Paper short abstract:

This paper addresses disconnects in international-communal interaction in peacebuilding. Engaging ethnographic knowledge by examples from communal ordering in the South Caucasus, it searches for innovative ways how international efforts for local ownership can match local agency for communal peace.

Paper long abstract:

The post-liberal debate on peacebuilding has considerably advanced in recent years. First, scholars have come to an increasing understanding that in their everyday lives people manage to skilfully cope with and curtail tensions related to identity and resources, even under circumstances of precarity. Second, interdisciplinary dialogues between social anthropology and critical peace studies stressed the need to account for both ideational and structural factors when exploring peace and conflict, and established that ethnographic fieldwork helps better grasp views and practices of local communal ordering. However, despite efforts to foster legitimacy on the ground and improve local ownership in peacebuilding and development interventions, disconnects between international actors and local ‘beneficiaries’ persist. Project designs and international practices continuously fail to integrate local experiential perspectives on ordering and peace formation.

This paper is interested in possibilities and limitations to translate the practices of local communal ordering into international public policies. Engaging ethnographic knowledge and discussing relevant examples of customary communal ordering in the South Caucasus, it asks if and how (inter-)national public policy could help advance effective and legitimate community-led initiatives of peaceful ordering. It draws attention to policy-oriented strategies that may allow local actors to reappropriate international frameworks (thus highlighting processes such as exploration, translation, dialogue, mutual learning; and aspects such as relationality and temporality) and increase reflexivity on the provision of material and expertise support. It demonstrates that more sensitivity in resolving practical problems of decentralization and diversity in international-local interaction could help (re-)create and sustain spaces for communal peace.