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CORE Project – Steering Committee Meeting and Thematic Workshop

Berghof Conflict Research hosted the Steering Committee Meeting and a Thematic Workshop of the EU-funded project Cultures of Governance and Conflict Resolution in Europe and India (CORE) on June 27 and 28, 2011 respectively. Participants included representatives from all ten project partners in the consortium. For more information on the project please visit the project’s website.

In the Steering Committee Meeting, the project basics were revisited, progress and project timeline were visualized, and general management issues were discussed. The different work-package activities were then further updated and clarified.

In the Thematic Workshop titled “The Socio-Cultural and Political Premises of European and Indian Initiatives in Areas of Conflict Transition/Resolution”, the partner institutes/universities gave presentations on different sub topics/questions that emanated from the workshop theme:

• What are the premises of European and Indian initiatives in the areas of conflict transition/resolution, and how do these initiatives resonate with – or are informed/determined by – the socio-cultural background of either Europe or India?
• How, if at all, are specific socio-cultural and political premises reflected/ incorporated or neglected/ ignored in those peacebuilding and conflict transition/resolution initiatives in Europe and India?
• If and to what extent do societal or elite discourses of socio-cultural and political issues underpin the principles, goals and strategies conceptualized and applied for peacebuilding in each context?
• How do internal and external governance initiatives interact and how do conceptualized norms of peacebuilding either merge with or compete with one another against the background of political conflict and socio-economic diversity?
• What are the methodological and theoretical challenges for analyzing and assessing the socio-cultural sensitivity and political appropriateness of governance initiatives in peacebuilding and conflict transition/resolution, and the results thereof?

The presentations, followed by inspiring and energetic brainstorming sessions, produced food for thought for the formulation of further refined research questions and for the case studies that are soon to start off.
A publicly accessible report on the workshop will be available in October 2011 on this website and later as a print version of the Berghof Occasional Papers series.