Emplacing the spatial turn in peace and conflict studies

The ‘local’ turn in peacebuilding: connecting to spatial analysis

Critical analysis of the failed promises of liberal peacebuilding interventions observes the problems that have accrued when institutions reflecting a liberal democratic and free-market ethos are imposed on local populations as part of broader conflict transition programming. These debates have fuelled interest in ‘hybrid’ approaches to peacebuilding (see Boege, 2009; Brown et al., 2010; Mac Ginty, 2012; Mac Ginty and Richmond, 2016; Richmond, 2009). A key contention of this scholarship, which has meanwhile gained significant traction, is that ‘liberal peace’ programmes fail because they do not account for the local particularity nor local understandings of how legitimate post-conflict order can be brought into being. In this vein, would-be interveners are encouraged to take seriously ordinary people’s understandings of peace and sources of social order ‘in their own everyday’ alongside their expectations of the nature and roles of regulatory order in post-conflict settings (Boege, 2009; Brown et al., 2010; Richmond, 2009: 333).

The effort to better engage the local in peacebuilding, the so called ‘local turn’, has, as a result, become a key theme in the conflict transition and wider peace and conflict studies literature in the last decade. As this critical scholarship has gained standing, hybrid peacebuilding has partly come to be interpreted as a type of policy prescription, and thus advocated, for example, as enabling greater attentiveness to embedded local discourses of dispute reconciliation and social regulation that focus, for instance, on the restoration of ‘reciprocal and ongoing harmonious relations between groups’ (Mac Ginty, 2012: 155, 149). Some argue, though, that the call for accommodation of local forms of ordering through hybridity is not very effective or reliable as a policy stance, and that hybridity is in fact prescriptive (Millar, 2014). However, in addition to accommodation, hybridity scholars advocate for an open-ended engagement with local forms of political organisation and sources of meaning from which forms of political order that are meaningful to people might emerge over time. This recognition of the ‘value’ of the ‘local’ to the peacebuilding process is said to lay bare the limitations of the liberal international model and open up possibilities for the achievement of a ‘post-liberal’ peace (Richmond, 2009: 333).

The foregoing divergences highlight that there are, as to be expected, diverse views about the analytical or practical value of the local turn. Some valuable energy has been directed towards uncovering what has been termed the ‘dark’ side of hybridity (Wallis et al., 2016), including how actors or practices become appropriated to serve sectional interests in ways that may undermine rather than consolidate peace. Others have defended the importance of a more disaggregated approach to evaluating the various institutional, practical, ritual and conceptual levels at which hybridity is evident in peacebuilding interventions (Millar, 2014). On this theme, there is also some dissatisfaction with the tendency to use a static dichotomy to commonly distinguish the international and the local in critical debates on hybridity (Hameiri and Jones, 2018). Others argue that notions of the local can sustain ‘a fundamental alterity’ distinguishing the liberal and the local, the former contained and distinctive from the subordinated and ‘indigenous’ latter (Sabaratnam, 2011: 251). Part of the issue here, though, is that terms such as ‘local’ and ‘international’ are vague and can easily slide into dichotomous usage. Feminist analysis has argued that the hybridity frame fails to confront the gendered geometries of power that may be locally sharpened in conflict environments and that prevent women’s access to peacebuilding sites with the result that their expectations and needs are represented back to them by local elites, marginalised or simply ignored (Björkdahl and Höglund, 2013; George, 2016, 2018). Emphasis upon the distance between the local and the international has also masked, it is claimed, the co-constitutive nature of the relationship between local and international and the ways that the ‘local is partially produced by what internationals find, initiate or are willing to fund’ (Heathershaw, 2013: 280).

