A note on methodology

While much of this article takes the form of conceptual scoping, it also has an empirical basis. The article arose from an ESRC-funded secondary data analysis project that gave the author access to an African Union-United Nations Joint Mission Analysis Centre (JMAC) security incident dataset from the conflict in Darfur.Footnote ⁶ The security incident dataset was compiled in real-time and comprises of a spreadsheet of 5,000+ incidents (like the one at the beginning of the article) sent from UN peacekeepers in the field to JMAC. The dataset covers incidents between 3 January 2008 and 6 April 2009, or the first 15 months of the UNAMID (United Nations Mission in Darfur) deployment. Before use it was anonymised and has been used in accordance with data protection provisions. The scale of 4x4 usage and theft in the Darfur conflict was not clear to the author until viewing the dataset. This prompted a more granular manual search of the database and, following coding, computerised searches. The apparent frequency of vehicle theft also prompted the author to hold semi-structured interviews to gain more contextual information. Interviews were conducted with 17 former and current UN and INGO personnel in Khartoum (March 2014), New York (May 2015), the UK (June 2016), and via Skype (2014–17). Initial interviewees were identified through the author’s professional network and thereafter via snowballing. All interviews were conducted on the basis of anonymity for interviewees, and a number of interviewees asked for ‘off the record’ interviews – hence the absence of direct quotations in some cases. The author did not travel to Darfur. The research was conducted with ethical approval from the University of Manchester.

The article uses Darfur, a site of extensive 4x4 use, as its principal case study. While the focus is on Darfur, it is hoped many of the insights from that context may be more generally applicable to other sites of conflict and international intervention. There is no claim that Darfur is representative of other cases, merely indicative.

The material turn

Recent years have seen local,Footnote ⁷ narrative,Footnote ⁸ everyday,Footnote ⁹ sociological,Footnote ¹⁰ and anthropologicalFootnote ¹¹ ‘turns’ as scholars have sought to unpack the liberal peace. This article invokes socio-materiality or the extent to which objects signify relationships and cosmologies. Daniel Miller’s observation that, ‘objects create subjects much more than the other way around’Footnote ¹² is challenging in that it forces us to think of limits to individual and collective agency. Yet agency, and especially the ability of local actors to exercise their will in the face of international intervention, has been a major focus of much IR scholarship in recent years.Footnote ¹³ This article seeks to contribute to the debate on the dynamic relationship between agency and objects, and hopes to move beyond the view that inanimate objects are only enlivened through context and constructionism. Certainly the meanings of materiality are often mediated through human interaction that renders an object into a symbol or device for production, consumption, compliance, or resistance. A large part of this article rests on insights from the representation and political meanings given to inanimate objects and so before discussing the new materialism lens, it is important to entertain materialism and the use of material objects as part of an evidential trail in the study of social phenomena.

Interpreting IR through material objects is in keeping with a number of other research directions in the discipline such as recent studies of spaces and the possibilities of new (nano, digital, neuroscientific, etc.) technologies. Literature on spaces (a form of matter) has focused on sovereignty, borders, new mobilities and the need to think of post-territorial conceptualisations of space.Footnote ¹⁴ Importantly, a number of works have conceived of space as ontological – lifeworlds constituted by enactment.Footnote ¹⁵ Work on the possibilities of digital technologies has examined issues of regulation, ethics, and biopolitical challenges.Footnote ¹⁶ Echoing the new materialism literature (to be discussed later) literatures on space and technology concur on the need to see their subjects as more than matter – these dimensions and items are constituted by humans, but – in turn – constitute humans through complex processes of interactionism.

One motivation for using material objects to understand the political economies of violent conflict and intervention is that many of the actors involved in these processes are less than transparent. Many international organisations, INGOs and state militaries produce significant amounts of publicly available material, and their personnel often consent to be interviewed. Yet there may be discrepancies between the official account of action, and actions actually taken. In the case of rebel and militia groups, safe access for the researcher can be problematic,Footnote ¹⁷ although work on rebel governance and the anthropology of rebellion points to some very brave researchers.Footnote ¹⁸ The lack of transparency encourages us to explore other evidential trails that may depict the nature of conflict and intervention. A focus on material objects allows us to examine the processes of objectification whereby objects are made and remade through use, language, and circulation.Footnote ¹⁹ This social construction will be moulded by context, with the same object acquiring different properties according to time and space. As Neil MacGregor noted in his A History of the World in 100 Objects, ‘The object becomes a document not just of the world for which it was made, but for the later periods which altered it.’Footnote ²⁰ Crucially, these material palimpsests can be used for purposes other than those originally intended by the manufacturer or regulator.Footnote ²¹ Usage tells a story that may help us access the ‘hidden transcript’Footnote ²² of a society – stories of resistance, mimicry, and polymorphism. Manufacturers, advertisers, pressure groups and governments may seek to impose approved usages on objects, for example branding some as ‘humanitarian goods’,Footnote ²³ but ‘systems use’ (how an object is actually used) and ‘normative use’ (its recommended use) may differ considerably.Footnote ²⁴ As will be discussed later, this is the case with 4x4s that can have multiple buyers, sellers and owners during a long life history, and can be modified in numerous ways. As an enthusiast website noted with respect to the Toyota Land Cruiser: popular with ‘tradies and the Taliban’.Footnote ²⁵

