6 - The Social Construction of Peacebuilding

Summary

This chapter examines how the situating of individuals and states in societal contexts holds implications for understanding the causes conflict and the generation of peace. It challenges the strict agent-centered state-centricity of traditionalist approaches and looks at the roles played by different societal constraints, norms, and processes at the international and domestic levels.I provide a discussion of the core assumptions of social constructivism andcompare social constructivism’s approach to peace with the other major paradigms (and their subparadigms) assessed in this book. Iconsider how the rational default mechanisms of security studies and the realist or power political paradigms, which have dominated the discourse for much of the period of scientific study, have come to be critiqued. This will be followed by detailed discussion of the similarities and differences between social constructivism and liberal approaches, functionalism, English School rationalism, critical approaches, and cosmopolitanism. I assess the contribution of social constructivismto the transformation of conflictual relations between states and the social construction of peace.