Part of what is at stake in debates about the local turn is the continued tendency, including contrary to the commitments of some of the original promulgators of hybridity, to use terms such as the ‘local’ as strong categories rather than gestures pointing to complex and mutable constellations of relations. These is a tendency, for instance, to depict the ‘local’ as a rather abstracted and hold-all category that acts as a flat counterweight to the international. Despite the traction that the local turn has achieved, discussion of the local turn has tended to be folded into dominant understandings of peacebuilding rather than bringing about fundamental shifts in these understandings. Here the spatial turn promises value by driving, for example, investigation of the emplaced and vernacular narratives that define identities, territories, actors and actions that opens the way for nuanced and situated understandings of the ‘local’ (and the personal) as emplaced constellations of scalar relations in conflict and peacebuilding. From this vantage point, we might develop a clearer understanding of how local, national and global scales interpenetrate and interrelate, including by investigating how they are concretely experienced as relatively contradictory but powerful modes of political, economic and social ordering rather than simply seeing the local or international in categorical terms.

When efforts to engage the local are not sufficiently advanced we miss too much, including the way that emplaced narratives of place and identity as well as the claims of liberal international ordering are politically constructed and take on meaning in conflict-affected contexts. These are mutable, prone to change, or are altogether contested across scales and according to context. Homogenising representations of the ‘local’ and indeed the ‘international’ (see Wallis, 2020) too easily paper over these types of complexities. We therefore choose to frame our engagement with the spatial through a focus on ‘emplacement’, and particularly ‘emplaced security’. This engagement with the spatial picks up on and extends what we take to be very promising commitments of the local turn. We hope that doing so facilitates more careful scrutiny of peacebuilding environments that are variously shaped by legacies of violence, demands for the preservation of community identity, claims for recognition and entitlement, and the expectations of those who intervene to stabilise and re-establish order.

The spatial turn in peace and conflict studies

While peace and conflict scholars have recently taken up questions of space, place and scale, geographers have of course long been centrally concerned with these matters. Although the geography discipline has long-standing entanglements with war and conquest (Koopman, 2017b: 4978), geographers have gradually increased their engagement with peace in recent decades (for an annotated bibliography, see Koopman, 2017a). The more recent geography literature resonates with peace and conflict studies interests in contextualised, pluralistic and everyday approaches to peace. Although critical peace scholars have turned to spatial concerns more recently (Björkdahl and Buckley-Zistel, 2016: 5), they have found value in spatial analysis, inter alia and as suggested above, as part of efforts to rethink the neat international/local binaries that have characterised a great deal of the peacebuilding literature (Björkdahl and Selimovic, 2016: 322; Kappler, 2015). Other foci have included examination of the complexities of the interplays between sites of peacebuilding activity (including as sites of contested meaning), and consideration of how differences of scale shape understanding and agency in peace and in conflict.

Interesting examples of early work on the contested meanings that become attached to demarcations of material space include Highgate and Henry’s (2009) multi-sited ethnographic study of peacekeeping missions. This work demonstrates the practical implications of the ‘military-cartographic gaze’ imposed on indigenous populations (54) and how demarcation of space into zones and enclaves as part of peacekeeping can legitimate ongoing efforts to secure and bring order to some districts and ‘freeze and fix’ conflict in others (58–73). This analytical focus illustrates how spatial practice is the product of international institutional intervention (17), enabling geopolitical interests to influence how security and insecurity are experienced by everyday people in everyday places (8). A recent contribution on this theme is offered by Nicolas Lemay-Hérbert (2018), who examines the political economy of zone demarcation in peacebuilding. He shows the lasting impact of these interventions and how the practice of rating districts as coloured zones, reflective of their security status, can facilitate a hardening of racialized and class divisions in post-conflict city-scapes such as Port-au-Prince in Haiti.

