Violence : Global Solutions to a Global Problem

This paper investigates the growing number of reports on violence produced by a variety of global multi-lateral institutions over the last decade. The paper argues that this increase in global reports on violence is not simply a reflection of an empirical rise in violence but is instead the result of systemic processes of knowledge production that are deeply implicated with power and “produce the reality they seem to reflect” (Stern and Öjendal, 2010: 7). The paper therefore asks whether these “global” understandings and “global” responses to violence are in fact “global” as in universal or do they reflect the understandings and aspirations of a small number of powerful global actors? Hence this paper seeks to interrogate the discursive production of knowledge about violence in reports produced by global multi-lateral institutions that configure the world into zones of risk and disorder and zones of modernity and rationality, through claims to universal knowledge and “scientific” neutrality. The paper instead argues that the specificity of conditions in the global south in fact contest many of the assumptions embedded in this global knowledge production. At stake in these global constructions of knowledge are enormously significant funding flows that have the power to shape national states’ responses to violence and, which can also become the premise of international interventions that sometimes exacerbate, rather than alleviate violent conflict in arenas around the world.