A Pedagogy of Peacebuilding: Infrapolitics, Resistance, and Liberation1

Abstract

Richmond, Oliver P. (2012) A Pedagogy of Peacebuilding: Infrapolitics, Resistance, and Liberation. International Political Sociology, doi: 10.1111/j.1749‐5687.2012.00154.x © 2012 International Studies Association A post‐liberal peace engages with the politics of hybridity emerging from a mixture of contextual and international social, political, economic, cultural, and historical dynamics of peace. It represents an attempt to escape liberal enclosure and distant administration as well as contextual forms of violence in post‐conflict zones—from Bosnia Herzegovina to Afghanistan. Critical agency as a form of resistance aimed at liberation from the structures of conflict, and structural violence—wherever they lie—rather than solely relying on external norms and capacity, is key. From this tension, a range of “local,” transversal, and transnational agencies can be uncovered in many peacebuilding or statebuilding contexts, which may resist, modify, or co‐opt intervention in unexpected ways. A hybrid form of peace emerges from this agonistic process, which points to an understanding of peacebuilding‐as‐liberation. Rather than producing subjects, this enables subjects to produce peace.

Everyday Resilience as Resistance: Palestinian Women PracticingSumud

“…Despite the prevalence of resilience in International Relations (IR) literature today, much engagement with it starts from the perspective that resilience is a tactic of neoliberal governance, whether in relation to peacebuilding, enhancing national security, or the provision of development aid. Even within the range of debates over the desirability of taking a “resilience‐building” approach to peace, security, and/or development, these debates still stem from a similar logic which positions the concept of resilience firmly within the realm of neoliberal (or post‐liberal) projects (Chandler , ; Richmond ). There are exceptions to this dominant logic, such as Bourbeau's (:11) argument that resilience must be “context‐informed” and is therefore neither inherently positive nor negative.…”

Reclaiming the local in EU peacebuilding: Effectiveness, ownership, and resistance

“…108-109). This has served as a basis for many to further explore not only the limits of liberal peace and its embrace of the local but also resistance to it (Chandler, 2010;Richmond, 2010Richmond, , 2011Richmond, , 2012. In addition to this, the local turn has also taken cues from postcolonialism and particularly its historic insights on the colonial rationality of peacebuilding (Jabri, 2013), its orientalist discourses (Kappler, 2015;Said, 1978), or ideas of hybridity (Mac Ginty, 2011).…”

“…To be more precise, for them the local turn should call into question the liberal peace project and expose its limitations and pathologies. Consequently, critical approaches to the local turn explore the merits of non/post-liberal forms of peace such as indigenous (Mac Ginty, 2008), everyday (Mac Ginty, 2014), emancipatory (Richmond, 2009(Richmond, , 2012, and hybrid peace (Mac Ginty, 2011). Authors within this camp, however, disagree on how emancipatory is the local turn in the policy discourse.…”

Everyday Resistance, Peacebuilding and State-making : Insights from 'Africa's World War'

“…In the attempt to offer a more nuanced account of peacebuilding, resistance has been made central to the critique of the liberal peace. Over the decade since 2006, different works have offered a more sustained theorisation of resistance in this context (Keranen 2013;Mac Ginty 2006Mitchell 2011a;Newman and Richmond 2006;Richmond 2009aRichmond , 2011aRichmond , 2011bRichmond , 2012Richmond and Mitchell 2012a;Zanotti 2006). They have argued that international peacebuilding is a complex process that local societies shape and oppose with multiple strategies.…”