University of California San Diego doctoral student John C. Dulin, under the direction of Dr. Joel Robbins, will conduct social scientific research on the relationship between religious conflict and the use of geographic space. While both religious conflict and territorial competition frequently co-occur, this research will be the first to focus on the particular trajectory of conflict in relation to variability in the use of space. The research will be conducted in the town of Gondar, in northwest Ethiopia, a traditional center of Ethiopian Orthodoxy and the site recent outbreaks of religious violence. The Gondor religious field contains a multiplicity of religions, which allows the researcher to examine the distinct ways each relates to space and how that has shaped the course of religious conflict. In particular, he will test the hypothesis that differences in spatial practices rather than sectarian differences explain the greater rates of violent conflict between some religious groups and not others.
The researcher will conduct 24 months of fieldwork in Gondor, collecting data with a mixture of social scientific methods including: qualitative interviewing, archival research, and the mapping of religious space and religious conflicts using Global Positioning Systems (GPS).
This project is important because it will further develop anthropological theories of religious conflict, which acknowledge that many conflicts center on the religious use of space, but do not articulate the relationship between the particular trajectory of an instance of religious conflict and the specific form of the antagonists' religious use of space. On a more practical level, by getting at the underlying reasons for space-related conflict, findings from this research might inform practices and policy for reducing conflict. Funding this research also supports the education of a graduate student.
