The Use and Misuse of the ‘Local Turn’

The following theoretical essay reassesses the critical project for peace and conflict research, and the implications of the related ‘local turn’. This represented an attempt to connect peace and justice more closely together by uncovering localised and subaltern political claims in conflict-affected societies, drawing on concepts of the everyday and hybridity, and on post-colonial and critical debates. The local turn’s subsequent and wide-ranging applications and appropriation were a reaction to the structural findings that were emerging in the field, which was no longer so clearly organised around hegemonic epistemologies, but was developing new ethico-political groundings (some of which indicated the direction of the emerging ‘sustainable development’ and ‘sustaining peace’ framework). The local turn’s critical implications transcend such doctrines even if its wider application has often been problematic.