[Studies in Strategic Peacebuilding] Daniel Philpott, Gerard Powers - Strategies of Peace (2010, Oxford University Press) - libgen.lc (1)

AN OVERVIEW 27
In addition, practitioners of on-the-ground peacebuilding began to realize
that deadly conflicts, if they are to be transformed, require multiple points of
analysis and intervention to create sustainable change. Accordingly, peacebuilders
began to seek strategic alliances and coordination over the longer term,
rather than “merely” a negotiated solution. In this regard, a second framing
question for the inchoate practice of strategic peacebuilding emerged: how do
we design processes that envision conflict as the opportunity for wider constructive
social change? 10
Third, the field of play was enlarged to encompass and link two previously
unlikely spheres of action: the local and the global. At the local level, the
capacity and need for communities to activate and mobilize resources to face
the realities of internal conflicts rose sharply. It was impossible to think about
peace without engaging, including, and respecting the local community.
Practitioners specialize in the dynamics of peacebuilding within the
boundaries and on the terms set by local communities, but they recognize
that local communities today always already exist within national and global
contexts. Accordingly, peacebuilders, especially during the course of the past
two decades, have become experienced in cultivating and applying human and
material resources both within and beyond the local community. Peacebuilding
practice is thus an interdisciplinary, local-global, expertise-driven approach to
building sustainable peace.
Striking the right balance is a delicate and difficult business. The relationship
between the three distinct transformative processes at the heart of
peacebuilding—striving for social justice, ending violent conflict, and building
healthy cooperative relationships in conflict-ridden societies—is complex.
These processes of transformation are interrelated most fundamentally at the
local level; even when violence originates and occurs at the national or regional
level, its impact is felt most keenly and directly in neighborhoods, towns, villages,
cities—in local communities. To violate the principle of subsidiarity by
moving too quickly beyond the most immediate community of concern and
agency, to national or regional actors as agents of conflict management, is to
undermine any hope of genuine resolution and transformation of most conflicts.
Bringing representatives of warring sides to peace talks typically requires
concerted effort by those wielding high levels of political and social authority.
But they cannot replace cultural agents who, operating on the local level,
interpret agreements and prepare the society for their implementation and the
transitions called for by the agreements. 11
On the other hand, the proliferation of transnational social movements
for global-local justice influenced peace studies scholar-practitioners to think
beyond borders, to locate both the causes of conflict and potential change
agents both within and beyond nation-states. The nation-state, meanwhile,
came under increasing pressure—from “above” (the international and transnational
community of nations and intergovernmental and nongovernmental
organizations, institutions, and foundations), from “below” (local communities
and grassroots movements for change), and from “across” (demands for
forms of autonomy at regional levels).