The local turn in peace studies: local appropriation and its alternatives

Abstract

This paper approaches the debates on the 'local turn' in peace studies from the perspective of critical studies in International Relations. The main objective is to explore the meaning of these debates for peace studies and what are the contributions and challenges that have been made from critical studies, as well as to introduce two alternatives that allow us to think about the local turn from a different perspective: local capacity building processes and processes of subjectivation for the reconstruction of intervened societies. In these debates of the 'local turn', the concept of local ownership has become a central element when dealing with issues related to peacebuilding and post-conflict processes. This concept of local ownership has been present in the literature and practice of peacebuilding mainly in the last three decades, specifically from the crisis of the peace model in the 1990s. Through a qualitative analysis based on a critical review of the existing literature on the debates of the 'local turn', we seek precisely to reflect from critical peace studies on the concept of local appropriation, its main potentialities and challenges, its link with peace studies, as well as some of the alternatives to this concept. Throughout this analytical process, the different elements of the concept of local appropriation are studied, with emphasis on the protagonists of local appropriation processes, as well as on the operationalization of the concept in the field. From the reflection on the protagonists of local ownership and the challenges they generate for the theory and practice of peacebuilding, the need to think of alternatives that respond to these challenges that, from the local ownership, are not being produced is perceived. Two of the alternatives discussed in this article are, on the one hand, the construction of local capacities and, on the other hand —linked to postcolonial perspectives and proposals— the processes of subjectivation and the reconstruction of intervened societies. The approach of these alternatives seeks, therefore, to respond to the challenges generated by the use in theory and practice of the concept of local appropriation, which carries with it a whole series of implications of the distinction between the international and the local, of preconceived images we have about what local space means and how it is constituted, as well as a series of challenges linked to the concept of 'civil society' such as the paradox of selectivity. To address this objective of exploring the meaning of the debates on the local turn and the contributions that have been made from critical studies in International Relations, the text is divided into three main parts. The first part summarizes the emergence of the 'local turn' debates in the 1990s and some of the factors that explain the emergence and development of these debates in both academia and practice. In the second part, once the emergence is explained, these 'local turn' debates are linked to peace studies. This linkage is important, because peace studies has become one of the fields where the debates on the 'local turn' have been most developed at both the theoretical and practical levels, along with other fields such as, for example, development. Finally, in the third part, critical perspectives on the 'local turn' are addressed. This third part is much more extensive and is therefore divided into four sections in order to better address the challenges and contributions from the critical studies. The first section analyzes the meaning of local ownership in peacebuilding, pointing to the variety of meanings that the concept acquires in this field, and the reasons for this variety. In the second section, partly in response to this variety of meanings, the protagonists of local appropriation are addressed. For this approach, firstly, the implications of the distinction between international and local are studied, secondly, the preconceived images of local space and how this influences the concept of local ownership are analyzed and, thirdly, the challenges of the concept of 'civil society' and what some authors call the 'paradox of selectivity' are unraveled. The third section deals with the operationalization of the concept of local ownership on the ground, one of the most problematic elements in the practice of peacebuilding in the last three decades, mainly because it is carried out within the framework of liberal peace. Finally, the fourth section of the third part explores two alternatives to the approach of local appropriation processes in peacebuilding. On the one hand, local capacity building processes are analyzed as a first alternative to the concept of local ownership. On the other hand, and based on postcolonial proposals in peacebuilding, the processes of subjectivation and reconstruction of intervened societies are analyzed as a second alternative to the concept of local appropriation. It is concluded that the approach to these debates of the 'local turn' demands, in the first place, a critical reflection on the concept of local ownership and the need to propose alternatives to this concept that allow us to face the challenges posed by the practice of the 'local turn' in peacebuilding. Secondly, that this whole process of critical reflection invites us and allows us to reflect on the very nature of what we mean by peace, and what peace we are building in the different post-conflict scenarios. Above all, after more than three decades in which peace operations have attempted to implement, with greater or lesser success, actions that seek to involve local populations affected by conflict scenarios. In short, it is a matter of putting the debates on the 'local turn' in perspective, in order to provide a framework from which to continue the task of critical reflection that will allow us to find answers to the challenges posed by the participation of local actors in peacebuilding and post-conflict processes, of which they are the protagonists.