The focus on contested practices and meanings that attach to material space has produced a great deal of creative reflection and analysis on the social and political significance of physical sites in peacebuilding. Two key book-length contributions to this literature, both engaged in the articles of this special issue, are provided by Björkdahl and Buckley-Zistel (2016) and Björkdahl and Kappler (2017). Rather than repeat that discussion here, we instead note the critical reading of space and meaning developed in Björkdahl and Selimovic’s (2016) recent examination of the way bridges in three Bosnian locations become sites of spatial practice. Here the authors argue that through symbolic and everyday encounters occurring at these sites, actors ‘lay claim to past events, and interpret them in the politics of the present’ in ways that simultaneously ‘bring people together and separate them’ (Björkdahl and Selimovic, 2016: 323). Attachments to space or place also form differently at different periods of time, revealing how conflict and processes of peacebuilding can result in spaces configured as sources of threats to safety or as refuges from violence in different periods (Björkdahl and Buckley-Zistel, 2016). Similar analysis of the contested or changed meanings of space or place in conflict has also emerged in feminist peace and conflict analysis. This includes study of how the domestic sites of family life – the ‘small worlds’ of the family and household (Mahon, 2006) – may be constructed as feminised sites of authority only to be reconfigured in the wake of conflict as spaces of gendered insecurity where trauma and masculine violence dominate familial interactions (Pitanguy, 2011; see George, 2020).

In another vein, Selimovic and Strömbom’s (2015) account of the way contested narratives of history and identity attach to place in the context of the Palestinian conflict makes clear how the framing of space is imbued with power relations that reproduce and legitimise social and political inclusions and exclusions, including by erasing some peoples’ connections to place. Likewise, literature on transitional justice has reflected on the contested ways that meaning can be attached to spaces of conflict memorialisation. Michael et al. (2016) show this to be critical in their discussion of plans to rehabilitate the infamous Maze prison in Northern Ireland as a public space of memorial. They describe the effort to articulate the heritage of this place in a way that reflects the experience and expectations of all interested stakeholders as an exercise in peacebuilding. They observe that this was unrecognised by the frustrated bureaucrats charged with trying to realise the memorial project; ultimately the project failed to progress (Michael et al., 2016: 240).

The spatial turn has also provoked a particular interest in scalar analysis of space, in part reflecting a critical interrogation of what it means to demarcate some spaces as local and then position other spaces in relation to the local, as global (Hameiri and Jones, 2018). In its earliest incarnations as a concept in human geography, scale was conceptualised in hierarchical form and discussed in ways that allowed demarcation of urban locales from national and global spheres of politics. The relationship between these spheres was clearly conceptualised in tiered terms with Peter Taylor observing the global as the ‘ultimate’ scale, and the only site that ‘really matters’ (Taylor, 1982: 26 quoted in Marston et al., 2005: 417). As Björkdahl and Buckley-Zistel (2016: 8) contend, in peace and conflict studies this understanding of scale has often resulted in analysis of the local as a site of specificity that is weaker or even at risk of erasure from a homogenising and hegemonic global influences. Within political geography, this hierarchical ordering has been challenged by other work on ‘the politics of scale’ that emphasises the ‘duality of spatial fixity and fluidity’ and the ‘shifting and contested’ nature of scalar configurations that are never only local or global (Marston et al., 2005: 418).

Doreen Massey’s contributions to debates on scale have also been influential, and illustrate the ways that ‘power geometries’ shape differentiation between particular articulations of ‘locals’ and/or ‘globals’ and the importance of understanding the ways in which distinct places are ‘constituted, invented, coordinated and produced’ and thus have agency in relation to the global (Massey, 2004: 11). Critical peace studies has drawn on these ideas to reflect on the complex nature of scalar interplay in peacebuilding, and to demonstrate that the global and local do not exist in a hierarchical relationship to each other but are ‘constantly resituating themselves between competing forces of identification’ (Kappler, 2015: 876). In this vein, we might consider the dynamic and fluid ways in which actors are defined within specific spaces and places of peacebuilding, and also the diverse ways that actors may understand and relate to space and place in these contexts. This latter theme is highly pertinent to the articles published in this issue, particularly as many of the authors focus on emplaced ways of knowing and relating to space and place as a further development in spatial analysis of peace and conflict (Björkdahl and Buckley-Zistel, 2016: 8).

