Dissertation projekt
Peacebuilding as spacemaking
Introduction
A more nuanced understanding of the workings of power in civilian peacebuilding would enhance knowledge about different local peace workers´ room for maneuver - and thus on important conditions for peacebuilding at large.
How do local peace workers in civil society create and maintain room for maneuver in violent protracted conflict settings?
What are the implications of their relations with other actors such as, for example, regional elites and external actors like donors?
In research as well as in the discourse of international aid, local peace workers are increasingly recognized as crucial actors in peacebuilding efforts, both during and after violent conflict. However, there seem to be flaws in this recognition as local peace workers are generally described as one monolithic group of civil society, without regard to differences among themselves. Different methods and strategies in civilian peacebuilding are often not distinguished from one another, nor are different forms of organization (the focus tends to be on NGOs only, not other grassroots groups or social movements). In connection to this, various possibilities and obstacles that local peace workers face are to a large extent ignored. Peace workers´ room for maneuver is poorly understood, rarely defined, and - somewhat paradoxically - yet taken for granted.
Lack of power analysis in peacebuilding theory and practice
Annelie Schlaug´s dissertation project suggests that the inattention to the problem of room for maneuver is due to lack of power analysis in the practice as well as in the literature on conflict resolution and conflict transformation. This deficit of power analysis can produce a lack of awareness of complex structures of social norms connected to sex/gender, skin colour, class, etc. As social norms have both inclusionary and exclusionary effects, different local peace workers´ room for maneuver should not be taken for granted. Its parameters should be specified so as to be better understood in research. In this endeavor, the thesis applies an intersectional, non-normative approach.
Reconciliation through resistance?
Peace work is about (striving for) social change or conflict transformation; concrete examples of this are various reconciliation projects in societies permeated by violence. Annelie Schlaug´s thesis argues that for change or transformation to happen, peace work in a violent conflict setting must imply peace workers´ resistance – for example against norms of violence and against other actors’ framings of reality. Therefore, questions like the following are addressed: how do different peace workers frame reconciliation on the one hand and resistance on the other? Is there resonance or are there disputes between these framings? Do (different) peace workers´ frames differ in communication with different other actors such as, for example, regional elites and external actors like donors? Is there resonance and are there disputes between those frames?
Questioning the idea of civil society as necessarily a good, the dissertation´s norm critical stance and Foucault-inspired understanding of power allows for an analysis of both local-local and global-local relational processes where power - and possibly resistance - are manifested. To the extent that manifestations need space, the analysis can enhance knowledge on how local peace workers create and maintain room for maneuver - or how they make space - in protracted conflict settings.
The theoretical contribution of Annelie Schlaug´s study consists of an integrated framework of the different bodies of peacebuilding, social movement, space/place and resistance studies literature. The fields are brought together through an explicit critical social theory approach. Nonviolence theory, with its conceptual contributions concerning construction, resistance and dialogue, serves as an important point of departure. The empirical contribution of the thesis rests in peace workers´ individual narratives and collective framings.
Further Details
The dissertation project, especially the field work, is supported by the following centres, foundations and funds:
The Centre for European Studies, Lund University
Agneta and Gunnar Nilsson Scholarship for Studies in Intercultural Relations, through SWEA International
Stiftelsen Karl Staaffs Fond för frisinnade ändamål
John Lindgrens fredsfond, through Olof Palme International Center
Department Researchers in this Project
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Koordinator/Projektledare
Annelie
Schlaug
(Doctoral candidate) |
