This impressive book is the most significant contribution thus far to the growing literature on the spatial turn in peace and conflict studies. Because conflict and peace take place in particular spaces, peacemaking is an inherently spatial project. Yet too often geography has been assumed as the inert stage for (supposedly) more fundamental processes. Drawing on fieldwork from around the world, Annika Bjrkdahl and Stefanie Kappler demonstrate how spatiality is crucial to understanding the role of agency in peacebuilding. Their sophisticated analysis of how this occurs at the intersections of space and place is required reading for anyone wanting to understand how violent places can be transformed into peaceful ones and why attempts to do this so often fail.
Nick Megoran, Newcastle University, UK
Annika Bjrkdahl and Stefanie Kappler have made me look at the rebuilt historic bridge in Mostar afresh, so I now can see that it is a place that has been turned into a space for stoking on-going distrust. This book also, though, shows how even modest physical places can be transformed, by commitment and creativity, into spaces where post-war tensions can be reduced.
Cynthia Enloe, Clark University, USA
Peacebuilding and Spatial Transformation
This book investigates peacebuilding in post-conflict scenarios by analysing the link between peace, space and place.
By focusing on the case studies of Cyprus, Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Northern Ireland and South Africa, the book provides a spatial reading of agency in peacebuilding contexts. It conceptualises peacebuilding agency in post-conflict landscapes as situated between place (material locality) and space (the imaginary counterpart of place), analysing the ways in which peacebuilding agency can be read as a spatial practice. Investigating a number of post-conflict cases, this book outlines infrastructures of power and agency as they are manifested in spatial practice. It demonstrates how spatial agency can take the form of conflict and exclusion on the one hand, but also of transformation towards peace over time on the other hand. Against this background, the book argues that agency drives place-making and spacemaking processes. Therefore, transformative processes in post-conflict societies can be understood as materialising through the active use and transformation of space and place.
This book will be of interest to students of peacebuilding, peace and conflict studies, human geography and IR in general.
Annika Bjrkdahl is Professor of Political Science, Lund University, Sweden, and is author/editor of numerous titles, including Peacebuilding and Friction (Routledge 2016) and Spatializing Peace and Conflict (2015).
Stefanie Kappler is Lecturer in Conflict Resolution and Peace Building, Durham University, UK, and is author of Local Agency and Peacebuilding (2014).
Studies in Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding
Series Editors: Keith Krause, Thomas J. Biersteker and Riccardo Bocco, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva
This series publishes innovative research into the connections between insecurity and under-development in fragile states, and into situations of violence and insecurity more generally. It adopts a multidisciplinary approach to the study of a variety of issues, including the changing nature of contemporary armed violence (conflict), efforts to foster the conditions that prevent the outbreak or recurrence of such violence (development), and strategies to promote peaceful relations on the communal, societal and international level (peacebuilding).
The Political Economy of Peacemaking
Achim Wennmann
The Peace In Between
Post-war violence and peacebuilding
Edited by Mats Berdal and Astri Suhrke
Local and Global Dynamics of Peacebuilding
Postconflict reconstruction in Sierra Leone
Christine Cubitt
Peacebuilding, Memory and Reconciliation
Bridging top-down and bottom-up approaches
Bruno Charbonneau and Genevive Parent
Peacebuilding and Local Ownership
Post-conflict consensus-building
Timothy Donais
Stabilization Operations, Security and Development
States of fragility
Edited by Robert Muggah
Controlling Small Arms
Consolidation, innovation and relevance in research and policy
Edited by Peter Batchelor and Kai Michael Kenkel
An Ethnographic Approach to Peacebuilding
Understanding local experiences in transitional states
Gearoid Millar
Peacebuilding and Ex-Combatants
Political reintegration in Liberia
Johanna Sderstrm
Local Ownership in International Peacebuilding
Key theoretical and practical issues
Edited by Sung Yong Lee and Alpaslan zerdem
Institutional Reforms and Peacebuilding
Change, path-dependency and societal divisions in post-war communities
Edited by Nadine Ansorg and Sabine Kurtenbach
Peacebuilding and Spatial Transformation
Peace, Space and Place
Annika Bjrkdahl and Stefanie Kappler
First published 2017
by Routledge
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2017 Annika Bjrkdahl and Stefanie Kappler
The right of Annika Bjrkdahl and Stefanie Kappler to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him/her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Bjrkdahl, Annika, author. | Kappler, Stefanie, author.
Title: Peacebuilding and spatial transformation : peace, space and place / Annika Bjrkdahl and Stefanie Kappler.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2017. | Series: Studies in conflict, development and peacebuilding | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016053933 | ISBN 9781138924154 (hardback) | ISBN 9781315684529 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Peace-building--Case studies. | Space--Social aspects. | Agent (Philosophy) | Place (Philosophy) | Peace-building--Cyprus. | Peacebuilding-- Kosovo (Republic) | Peace-building--Bosnia and Herzegovina. | Peace-building--Northern Ireland. | Peace-building--South Africa.
