Localised Indicators in Peacebuilding

Yumna M. Usmani and Mahrukh Adnan Shaukat blog about the last seminar in the POLIS Seminar series 2014-15, held on 28th May. Professor Roger Mac Ginty, from the University of Manchester, was invited to talk about his on-going research on top-down bottom-up peacebuilding, focusing on the issues of epistemology.

Professor MacGinty: Localized Indicators in Peacebuilding

From where I come from (Pakistan), there is a joke that is often repeated at large gatherings:

“A foreign female journalist visited Afghanistan during the time when the Taliban were in power. She noticed that women always walked five steps behind men. A staunch feminist, she advocated her enlightened notions to all men she could reach out to. Tired of her meddlesome ways, the Taliban threw her out. When the Taliban were overthrown she visited Afghanistan once more. Now she noticed that men walked five paces behind their women. She was overjoyed by this revolutionary development. So she went back to her hotel to write an article about “The Incredible Development along Feminist Lines in the Afghani Society”. While still working on the piece, she asked the bartender, how this development had taken place in such a short time. He replied, “Landmines, madam.”

This view of skewed foreign perspectives is essentially a cultural appropriation of Mac Ginty’s main critique of popular epistemologies that are used to determine the useful indicators for development. In our efforts to find distinct trends and causal factors that are inhibiting a pre-conceived notion of development, it is argued we lose a true appreciation of a complex reality.

According to Mac Ginty, including localized indicators, specifically those related to security, could enlighten a course towards more substantive peacebuilding efforts. Specifically mentioned in the seminar were indicators such as urinating inside at night or the barking of dogs which stemmed from conversations held in the various African countries included in Mac Ginty’s field research. Both indicators were recognised as standards of personal security in the local area. Urinating inside as opposed to outside was used to show a substantial fear of vulnerability even in one’s own backyard and the barking dogs, the prevalence of neighbourhood prowlers. Everyday indicators, such as those mentioned, can be used to provide us with data that can bridge the gap between top-down and bottom-up peacebuilding, “talking past each other”. He argued that such localized indicators aid in “everyday peacebuilding” and can prove to be more inclusive rather than an artificial peace enforced by the North on the developing world.

In his 2013(b) article with Dr. Richmond he states that “local peacebuilding” is growing in popularity due to five reasons (pp. 774-76). Firstly, the peace imposed by the liberalists is in shambles and it has gaps which can be filled by bottom-up peacebuilding tactics. Secondly the “epistemologies and methodologies used to” (p.774) analyse peacebuilding processes are also being updated to cater for more localized forms of data. Thirdly, this new development complements other changes in the field of development which focus on local “participation” and “partnership” (p.775) in the peacebuilding process. Furthermore there is a rise in peacebuilding officials from the South who advocate a more tailor made approach to peace rather than the imported methods that were previously being used by the North. Lastly, there is also a rise in the “assertiveness of local actors” (p.776).

Thus, Mac Ginty in the Polis Seminar declared that to cater for such localized peacebuilding we need localized indicators to understand the root causes of the problem. Yet an effective point was raised at the seminar by Dr. Stuart McAnulla (Lecturer in British Politics and Political Science Methodology at POLIS) when he questioned how would one distinguish between a dog barking at a stranger just passing by the property and a potential security threat. Though the issue of interpretivism was acknowledged by Mac Ginty as something which can indeed affect generalisation, this particular question was also demonstrative of the salience of his point of view. The issue of localized human security is not a situation in which broad generalizations are necessarily helpful to community peacebuilding. Taking the case of barking dogs, one could say that dogs are found all over the world, dogs bark, dogs do not always bark at humans therefore, barking dogs are not sufficient indicators. Mac Ginty’s argument, however, takes local perceptions and interpretation into account. As he surmised, if you own a dog you’ll likely know what it’s barking at.

Nevertheless, there are still elements of the theory that need to be ironed out. Which local indicators would be more effective and of substantially more value than those regarded as top-down and how would the relevant information needed to identify such indicators be gathered? This again makes me wonder whether we could effectively use localised indicators such as women walking behind or in front of men. What if the women were just walking behind men because they were scared? Or how would we distinguish between a man who allows his wife to walk in front of him because he is a feminist or because there is a potential danger of landmines?

A gender-related indicator that Mac Ginty mentioned in the seminar was how one could find out gender equality in a society from the differences between the “going-out” patterns of women and men. Yet once again I question how we would distinguish between an introverted women and one that is not allowed to step out of the house after dark? The answer is quite clear: surely we could ask. However, if such surveys are done at a large-scale we might not have enough resources to collect the metadata. Furthermore how would we compare data that has been taken from a specialized set of indicators, tailor-made for a specific society, to data acquired from another society? For instance, ‘the dog's example’ given by Mac Ginty would be effective in a society where dogs are kept in large numbers as pets but what indicators would one use to compare this data with one where dogs are not so prevalent because they are considered bad religiously or culturally?

The beauty of Professor Mac Ginty's argument, however, lies in the fact that he emphasizes a move “towards complications without a sense of despair but working hard to understand it.” He compares a Pollock painting, in the seminar, to a painting with straight lines and clear buildings and declares that humans favour the clarity and prefer to see the world as such. Yet it is not. It is more like a Pollock painting, messy and entangled, but it only means we have to work harder to figure it out. Whether Professor Roger Mac Ginty’s localized indicators can help us better accomplish bottom-up peacebuilding tactics seems questionable; but it is indeed true that we need to work harder to create more tailor-made approaches to conflict resolution and peacebuilding, to achieve more effective and long-lasting results.

 

Bibliography

Richmond, O. and Mac Ginty, R. (2013) The Local Turn in Peacebuilding: a critical agenda for peace. Third World Quarterly. 34(5), pp. 763-783.

This blog is co-authored by Yumna M. Usmani and Mahrukh Adnan Shaukat, both second year students at POLIS. You can contact Yumna at @Ymusmani and Mahrukh at @mahrukh_shaukat.