Peacebuilding upside down? How a peace community in Colombia builds peace despite the state

Abstract

Critics explain the modest success of liberal peacebuilding with the neglect of local particularities. While the local is upgraded in concepts like local ownership, the role of the state and the direction of peace operations remain untouched. Following normative models of Western states, most peacebuilding practitioners and scholars assume that the state has an interest in peaceful public order, while local actors are deemed to have no potential for peace transformation. Anthropological concepts assume that the state is not a monolithic entity. Neither is the state seen as having an a priori purpose for existence. This approach allows for the analysis of certain state practices as rational that, from the perspective of normative state models, might appear dysfunctional, e.g. human rights violations by armed forces. In the 50 years of ongoing conflict in Colombia, some state institutions and regional elites seem unwilling to promote a peaceful public order throughout the country. Paradoxically, it is in these conflict regions that some communities have created strategies to increase their safety. Drawing on the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, I will show how these communities develop the potential for peace as their strategies for self‐protection counteract conflict causes.

Klientelisierte Staatlichkeit in Konfliktregionen

“…In diesem Überblick möchte ich abschließend auch meine eigenen Arbeiten über die Friedensgemeinde erwähnen. Hierzu zählt einerseits meine Magisterarbeit 11 , in der ich die Friedensgemeinde als eine Form zivilen Widerstands beschrieben und analysiert habe (Naucke 2011). Obwohl ich insbesondere zu der Analyse weiterhin stehen kann, weist die Arbeit aus meiner heutigen Sicht einige Schwächen auf: So ist die ethnographische Darstellung der Friedensgemeinde zu wenig ausgereift, die Beschreibung der staatlichen Präsenz zu wenig ausdifferenziert und die skizzierte Konfliktgeschichte nicht genügend lokal verankert.…”

Institutional Strength, Peacebuilding, and Productive Entrepreneurship - Exploratory Analysis in Colombia

“…Liberal and Conservador) and how they influenced both the doctrine and behavior of the armed forces and the policy making processes in the 1980s and 1990s (Avilés 2001); and 2) the quality of preexisting local institutions and their influence in both collective-resistance civilians and bargaining power to push back the expansion of armed actors in civil war times (Arjona 2016). Second, in both conflict and peacebuilding fields, a prolific literature have focused on studying 3) the role of NGOs in supporting resistance to violence and oppression (Alther 2006); 4) the role of the state in the peace and paramilitary demobilization processes (Boudon 1996, Maher andThomson 2011); 5) the understanding of peace by young and adult men and women (Sacipa et al 2006), the negative effects of conflict in young people (Berents 2014) and children's rights (Cameron 2000, Cook et al 2017; 6) the effects caused by the mining sector in both insecurity and human rights violations (McNeish 2017); 7) community peace initiatives (Uraba (Burnyeat 2013), San José de Apartadó (Naucke 2017), Samaniego and Las Mercedes (Idler et al 2015)); and 8) peace and education (Diazgranados et al 2014, Gomez-Suarez 2017. And third, in the field of entrepreneurship, researchers have analyzed 9) the role of innovative entrepreneurship in Colombian business cycles (Aparicio et al 2016); 10) the effect of middle class entrepreneurship and income mobility (Mejía 2014); 12) the effect of social capital in incubating firms (Castro et al 2014); and 13) the causal effect of armed-conflict on firms exit (Camacho and Rodríguez 2012).…”

Peacebuilding and conceptualisations of the local

“…They will remain tools that are supposed to make peacebuilding more effective, but do not (necessarily) see ‘the local in peacebuilding as a means of emancipation and inclusion of local agency’ (Leonardsson and Rudd : 825), in which outsiders act as supporters and bystanders only (Hellmüller : 3; Leonardsson and Rudd : 827). In this special section we touch on several ways and levels in and on which the local comes into peacebuilding discourses: with regard to traditional justice (see Bräuchler ), locally developed means to deal with civil war (Naucke ) or the neglect of local culture through outsiders (Hobbis ).…”

“…As Bräuchler's () contribution to this special section shows, social engineering and instrumentalisation of local peace mechanisms do not only take place top‐down, by outside actors, but also internally, by a variety of actors, far beyond the notorious ‘traditional elites’, and far beyond a one‐sided notion of the selfish adoption for individual or elite interests. As in particular Naucke's () contribution illustrates, this goes as far as the development of new mechanisms by local actors (that might become traditional) in opposition to violent surroundings that refuse to take the path towards peace.…”