Ian Walters observes that ‘the very physicality of the object, which makes it appear so immediate, assimilable, sensual, belies its actual character’.Footnote ²⁶ The everyday-ness of an object may be accentuated by its ubiquity, accessibility, and mundane nature. Mass-produced items will contain the same parts or ingredients and may have universal branding. Coca-Cola and Apple, and many other products and corporate brands, constitute forces of isomorphism that suggest common experiences and even the achievement of shared standards of modernity. Yet, of course, artefacts are inflected with social meaning through their usage, modification, culture, economics, and politics.Footnote ²⁷ The 4x4, depending on type and the socioeconomic value given to it, can be a luxury object of desire, but it can also be an utilitarian object required for strictly functional purposes: covering rough terrain, pulling heavy loads, carrying troops and looted goods. On the one hand, the 4x4 has achieved an iconic place in many societies in the global north. It has variously been seen as emblematic of excess, emasculation,Footnote ²⁸ and the securitisation of everyday life.Footnote ²⁹ Josh Lauer noted how such so-called Chelsea tractors or soccer mom vans ‘lent “yuppies” and wealthy suburbanites an aura of roughness that few could legitimately claim’.Footnote ³⁰ On the other hand, the use of 4x4s by apparently incorrigible militants groups such as Islamic State and the Taliban prompted a round of media securitisation of the 4x4. A former US Ambassador to the UN noted that ‘Regrettably, the Toyota Land Cruiser and Hilux have effectively become almost part of the ISIS brand.’Footnote ³¹

Anthropological and sociological lenses allow us to see the extra-economic dimensions of material objects and their users. A strict economic view may encourage the rendering of an object into an economic value.Footnote ³² By going beyond economic value we are confronted with a world of motivations, gifting, inheritance, borrowing, hoarding, and storage whereby the object has affective and life-shaping dimensions. In effect, the inanimate and the affective meet, with the former being given forms of life by the latter.

The new materialism literature encourages us to examine the ‘mutual constitution of humans-nonhumans’Footnote ³³ and ‘technologies in intimate integration with humans’.Footnote ³⁴ While matter matters, it is more than just matter and we are encouraged to think of ‘the emergent or generative powers of “matter” and the complex yet intertwined formation of “objects”, “bodies”, and “subjectivities” that this entails.’Footnote ³⁵ The social construction of objects is not to be under-estimated,Footnote ³⁶ yet to leave our analysis at this point risks missing the ontological and normative aspects of products and how they intersect with belief systems.Footnote ³⁷ As Vicki Squire notes pithily, we may become stuck on ‘object fetishism’.Footnote ³⁸ The new materialisms literature on the vitality of objects and how they are ‘more than human’Footnote ³⁹ encourages at least two lines of thinking in relation to 4x4s in Darfur. Firstly, the 4x4 embodies and becomes the professional and the personal, even intimate, lifeworlds of those who use them. The professional aspect is well known with the cliché of the humanitarian 4x4 sweeping through the village scattering villagers in a dust cloud. Driving in, or being driven in, a 4x4 may also be seen as a ‘badge of honour’ by some. One academic acquaintance recalls how a human rights activist in Colombia, contracted by the US government, ‘was very pleased that she could give us a ride back from the village to the municipality in her car’.Footnote ⁴⁰ But the personal aspect of the 4x4 is less well explored. The interior of the vehicle constitutes a micro-cosmos.Footnote ⁴¹ For one UN employee involved in humanitarian convoys in Syria, the 4x4 became home for days on end as access was being negotiated to besieged enclaves.Footnote ⁴² One female British Government employee noted how the interior of armoured vehicles, with their non-opening windows, can be oppressive: ‘if someone farts you’re fucked’.Footnote ⁴³ The seating arrangements are dictated by status and gender. Mission leaders usually sit in the front passenger seat, but according to one interviewee ‘statistically, the seat behind the driver is the safest’.Footnote ⁴⁴ In many missions, national staff are the drivers and expatriate staff are the passengers – leading to a racialised division of labour. No interviewee could ever remember seeing a female drive a vehicle in Darfur.Footnote ⁴⁵ The key point is that, in certain circumstances, people are constituted by things.Footnote ⁴⁶ It is not simply that the 4x4 (and other objects) represent status, identity, and purpose as a rebel, militia member, UN peacekeeper, or humanitarian worker. Material objects are constitutive of these identities and bring with them affective reactions from both those inside and outside the 4x4. By creating (and recreating) lifeworlds, the material dimension strays into ontology whereby existence and purpose are due, to a significant degree, to the possession and utilisation of material objects. To put it bluntly, it is difficult to imagine an active rebel or militia member operating in Darfur without a 4x4.

