Thinking and Theorizing Peace: Corporeal and Mundane Dimensions

Abstract

The chapter shows how the early feminist peace researchers insisted on the importance of the relational body and mundane when studying conflict resolution, peacebuilding, reconciliation and peace, and how their research agenda has not been actualized in the mainstream theorizing of peacebuilding. Although feminist peace research has received a little acknowledgement among mainstream peace scholars this chapter shows that this radical scholarship is instrumental when investigating peacebuilding from corporeal perspectives. The chapter introduces also the “local turn” scholarship and argues that it is limited when it comes to its understanding of the “here and now” everyday and mundane practices of peace. An alternative understanding is offered, emerging from Judith Butler’s observation that adequate responses to different forms of violence require the recognition of human vulnerability.