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Beyond Liberal Peacebuilding: A Critique of Liberal Peacebuilding and Exploring a Postmodern Post-liberal Hybrid Model of Peacebuilding



Author(s)

Juichiro Tanabe

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DOI:10.17265/2328-2134/2017.08.001

One of the pressing problems with contemporary peacebuilding research is that much of the analysis focuses on the practical and technical challenges while paying little attention to the philosophical assumptions of those operations. Any understanding of peacebuilding is underpinned by philosophical frameworks as they shape and orient us towards particular strategies for peacebuilding. This paper makes a philosophical critique of liberal peacebuilding (the mainstream peacebuilding) and explores a postmodern post-liberal hybrid peacebuilding. The analysis claims neither the categorical rejection of liberal peacebuilding nor the exclusive reliance on locally-oriented peacebuilding. Rather, the upshot is the need for deconstructing dualistic view of either liberal peacebuilding or locally-oriented peacebuilding so that both external liberal actors and local actors engage in jointly learning and mutually transformative process wherein both liberal international actors and local actors look beyond peace constructed around their narrow and restricted conception and framework to create the meanings of peace that can interconnect the global and the local.

liberal peacebuilding, post-liberal hybrid peacebuilding, culture, postmodernism