The 4x4 can also shape epistemology in quite literal ways. The inhabitant may be encased in an armoured vehicle, physically insulated from the territory and people they are – notionally – working with. A former UN peacekeeper, and a UN human rights monitor (both with experience in Darfur) confirmed that the UN could only record what its personnel could witness and that this view was often limited by the 4x4.Footnote ⁴⁷ For example, the 4x4 might be physically limited in where it can go, the movement control officer might declare certain routes off-limits, or the Sudanese authorities may thwart 4x4 journeys. So the 4x4 facilitates and limits standpoint epistemology and situated knowledge.Footnote ⁴⁸

A second point that emerges from the new materialism perspective is that objects are part of interlocking systems.Footnote ⁴⁹ This point has been well made by Marxists and Gramscians who have pointed to the relationships between technology, belief systems, power, and behaviour.Footnote ⁵⁰ Complex political economies mean that a 4x4 might be purchased and ordered by an INGO headquartered in the Netherlands, built in a factory in Japan, kitted out in Gibraltar, shipped to Port Sudan, convoyed to Darfur, used by personnel working on an infant mortality project, be carjacked in Darfur, and be used by a rebel commander before being sold in Chad. During this ‘journey’, the vehicle might variously be the object of a commercial transaction, comfort, fear, and employment (for carmakers and drivers). Some material objects, in this case the 4x4, constitute a chain of implication linking apparently remote conflict locations to everyday activity in the global north. Scholars from IR and other disciplines have been useful in highlighting how violent conflict is often othered and exoticised as something that happens ‘over there’.Footnote ⁵¹ By tracking the material objects of conflict it is possible to question this othering and instead point to a chain of implication that unites the rebel, militia fighter, or humanitarian in the 4x4 with the 4x4 on many driveways in the global north. So keen are manufacturers to trumpet the security and all-terrain advantages of their wares that they invoke their military and humanitarian usages in advertising. Toyota Europe, for example, quotes from a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) logistician who describes the Land Cruiser as ‘truly unbreakable’.Footnote ⁵² A minor media storm erupted when a Texas plumber saw his former pick-up truck being used by Islamic State in Syria.Footnote ⁵³ This long chain of implication relies on shared meanings of the 4x4 that go beyond its undoubted physical usefulness. Thus, and in keeping the new materialism perspective, political economies are augmented by moral economies that have an affective dimension.

While this article appreciates the disruptive and original direction of the new materialism thesis, the case study basis of the article urges caution. This circumspection encourages the author to put forward the notion of materialism+, a notion that appreciates the ability to explore ‘matter’s capacity to pose questions on its own terms’Footnote ⁵⁴ but stops short of embracing three aspects of new materialism. Materialism + thus may be seen as a staging post on the way to new materialism, one necessitated by three unconvincing aspects of new materialism thesis in respect of observations from the case study.

The first point of caution relates to the neophilia much observed in new materialism arguments. To be clear, studies of new materialism are not exclusively restricted to new objects or technologies. Yet there can be no doubting that such a bias can be found in the literature. Tom Roberts observed that ‘the emergence of a new materialism within the social sciences is contemporaneous to the mutation of scientific technologies and biotechnologies over the course of the 20^th century.’Footnote ⁵⁵ Much of the new materialism literature concentrates on cutting-edge nano, digital, wearable, and biotechnologies. The emphasis on techno-scientific advances stands in contrast to the 4x4. The technology involved in most 4x4 use is decidedly intermediate rather than advanced or hyper-advanced. As one UN interviewee said of the Toyota Land Cruiser ‘simple mechanics, lots of spare parts’.Footnote ⁵⁶ Despite the changes in digitally-enabled humanitarianism and the trend towards remote and new public management, a constant factor seems to be the diesel engine and the 4x4.Footnote ⁵⁷ Indeed, it is worth noting that the UN and some INGOs are frustrated with the increasing sophistication of 4x4s – especially their reliance on advanced electronics. These organisations value the ability to service vehicles in the field and cannabalise older vehicles for spare parts, and so find increasingly sophisticated vehicles a hindrance.

