The recent literature on war and collective violence has stressed the importance of using a relational approach toward studying armed conflict (Kestnbaum 2005, Tilly 2003, Gould 1995). This relational approach captures the complex patterns of social interactions between the various actors involved in armed conflict, particularly how violence "transforms relations among persons and groups" (Tilly 2003:5). A relational approach also helps one to understand war as " a complex social process and an extraordinary series of events in the lives and histories of peoples and states" (Kestnbaum 2005:254). According to Kestnbaum (2005:254), the processual quality of war permits insights into the linkages and alignments of social relations while the eventful quality of war highlights the distinctiveness of a conflict, including its temporal patterns as well as how it is experienced by the people. Using this relational approach, we plan to discuss a preliminary inventory of processes of war-making, e.g. brutalization, escalation, de-escalation, spirals of retaliation, mobilization, etc. and the events of war in the case of Northern Ireland. Field research in Northern Ireland from summer 2005 and summer 2006 will used to inform this discussion. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]