Writing conflicts: An activity theory analysis of the development of the network for ethnological monitoring and early warning

This study examines how a conflict monitoring network in the former Soviet Union emerged as a distributed and largely virtual organization in response to both sociopolitical concerns regarding the politicization of ethnicity in the post-Soviet sphere, and financial concerns resulting from economic crises. I draw upon theories of organization as a form of social life which constantly enacts its changing structures through discourse---the production of verbal conversations and written texts---to analyze the dynamic process through which members of the Network construct who they are collectively and in relation to one another, what they do, and why.;Data for this study included documents pertaining to the Network's formation and funding, correspondence between the founding partners, electronic messages exchanged within the Network, fieldnotes from participant observation at two annual meetings of the Network, texts on ethnic relations produced by Network members, and transcripts of discussions and interviews with Network directors and members. I triangualated these diverse forms of data with one another, and employed methods of historical, ethnographic and discourse analysis to interpret them.;Moving dialogically between the data and a cultural-historical activity theory framework, I argue in this study that systemic contradictions embedded in the Network's internal relations catalyzed its cyclic development. I analyze manifestations of the tension between the use value and exchange value of the Network's activity in three areas: relations between Network directors and members; the dialogical construction of a shared object; and the development of tools with which to engage the object and enact administrative control over Network members.;I trace the emergence of two complex "object-conceptions" represented in the discourse of the Network: the monitoring of ethnic relations for the purpose of early warning of violence, and the building of an epistemic community. I identify the Network's attempts to resolve systemic contradictions which both catalyze and are aggravated by the evolution of the Network's object. I analyze the emergent commercialization of the Network, and the corresponding commodificaton of its members, object-conceptions, and tools. Finally, I explore the EAWARN's options for development in the future.