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Peace in Political Unsettlement pp 17–55Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

The State of Affirmation in Peacebuilding: Locating Pragmatic Transitions

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Part of the book series: Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies ((RCS))

Abstract

Peacebuilding’s history has undergone several stages, all characterised by a contestation between normative perspectives, realist power struggles and pragmatism. The rediscovery of internal violent conflict after the Cold War was accompanied by a period of conceptual authority: the creation of liberal democratic political institutions in the process of statebuilding should enable peace and stability. Failure to achieve the aspired success impelled peacebuilding to embrace the critique raised by the local turn and other approaches. Contextualised approaches and knowledge should provide a new background for useful interventions. However, the acceptance of context and the generation of respective knowledge overwhelmed peacebuilding. The eventual recognition of failure pushed peacebuilding into affirming its environmental circumstances. A transitional approach based on principled pragmatism, constructed out of existing, hitherto neglected practices in peace processes, may be able to provide a possible answer to this state of affirmation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Truman’s Inaugural Address, 20 January 1949, Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum, https://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/50yr_archive/inagural20jan1949.htm, accessed 16 September 2018.

  2. 2.

    The quote goes back to Franklin Roosevelt referring to Nicaraguan dictator Somoza (the elder brother), whom he called a ‘son of a bitch, but our son of a bitch’.

  3. 3.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chilcot-report-tony-blair-read-response-statement-in-full-iraq-war-inquiry-a7123251.html, accessed 3 September 2018.

  4. 4.

    The Guardian, 12 May 2016, ‘Walkout at Ugandan president’s inauguration over ICC remarks’, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/12/walkout-at-ugandan-presidents-inauguration-over-icc-remarks, accessed 3 September 2018.

  5. 5.

    http://fundforpeace.org/fsi/, accessed 3 September 2018.

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  1. ASPR—Austrian Study Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution, Vienna, Austria

    Jan Pospisil

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Pospisil, J. (2019). The State of Affirmation in Peacebuilding: Locating Pragmatic Transitions. In: Peace in Political Unsettlement. Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04318-6_2

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