Participatory Action Research as a Mechanism for Sustaining Peace
Institutional Affiliation
New York University, Peace Research and Education Program
Start Date
2-11-2023 10:45 AM
End Date
2-11-2023 12:15 PM
Proposal Type
Presentation
Proposal Format
On-campus
Proposal Description
Participatory Action Research as a Mechanism for Sustaining Peace
By Thomas Hill and Katerina Siira
Peace Research and Education Program
New York University
Abstract
How can peacebuilding actually become sustainable? At a time when human and financial resources are disproportionately invested in military-based approaches to security, is there a realistic way to promote community-centered, context-specific methods of building peace? This paper argues that the growing use of Participatory Action Research (PAR) offers a significant opportunity to reconstitute paradigms around what constitutes peacebuilding success and to shift peacebuilding power in the direction of local leaders and away from hegemonic national governments and trans-national institutions that consistently have proven ineffective at increasing levels of peacefulness.
This paper will offer evidence to support our central argument from an ongoing multi-year action research project, “Municipal Leaders Building Peace: Understanding Locally-led Impact in Conflict-affected Countries.” This project, based in Colombia and Libya, is testing the notion that local leaders (defined locally) are best positioned to determine what peace looks like in their own communities, and which tools, resources, structures, systems and practices are required in order to build and sustain it. Early outcomes in these two very different contexts suggest that PAR can provide local leaders with an otherwise unavailable space to refine ideas about peace in close collaboration with community members, and then to translate those ideas into policies and practices that draw upon community strengths and resources to grow and sustain the peace that already exists in those communities. PAR simultaneously offers local leaders and their constituencies an opportunity to articulate and promote visions of peace that resonate locally and that diverge greatly from externally-developed notions of peace that typically drive international peacebuilding efforts.
The project supports Mahmoud’s (2023) assertion that “[d]ecoupling the sustaining of peace from peacebuilding would attenuate the conceptual muddle its binary relationship with conflict has created … Such a separation would open the doors to innovative, empirically based approaches that broaden our understanding of peace, how it should be built, sustained and by whom.”
_____________________________________________________________
Mahmoud, Y. (2023). “How Can the UN Sustaining Peace Agenda Live Up to Its Potential?” in C. de Coning et al. (eds.), Adaptive Peacebuilding, Twenty-first Century Perspectives on War, Peace, and Human Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18219-8_3
Participatory Action Research as a Mechanism for Sustaining Peace
Participatory Action Research as a Mechanism for Sustaining Peace
By Thomas Hill and Katerina Siira
Peace Research and Education Program
New York University
Abstract
How can peacebuilding actually become sustainable? At a time when human and financial resources are disproportionately invested in military-based approaches to security, is there a realistic way to promote community-centered, context-specific methods of building peace? This paper argues that the growing use of Participatory Action Research (PAR) offers a significant opportunity to reconstitute paradigms around what constitutes peacebuilding success and to shift peacebuilding power in the direction of local leaders and away from hegemonic national governments and trans-national institutions that consistently have proven ineffective at increasing levels of peacefulness.
This paper will offer evidence to support our central argument from an ongoing multi-year action research project, “Municipal Leaders Building Peace: Understanding Locally-led Impact in Conflict-affected Countries.” This project, based in Colombia and Libya, is testing the notion that local leaders (defined locally) are best positioned to determine what peace looks like in their own communities, and which tools, resources, structures, systems and practices are required in order to build and sustain it. Early outcomes in these two very different contexts suggest that PAR can provide local leaders with an otherwise unavailable space to refine ideas about peace in close collaboration with community members, and then to translate those ideas into policies and practices that draw upon community strengths and resources to grow and sustain the peace that already exists in those communities. PAR simultaneously offers local leaders and their constituencies an opportunity to articulate and promote visions of peace that resonate locally and that diverge greatly from externally-developed notions of peace that typically drive international peacebuilding efforts.
The project supports Mahmoud’s (2023) assertion that “[d]ecoupling the sustaining of peace from peacebuilding would attenuate the conceptual muddle its binary relationship with conflict has created … Such a separation would open the doors to innovative, empirically based approaches that broaden our understanding of peace, how it should be built, sustained and by whom.”
_____________________________________________________________
Mahmoud, Y. (2023). “How Can the UN Sustaining Peace Agenda Live Up to Its Potential?” in C. de Coning et al. (eds.), Adaptive Peacebuilding, Twenty-first Century Perspectives on War, Peace, and Human Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18219-8_3