The Everyday, Circuitry, and Scalability

Abstract

This chapter unpacks two concepts that lie at the heart of the book: the everyday and circuitry. In order to understand everyday peace, it seems sensible to unpack the notion of the everyday and illustrate why the hyperlocal level is relevant to how peace is embodied and enacted. The chapter defines ‘everyday peace’ and discusses the ‘local turn’ in peace and conflict studies before going on to discuss how we might see the local level in comparison with other scales such as the national, the international, the transnational, and all levels in between. It is here that the chapter uses the notion of biological and electronic circuits as a way of explaining the multi-scalar nature of peace and conflict and the messy connectivity between them. In its final substantive part, the chapter considers how everyday peace might be scaled up and thus become more significant than local-level actions and stances. Important here is the notion of scaling out, or the horizontal spread of civility. This leads us to think about how there can be multi-speed and multilevel peace.