2 - Everyday peace as a community development approach

Summary

Introduction

The dominant approach to peacebuilding at a community level, as opposed to elite-level peace processes, revolves around ideas of building or strengthening social cohesion between individuals, groups and authorities. In this context, social cohesion is conceived of in terms of overcoming horizontal social cleavages within society, and vertical cleavages between the state and the people. A social cohesion approach to peacebuilding thus fundamentally commences with the idea of bringing people together, physically, socially and emotionally, to search for common ground or shared needs/ mutual benefit. It relies on rehumanising the Other, developing empathy and rebuilding relationships, including between state authorities and the people.

The issue is that violence leaves a pervasive fear of further violence, and the more frequent or severe the violence, the deeper that fear. Given this, most work seeking to strengthen social cohesion after violence is usually agonistic, cautious and sensitive. Nonetheless, the principal threat to social cohesion after violence at the everyday level, apart from more actual violence, is that the slightest confrontation may trigger further fear, and that the ongoing suspicion drives social practices that maintain or expand these cleavages. The more extreme the past violence, and frequent the triggering of fear, therefore, the more likely that bringing people together, seeking to rebuild empathy, and searching for common ground or mutual benefit, may be premature. Even a deep sense of awkwardness encountering the Other may, potentially, trigger fear more than advance social cohesion. There are situations in which the social cleavages are so great, and fears so acute, that engagement and (social) cohesion may be premature, unsafe or even inflammatory. Such is the situation in the case study we explore in Chapter 11 in this book, regarding Myanmar’s Rohingya conflict after the horrific ethnic cleansing of 2017. In such cases, and perhaps far more widely, we propose an alternative community development peacebuilding approach, built around the idea of ‘everyday peace’.

This chapter explores the concepts of ‘the everyday’ and of ‘everyday peace’ in detail, highlighting its relevance to community development practice, particularly that which adopts appreciative inquiry and awareness-raising approaches. Everyday peace is presented in the literature as the means by which ordinary individuals and groups navigate everyday life in deeply divided societies, in ways that first avoid or minimise both awkward situations and conflict triggers, and (only) then consider active steps to engage with the other.