Social Science Research Council

In Complex Emergencies David Keen draws upon James Gilligan’s work on the psychological motivations of the most violent killers in American gaols as a source of insight into why atrocities are so commonly part of civil wars in countries such as Sierra Leone. Let me explore this with regard to Darfur.
Gilligan’s core insight, based [...]

First of all, I would like the thank Zoe Marriage, Michael Barnett and Angela Raven-Roberts for taking the trouble to read the book, and for their insightful, critical and sympathetic comments.
A large part of what I am trying to get across in the Complex Emergencies book, as Michael Barnett correctly perceives, is that the aims [...]

Posted by Angela Raven-Roberts.
David Keen has written a very readable and approachable book tackling a complex subject and tracing its multiple representations, interpretations and modes of analyses. I read it from the point of view of an insider of the ‘humanitarian enterprise’ that he skillfully critiques and as one who is frequently engaged in training [...]

Posted on behalf of Michael Barnett.
David Keen certainly puts the complex into complex emergencies. Combining critical theorizing and detailed knowledge of conflict zones around the world, Keen challenges a mountain of received wisdoms, urban myths, and simplified understandings regarding collective violence, aid, reconstruction, and peace-building. Keen tells us that: not everything is as [...]

Complex Emergencies emanates from lectures renowned for their capacity to challenge MSc students (I was one of them) and encourage new ways of thinking. The book draws on David Keen’s research over three decades into the causes of wars and other forms of mass political violence and the responses that have been made to them. [...]

On page 115 of his recent book Complex Emergencies, David Keen writes, “For those familiar with this famine [1988 in southwest Kordofan and Bahr el Ghazal] the current crisis in Darfur is a horrific case of déja vu.”
Indeed there is little about the internal dynamics of the Darfur conflict that is substantially different from other [...]