Everyday peace indicators: A proposal

When?

Wednesday 1 February 2012, 15.30 to 17.00

Where?

21 AC 03

Open to:

Staff, Students, Public

Speaker:

Dr Roger MacGinty, University of St Andrews

 

Many of the approaches to measuring peace used by international organisations, INGOs and donor governments are flawed. Their level of analysis is often too broad or too narrow, and their statistical format often means that they represent the conflict-affected area in ways that are meaningless to local communities. This paper takes the form of a proposal for a new generation of locally-organised indicators that are based in everyday life. These indicators are inspired by practice from sustainable development in which indicators are crowd sourced. There is the potential for these to become ‘indicators +’ or part of a conflict transformation exercise as communities think about what peace might look like and how it could be realised. The paper emphasises how the peacebuilding sector has undergone a 'technocratic turn' in recent decades and how technocratic values and practices have promoted a peculiar type of 'peace'.

Bio:

Dr Roger MacGinty is a Reader at the School of International Relations and Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of St Andrews. His main research interests are in peacemaking processes in civil war, political violence and post-war reconstruction. His latest book, 'International Peacebuilding and Local Resistance: Hybrid forms of peace' was published by Palgrave in June 2011. He edits a book series from Palgrave entitled 'Rethinking Political Violence' and a Taylor and Francis journal entitled 'Peacebuilding' (co-edited with Oliver Richmond) will start publication in 2013. For 2011 and 2012 he is on research leave courtesy of a EU FP7 grant in order to work on a project 'The role of governance in the resolution of socioeconomic and political conflict in India and Europe'. In the Fall semester 2011 he was a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Kroc Institute for International Peace studies at the University of Notre Dame. He has conducted field research in Bosnia, Croatia, Northern Ireland, Jordan, Sri Lanka, Lebanon and New Zealand. He becomes Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Manchester in March 2012.

 

cii seminar slides 1Feb12 (180.62KB - Requires Adobe Reader)