This article examines questions of local ownership in post-conflict peacebuilding and makes the case that the complex relationship between insiders and outsiders lies at the very heart of contemporary peacebuilding processes. While the discourse of local ownership has increasingly become part of the vocabulary of post-conflict peacebuilding, the discussion to date on both the meanings and the practices of local ownership in peacebuilding contexts remains underdeveloped. This article is therefore an effort to add substance to the local ownership debate, and outlines two forms of peacebuildingliberal and communitarian-which contain markedly different assumptions concerning the role of local actors in peacebuilding processes. Ultimately, the article suggests that the search for ways to operationalize local ownership principles remains one of the key challenges of contemporary peacebuilding, and outlines a vision of peacebuilding as cultural exchange as a way forward.

This paper explores the dynamics of security sector reform (SSR),Since the end of the cold war, both the study and the practice of security have been in a state of turmoil. Academics and practitioners alike have struggled to come to terms with the reality of "new" security threats and with the ongoing referent object issue-neatly captured by recent debates about human security-concerning who or what is to be secured through the practices of security. No less controversial (if somewhat less prominent in academic or policy debates) is the question of the relationship between the providers and the consumers of security. Security has long been characterized by a clear (and typically gendered) divide between protector and protected, with the former enjoying a near monopoly of agency over how, and to whom, security is provided. Both in discourse and in practice, therefore, security has been not only about including and excluding particular populations, but has also been about who enjoys, and who is denied, the ability to "speak" and to "do" security. As Lene Hansen (2000) has argued in her critique of the Copenhagen School's notion of security as "speech act", "those who . . . are constrained in their ability to speak security are therefore prevented from becoming subjects worthy of consideration and protection" (p. 285).

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