Canadian Consortium on Human Security
Fellow Profile: Shane Barter
Shane Barter is a doctoral candidate in Political Science at the University of British Columbia. His dissertation and Human Security Fellowship research examine a common, but relatively unexplored source of human security: village level peace processes. He asks: how do traditional village dispute resolution mechanisms adapt to intrastate conflict? Shane’s answers are based on fieldwork in Aceh, Indonesia, Cotabato in the southern Philippines, and Pattani in southern Thailand.
Anthropologists have long studied the complex systems of dispute resolution at the village level, but this approach has not been applied to large regional conflicts. Village chiefs, district heads, and religious leaders play important, but very different micro-level roles in providing human security in intrastate conflicts. For example, when villagers are arrested by either combatant on suspicion of being an informant, chiefs become defence lawyers of sorts, approaching the combatants, making a case for their release, and in many cases are themselves beaten or arrested. If one asks a village leader why they risked their life to help a villager, they will usually respond that they had no choice - it was part of their job. On a micro-level, such culturally-defined roles save lives. For the conflict as a whole, efforts which lessen animosities, encourage defections, and display alternative sources of authority—if such local processes are common—can change outcomes. Shane’s research considers what these village level roles are, why they take place, how they vary across conflicts and groups, how they influence the conflict as a whole, and what the implications are for foreign assistance.
Shane is currently in the third year of his PhD, undertaking field research throughout 2008. He earned his BA from the University of Victoria in Comparative Politics and Asian History, and his MA from UBC, where his thesis explored why the Aceh conflict has remained secular despite a history of religious conflict and regional trends. He has worked at Forum-Asia, a Thai human rights NGO, where he authored a book on the role of civil society in the Aceh conflict. He has also served as an election observer for the European Union, the Carter Center, and numerous regional NGOs. He currently is a board member of the Saree School in Aceh Besar.
At UBC, he has been a teaching assistant for several courses, a research assistant with Dr. Peter Dauvergne, and has taught Comparative Politics. After the 2004 Tsunami, Shane created an Interdisciplinary Working Group, organized aid programmes, supervised engineering research teams, worked with Vancouver’s Acehnese refugee community, and served on the University’s Global Service Committee. Shane is currently the Southeast Asia coordinator for YouLead, developing internship placements for Canadian students with local NGOs.
In addition to the CCHS Human Security Fellowship, Shane holds a Canadian Graduate Scholarship and an Urban Human Security Research Award. He has presented papers at the East West Center, CSIS Jakarta, the Canadian Consortium on Human Security, and the Canadian Political Science Association.
Shane can be reached at shanejb (at) interchange.ubc.ca.
Publications:
Barter, Shane Joshua, and Diane K. Mauzy, “Learning to Lose? Not if UMNO Can Help It,” in Learning to Lose: Adapting Democracy to One-Party Dominant Systems, edited by Joseph Wong and Edward Friedman (Routledge Publishers, 2008).
Barter, Shane Joshua, “Review of Realpolitik Ideology: Indonesia’s Use of Military Force,” by Leonard C. Sebastian, Pacific Affairs, Volume 80, Number 3 (Winter 2008).
Barter, Shane Joshua, “Resources, Religion, Rebellion: The Sources of Conflict in Aceh,” Small Wars & Insurgencies, Volume 19, Issue 1 (January 2008).
Barter, Shane Joshua, “Dangers of Decentralization: Clientelism, the State, & Nature in Indonesia,” Federal Governance, Volume 1, Issue 6 (Winter 2008).
Barter, Shane Joshua, “Review of Verandah of Violence: the Background to the Aceh Problem,” edited by Anthony Reid, Pacific Affairs, Volume 80, Number 3 (Fall 2007).
Barter, Shane Joshua, “A Cosmopolitan Conflict? Aceh as a New War,” in Old Conflicts and New Wars in the Pacific, edited by Rolf Jordan and Michael Waibel (APSA 14, January 2006); pp. 27-40.
Barter, Shane Joshua, “Report on Research Trip to Aceh, Post-Tsunami / Pre-Peace,” CANCAPS BULLETIN (20 August 2005)
Barter, Shane Joshua, “Perspectives for Peace in Post-Tsunami Aceh,” Human Security Bulletin (August 2005), http://www.humansecurity.info/page375.htm
Barter, Shane Joshua, “Accountability for Abuses in Aceh,” Jakarta Post (17 July 2004)
Barter, Shane Joshua, Neither Wolf, Nor Lamb: Embracing Civil Society in the Aceh Conflict (Bangkok: Forum-Asia, 2004).
