What attachment to peace? Exploring the normative and material dimensions of local ownership in peacebuilding

Nicolas Lemay-Hébert*, Stefanie Kappler

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

37 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The peacebuilding and academic communities are divided over the issue of local ownership between problem-solvers who believe that local ownership can 'save liberal peacebuilding' and critical voices claiming that local ownership is purely a rhetorical device to hide the same dynamics of intervention used in more 'assertive' interventions. The article challenges these two sets of assumptions to suggest that one has to combine an analysis of the material and normative components of ownership to understand the complex ways in which societies relate to the peace that is being created. Building on the recent scholarship on 'attachment', we claim that different modalities of peacebuilding lead to different types of social 'attachment' - social-normative and social-material - to the peace being created on the part of its subjects.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)895-914
Number of pages20
JournalReview of International Studies
Volume42
Issue number5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Dec 2016
Externally publishedYes

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