A microdynamics approach to geographies of violence: Mapping the kill chain in militarized conservation areas

Within segments of the overlapping fields of political ecology and political geography, there is an emerging consensus that direct physical violence is over-studied, and that it cannot be analytically separated from other forms of violence. This article argues the opposite, namely, that direct physical violence remains understudied, and that analyzing it separately is warranted to grasp its specificities. To corroborate this argument, the article examines the study of green militarization and green violence. Whereas a substantial part of this literature discusses direct physical violence, most studies focus on broader conditions and discourses of violence, without empirically demonstrating how they feed into the production of direct physical violence. Consequently, these studies do not accurately map the entire “kill chain”. A case study of violence in Virunga National Park, in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, demonstrates the analytical merits of studying direct physical violence through a “microdynamics” approach, implying the detailed study of specific acts of violence and how they were committed. Far from distracting from broader conditions, structures and histories of violence, a microdynamics approach provides an entry point for understanding how these dimensions feed into the production of direct physical violence, and how this violence interacts with other forms of violence. In addition, it allows for a more accurate understanding of how the kill chain is constituted in time and space. The article concludes that acknowledging the particularities of different modalities of violence, instead of conflating them, will significantly advance the study of geographies of violence.