Understanding Local Peacebuilding
3. June 2019
The Dynamics of Local Knowledge Transfer in Peace and Conflict Interventions
Emerging from criticisms of the underperforming liberal peacebuilding system, the past 15 years have seen a shift away from the technocratic, liberal approaches of the 1990s toward a prioritization of locally owned, bottom-up, micro peacebuilding, in line with broader trends in development policy. Academics and practitioners alike call for more hybridity and the contextualization of interventions. Such local peacebuilding approaches, however, demand a detailed understanding of the local context, greater local participation, context-specific solutions, “micro-level perspectives” and the inclusion of local institutions conducive to the overall aims of the intervention. Having said that, we still lack a clear understanding of hybrid peacebuilding and the ways in which it should be enacted or manifest in practice.
The workshop brings together academics and practitioners who work in the field of peace and conflict and share an interest to better understanding the nature of local peacebuilding. The aim is to better understand the nature of local knowledge in foreign interventions and the processes that shape how external actors gather information on local perceptions and peacebuilding interests. Failure to acknowledge local knowledge has often been linked to failure in delivering effective foreign assistance. Local knowledge can therefore be seen as a key to more effective and relevant program intervention.
Mo, 3 June 2019, 13:00-18:00 and Tue, 4 June 2019, 8:30-15:00
Bischofsvilla, Otto-Adam-Str. 5, 78467 Konstanz
Contact
Prof. Dr. Benjamin Zyla, Benjamin.Zyla[at]uottawa.ca
