Globalization, Social Movements, and Peacebuilding

Conclusion

235 Conclusion Ernesto Verdeja and Jackie Smith The past several decades have seen major changes in approaches to peacebuilding . Scholars and practitioners have moved beyond the early efforts of conflict management, which sought to contain violence, to more sophisticated strategies of conflict “resolution” and “transformation” (Richmond 2010) with the aim of addressing the deeper causes of violence. Some of these recent approaches have shown a welcome awareness of civil society demands, but peacebuilding is still largely driven by international and transnational elites and institutions that show little concern for substantive transformations of power relations (Jabri 2007). In this volume we have offered a critical review of the literature on peacebuilding, and have argued that the field of peace research needs to do more to embrace critical and truly multidisciplinary approaches to the study of peace, conflict, and violence. Moreover, the material presented in this volume supports our contention that more international resources and attention need to be devoted to the work of peacebuilding before conflicts escalate into wars. In short, our notions of peacebuilding need to be expanded to emphasize a focus on the underlying sources and structures that reproduce violence. We have illustrated how research on economic globalization and global institutions as well as on social movements can address limitations in much of the existing work on peacebuilding. In doing so, we have developed analyses of particular conflicts that suggest some basic lessons or conclusions for the larger field. The approach to globalization, peacebuilding, and social movements in this collection is motivated by three theoretical concerns. First, we have 236  Globalization, Social Movements, and Peacebuilding sought to rethink the background and proximate causes of violence, as well as its accelerators. We have drawn particular attention to general factors such as neoliberalism that create the conditions for recurring and structural violence. This analytical orientation is not meant to dismiss the importance of meso- and micro-level analyses (which are evident in the contributions of the volume), but rather seeks to highlight the complex interactions through which national and subnational dynamics of violence and peacebuilding emerge, develop, and are constrained by transnational processes and structures. Given that the mainstream of current scholarly and policy literature assumes that the policies of the dominant international actors are normatively benign (though perhaps occasionally problematic in practice), such a fundamental reexamination of the causes of violence is especially pressing. Second, we have promoted a critical interrogation of the assumptions and presuppositions underlying the norms of peacebuilding. This includes rethinking the proper place of social movements, domestic and international state actors, and civil society, as well as bringing under further scrutiny the ahistorical, statist, and Western-centric perspectives that frame much of contemporary thinking about peace and its relation to economic development, democracy, and stability. A critical interrogation of this sort investigates not only the practical outcomes of particular policies —such as market liberalization and privatization—but also the ideological justifications on which they rest and the interests they serve, which often remain opaque. Finally, we have promoted an alternative analytical framework that privileges the perspectives and claims of people on the ground. Rather than begin from the perspective of national or international elites, we start with the problem of exclusion and domination of already vulnerable groups (such as women, racial and ethnic minorities, the economically disenfranchised, and others) within communities. This approach offers greater sensitivity and responsiveness to local contexts and the people who experience and resist violence firsthand. By focusing on these local experiences, our framework calls for greater transparency and accountability on the part of international actors and institutions—including dominant states whose interests largely define and constrain the options Conclusion  237 of local actors. It also requires a fundamental questioning of the security paradigm adopted by mainstream peacebuilding, which essentially treats populations as “biopolitical” (Agamben 1998), that is, as something to be regulated, managed, secured, and protected: ultimately, as something passive to be controlled and kept in place. One thinks of the security approaches used in Afghanistan and Iraq as well the slums in Brazil, Central America, and elsewhere that continue to inform peacemaking efforts, with often savage results. The alternative framework presented here seeks to clear a space for envisioning and promoting economic models that (a) reverse the logic of free market dogma, and (b) are based on the welfare and agency— emancipation—of the population, rather than aggregate economic growth criteria that may mask increased inequality in weakened...