ABSTRACT
As students of violence, we prioritize and connect certain aspects of violent conflict and disregard others. Undeniably, our analysis is selective and influenced by ideological and scientific paradigms and interpretative frames. No matter how systematic, our analysis is always shaped by our ‘knowledge environment’ as well as our personal and political positions and preferences. Academic thinking is about the ability to articulate and situate one’s own theoretical position and to critically review the dialogue between ideas and evidence. It is also about the responsibility to critically think through the political consequences of the knowledge one produces. Evidently, the way in which we frame violent conflict has implications outside academia. Framing also always involves claiming. By framing one not only ‘simplifies and condenses the “world out there” by selectively encoding objects, situations, events, experiences, and sequences of actions within one’s present or past environment’ as Snow and Benford (1992: 137) argue, but one also puts moral claims on, for instance, the (il)legitimacy of violent conflict. One of the core arguments of this book is that the selection of an interpretative frame is not merely an isolated academic act, it is also political.
The selection of a form and level of explanation for contemporary violent conflict is a serious political act in the sense that representations have political implications. The way in which violent incidents and conflicts are coded and categorized will play – intentionally, or not – a role in casting blame and responsibility.
(Brass 1996: 4)