Leveraging the local and spatial turns

Considering the nascent spatial turn alongside existing peace and conflict studies’ interest in ‘the local turn’, hybridity, and ‘the everyday’ provides a helpful lens for reflecting on scholarship engages with diverse peoples and myriad forms of human difference, and how difference can be better engaged in peacebuilding scholarship and practice. Contributions to this special issue by Boege and Hunt (2020) as well as by George (2020), Grenfell (2020) and Higgins (2020) demonstrate the utility of applying a new set of analytical concepts to peace and conflict concerns. Place and space sharpen and extend our analyses of processes of political ordering and conflict management (Boege and Hunt, 2020), of how activists might reflect on their place and capacity to reform post-conflict governance (George, 2020), and of how local populations conceive of and enact security and peace (Grenfell, 2020; Higgins, 2020). These analyses show that place and space are fundamental to political ordering, to governance and to security. Moreover, the spatial analyses deployed in this special issue tend to amplify insights generated though the ‘local turn’ and cognate developments in peace and conflict studies, sometimes in striking or otherwise important ways. Some of the articles show how local peoples draw upon place to manage conflict and secure peace but, against common prejudice, also demonstrate that such capacities are, in fact, not ‘place-bound’ and can ‘travel’ (Boege and Hunt, 2020). And while the spiritual worlds of ‘people of place’ (Higgins, 2020) enable (and sometimes lead) the pursuit of peace and security aside from the state (Grenfell, 2020; Higgins, 2020), notions of scale help to elucidate how people seek to imbricate the local with the state (Higgins, 2020) and otherwise use the local as a foundation and source of inspiration for engaging formal governance (George, 2020).

The spatial turn, then, brings significant generative potential to peace and conflict studies (Brown, 2020). However, as both Brown and Brigg point out in this special issue, realising the potential of the spatial turn also requires that scholars retain a critical orientation towards the capacity of dominant scholarship to engage with human difference. Dominant scholarship tends to reproduce and extend itself through processes of reification (Brown, 2020), reproducing dominant power relations – including the figure of the sovereign knowing subject – in the politics of knowledge by neglecting its own emplacement (Brigg, 2020). These patterns tend to recur regardless of how innovative new scholarly ‘turns’ initially appear to be. Realising the full potential of the spatial turn thus requires the development of capacity to engage with the full range of human knowledge to counter long-standing patterns that reproduce European-derived concerns and foci (Brigg, 2020; Brown, 2020) and/or gendered ones (George, 2020).

The contributors to this special issue suggest, collectively, two ways of responding to the challenge of human difference through the spatial turn. First, diverse peoples should be taken seriously not only as research partners in explicating the diverse ways in which space and place get configured in peace and conflict dynamics, but also as sophisticated theoreticians of space and place. Brigg demonstrates the latter point in relation to Indigenous peoples, and the same point is implicit in the contributions by George, Grenfell and Higgins. Taking diverse peoples seriously guards against the common sense view that the global north generates ‘new’ knowledge that is subsequently exported to the global south. Second, a thoroughgoing spatial turn should bring the global north into analyses considering peace and conflict practitioners and scholars. Wallis draws our attention to the emplaced ontological security of military peacebuilders, and the implications of everyday displacement for peacebuilding practice. Brigg and Brown, meanwhile, challenge peace and conflict scholars to more thoroughly examine the emplacement of the knowing subject, and to thereby develop a more sophisticated account of global power relations while adopting a contingent and humble position in relation to diverse peoples.

One way of leveraging spatial concepts, through both the local turn and more broadly, is by making greater use of the idea of ‘relations’ or ‘relationality’. Much scholarship in the nascent spatial turn in peace and conflict studies does refer to the relational constitution of categories and phenomena through space and place. In addition, all contributions to this special issue give implicit or explicit weight to intersubjective (and wider) connections and relations against the more traditional social science prioritising of an atomised subject. (Wallis, in particular, explicitly makes clear that relational ties are critical to the identity and ontological security of international peacekeepers.) Brigg also argues that the turn to space and place includes an as yet unmet ‘relational challenge’ to the positioning of the knowing subject as well as to conventional political ontology and to dominant forms of knowledge production. Responding adequately requires greater engagement across human difference with diverse theorisations of space and place, and rigorous engagement with the emplacement of the knowing subject. These possibilities indicate that the value of the spatial turn extends beyond the demonstrable value associated with the application of a new set of analytical concepts to a thoroughgoing consideration of the meaning of ‘emplacement’ for peace and conflict scholarship and practice more generally.

