A crisis of criticality? Reimagining academia in international peacebuilding (original) (raw)

All these theories and yet the bodies have stopped piling up : Critical approaches to Peace Studies

The theoretical debates that have defined and helped construct International Relations as a social science over the course of the twentieth century have heavily informed the principle debates within Peace Studies as well. The maximalist/minimalist agenda or the positive versus negative peace debate within Peace Studies are not all that different from the Liberalism vs Realism framework at the center of International Relations. In recent decades, however, there has been a growing acknowledgement of other voices in International Relations theory. In as much as International Relations theory has had an uncomfortable relationship with these theories of the third kind, mainstream or self-defined Peace Studies has also had little interest in such so called Critical approaches. The feeling, however, appears to be mutual: those same Critical approaches have had little interest in contributing to Peace Studies per se. How then to explain this mutual disinterest? Given the proliferation of Critical approaches to various topics within the social sciences, why has a sub-field of Critical Peace Studies never emerged? At the same time, why have scholars in Peace Studies shown little interest in Critical approaches towards the issues that define the field? This paper seeks to provide an initial framework for thinking through these questions by analyzing the contributions of Critical approaches to the issues that have traditionally defined Peace Studies. Through an analysis of the theoretical assumptions, methods of critique, and ethical commitments of Critical approaches, we can perhaps better understand why peace and Peace Studies have never been viewed as a problem worth devoting Critical attention towards.

Critical Edge and Legitimation in Peace Studies

RCCS Annual Review, 2009

Historically established as critical knowledge and thus an alternative to normal science in International Relations, Peace Studies came to be co-opted, in the 1990s, by the regulatory structures of the international system as a cornerstone of many of the options put into practice especially in post-war reconstruction processes. In this context, recovering the critical lineage of Peace Studies today involves two radical options. The first entails qualifying intended peace as sustainable peace. The second implies the epistemological decolonisation of Peace Studies.

Critical Theory and the Politics of Peace

The Oxford Handbook of Peacebuilding, Statebuilding, and Peace Formation, 2021

This chapter outlines the development of the concepts of peace, peacebuilding, and statebuilding's relationship with critical theory, and what this means for the development of peace formation. The latter is a more contextually sensitized, ethico-political and every day praxis also connected to policy doctrines, the state framework, and the international architecture. Indeed, it is formative of such political frameworks. We argue that critical theory has made very significant contributions in holding peacebuilding and statebuilding praxis to account and creating a platform for the emancipatory expansion, perhaps via peace formation from below and cognizant of postcolonial renderings of power. In theory, this allows for a more substantial and critically oriented praxis of peace, one which may influence global politics as statist, neoliberal, and geopolitical frameworks lose their legit imacy.

Critical Research Agendas for Peace: The Missing Link in the Study of International Relations

Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 2007

An elaborate intellectual and policy framework has been constructed in order to preserve and protect "peace." The concept of peace is often used to refer to what Plato would have described as an "ideal form," or to depict a minimalist, realistliberal version in which there is an absence of overt violence particularly between or within states. These common and differing usages illustrate that the concept of peace has generally been overlooked, and is often deployed in an ill-specified manner, while at the same time implying extraordinary levels of legitimacy. This article explores the consequences of not engaging with the concept of peace and outlines the possibilities inherent in opening up multiple conceptualizations of peace as a critical research agenda central to International Relations. KEYWORDS: peace, violence, conflict, critical research, international relations "Peace"-freedom from war, disturbance, or dissension (entered the English Language in twelfth century): quiet, stillness, concord (thirteenth century); peacemaker (fifteenth century) 1 Peace may or may not be a "modern invention" but it is certainly a far more complex affair than war. 2

"Post-Liberal" Peacebuilding and the Crisis of International Authority

Peacebuilding, 2016

This paper investigates how pragmatic approaches to peacebuilding might undermine the capacity of international policymakers to formulate a purposive, socially transformative project for their engagement with the Global South. Focusing on Oliver Richmond and Roger Mac Ginty’s recent work on ‘post-liberal’ peacebuilding, the analysis draws out how notions of ‘the everyday’, hybridity and ‘the local’ are geared towards disassembling the existing stock of reductionist liberal-universal knowledge claims. These were the ideological basis on which international interveners used to cohere their policy frameworks towards the Global South. Pragmatic approaches posit that the key to successful post-conflict transition lies in local – non-western, non-universalist – epistemologies and that empowering this pool of idiosyncratic insider understandings requires the deconstruction of modern liberal-universalist forms of knowing. While this dynamic of analytical and normative self-deconstruction is heralded as an opportunity for radical change ‘from below’, it simultaneously corrodes international authority as the ability to initiate and transform.

The History, Influences and Framework of Critical Peace Research

Class Paper for Advanced Qualitative Research, 2014

Many educators and researchers such as Paulo Friere, Maria Montessori, Johan Galtung and Joe Kincheloe have contributed to peace education by putting forward that schools need to foster students who will question: 1) why we define ourselves through the negation of others; 2) why some societies privilege some and devalue others and how that leads to violence and frustration; 3) why racism, nationalism, capitalism and sexism exist and how it fosters marginalization; 4) why it is essential that we take responsibility for our beliefs and the subsequent choices we make (Shapiro, 2005). Critical peace educators actively engage student in the analysis of these questions. Critical peace researchers such as those who use participatory action research, illuminate these themes, use research to create social change and “amplify the voices of those who struggle to be heard (Kincheloe, 2008, p. 23). To understand the relationship between critical peace research, specifically participatory action research and peace education, the origins of the field need to be examined and the terms need to be untangled namely: “peace education”, “critical peace education”, “peacebuilding education” and “critical pedagogy”.

'Post-liberal' Peacebuilding and the Crisis of international Authority (IAPCS 2015, Manchester)

This paper seeks to shed light on the way in which pragmatic approaches to peacebuilding have been undermining metropolitan policy elites’ capacity to formulate a purposive, socially transformative project for their engagement with the Global South and to it pursue through instrumentalist forms of governing. By focusing on Oliver Richmond’s recent work on ‘post-liberal’ peacebuilding , the analysis will draw out how notions of ‘the everyday’, hybridity, and ‘the local’ are geared towards disassembling the existing stock of reductionist liberal-universal knowledge claims through which Western interveners used to cohere their policy frameworks towards the global periphery ideologically. While this dynamic of analytical and normative self-deconstruction is heralded as an opportunity for radical change ‘from below’, it simultaneously corrodes Western policymakers’ authority as the ‘capacity to create and initiate’ .

A brief intellectual history of international conflict management, 1990-2010

In this volume, the term 'the liberal peace' is understood as the dominant critical intellectual framework currently applied to post-Cold War policies and practices of postconflict intervention. However, as Heathershaw observes, its use within analysis has sometimes tended, misleadingly, to claim that the liberal peace has had only a singular logic or set of assumptions (2008a: 603), gradations of this logic notwithstanding. Both he and note that different ideas are at work in the movements between peacebuilding and statebuilding as modes of conflict management. This chapter gives an alternative historical overview of these developments and locates the academic critiques in the context of these changes, giving a sense in which academic critique and political practice have co-evolved. These shifts and expansions reflect something rather more complex, and perhaps more opaque, than a hardening or deepening of a liberal logic in interventionrather they reveal a reflexive anxiety about inadequacy of this logic to address seemingly intractable challenges of conflict, insecurity and underdevelopment. By tracking the recent evolution of these discourses and the critiques of the paradigm, this chapter sets the stage for the other contributions to the volume which interrogate and broaden empirically and conceptually the problem of 'the liberal peace'.