The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is currently emerging from a decade of calamitous war. The contributors suggest that the chronic violence cannot be understood purely with reference to the ‘greed’ of powerful local and international actors. Rather, the seeming intractability of the Congolese conflict can only be fully understood with reference to the ways in which conflict – together with the legacy of colonial and state policy that preceded and informed it – has created a situation in which the ‘rational’ pursuit of individual livelihoods ends up reproducing the collectively ‘irrational’ phenomenon of war. In contrast with traditional perspectives that explain the Congolese conflict in terms of dynamics set in motion ‘from above’, the work collected here stresses the local, ‘micro-level’ dilemmas of conflict and development that face the communities of eastern Congo today. In short, this volume argues that the design of interventions aiming to end conflict and promote development in the DRC must consider the nature of interests, institutions, and patterns of action that drive change ‘from below’. The contributors to this volume (Koen Vlassenroot, Timothy Raeymakers, Anna Verhoeve, Luca Jourdan and Jeroen Cuvelier) base their analyses on recent fieldwork in Beni, Kamituga, Goma, Bunia and Masisi.