Somaliland; the viability of a liberal peacebuilding critique beyond state building, state formation and hybridity

Abstract

If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination, volume/issue, and date of publication details. And where the final published version is provided on the Research Portal, if citing you are again advised to check the publisher's website for any subsequent corrections.

Imagining Peace Outside of Liberal Statebuilding: Anarchist Theory as Pathway to Emancipatory Peacefacilitation

“…Liberal peacebuilding has become subservient to statebuilding, merging the two projects inseparably and reproducing sovereign territoriality, hierarchies of modernity and inherent structural, cultural, physical and economic violences (Richmond, 2011, p. 117). Even scholarship on peacebuilding is itself state-centric (Mac Ginty, 2008; Millar, 2018, p. 2; Njeri, 2019; Richmond, 2019, p. 2).…”

“…In fact, the literature sees its role, rather ambitiously, to “be to move beyond negative hybrid peace [anything else] would mean accepting structural inequalities and latent tensions that pertain to conflict-affected societies” (Visoka & Richmond, 2016, 113). In pursuit of forms of positive peace, critical peacebuilding academia claims to “search for emancipatory forms of peace inside and outside the state framework” (Visoka & Richmond, 2016, 113), yet more often than not the literature is unable to overcome a state centrist perspective in analysis as well as proposal (Susanna Campbell & Peterson, 2015; Mac Ginty, 2008, p. 157; Millar, 2018, p. 2; Njeri, 2019; Richmond, 2011, p. 117). Absent a systematic critique of the state, seminal works call generally for a peace that enables its subjects to determine this peace themselves as otherwise assumptions and norms would once more be imposed from the outside (Richmond & Mac Ginty, 2015, p. 177), whilst simultaneously confronting the dilemma that such envisioned bottom-up peace(s) could be hierarchical or violent in themselves (Richmond & Mac Ginty, 2015, p. 184).…”

Examining Mine Action�s �peaceability� potential through everyday narratives and practices in Somaliland

“…Analysis on the same has been limited to the state building process and has disregarded other activities such as mine action, upon which initiation took the same approach. This is because of a state-centric approach, which limits their critiques to statebuilding (see Njeri 2019). These critiques challenge the standardised 'one size fits all approach' employed by interveners, yet they take the same approach, and in so doing apply a broad-brush across a diverse range of programmes, actors, issues and activities that are indeed peacebuilding contexts or activities.…”

Everyday peacebuilding and practices in Kenya, South Sudan, Somaliland and Ghana: introduction

“…Thus, scholarship that has emerged from this is top-down institution-centric (Mac Ginty 2014), with scholars being resistant to perspectives that attempt to look beyond the state. Njeri (2019) argues that both the scholars and the emerging critiques are state-centric in approach. Such approaches have been labelled as sacrifice concern for community, local needs and everyday experiences by Berents (2015).…”

“…Thus, as is indicative of the mainstream practice of peacebuilding and the discourse therein, the recipients of the practice of peacebuilding remain passive and voiceless, perhaps explaining why according to the critiques, peacebuilding is seen to have failed. As argued elsewhere, that this is partly because the actors and recipients may have contrasting views of what the end result is; and their conceptualisation is not taken into consideration (Njeri 2019). There is also a generalisation, and an underlying assumption, that because the peacebuilding arena is normally a post-conflict environment, then 'local' leaders and or indigenous everyday rituals and ceremonies have no place of local legitimacy, as argued by Bedigen who notes that the majority of these scholarship ignores the dominance of indigenous religions and their linkages to community every day ceremonies and rituals that contributes to peacebuilding, yet, political and economic initiatives by external NGOs are seen as crucial in the planning, implementation and achievement of national peacebuilding strategies.…”