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Brazil is one of the most violent countries in the world, and the vast majority of victims of lethal violence are under 30 years of age. Given this context, it seems important to understand what the perceptions and experiences of young people are regarding peace, violence, and power. This article does this through a study of the views of 153 high school students in nine public institutions in three municipalities. Engaging with the debates on the "local turn" and on youth in peacebuilding, we show that young people, while embracing some values intrinsic to the influential "liberal peace discourse," also express views that are critical of important assumptions that shape such discourse. Students also criticized entrenched dynamics of symbolic violence, such as machismo and racism, factors which affect their subjectivities of empowerment and agency. To reduce violence, participants reiterated the need to change values through critical (peace) education.

Democracy promotion and economic liberalisation have been two pillars of contemporary peacebuilding practices. Whereas several studies have discussed the implementation of such reforms, much less has been written about their long-term effects, including repercussions in terms of changing people's perception about their own power and ability to influence political spaces. Addressing this gap in the literature, this article analyses local perceptions of change following the peace accords in Mozambique. The analysis is based on interviews and focus groups conducted in Northern Mozambique in 2012, as well as on two surveys on democracy conducted by the Afrobarometer project in 2002 and 2012. This article concludes that whilst democratisation has contributed to people's empowerment by creating formal spaces for participation, economic liberalisation has instead contributed to the reverse; in failing to tackle poverty, it has negatively affected the very spaces for empowerment created by democratisation.

Over the last 20 years the local domain has gained widespread attention in the analysis of peacebuilding. While this debate has contributed to an important review of many assumptions underlying peacebuilding practice and analysis, the subjective domain of peacebuilding -how actors experience and make sense of these transformations -still needs to be more methodically explored. In particular, while different narratives of peace have been analysed in this literature, much more rarely has there been a systematic discussion linking peace with power and violence and the different understandings and experiences around these two concepts. In this article I argue that integrating violence and power more systematically in the local turn and exploring their subjective domain can greatly benefit this debate, including by contributing to the elaboration of conceptual and theoretical tools more aligned with Southern epistemologies.

Consolidação internacional da paz versus ABSTRACT This article discusses the local turn in peacebuilding and the concept of hybridity, highlighting the limitations related to cultural analysis framework utilised in this discussion. It argues that, as long as this debate is tight to the liberal peace (and the expressions of resistance to it), it limits the cultural analysis by excluding a broader discussion that includes alternative interpretations and perceptions of peace that are not necessarily related to the liberal peace.Key-words: peacebuilding; local turn; liberal peace. INTRODUÇÃOAo longo dos últimos 20 anos houve uma expansão significativa da literatura voltada para a chamada "virada local" nos estudos sobre a construção/consolidação da paz (peacebuilding). 2 Em linhas gerais, em suas diferentes vertentes, essa literatura