Community Resilience, Ethno-Religious Violence, and Sustainable Peacebuilding: A Case Study from Arsi Zone Lode Hetosa Woreda of Oromia National Regional State
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Date
2022-11
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This dissertation examines factors behind the resiliency of the Lode Hetosa Woreda community to
pressures of violence in general and ethno-religious violence in particular. We know that these
days the widely convincing model for a comprehensive Peacebuilding approach is that identifying
a conflict’s causes and triggers must be coupled with efforts to identify local capacities for peace
and sources of resilience. Therefore, a conversation on communities’ resilience to pressures of
violence isthinking that substantiates the critical role of local capabilities and responses in building
sustainable peace. When this study was designed to explore the resilience experience of the Arsi
Zone, Lode Hetosa Woreda community to pressures of ethno-religious violence, it was with such
acknowledgment. The core argument of the study was founded on the assertion that even in the
most challenging situations, there are communities acting to prevent violence from its occurrence
by employing local strategies. The Lode Hetosa Woreda community, with this regard, has
conveyed a public image of a peaceful society/resiliency to pressures of violence/. Thus, this study
placed itself in getting deep into the reasons why the community remained non-violent and how
they protect themselves and preserve spaces of non-violence. A related inquiry was on sustaining
the community’s resiliency to pressures of violence to build sustainable peace. In exploring the
puzzle of non-violence (the absence of ethno-religious related violence) in the community, the
study had examined and cross-validated relevant sources. It employed an ontology that relies on a
social world of meanings rather than reality. Hence, the assumption in drawing the arguments was
that different people might construct meaning differently, even about the same phenomenon
(constructivist epistemology). Accordingly, through looking at the specific situations (e.g.,
historical, political, or socio-cultural specificities) that explain the phenomenon in much greater
detail, arguments about the community’s resilience response to pressures of ethno-religious
violence were made. Situations that would explain the research questions were examined through
the eyes of the participants rather than the eyes of the researcher (Interpretivism was, therefore,
the theoretical perspective of the study). Significant findings of the dissertation that refine our
existing knowledge include: Local social cohesion, collective security system, and trust networks
maintained among the community even under pressures are the basis that made the community
resilient to violence; absence of violence in the community may not necessarily imply the
community being an “island of unity or harmony,” rather the community’s awareness of imminent
threats and their social knowledge to proactively respond to would be the violent situation;
continuous pressure to descend the community to violence instead produced a reverse effect of the
resiliency of the community by prompting the people even to strengthen their relation, networks
and social infrastructure for collective security system; ineffective leadership/broken relationship/
between the community and the local government does not necessarily imply community
descending to violence. Challenges to sustaining resiliency of the community to pressures of
violence or spaces for intervention in the area include issues related to polarized identity
politics/topics related to ethnicity and religion/, issues related to feelings of social “exclusion” and
“marginalization”, issues related to “negative” resilience, matters pertaining “everyday” life and
issues related to the relationship between the local administration and the community.
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Keywords
Resilience, Ethno-Religious Violence, Social Cohesion, Collective Security System, Trust Networks