The frequent failure of international peace missions and the ‘crisis of the liberal peace’ led to the promotion of a local or cultural turn in peace research and work that focuses on the role and meaning of culture, local actors and a mostly unspecified ‘local’ for peacebuilding processes. This pushes peace and conflict studies to engage with the subject area of anthropological research, which poses a challenge for disciplines such as political and legal sciences. In contrast to the critiques of the critique of the liberal peace, which seem to have led to a circular debate, this special section aims to take the debate to the next step. It does so through anthropologically informed methodological and conceptual advancements that the local turn is asking for and by providing a better understanding of how the local can become an important reference point in peace and conflict studies without essentialising it. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the contributions to this special section highlight the importance of ethnographic research and anthropological framing in analysing the ambivalence of the local in peacebuilding and the contributions anthropology can make to the interdisciplinary field of conflict and peace studies.

Critics explain the modest success of liberal peacebuilding with the neglect of local particularities. While the local is upgraded in concepts like local ownership, the role of the state and the direction of peace operations remain untouched. Following normative models of Western states, most peacebuilding practitioners and scholars assume that the state has an interest in peaceful public order, while local actors are deemed to have no potential for peace transformation. Anthropological concepts assume that the state is not a monolithic entity. Neither is the state seen as having an a priori purpose for existence. This approach allows for the analysis of certain state practices as rational that, from the perspective of normative state models, might appear dysfunctional, e.g. human rights violations by armed forces. In the 50 years of ongoing conflict in Colombia, some state institutions and regional elites seem unwilling to promote a peaceful public order throughout the country. Paradoxically, it is in these conflict regions that some communities have created strategies to increase their safety. Drawing on the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, I will show how these communities develop the potential for peace as their strategies for self‐protection counteract conflict causes.

Este artículo reflexiona sobre las opciones por parte de civiles de resistir pacíficamente en conflictos armados. Los argumentos desarrollados aquí se basan en una investigación de campo en la Comunidad de Paz de San José de Apartadó, Colombia. El marco analítico y teórico por medio del cual se delimita en este artículo la aplicación del término ‘resistencia’, se basa en las consideraciones conceptuales de Hollander y Einwohner (2004) y en el concepto teórico de ‘resistencia legítima’ de O’Brien (1996). Después de un breve análisis del conflicto, describiremos los procesos socio-históricos de la zona de Apartadó, y las experiencias auto-organizativas de sus habitantes, las cuales favorecieron la conformación de esta iniciativa de paz. El análisis de las dimensiones y de los objetivos de la resistencia de la Comunidad de Paz permite reconceptualizar la idea de ‘resistencia legítima’ de O’Brien.

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