South Sudan's recent war-to-war transition, and its post-conflict statebuilding experience prior to renewed mass violence beginning in December 2013, has upended conventional wisdom on post-conflict peacemaking. Analysts have been left scrambling to explain the apparent implosion of South Sudan's political and military system, often reverting to problematic or discredited analytical frameworks - including 'ethnic conflict', 'failed states' or variants of the 'greed not grievance' argument - to interpret the violence, or else have emphasised the chaotic and disorderly nature of conflict and governance in South Sudan. This thesis argues that in order to make sense of South Sudan's tragic and unshakeable relationship to political violence, an explanation grounded in the concepts of militarism and militarisation, and the framework of militarised statebuilding, is required. The post-conflict statebuilding process in South Sudan has further militarised social relationships whilst considerably expanding the state, creating an enabling environment for war to occur either on the margins of the political system established in the course of statebuilding, or from within it. Simultaneously, it has compelled those making political and economic claims on the state to do so through engaging with this militarised state infrastructure, or else through organising violence to gain entry into the state. However, this militarised statebuilding project entered a state of crisis since independence in 2011, culminating in the mass violence of December 2013, when the same forces which had propelled the expansion of the state would propel its sudden and violent contraction. This militarised statebuilding process has provided much for some sections of South Sudanese society (and especially its elites), but has also left the country particularly vulnerable to large-scale violence among its vastly expanded and heavily armed military. This framework of militarised statebuilding has the potential to speak to enduring militarism and violence in cases of post-conflict statebuilding beyond South Sudan, and advances debate on the relationship between statebuilding and violence in contemporary international politics.

This research project addresses the question of how violent groups emerge and act under specific identity mantles in complex local, national and transnational conflict environments. It takes as a case study the example of violent Islamist groups in sub-Saharan Africa, and seeks to understand what influences the emergence and dynamics of violence under this specific 'brand.' It explains Islamist violence as a strategic tool in contexts of political and socio-economic marginalisation, deliberately mobilised under an Islamist brand in order to leverage a powerful and cross-ethnic identity among otherwise disempowered communities. The project explains variation in the intensification of conflict, use of anti-civilian strategies, and groups' relationships with transnational actors, as strategic choices, shaped by features of the wider conflict marketplace, including the presence, relative strength and transnational linkages of conflict actors. Using quantitative conflict event data, supplemented by qualitative fieldwork, the findings of this research project are four-fold: first, it demonstrates that Islamist violence should not be conceived of as unique from other non-state violence. Rather, Islamist violence can be studied in comparative context, and through some of the same explanatory frameworks that have effectively traced the origins, drivers and dynamics of other forms of non-state armed violence. Second, it finds that Islamist violence is a strategic response to local political environments, shaping the emergence and dynamics of violence under different brands. Third, it presents evidence that in spite of a dominant narrative of a single, homogeneous, global threat of Islamist violence, local conditions shape this phenomenon, and undermine the assumption of a highly transnational, mobile and rootless network of homogenous militant groups. Finally, it shows that the contours of those local environments - reflected in the number, strength and relative activity of other non-state armed groups - shape the intensity and targeting of Islamist violence in important ways.

