Based on insights from Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and Systems Theory, we conceptualise conflicts as self-referential modes of ordering that shape places. Conflicts can disappear or get resolved, yet they have a tendency to endure. In this lecture I argue that conflicts can only be understood if one takes into account the history of their emergence, understands them as subject to path dependencies and potentially performative. Through a reconceptualization of conflicts in an Evolutionary Governance Framework, we stress that any attempt to manage or govern conflicts paradoxically enforces them. Instead of managing conflicts we propose to study how they create places, spaces, objects and subjects.

Duineveld, M., & Van Assche, K. (2011). The power of tulips: constructing nature and heritage in a contested landscape. Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning, 13(2), 1-20.

Pellis, A., Duineveld, M., & Wagner, L. (2015). Conflicts forever. The path dependencies of tourism conflicts: the case of Anabeb Conservancy, Namibia, . In G. T. Jóhannesson, C. Ren, & R. van der Duim (Eds.), Tourism Encounters and Controversies. Ontological politics of tourism develepment: Ashgate