Building peaceful citizens? Nation-building in divided societies

ABSTRACT

Interventions aimed at citizenship formation and nation-building in divided and post-conflict societies place great emphasis on promoting and entrenching peace as a cornerstone of economic development and statehood. Such efforts are multi-scalar, encompassing interventions to build democratic institutions and responsible citizens with the pursuit and maintenance of peace at the heart of these ideals. Dominant international pedagogies and policies for liberal-peace-building in divided societies can be used to maintain existing power relations and hierarchies, and may prevent the realization of social (and other forms of) justice while stifling dissent and criticism through exhortations to patriotism, unity, civility, and nation-building. Thus, the ‘goodness’ of peace makes this concept particularly useful as a technique of governance. However, ‘peace’ can also be reworked to suit counter-hegemonic political purposes that open up rather than shut down the question of what peace means. Through an exploration of contestations around the notion of ‘peace’ and its deployment in efforts to promote particular foreign policy agendas we highlight the incongruities in civil society actors’ approaches to peace, and their efforts to achieve sometimes conflicting aims, within divided societies.

KEYWORDS:

• Citizenship
• peace
• civil society
• governmentality

Acknowledgements:

The authors would also like to thank Lynn Staeheli, Konstantin Kastrissianakis, Vanja Čelebičić, Dima Smaira and Caroline Nagel for their invaluable contributions. We are grateful also for the comments of participants in the Pedagogies of Peace-Building, Democracy and Development sessions at the 2015 Association of American Geographers’ Conference, as well as the insights of the anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Daniel Hammett is a senior lecturer in the Department of Geography, University of Sheffield. His research covers the fields of political geography and development studies, with a particular focus on issues of citizenship, civil society and activism in sub-Saharan Africa.

David J. Marshall has a PhD in Geography from the University of Kentucky. He has lived, worked and researched in Palestine and throughout the Middle East for over 12 years. He is currently an assistant professor in the Department of History and Geography at Elon University.

ORCID

Daniel Hammett http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9607-6901

David Marshall http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7460-7898

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded through the European Research Council Advanced Grant entitled: ‘Youth Citizenship in Divided Societies: Between Cosmopolitanism, Nation, and Civil Society’ (ERC 295392).