Assemblage thinking and actor–network theory: Reconciling the perspectives of environmental security and political ecology for improving the understanding of farmer–herder conflicts in Africa

Abstract

The two main theoretical approaches to study the farmer–herder conflicts (FHCs) in Africa, namely, environmental security (ES) and political ecology (PE), demonstrate theoretical disagreement. This review proposes that the disagreement between the two approaches needs to be resolved, to account for the complexity of the conflicts. Notably, the resolution can benefit analysts and help them understand the conflicts comprehensively. This review contributes to the literature on FHCs, by integrating the aspects of ES and PE for analyzing the FHCs in a single framework. Particularly, this review reveals some of the factors that shape the conflicts. It uses assemblage thinking and actor–network theory, to incorporate the issues related to the PE and ES of conflicts, which are often ignored in either of these two perspectives previously, and develops a detailed FHC assemblage framework. This method allows us to provide a comprehensive analysis that does not downplay the essential details of the conflicts, which may have been ignored in previous studies.