Local Peace Formation: Asserting Subaltern Visions of Political Legitimacy

Peace is often negotiated far beyond the places where people suffer from draconian laws, discrimination, outright aggression, sexualized violence, armed strife, natural disasters, or plunder. More recent attempts to reflect local demands and needs in political processes in (post-)conflict areas were unable to sufficiently do so and continue to impose ideas of peace that are fundamentally elitist, Eurocentric, and postcolonial. Local peace agency is all too often overlooked, silenced and misrepresented within the traditional frameworks and processes of the international community.

This online conference brings together activists, peace practitioners, and scholars from South Sudan, Bosnia, and Lebanon in order to voice and debate the importance of local visions of political legitimacy, justice, and peace. It thereby wants to highlight the constitutive character of subaltern peace agency for negotiating peace and at the same time its precarious position due to the various power asymmetries towards the national and the international. In doing so, the conference will discuss the chances of local and subaltern actors to assert their understandings of peace within overarching national and international frameworks of governance.

This event is organized by the Varna Institute for Peace Research (VIPR) as well as the Department of Global Governance (Institute of the Foundations of Law) at the University of Graz and supported by the Austrian Centre for Peace, the Conflict – Peace – Democracy Cluster, the Center for Southeast European Studies and the Journal Wissenschaft und Frieden.

In order to attend the conference, please register at hannah.stadler(at)uni-graz.at.

Programme

11:00 – 11:15
Welcome notes
Maximilian Lakitsch (University of Graz)
Josef Mühlbauer (VIPR – Varna Institute for Peace Research)


11:15 – 12:00
Keynote speech
Oliver Richmond (University of Manchester)
Unpacking Local Peace Formation

Moderation: Josef Mühlbauer (VIPR – Varna Institute for Peace Research)
(30 min presentation, 15 min Q&A)


12:00 – 12:30
Presentation
Edmund Yakani (CEPO, South Sudan)
Moderation: Eva Huber (Austrian Centre for Peace)
(20 min presentation, 10 minutes Q&A)


12:30 – 13:00
Presentation
Amina Krvavac (War Childhood Museum, Bosnia)
Moderation: Armina Galijas (Centre for South East European Studies)
(20 min presentation, 10 minutes Q&A)


13:00 – 13:30
Presentation
Vera Mawla (Peace of Art, Lebanon)
Moderation: Maximilian Lakitsch (Global Governance, University of Graz)
(20 min presentation, 10 minutes Q&A)