A second note of caution relates to a tendency towards dematerialisation in some of the new materialism literature.Footnote ⁵⁸ It is not the case, of course, that all new materialism literature has a dematerialised focus.Footnote ⁵⁹ Yet the metaphysical direction of some discussion seems very far removed from the immediate and onsite nature of much contemporary conflict and humanitarianism. The case study material on which this article is based suggests that the demise of traditional forms of intervention using boots on the ground, or tyres on mud roads, can be overstated. In 2016, one humanitarian agency, MSF, had a fleet of 700 Toyota Land Cruisers. Such vehicles are the day-to-day workhorses of humanitarianism, stabilisation, and peacemaking. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has well over 10,000 vehicles.Footnote ⁶⁰ Such large numbers point to an onsite materiality of intervention that involves human-to-human contact and all of the complexity and power relations that such interaction involves. Without the 4x4, the ‘aid archipelago’ of fortified aid compounds could not exist.Footnote ⁶¹ Moreover, the vehicles are composed of raw materials extracted from specific sites in real-time, with consequences in terms of environmental degradation, consumption, and the dislocation of traditional industries.Footnote ⁶²

A recognition of the grounded and onsite nature of contemporary conflict and humanitarianism is not to deny trends towards remote management in humanitarianism whereby digital technologies allow headquarters to direct more closely ground operations and to liaise directly with national actors (bypassing field offices).Footnote ⁶³ Digital and remote sensing technologies, we are told, offer the potential for postmodern humanitarianism, whereby intervention (and more particularly the management of intervention) occurs remotely and thus possibly reinforces the othering of the subject of intervention.Footnote ⁶⁴

The trend towards remote management is not in question; yet, the immediate and human costs of onsite physical intervention, humanitarianism, and resistance are evidenced by the killings of significant numbers of humanitarian medical personnel in recent years.Footnote ⁶⁵

A third point of caution in relation to new materialism is its potential to move towards posthumanism, or situations in which human agency is displaced in narratives and analyses. None of this is to deny the imperative of ‘more than human’ perspectives and the need to recalibrate how and where humans fit into explanations of conflict. As Erika Cudworth and Stephen Hobden note, new materialism risks overlooking ‘the unique specificity of human agency and the transformatory capabilities of our species’.Footnote ⁶⁶ The caution concerned with the posthuman implications of new materialism relates to the normative project at the heart of humanitarianism and critical approaches to peace and conflict studies. As the term suggests, humanitarianism is human centred and often focused on basic and immediate needs. Thus moves towards extreme versions of posthumanismFootnote ⁶⁷ risk overlooking the essential imperative of remaining focused on human things. In terms of critical approaches to peace and conflict studies, a clear normative intellectual project is underway whereby scholars and scholar-practitioners see their role as part of emancipatory efforts that seek to write people and agency back into analyses of peace and conflict. While posthumanism has been a useful intellectual device (a point revisited in the conclusion) it does demand caution lest it contradicts the normative (and indeed practical) ambitions of humanitarianism, and to a lesser extent critical peace and conflict studies. As the next section hopes to show, multiple forms of agency – many of them complex, subtle and hard to observe – lie at the heart of conflict and responses to conflict. As a result, a lurch too far towards posthumanism seems to move us away from grounded observations.

The key point of this section has been to reaffirm the material turn and beyond that, new materialism. The case study material, however, demands some caution with regards to some aspects of the new materialism perspective. As a result, a materialism + perspective was put forward – one cognisant of much of what new materialism has to offer, especially in investigating the inanimate-animate interstices. This position is, however, circumspect on new materialism’s tendencies towards neophilia, dematerialisation, and posthumanism. The next section extends the materialism + argument by examining the 4x4 as an object of resistance and agency.

The 4x4 as local agency and resistance

It is relatively straightforward to portray the 4x4 as emblematic of top-down intervention – an alien intrusion that is clearly not indigenous to the conflict zone. It is a point of separation between the intervener and the intervened, perhaps inviting a rephrasing of the Belloc quip into, ‘We have the 4x4, and they have not.’ Lisa Smirl notes how ‘The white sports utility vehicle (SUV) has become a symbol of international humanitarian personnel; in many countries better recognised than the symbol of the blue helmet of UN peacekeepers.’Footnote ⁶⁸ One UNAMID employee referred to the 4x4 as ‘Our way of marking our territory.’Footnote ⁶⁹ A UN interviewee referred to the organisation’s ‘psychological dependence on the great big white vehicle – the dust cloud scattering children and market traders’.Footnote ⁷⁰

The 4x4 is less often portrayed as enabling bottom-up agency and resistance. Before developing this point, two caveats should be made. The first is that we should avoid romanticising bottom-up and local forms of agency and resistance.Footnote ⁷¹ In some cases it can be emancipatory and enabling, but it can also be violent, exclusionary, and reinforce patriarchy and other established forms of power.Footnote ⁷² The second caveat is that the top-down/bottom-up binary is too simplistic for a complex situation like Darfur. Although this section concentrates on bottom-up agency, it does so in the knowledge that terms like ‘top-down’, ‘bottom-up’, ‘local’, and ‘international’ are too static for dynamic and multilateral contexts.Footnote ⁷³ The terms are used in this article on the understanding that they contain dynamism, are gendered, and are a shorthand for very complex categories. Complicating matters are the multitude of actors involved in Darfur. Rather than a tripartite conflict involving a government, rebels, and representatives of the international community, the conflict involves multiple proxies, divisions, defections, and shifting alliances. Actors can straddle the local-national-international categories. The status of the Government of Sudan defies the neat stratifications and categorisations that comprehensible analysis prefers: it is at once a sovereign national government with international recognition, but also a local actor through its militias and proxies. Crucially, the Government of Sudan can be regarded as a resistance actor (resistance is not the sole privilege of the ‘underdog’). The Government is engaged in resistance to the international community and has sought to thwart UNAMID and many other international actors who it regards as interfering in matters internal to Sudan. So in discussing agency and resistance, as illustrated by 4x4s, this article will also include the Government of Sudan and its proxies who are resisting the mandate of the international community.

