Peace beyond the Absence of War: Three Trends in the Study of Positive Peace

Abstract

Recent years have seen a surge in renewed academic interest in positive concepts of peace. This chapter takes stock of these developments, arguing that three trends can be observed. First, in a quest to make positive peace measurable, additional indicators of peace are added to the absence of war, mostly relying on existing databases. Second, in an attempt to capture the varieties of peace that resonate with inhabitants of postwar countries, authors rely on interviews with various groups to construct locally grounded notions of peace. Third, the ontological status of peace is reconceptualized. Rather than being a (utopian?) state of affairs, peace is said to be a process, an emergent phenomenon, or a quality of relationships between actors. The uptake of these three trends is that we are left with a variety of peace paradigms for local and international peacebuilders to work on. Consequently, special attention should be paid to concepts of peace that resonate with rising powers in peacebuilding and with populations in conflict-affected areas. The chapter concludes that the field of peace studies is maturing into a separate discipline, following a different logic than that of conflict studies, holistic rather than reductionist, bottom-up rather than top-down and focusing on long-term change rather than quick problem-solving.