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This article examines how the Maoist conflict in Nepal affected women ex-combatants and non-combatants, looking at shifts in gender roles during and after the conflict particularly from the standpoint of current livelihood challenges. We argue changing gender roles largely depends upon everyday practice of gender division of labour and power as it evolved during and after the conflict. We also found the conflict had different and contradictory effects: Both categories of women experienced shift in gender roles, with women taking on tasks earlier reserved for men, but this effect was strongest amongst ex-combatants during conflict. In the aftermath of conflict, these changes were partly reversed and especially ex-combatant women faced severe livelihood challenges and returned to traditional gender roles. The article also considers how women experience state and non-state responses meant to improve their livelihoods security in the post-conflict setting. The article is based on in-depth fieldwork in Chitwan and Kathmandu districts of Nepal. It draws on interviews with women ex-combatants/non-combatants and key informant interviews.

SummaryThe link between public administration and conflict resolution is traditionally understood through the 'democratic peace' thesis, which holds that war is less likely in democracies than in non‐democracies. Limited success with post‐conflict democratisation missions has opened space for renewed research on three strands of 'deeper democracy': decentralisation, participation and deliberation. This article reports on the study of deliberative democratic practices in emerging governance networks in Prishtina. Through an investigation of three contentious issues in Prishtina's public spaces, research combines documentary sources with field interviews with governance actors to identify factors that enable and constrain the scope for deliberative decision‐making in governance networks. Case studies point to six main influences: 'securitisation', trust building, 'mandate parallelism', structural patterns of inclusion and exclusion, network structures and the properties of governed public spaces. In addition, two frames are found to be particularly resistant to deliberative engagement: Kosovo's status and ethnic identities. We formulate a tentative conclusion to be further investigated: in contexts where distrust is high, deliberative governance requires a rigid adherence to an overarching reference framework that can create discursive space within which relative deliberation can take place. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

ABSTRACTThere is a growing interest in localized land registration, in which user rights are acknowledged and recorded through a community‐based procedure, as an alternative to centralized titling to promote secure tenure in sub‐Saharan Africa. Localized land registration is expected to reduce land disputes, yet it remains unclear how it impacts disputes in practice. This is an urgent question for war‐affected settings that experience sensitive land disputes. This article discusses findings from ethnographic fieldwork in Burundi on pilot projects for land certification. It identifies three ways in which certification feeds into land conflicts rather than preventing or resolving them. First, land certification represents a chance for local people to enter a new round of claim making, as those ignored or disenfranchised in earlier rounds see new opportunities. Second, it offers an avenue for institutional competition between different land‐governing institutions. Third, certification provides politicians with openings to interfere in tenure relations and to expand their support base. The authors conclude that these problems are not simply a matter of inadequate policy design. Rather, there are crucial political dimensions to land conflicts and land tenure in Burundi, which means that land registration programmes run the risk of inflaming conflictive property relations in rural communities.

Literature on transformations to sustainability increasingly recognizes transformation as inherently political, but the field still struggles to study these politics. Our research project 'Securing Tenure, Sustainable Peace?' on efforts to localize land registration in conflict-affected settings, both illustrates and contributes to understanding the politics of transformation. Building on insights from political ecology/economy, legal and political anthropology, and the anthropology of conflict, we analyse the politics involved in (1) the overarching policy discourses that legitimize these interventions; (2) the competition around these programmes; and (3) the outcomes, or the risks and contradictory effects of these programmes. We present insights that we consider relevant to develop better conceptualizations of the politics of transformations in sustainability studies more broadly. In particular, we draw attention to the tendency of de-politicization, which involves the hiding in technical formats of what are in essence political choices; as well as the need to give attention to institutional competition and to risks involved and unexpected outcomes of transformation.

Literature on transformations to sustainability increasingly recognizes transformation as inherently political, but the field still struggles to study these politics. Our research project 'Securing Tenure, Sustainable Peace?' on efforts to localize land registration in conflict-affected settings, both illustrates and contributes to understanding the politics of transformation. Building on insights from political ecology/economy, legal and political anthropology, and the anthropology of conflict, we analyse the politics involved in (1) the overarching policy discourses that legitimize these interventions; (2) the competition around these programmes; and (3) the outcomes, or the risks and contradictory effects of these programmes. We present insights that we consider relevant to develop better conceptualizations of the politics of transformations in sustainability studies more broadly. In particular, we draw attention to the tendency of de-politicization, which involves the hiding in technical formats of what are in essence political choices; as well as the need to give attention to institutional competition and to risks involved and unexpected outcomes of transformation.