and classification of both notions and situations. In South Asia, all inter-state armed conflicts, full-scale or localised civil wars, terrorist acts, separatist, secessionist or irredentist conflicts as well as communal, sectarian, caste, class conflicts etc. are taken stock of. The stakes involved in these conflicts can be political, economic, ethnic, religious, territorial, and sometimes, several of these dimensions overlap with each other. As for cooperation, bilateral or regional initiatives, instances of resorting to positive discriminatory measures or redefining borders between two states, success or failure etc. are registered. It is thus important to determine criteria to define conflict and cooperation, to understand the reasons behind these dynamics, to explain why certain conflicts deteriorate while others stabilise, to define the margin left for negotiations and to analyse the methodological tools that the researcher has for studying conflict and cooperation. It would also be necessary to inquire about the identity of stakeholders, their interests and the strategies that they adopt to express and defend themselves during the processes of conflict, cooperation and negotiation.

Theme 2: Talking about social relations

Addressing the issue of social relations and in particular, the notions of conflict, negotiation and cooperation, through the manner they are expressed by various stakeholders and thus made visible, then through the way they are interpreted by the researcher, seems to give a relevant key for understanding interactions between social groups in South Asia. In this theme and the next one, we wish to generate a deliberation about the visibility and the forms of expression of social relationships. Every social entity produces its own discourse - of which many types exist: scientific, ideological, political, historical, religious, media-related, popular discourses… - which influences reality. The construction of social representations and their expression in the society depends on this interplay between discourse and reality, between speaking, reacting and living. It is thus important to question the origin of narratives: who produces the discourse and why, and the consequences of it. How does the discourse influence social realities while the latter also create discourse? Finally, how can the researcher understand social relationships from actors’ narratives, and how should he consider his own speech?

Theme 3: Reading into social relations

Finally, parallel to the analysis of the “talking about”, it seems interesting to address different possibilities for reading into social relations. We would thus like to focus on the methods available for reading into and deciphering social relations through their diverse expressions. Interpretation or hermeneutic analysis of discourse, whether they are in written form, in spoken form, in images or implicit, enable us to understand the modalities operating in the expression of social relations. But, it is also possible to read into conflict, negotiations, or cooperation in space, by referring to a geographic analysis of social relations. In fact, it seems particularly heuristic to address the spatial dimension of social relations, and more precisely the issues and significations of their constant overlapping with spatial relations, with the space being not only a support for social relations but also a framework, translating the economic, social, symbolic or political position - or even opposition - of individuals or social groups. As per Guy Di Meo’s thinking, social space must be considered as something that is being built up through struggles (category or class) and stakes, which create socio-spatial differentiation. Also, space shall be considered to read into and understand modalities of social relations shifting from conflicts to cooperation. We shall thus reflect on methods and tools available in order to address socio-spatial relations.