Thriving Economies Amidst Armed Violence - Incite at Columbia University

In 2025, the Social Study of Disappearance Lab at Columbia University launched Thriving Economies Amidst Armed Violence, a research initiative examining the relationship between political economy and violence.

The project is a collaboration with Columbia’s Department of Anthropology, the Columbia Paris Global Center, the Institute for Ideas and Imagination, Sciences Po, and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS).

The project brings together researchers, experts, and students from the U.S. and France to examine how violence and economic activity are intertwined across legal and illegal spheres. It moves beyond conventional approaches that isolate illicit economies, such as poppy cultivation or clandestine fentanyl labs, to consider how criminal actors operate within and alongside formal industries and state structures. By shifting the lens from isolated illegal markets to the broader political-economic context in which they are embedded, the project challenges traditional frameworks for understanding organized crime, development, and governance in conflict-affected regions.

While the project grows out of the Lab’s research on forced disappearance in Mexico and Central America, it also incorporates comparative case studies from Afghanistan, Syria, and the Sahel. Grounded in ethnographic research and informed by recent revivals of political economy in French academic networks, Thriving Economies emphasizes collaboration across disciplines.

The project aims to build a durable transatlantic partnership for the study of violent political economies. Over its first year, it will convene a working group, host conferences in New York and Paris, and provide student research opportunities. Through these activities, the project supports comparative, field-based research on how violence and economic order are co-produced in the contemporary world.