Three locals of peace: a typology of local capacities for peace

Abstract

In recent thinking on peace, the ‘local’ has taken centre stage, carrying our last hopes after decades of ‘failed’ peacebuilding. The local can, however, denote quite a variety of different actors. How we select and define the kind of local to work with has huge implications. By developing a typology of three kinds of locals, this piece points to how installing the local as pivotal for establishing peace can take very different forms, implying vastly different policies. These different ways of conceptualising the role of the local, and what are seen as possible ways of engaging with the people who are at the receiving end of peacebuilding interventions, carry political value and reveal shifts in the political terrain of interventions. The article points to how engaging with locals might serve as an attempt at evading the political and ethical consequences of intervention, yet shows how such avoidance of political consequences fails by pointing to the political and ethical choices implied in choosing what kind of locals to work with.