Peace-in-Difference: A Phenomenological Approach to Peace Through Difference

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article develops the notion of ‘peace-in-difference’, based on a phenomenological approach to difference from German sociology in the 1920s to the French philosophies of Emmanuel Lévinas and Jacques Derrida. Such an attempt responds to a long-standing concern in peacebuilding theory and practice and is critical of essentialist and linear-teleological approaches to peace, as with the theoretical framework of liberal peace-building. As a consequence, ‘peace-in-difference’ is sceptical with attempts to define peace as a status, but rather envisions peace as a perennial process of dialogue. However, ‘peace-in-difference’, even though having the critique of liberal peace and subsequent research questions in common with post-liberal approaches, it is also critical with their construction of ‘the local’ as as a binary opposition to ‘the international’. Though this binary is an attempt to overcome liberal legacies in International Relations (IR) and peace studies, it nevertheless risks reintroducing essentialism. In contrast, a phenomenological approach infers a positive understanding of difference(s) which can be generative of peace, if and when perceived in non-essentialist ways and negotiated as such.