Introduction – towards a post-liberal peace

Oliver P. Richmond

Audra Mitchell

pp. 1-38

in: Oliver P. Richmond, Audra Mitchell (eds), Hybrid forms of peace, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

Abstract

Peace is not a universal concept that can be transposed identically between different contexts of conflict. Rather, unique forms of peace arise when the strategies, institutions and norms of international, largely liberal–democratic peacebuilding interventions collide with the everyday lives of local actors affected by conflict. At the site of each international peace intervention, an interface forms at which the everyday activities, needs, interests and experiences of local groups and the goals, norms and practices of international policy-makers/implementers overlap. Within this space, a unique range of practices, responses and agencies – including plural forms of acceptance and appropriation, resistance and the exertion of autonomy – emerges and "hybridizes"¹ the "blueprints"² for peace advanced by international actors. In the process of hybridization, actors (both locally and internationally based) reshape the norms, institutions and activities in question by means of everyday practices such as verbal interaction, organization and even overt conflict.