These caveats aside, 4x4 usage indicates agency and resistance by Darfurians against the Sudanese state and their proxies. Crucially, and following the earlier discussion of new materialism, actorness can be conferred by possession, use, and association with material objects. The object defines the subject as agential. A limited number of objects have this power, among them in this case the camel, the 4x4, and the automatic rifle. In this ‘object-oriented ontology’,Footnote ⁷⁴ objects are affiliative and notate particular associations or disassociations. In the case of Darfur, the object is not ambivalent, but affirms or modifies narratives about individual and group identity, role and motive.Footnote ⁷⁵ For example, INGOs might have local chapters that seek to differentiate themselves from their international colleagues. In eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (though not Darfur to the best of the author’s knowledge) it is common for NGO-owned 4x4s to be painted vivid colours to differentiate them from the ubiquitous white Land Cruiser and the connotations they carry.Footnote ⁷⁶

Rather than being populated by ‘victims’ and ‘survivors’, and rather than being ‘remote’ and ‘isolated’, analysis of 4x4 usage depicts a Darfur containing active, entrepreneurial, and connected people and groups. Many objects do not tell a simple story of passive consumption. Much commentary on consumption is prone to a moralistic tone, regarding it as profligate or indulgent. Frank Trentmann cautions that ‘We cannot simply stamp consumption as inauthentic or frivolous. For former slaves and migrants, things were a great emancipator. A shirt, a hat, a watch and a mirror were tickets to social inclusion and self-respect.’Footnote ⁷⁷ So rather than an end-state (Adam Smith regarded consumption as ‘the sole end and purpose of all production’),Footnote ⁷⁸ consumption can be better seen as a stage in a process that involves possibilities for agency, emotion, fulfillment, and display.

In addition to consumption, objects narrate stories of production, co-production, labour, exploitation, resistance, social advancement, and environmental degradation. Production, in particular, points to agency, and possibly resistance and subversion. As Shari Daya noted, ‘“production” is often more than simply the act of making’.Footnote ⁷⁹ It may involve identity construction and change, social (im)mobility, the carving of new relationships, and the creation or stripping away of autonomy. While 4x4s are made in factories in Japan, Germany or elsewhere, they can also be ‘produced’ through modification in seemingly non-industrialised places like Darfur. As the database that is point of origin of this article shows, many 4x4s are stolen from humanitarian INGOs and thereafter modified to suit the purposes of the new owner. They may be re-sprayed to hide the logo of the previous owner, the cab may be cut off to create a pick-up truck, and a machine gun might be fitted onto the back. These are processes of production that call on specialised skills and tools.Footnote ⁸⁰ They render actors in Darfur as more than caricature-like consumers, the drone-like users of objects constructed in the global north.Footnote ⁸¹ Local modification and production challenge the notion of the 4x4 as a standardised mass production item.Footnote ⁸² The logic of factory production lies in economies of scale through standardisation and repetition. In Darfur, however, standardised objects are routinely modified for humanitarian, peacekeeping, and military purposes. On the one hand, there are trends towards isomorphism with the spread of the 4x4 and other mass produced objects, but there are also opportunities for personalisation and modification.

Rebel groups have found ways to fuel their fleets, with the security incident database containing multiple reports of the theft of fuel from UN and commercial trucks. Indeed, UN documents show that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees had difficulty gaining adequate fuel supplies for its own fleet for a time in 2007.Footnote ⁸³ The 4x4 shows agency and resistance in the sense that rebel groups, and the population supporting them, adapted to circumstances. Rough and ready car maintenance shops sprang up in towns and trading posts, and small groups travelled with additional fuel in 40-gallon drums.Footnote ⁸⁴

