New Approaches To Conflict Analysis: Everyday Resistance, Peacebuilding And State-Making

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This study explores the liberal peace and peacebuilding policies through a theoretical and empirical examination of resistance within these contexts. It situates resistance in the experiences of war, peacebuilding, and state-making, investigating discourses, violence, and everyday survival acts that challenge or mitigate these experiences. The focus is on highlighting the contested nature of peacebuilding processes and examining the practices that constitute, challenge, and subvert them. Understanding these dynamics is crucial to grasp the resistance faced by peacebuilding initiatives and the discrepancies between their stated goals and actual practices. The analysis centers on 'Africa's World War' in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the subsequent peacebuilding efforts. The war's outbreak and ongoing conflict, despite a significant UN peacekeeping operation, cannot be fully understood without considering how rural and urban populations have resisted the political and economic order imposed by war and its aftermath. Various forms of resistance provide valuable insights applicable to other contexts and serve as a foundation for theorizing resistance in peacebuilding. Drawing from extensive fieldwork in both rural and urban settings, this work contributes to the understanding of the complex conflict in the DRC from historical and regional perspectives. It will appeal to students and lecturers in International Relat