Jennifer Curtis: Community-Based Politics and the Northern Irish Peace Process
               My research explores innovative paths from violence to nonviolence. At the beginning of graduate study, I conducted research at a community-based education project for men who committed violence in their personal relationships. This project considered "domestic" violence in relation to broader institutional and social forces, using both ethnographic and sociolinguistic methodologies.

       My dissertation project continues this examination of shifts from violent to nonviolent practice, and is an analysis of the role of community-based organizations in the Northern Irish peace process. Historically, community-based organizations have played an active role in marginalized communities in Northern Ireland, and have come to be seen as vital actors in the creation of peace. The local practice of community development has been a way for communities to engage with the contested state. Furthermore, with the expansion of governmental and international funding, particularly the European Union Special Support Programme for Peace and Reconciliation, community development has grown into a sector of both employment and broad political influence. Through ethnographic and archival research, I consider how community development came to be seen as a peace-promoting activity over the past 35 years, and assess whether and how these activities have contributed to a robust, just peace. This project engages with, and queries, modern political theories about social movements, civil society, and democratic citizenship as antidotes to communal conflict, as well as broader theoretical formulations of both communal conflict and "peace" as modern phenomena. The two years of research were funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and the United States Institute of Peace.

Representative publications and presentations include:

Curtis, Jennifer. 1996. "'He sorta raped her': Hedging and Re-education for Batterers." In Natasha Warner et al. eds., Gender and Belief Systems. Berkeley: Berkeley Women and Language Group.

“Truth and Reconciliation.” Presentation at Assn for Political and Legal Anthropology Distinguished Roundtable. American Anthropological Association Meetings, November 2000.
Mural off the Shankill Road, February
1998, articulating loyalist demands for prisoner releases prior to the agreement of April 1998.
     
“Politicized Bodies: Spaces of Violence from Belfast to Acre.” Co-authored with Rebecca Torstrick. American Anthropological Association Meetings, December 1998, Philadelphia, PA.

Co-Organizer. "Domesticating Violence, Rethinking the Nation." American Anthropological Association Meetings, November 1996, San Francisco, California.

Co-Organizer. "Gendering Violence: Transcending Public/Private Dichotomies through Institutional Spaces." American Anthropological Association Meetings, November 1995, Washington D.C.



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Mural in Ballymurphy, February 1998, articulating republican demands for demilitarization prior to the agreement of April 1998