This thesis explores the relationship between social capital and conflict in two different contexts, by answering the following two questions: How does exposure to violence affect social capital in urban Maharashtra, India? How does returning home affect social capital amongst internally displaced persons and returnees from Nahr el Bared camp in North Lebanon? This thesis then goes on to look at the labour market implications of returning home to Nahr el Bared camp, exploring the role of social capital (amongst other mechanisms) in this relationship. The following paragraphs are abstracts from the three empirical chapters that address these questions. The first empirical chapter explores the relationship between exposure to riots and social capital in urban Maharashtra. We exploit a panel dataset collected by the authors and apply a random effects model with lagged covariates to estimate an exogenous relationship between neighbourhood exposure to riots and four forms of social capital: membership in a group or organisation, trust in neighbours, participation in community discussions and participation in community festival preparations. Consistent with Bellows and Miguel's study of conflict and social capital (2009), we find that households living in neighbourhoods that experienced a riot are more likely to be members of groups and organisations. On the other hand, we find that these households are less likely to join community discussions, which lends more to the hypothesis of fragmented post-conflict societies with a damaged social fabric (Colletta and Cullen, 2000). We explore various mechanisms behind these results and find that the increased membership in organisations is greatest in diverse neighbourhoods that have not experienced recent changes in composition. However, riots reduce trust and the likelihood of participation in fragmented and polarised riot-affected neighbourhoods. Riots also decrease participation in festival preparations in neighbourhoods where out-migration has been low. Our analysis suggests that individuals and households instrumentally use social capital to their advantage, a type of insurance to protect against potential communal violence in the future. However, riots can have adverse affects on different forms of social capital that go beyond the surface level of social networking to feelings of trust and sense of community. The second empirical chapter studies the effect of returning home after conflict induced displacement on social capital, compared to remaining displaced. I have collected a household survey of displaced Palestinians from a refugee camp in Lebanon, and this chapter assesses the impact of return on the different dimensions of social capital based on a diverse and rich set of questions. An instrumental variable is used to model the return decision in one part of the camp, and the exogenous nature of return is exploited in another section of the camp. Results show that return can improve social capital if households return within one year of the war ending and with their friends and family. If households have been displaced for too long, then social capital is decreased upon returning home. This indicates that social capital is not simply carried over from displacement to return, but is rebuilt in a process that takes time and effort. The third and final empirical chapter studies the effect of returning home on labour market outcomes. Theoretically the effect of return is ambiguous, depending on changes in both the demand and supply of labour. I empirically study the effect of return on four labour market outcomes: participation in the labour force, working, wages and number of days worked. I analyse a dataset of individuals originally from Nahr el-Bared camp in North Lebanon, displaced within Lebanon after a war in 2007 between the Lebanese army and Fatah al-Islam. I use an instrumental variable and exploit the exogenous nature of the return process in order to estimate a causal effect of return. The results show that return increases the likelihood of working by 117 percentage points. This effect is greatest for those who have returned within two years, reaping the benefits of greater aggregate demand as the market increases. Women returnees are more likely to be working compared to the displaced, but there is no difference in employment between men who have been displaced and those who have returned. This could be because women possess skills that are adaptable in labour markets, working in cottage type industries from home, as opposed to the more specialised skills that men tend to possess.

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This thesis explores the work carried out by forensic specialists employed by the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP). Headquartered in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), ICMP assists the work of local governments around the world in addressing the issue of missing persons following armed conflict, atrocities, and natural disasters. This thesis focuses on ICMP's efforts to aid the Bosnian government in locating, exhuming, and identifying the remains of the individuals who went missing during the country's recent war (1992-1995). Utilising data obtained via interviews with and observations of ICMP staff members, it primarily represents a study of the management of professional identity in emotionally charged situations, examining the experiences of the forensic specialists who work in the organisation's three mortuary facilities throughout BiH. It explores forensic specialists' work with human remains, their interactions with victims' family members, and their attendance at events in which victims are commemorated and/or buried. Discussion of forensic specialists' experiences with the deceased brings into consideration their varying responses to the remains, emphasising the prevalence and perceived importance of emotional detachment. Situations in which emotional detachment from the remains may prove challenging are considered, as are the varying techniques forensic specialists utilise in managing emotional responses to their work. Examination of forensic specialists' interactions with the living suggests their general dislike of these encounters, although the positive aspects of these interactions are also examined. Exploration of forensic specialists' opinions of attending burials and/or commemorations brings into further consideration the balance between emotional attachment and detachment. While respondents noted the importance of maintaining an emotional connection to their work, they nevertheless emphasised the importance of avoiding such responses while in the mortuary. Commemorations and/or burials become ‘safe spaces' for forensic specialists to express and experience emotional responses to their work that are not overtly professional.

This thesis offers a critical feminist reading of the war in Afghanistan, from invasion, through the practice of counterinsurgency, to the training of the Afghan National Army as a central part of NATO's exit strategy. Empirically it focuses on the discourses, policies and practices of the US and Norwegian militaries in Afghanistan. It draws on a range of material including military doctrine and policy, parliamentary discussions, public policy documents, interviews, political statements and soldiers' memoirs. Deploying the theoretical framework of performative gender with an emphasis on embodiment, it shows how particular gendered bodies are called into being and how the distinct practices of war in Afghanistan produce and rely on a series of multiple, fluid and, at times, contradictory performances of masculinity and femininity. It demonstrates how gendered performances should not be considered superfluous, but rather integral to the practices of war. It illustrates this, first, by examining the production of the (in) visible ‘body in the burqa' alongside the ‘protective masculinity' of Western politicians in the legitimation of the invasion; second, through the ‘soldier-­‐scholars', ‘warriors' and the Female Engagement Teams (FETs) in practices of ‘population­‐centric' counterinsurgency, examining the ways in which counterinsurgency is a gendered and embodied practice; and third, through the remaking of the fledgling Afghan National Army (ANA) recruits in the NATO exit strategy. The thesis furthers feminist studies on gender and war in International Relations by emphasising the multiplicity of gendered bodies and performances by problematizing singular notions of masculinity and femininity. It contributes to existing literature that reads the war in Afghanistan as a neocolonial and biopolitical practice, enhancing these readings by paying attention to the gendering of bodies and their performances, thereby expanding critical investigations into late modern ways of war and counterinsurgency.