The 4x4 is also useful for illustrating resistance and agency by the Government of Sudan, their militias and proxies. All have exercised considerable resistance and subversion to UNAMID and what they regard as unwarranted intrusion in Sudan’s affairs. The most obvious and violent resistance comes from the militias and proxies resourced by the Government of Sudan. Included in this resourcing is the supply of 4x4s to the Rapid Support Forces,Footnote ⁸⁵ a pro-Government militia considered as a reconstituted Janjaweed.Footnote ⁸⁶ Multiple reports, including prosecution documents from the International Criminal Court, attest to human rights abuses by pro-Government militias who travel in weaponised 4x4s.Footnote ⁸⁷ The Government, which has made clear that it wants the UNAMID mission to end, uses multiple acts of obstruction (often involving 4x4s) to thwart the UN mission. For example, the Government reportedly delays customs checks on UN vehicles at Port Sudan and links customs clearance with political concessions.Footnote ⁸⁸ The UN and INGOs are often reliant on the Sudanese police to recover stolen 4x4s – a process that may not be straightforward. As one UN employee asked, ‘Are the police in Darfur going to help?’Footnote ⁸⁹

A final observation on agency comes from interplay between donors and recipients and how the donation of 4x4s by international organisations and INGOs has become a core part of capacity-building. Given the terrain, poor road infrastructure, and the distances to be covered, 4x4s are essential, rather than a luxury. It not uncommon for capacity-building programmes to include items such as ‘logistic support for … one all-terrain vehicle for liaison purposes’.Footnote ⁹⁰ The donor-recipient relationship is more complex than the simple hand over of goods. It often involves a script of requests and demands from both sides, with all parties having an awareness of the political economies of monitoring and evaluation, the new public management vernacular, and competition from other agencies and potential recipients.Footnote ⁹¹ In a classic case of mimicry, or what postcolonialists identify as locals speaking back to colonialists,Footnote ⁹² one former international UNAMID employee noted how mayors or Government of Sudan appointees would only turn up to meetings in a 4x4. For them it was mark of status intended to say that they were equal to any UN appointee.Footnote ⁹³

Multiple data points in conflict analysis

In its third major second the article takes a methodological turn, situating itself in the ‘crisis of access’ experienced by many researchers in relation to conflict-affected zones. The physical and ethical dangers to the researched and the researcher have been well discussed in the literature.Footnote ⁹⁴ What is worth highlighting, however, is how conflict actors often endeavour to close off sites of conflict to researchers.Footnote ⁹⁵ Whether this is through the denial of visas (Sri Lanka in the run up to the 2009 defeat of the LTTE); the invocation of security exclusion zones (southern Lebanon); the physical inaccessibility of the conflict zone (Darfur, Yemen); or the reliance of the researcher on UN, INGO, or government gatekeepers with commensurate accusations of bias; the researcher might struggle to access the zone of the intended research.

Reactions to these problems of access might entail methodological innovation whereby researchers take unconventional approaches to compensate for a lack of access. This might involve using autoethnography,Footnote ⁹⁶ mobile and smartphone technologies,Footnote ⁹⁷ the crowdsourcingFootnote ⁹⁸ and crowdseedingFootnote ⁹⁹ of data, and mixed mode surveys.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ It also involves a recognition that conflict areas are not laboratories and so ‘good enough’ methodologies may have to sufficeFootnote ¹⁰¹ – a position with obvious consequences for the robustness of data and scientific replicability. The current research on 4x4s shows how seemingly idiosyncratic avenues of research can be revealing as to the character of violent conflict. The argument advanced here is that the examination of the role of 4x4s in the Darfur conflict can act as a conflict analysis device to complement other approaches to analysing violent conflict.

This argument is advanced in the knowledge that conflict analysis frameworks (used primarily by international organisations and INGOs, but also by academics) have been undergoing standardisation.Footnote ¹⁰² The advantage of standardisation is comparability – useful for the interoperability of intervening organisations. The disadvantage, however, is that standardised conflict analyses tend to produce the same answers and exclude alternative explanations for conflict onset and maintenance, and for the character of the conflict. By examining 4x4 usage in the security incident dataset we are presented with multiple data points. In singularity these data points do not tell us very much about the character of the conflict. Cumulatively, however, they offer a narrative of the conflict that may also have analytical worth. Conflict analysis is charged with representing the ‘who, what, why and where’ of a conflict. An analysis of 4x4 usage does just that by offering insights into conflict actors, motivations, modus operandi, and resourcing. Put simply, it is difficult to conceive of contemporary patterns of conflict, peacekeeping, and humanitarianism in Darfur in the absence of the 4x4. The conflict, more correctly described as an interlocking series of conflicts that have been ongoing for decades, mixes high and low technology with high and low intensity warfare.Footnote ¹⁰³ The conflict causation and maintenance factors include resource competition and degradation, race and identity, the insecurity of the Khartoum regime, the fractured nature of opposition groups, and regional instability. A number of scholars have emphasised the importance of structural and political economy explanations for the conflict.Footnote ¹⁰⁴

Harry Verhoeven, Lydiah Kemunto Bosire, and Sharath Srinivasan’s description gives a good account of the all-encompassing nature of the violence:

