The critical challenge of innovations in peacemaking after the liberal international order

Abstract

Speaker – Oliver Richmond, University of Manchester The inaugural seminar in this series invites reflection on opportunities and challenges faced by researchers in critical peace and conflict studies. Oliver Richmond sketches some potential spaces- and problems- for emancipatory developments in peacemaking in the light of the serious constraints and blockages to the existing system that have emerged since the end of the Cold War. He reflects on the entangled advances in theoretical work in a range of connected areas: on local legitimacy; transversal networks; digital/ AI technologies; decolonialism; law; global justice; the arts; and sustainability. The perspectives and insights that emerge when we marry these new developments with existing tools of peacemaking, peacebuilding, and conflict resolution/ transformation indicate that a significant rethinking of peacemaking is imminent. The parameters of peacemaking are historically consolidated: at the local scale they are socially determined, at the state scale – elite dependent, and at the international scale – tied to dominant regional norms and interests. Given these constraints, it may well be that the main innovations may result from revisiting the relationship between these different scales (aligned, non-aligned, or misaligned), and the effects on understanding peace as a result. This also raises the instrumental concern about the production of knowledge about peacemaking in different scales of international order, whether top-down or bottom-up, transnationally or transversally.