S1 Ep1: How is war changing? Organised violence in the 21st century

How is war changing in the twenty-first century? What makes contemporary organised violence distinct from past conflicts? In this podcast, the first in a new series from the LSE, we explore the nature of intractable conflict in the modern world. While warfare is no longer seen as a normal mechanism for resolving disputes between states, many states and regions across the globe still live with the reality of conflict and violence. 

Modern warfare has become more like a social condition, an intractable conflict situation. In this podcast we show how this is happening in the countries we’ve looked at on the Conflict Research Programme. And we take a closer look at the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We pick apart the reputation the country has as a site of so-called ‘resource wars’. We show that it’s a lot more complicated than this part of the academic literature has suggested.

Featuring professor Mary Kaldor, director of the Conflict Research Programme at the LSE, Zaki Mehchy, a researcher on the Syria team at the LSE, and professor Koen Vlassenroot, director of the Conflict Research Group at Ghent University.

This podcast series has been funded by the UK Department of International Development as part of the Conflict Research Programme.

Producers: Luke Cooper, Azaria Morgan
Sound editor: Ben Higgins Millner

Intro music: The Drama by Rafael Krux (used for education purposes under Creative Commons License).