The displacement and dispossession of Darfurians are key aims of the Sudanese government (with an estimated two million people displaced from the 1990s onwards).Footnote ¹⁰⁶ The ‘actorness’ of the conflict defies easy explanation and goes far beyond a simple rebel versus government or African versus Arab binary. The Sudanese government relies heavily on proxy militias some of which are formally aligned with the police and military. They maintain strong, but less formal, links with the Janjaweed – an Arab militia that has been implicated in mass human rights violations.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ The rebels coalesce around the Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudanese Liberation Army but are riven with division.Footnote ¹⁰⁸

An object that links many actors in the conflict – government, militias, rebels, peacekeepers, INGOs, and even fleeing refugees – is the 4x4. The extent to which the 4x4 plays a vital role in the conflict is evidenced by the United Nations Mission to Darfur security incident log. Taking the form of an Excel spreadsheet mentioned in the methodological note near the beginning of this article, it is a list of the date, location, and type of security incidents in the Mission area of operations ranging from bombings and shootings to intimidation and sexual assault. These security incident logs, which are collated on a daily basis, originate in field missions before being passed through the Joint Mission Analysis Centres (JMAC) and thenceforth onto New York. They constitute an official narrative of the security aspects of the mission and are important documents because policy and resourcing decisions may be based on the story they tell. A perusal of the UN security incident log from Darfur for an eighteen-month period in 2008–9 contains a startling story. Alongside the recording of thousands incidents of ethnic cleansing, abduction, bombing, village burnings, and assaults, there are hundreds of reports of the theft and hijacking of vehicles. Indeed, there are 283 reports of hijacking or attempted hijacking. Seventeen of these incidents involved loss of life, and 165 of the incidents involved vehicles in the service of aid organisations. One aspect of the conflict can be seen as a massive asset transfer from organisations based in the global north to organisations (mainly rebel groups) in the global south. The sheer number of 4x4s stolen in a relatively short time period points to a significant injection of resources into a conflict zones, and the local appropriation of these resources. They encourage us to look afresh at the complex political economy of a conflict and observe how local and national agency mixes with transnational flows of resources.

The UN security incident log contains reports such as:

As well as theft, the security incident log references to 4x4s reveal a picture of a complex conflict involving surveillance and probing, military movements, collaboration between the United Nations, rebels and the Government of Sudan, tensions between the UN and Government of Sudan forces, and the importance of fuel,

In these reports (and there are many hundreds like them), 4x4s have functional roles in warfare – as troop carriers, a means to cart looted goods, or a way to conduct surveillance and test UN readiness. They shape the character of the violent conflict, allowing actors (government, pro-government militia, and rebels) to project their forces over long distances, across difficult territory, making looting and hit-and-run tactics feasible. They allow for the operation of semi-autonomous small groups of fighters (perhaps five or six vehicles operating under one commander) and thus do much to explain the fragmented nature of armed groups, and the consequent difficulties of achieving united negotiating positions among the rebel groups.Footnote ¹¹⁰

The 4x4 also shapes the conflict that is seen by the United Nations. The UN security incident log can only record incidents that are seen by UN peacekeepers, or incidents that are brought to the attention of the UN. While 4x4s are all terrain vehicles, they are limited in where they can go and therefore there are limits to the conflict that the UN can record – a factor that has implications for the policy responses to that conflict. Darfur is a vast area (over twice the size of the United Kingdom) and while UNAMID was authorised to have 19,555 uniformed personnel, the number provided was often under 10,000.Footnote ¹¹¹ Darfur is estimated to have a mere 2,000 km of roads (of all types, including roads that are planned but not yet completed).Footnote ¹¹² By comparison, the United Kingdom has 24,560 km. As a result much of the territory was not visible to the UN. Moreover, given carjacking and attacks on vehicles and personnel, at various times the UN placed restrictions on when and where vehicles could be used, and on the minimum number of vehicles per assignment.Footnote ¹¹³ As one UN official noted, ‘The UN stick to safe places so fewer vehicles are stolen.’Footnote ¹¹⁴ A further factor limiting the extent to which UN personnel could monitor the ongoing conflict in Darfur took the form of restrictions, harassment, and foot-dragging from the Government of Sudan who, for example, often controlled access to sites of alleged incidents.

The chief point of this section is to highlight how the 4x4 (alongside other objects) shaped the conflict and thus how data on 4x4s or perhaps other material objects can be used as a conflict analysis tool. Multiple conflict analysis models exist in the practitioner and policy worlds. Many of these are sophisticated and conflict sensitive. Yet they still face the problem of access to the conflict area due to violence, logistics, aggressive gatekeeping and the ethics of endangering the researched and the researcher. In the face of such obstacles, a case can be made for remote research that seeks to employ multiple methodologies in the hope that they can convey an accurate picture of conflict modalities. The advantage of examining the 4x4 data is that it provides information on conflict scale, geographies, patterns, resourcing, and consumption. Remote research, like remote management in humanitarianism, is not without its drawbacks and is recommended here in the absence of safe alternatives and is only viable because a peacekeeping operation is in situ and able to collect data. Yet the notion of following ‘things’ is worthy of further investigation in relation to conflict analysis. The advantage of a political economy of objects is that some objects tend to be in high volume circulation and have the capacity to provide an evidential trail. Crucially, these objects, whether the AK47, the Zippo lighter,Footnote ¹¹⁵ or the mobile phone, can tell a story of actual usage – rather than of projected capability.

