Ethnographic Peace Research

This chapter provides an introduction to ethnographic peace research (EPR) and an argument in favor of its use as a key methodological extension of the recent turn to the local in peace and conflict studies. EPR is primarily an attempt to promote a forceful and rigorous research agenda that centralizes local experiences, perceptions, concepts, and understandings within research regarding conflict, violence, and peace. The original contribution here is the delineation of EPR into three different forms, described as its evaluative, scholarly, and active registers. As described, each of these has different goals and target audiences and demands different depths of analysis and levels of reflection. This new typology therefore identifies the benefits of EPR when applied in response to different demands, conducted for different purposes, and with different audiences in mind.