One of the pressing problems with contemporary peacebuilding research is that much of the analysis focuses on the practical and technical challenges while paying little attention to the philosophical assumptions of those operations.Any understanding of peacebuilding is underpinned by philosophical frameworks as they shape and orient us towards particular strategies for peacebuilding. This paper makes a philosophical critique of liberal peacebuilding (the mainstream peacebuilding) and explores a postmodern post-liberal hybrid peacebuilding. The analysis claims neither the categorical rejection of liberal peacebuilding nor the exclusive reliance on locally-oriented peacebuilding. Rather, the upshot is the need for deconstructing dualistic view of either liberal peacebuilding or locally-oriented peacebuilding so that both external liberal actors and local actors engage in jointly learning and mutually transformative process wherein both liberal international actors and local actors look beyond peace constructed around their narrow and restricted conception and framework to create the meanings of peace that can interconnect the global and the local.
IntroductionThis paper will make a philosophical critique of liberal peacebuilding and explore a postmodern post-liberal hybrid peacebuilding. One of the problems with contemporary peacebuilding research is that much of it has focused on the practical and technical challenges of peacebuilding whilst paying little attention to the philosophical assumptions of those technical operations (Paris, 2002). Truly, peace research is a practice-oriented intellectual enterprise that aims to transform a world filled with violence and contribute to achieving a more just and peaceful world (Rogers & Ramsbotham, 1999).However, any understanding of peace, conflict, and violence is underpinned by philosophical assumptions. Our philosophical frameworks shape and orient us towards particular strategies for conflict resolution and peacebuilding. Therefore, engagement in reflection on philosophical assumptions we normally employ in an unreflective use can offer us an opportunity to make an in-depth analysis of how those committed to peacebuilding construct their approaches to the enterprise. Philosophical analysis will help us create new ways to look at peacebuilding and broaden our understanding of the enterprise (Thompson, 2000). This does not mean to deny liberal peacebuilding. Rather, critique of philosophical framework of liberal peacebuilding and Juichiro Tanabe, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Social and Cultural Sciences, Kumamoto University. The first section introduces the basic ideas of peacebuilding, presenting the origin of peacebuilding and its core ideas. The second section critically examines liberal peacebuilding that has predominated the contemporary peacebuilding enterprise. Here, approaches of liberal peacebuilding and its philosophical underpinning will be critiqued. The third section will explore how postmodernism will contribute to post-liberal hybrid p...