Concluding discussion

The principal aim of this article has been to assess what the study of material objects can bring to the analysis of conflict and intervention. The article has much sympathy with the new materialism literature, though given the case study origins of the article, it struggles to go along with all of the enthusiasms of the new materialism literature. As a result, the article proposes materialism+, a notion heavily influenced by new materialism and grateful to it for opening a window into the ontology and life-making power of objects.

A danger of concentrating on material objects is that we move towards posthumanism whereby people are removed from our analyses. It is tautological, but worth emphasising, that humanitarianism must involve a human (according to many a humane) dimension.Footnote ¹¹⁶ Similarly, people-focused forms of conflict transformation are widely regarded as superior to shallower institutionalised forms of conflict resolution and conflict management.Footnote ¹¹⁷ Although the current article has made clear that objects are agential and lead us to unpack the human/non-human divide, the very act of concentrating on material objects can lead to criticism that analytical space given to objects detracts from space given to humans, their agency and issues. Such a zero sum perspective would, however, miss the point of this article. The value of the posthuman lens lie primarily in the ontological and epistemological calculus that it encourages among researchers. Whether this is the dystopian view of posthuman soldiery (‘horrific posthuman soldiers, genetically engineered and cyborged for obedience, conscienceless, fearlessness’)Footnote ¹¹⁸ or more optimistic views of humans enhanced by technology,Footnote ¹¹⁹ posthumanism’s promise lies in its challenge. In keeping with the new materialism literature, it forces us to think of its novelty (or lack thereofFootnote ¹²⁰ ), assemblagesFootnote ¹²¹ and context, and the motivations of those behind efforts to humanise, dehumanise, and rehumanise human subjects.Footnote ¹²² A particularly important contribution of recent additions to the posthumanism literature has been a reminder of the importance of power, actual and discursive. As Anette-Carina van der Zaag notes, ‘processes of power [are] constitutive of who gets to count as human in human/nonhuman relations’.Footnote ¹²³ Crucial here, and very pertinent when discussing material objects, is how advanced capitalism blurs the boundaries between people and things in an ‘all-consuming commodification of life’.Footnote ¹²⁴

Indeed, the focus on 4x4s, it can be argued, privileges well-resourced groups to the detriment of others. In Darfur, for example, not everyone has a 4x4 – it is a material privilege afforded to rebel, militia, and international elites. By choosing to examine the 4x4, the researcher is immediately drawn to gathering data on the topic – most obviously the security incident dataset from Darfur, but also facts and figures held by the UN and INGOs. The risk is that the material turn encourages a path dependency on particular types of data that have been gathered using specific technocratic methods. The danger is that we become prone to data fundamentalism whereby researchers examine quantifiable and easily observable phenomena and overlook power, including structural power. Moreover, there is the risk that a concentration on material objects fuels a possible retreat from fieldwork, whereby researchers and increasingly risk averse institutions recommend desk-based or less exposed forms of field research.

It is hoped, however, that the discussion in this article has made clear the intersections between people and machines, and how vehicles and their usage are nested within wider power structures. The 4x4 on its own tells us little. Instead, any material turn in International Relations is best seen as a complementary methodological tool, able to augment but not substitute other approaches that are cognisant of structure, power, and agency. Examining 4x4s and their usage in humanitarian and conflict settings allows us to connect with debates on political economy, the sociology of conflict and intervention, and the hybrid nature of conflict and agency. It shows how different actors have been able to eke out, define and appropriate space. What becomes clear is that the space appropriated through 4x4 usage defies simple labels such a humanitarian, battle, or peace. Instead, spaces fashioned by 4x4s are often complex, contested, and transitional. As well as the agency of the drivers, mechanics and passengers, they remind us of the structural power that enables some actors to project their presence in apparently ‘remote’ spaces. In order for a government, UN, INGO or rebel 4x4 to operate on a dirt road in Darfur there needs to be set of economies and enabling conditions in place, many of which are far removed from the physicality of the object. Apparently localised conflict and violence are globally constituted.Footnote ¹²⁵ The end-user is only one actor in an intricate process of interactionism. Such an observation is congruent with analyses that examine conflict and peacemaking as processes rather than events, and thus are alert to the structural, gendered, and economic aspects of conflict and violence. Crucially, and the subject for another article, the 4x4 points to a long chain of implication whereby apparently far away conflicts are connected to daily life in the global north through the use of very similar objects, manufactured in the same factories, and dependent on the same supply chains.