Obstacle or Resource? Conceptualising Alterity in Processes of Peacebuilding

Abstract

This article seeks to understand the evolution of the processes of peacebuilding in the past years by analysing how international organisations have recently conceptualised alterity in a different manner. It is argued that throughout the post-war interventions of the 1990s and early years of 2000s, the inter-subjective processes of post-conflict societies were considered a problem to be corrected by the means of creating efficient institutions supervised by international experts. However, the optimism in relation to the promotion of democracy abroad withered away and there was the need to solve the errors of highly intrusive interventions. On these assumptions, alterity is increasingly seen as a resource that can be used to develop a peace project respectful of the context of each society. In order to analyse how alterity is understood more positively in the past years —which is crucial to explain how international organisations currently practice peace— the article will focus on the concepts of “local ownership” and “resilience”. The conclusion is that the positive shift to embrace other cultures also hides two potential problems. The first is that we are losing the capacity to theorise about peace and the second is that the autonomy or national sovereignty of post-war societies still remains in limbo.