Everyday peace: Bottom-up and local agency in conflict-affected societies

Abstract

This article is a conceptual scoping of the notion and practice of everyday peace, or the methods that individuals and groups use to navigate their way through life in deeply divided societies. It focuses on bottom-up peace and survival strategies. The article locates everyday peace in the wider study of peace and conflict, and constructs a typology of the different types of social practice that constitute everyday peace. While aware of the limitations of the concept and the practice, the article argues that everyday peace can be an important building block of peace formation, especially as formal approaches to peacebuilding and statebuilding are often deficient. An enhanced form of everyday peace (everyday diplomacy) has the potential to go beyond conflict-calming measures to encompass more positive actions linked with conflict transformation. The article can also be read as an exploration of ‘the local’ and ‘agency’ in deeply divided societies. It provides a counterweight to accounts of conflict-affected societies that concentrate on top-down actors, formal institutions and conflict resolution ‘professionals’. The apparent ‘banality’ of the everyday challenges us to think creatively about perspectives and methodologies that can capture it.