Complexity theory alerts us to the limits of disaggregation in complex settings but research and analysis nevertheless often equal disaggregation. Because a complex social situation cannot be analyzed in its entirety, research often focusses on individual component parts of this situation, analysis of which seems manageable. Analyzing several components and subsequently assembling the results of the individual analyses, researchers hope to gain a complete picture of the overall setting or at least a picture that is as complete as possible.
Problems abound. For example, researchers have to identify all component parts of a complex setting or at least the most important ingredients. This is not always easy. Furthermore, analyzing component parts in isolation risks ignoring the dynamics operating among the components. Such dynamics may change the component parts; researchers may find it difficult to anticipate such changes or cover them analytically. As a result, disaggregation may result in under-complex and over-simplified description as well as in rigid and static interpretation of what are in fact ambiguous, multi-directional and often contradictory social processes. Such processes, complexity theory holds, cannot be understood completely, however hard researchers try.
Still, doing research without disaggregation appears difficult. Research on the visualization of peace is no exception.
Peace images reflect to some extent already existing understandings of peace, but many such understandings coexist, competing with one another for acknowledgement. Different understandings of peace require different visualizations of peace. Thus, rather than discussing peace images generically, differentiation is required.
In our earlier work,¹ we tentatively suggested a cumulative typology of peace images and insisted on its incompleteness. This typology included:
• negative peace images showing the need for peace by depicting its absence;
• formal peace images documenting the signing of peace treaties or handshakes among former adversaries;
• symbolic peace images representing peace through a standardized marker or character;
• accompanying peace images² documenting activities that presuppose expectations of peace or activities that would not have been engaged in without such expectations;
• fragile peace images representing the coexistence of peace and conflict, even violent antagonism;
• minimalist peace images showing the continuation of everyday life in times of violent conflict;
• processual peace images displaying the temporalities of peace and war such as the (ideal-typical) transition from war to its aftermath and from the aftermath to peace;
• mnemonic peace images reconstructing archival and remembered imagery, alerting viewers to the peacefulness of earlier social encounters and, by implication, to the possibility of future peaceful encounters as well; and
• anticipatory peace images showing or constructing images of a peaceful future as a way of trying to make such a future happen.
Based on our recent collaboration with Tiffany Fairey, we may add explicit and implicit peace images, the one to be understood as “a strategic form of visual peacebuilding” clearly aiming at peace, the other targeting peace indirectly and hiding, for a variety of reasons, the peace objective. Implicit peace potentialities may even emerge in participatory projects without peace objective through the “iterative development of a project and its engagement with participants and audiences.”³
Arguably, such differentiations reflect the complexities and ambiguities of social life more adequately than a search for generic images of peace, ostensibly valid across cases and over time.
However, it is important not to disregard the dynamics operating among the individual categories of any typology. It is also important not to ignore that a single image may be put into different categories simultaneously, move over time from one category to another, or cease being a peace image altogether, given changed circumstances.⁴
It is equally crucial to understand the processes through which a given typology came into being. Such processes include the implicit biases cultivated by authoritative and, therefore, taken-for-granted orders of knowledge production such as those dominating western academia and expert culture.⁵ And it is critical to acknowledge the open-endedness of every typology: typologies are always emerging; they need constant adaptation and further development.
In sum, creating a typology of peace images by disaggregating peace imagery into distinctive categories can best be understood as an auxiliary tool to complexify and diversify our understanding of the visual representation of peace. Rather than being superimposed on changing social circumstances, such a typology must permanently be adapted to such circumstances, leaving space for hitherto marginalized voices.
Images, image-makers and analysts need to acknowledge and visualize the non-linearity and multi-directionality as well as the complexities and ambiguities of politics. In consequence, images of peace will be as ambiguous and complex as the social conditions such images (cl)aim to represent.
Questions remain, of course: Is the creation of a typology of peace images the best way of approaching the issue, even if we acknowledge the limits of disaggregation and typology-building? If so, what categories are still missing? If not, what alternatives are there?
See also:
WAYS OF SHOWING PEACE (I): Reflections on the visualization of peace
WAYS OF SHOWING PEACE (II): Visualizing contested peace
WAYS OF SHOWING PEACE (III): Peace images and complexity
NOTES
¹ Interactive Peace Imagery: Integrating Visual Research and Peace Education, Journal of Peace Education 20:1 (2023), https://doi.org/10.1080/17400201.2023.2171374.
² In an earlier blog post (Ways of showing peace, I), we referred to such images as vicarious peace images, arguing that peace ‘can be shown vicariously by documenting activities accompanying, reflecting and following from a given individual’s or group’s perception and experience of peace. Simply put, if a sense of peace prevails, individuals and groups of people tend to do things they would not do in the absence of a sense of peace. Such activities can be recorded visually.’
³ See our “Peace Photography, Visual Peacebuilding and Participatory Peace Photography,” in The Routledge Handbook of Conflict and Peacebuilding Communication, edited by Stefanie Pukallus and Stacey Connaughton (New York: Routledge, forthcoming), pp. 342–3. We will introduce this publication in autumn.
⁴ One example we often refer to is imagery from the signing of the Arusha Peace Agreement of 1993, seemingly ending the violence in Rwanda. At the time, this imagery may have qualified as formal peace imagery. In light of what came afterwards, maintaining such a characterization today would require substantial qualification.
⁵ Self-reflexivity is key here. What factors affect us in such a manner that we regard certain images as images of peace (in contrast to others)? Socialization matters. We are not building a typology of peace images in isolation but, rather, exposed to a variety of influences, not all of which we are aware of. What we see reflects who we are and the processes through which we became who we believe we are. Thus, what factors affect our typology-building?