The emancipatory potential of emplacement?

Beyond the foregoing opportunities to leverage the spatial turn for more nuanced and responsive analyses in peace and conflict studies, we face a series of troubling questions about the intersection of our current and related efforts with extant large-scale structuring forces of global socio-political order and injustice. We have made some rather large claims for the possibilities of what we have termed ‘emplaced security’. Inter alia, we suggest that emplaced security promises ways to ‘open up scrutiny of peacebuilding environments’, to ‘sharpen and extend our analyses of process of political ordering’, to draw attention to ‘the pursuit of peace and security aside from the state’, to contest ‘dominant forms of knowledge production’, and to take diverse peoples seriously as ‘sophisticated theoreticians of space and place’. Individually and collectively, these promises speak to emancipatory possibilities that the field of peace and conflict studies has traditionally held as a constitutive part of its disciplinary fabric.

However, the truth is that emplaced security could be pursued in both scholarly and practice domains with relatively little implications for macro-structural injustices and dominant patterns of socio-political ordering. As one anonymous reviewer of this special issue asked us, how does emplacement relate to the strictures of sovereignty and state order? The articles by Brigg, Grenfell, Higgins and George implicitly respond by noting – and advocating for – forms of political ordering that operate aside from, or within the interstices of, sovereignty and the state. However, it can be argued that this is an insufficient response for two reasons. First, it does not speak to the interactions between the state and non-dominant place-linked forms of political ordering. Second, a focus on emplaced security can risk drawing our attention to a range of micro-practices such as those relating to belonging and identity, or to community justice. This potentially elides questions about macro-structural injustices, leaving them in play even as we pursue richer and more nuanced scholarship and practice. As our reviewer points out, this can be seen as a type of ‘subjective capture’ and as a ‘fragmentation’ that supports a form of ‘neoliberal peace’. In other words, we face the risk that emplaced security suggests that, again in the words our reviewer, ‘micro-peace deals are enough’.

One possible response hinted at by our reviewer is to look to ‘transcend the political-ethical issues raised by an engagement with the local/everyday/subaltern’ through the development of a more systematic ‘substantial political critique’.

In a complementary way, the reviewer suggests, we might seek to show how emplaced security can take scholarship ‘beyond hegemonic bias into an ethico-political terrain where we can begin to see the workings of violence and of power more clearly and thus reconstruct (more ethical forms of) peace and security on a larger scale’. These are tempting prescriptions. The idea that we could flex our scholarly and analytical agency to bring about the more ethical and just pursuit of peace speaks directly to the kind of impact that many in our field would like to have. However, our view is that such possibilities carry risks that directly undercut the ethico-political impulse and import of emplaced security. This stance is not unique. Rather, it is part of a wider grappling with the questions of how to be engaged and effective while avoiding modernist tendencies that have generated many of the macro-structural political phenomena that we currently seek to challenge and redress.

In this view, the challenge of the emancipatory potential of emplacement cannot be resolved by elevating our particular version of emplacement (or that of the authors in this issue), even in the form of a conceptual or analytical scaffold. To do so would be to reproduce the very problems to which emplaced security seeks to respond. It would be an attempt to reinstate, as Donna Haraway (1988: 581) put it decades ago, the transcendent god trick of seeing from nowhere rather than acknowledging our emplacement. The transcendental move is no longer available because, as Wendy Brown (2001: 3) points out, the ‘crucial collective stories in modernity have been disturbed or undermined in recent decades’ or have simply begun ‘to be exposed as fundamental premises’. For us, this situation does not remove the possibility of politics or the promise of emplaced security, though it does modify our place in both. We do hope, of course, that the notion of emplaced security has impact, including by challenging and transforming macro-structural forces of dominance. However, the possibility of such results is necessarily contingent on the ramifying effects of whether and how emplaced security is taken up. For now, our contention is that emplaced security contains within it sufficient orientation to diversity and difference of the peoples of the world to challenge and transform dominance. Whether its potential is realised cannot be foretold and depends upon how others engage with emplaced security as a concept and a practice.