Preserving the everyday: Pre-political agency in peacebuilding theory
| Date | 01 September 2020 |
| Published date | 01 September 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0010836720904390 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0010836720904390
Cooperation and Conflict
2020, Vol. 55(3) 310 –325
© The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0010836720904390
journals.sagepub.com/home/cac
Preserving the everyday:
Pre-political agency in
peacebuilding theory
Gearoid Millar
Abstract
Quite a lot of recent peacebuilding scholarship has deployed the concept of ‘the everyday’. In
an extension of the local turn’s emphasis on agency and resistance, much of this scholarship
interprets the everyday as inherently a site of politics. It does so either by interpreting every
act (no matter how motivated) as an agentic political act, or by equating agentic political acts
(at the local level) with the quotidian activities which define the everyday. This article argues,
however, that representing the everyday in this way interprets both forms of activity in ways
which have critical implications for peacebuilding theory, because both moves inadvertently strip
everyday acts of the emergent creativity and innovation inherent to ‘everyday-ness’. Alternative
understandings of and engagement with different forms of agency would encourage peace
scholars to acknowledge the overtly political nature of peace projects and so to reserve ‘the
everyday’ label for pre-political forms of action which may contribute to peace, but in a more
unintentional, organic or emergent fashion. This is not to argue that everyday acts are a-political
or non-political, but only that they do not have political motivations and are not themselves
products of conscious will to power, or even to peace itself.
Keywords
Agency, emergence, the everyday, local turn, peacebuilding, pre-political, resistance
Introduction
‘The everyday’ is referenced quite regularly in recent peacebuilding literature. While it
means quite distinct things to different scholars (as will be discussed below), the concept
has largely been deployed in an extension of the ‘local turn’ literature, which has grown
in response to the failures of the ‘liberal peace’ project. As the liberal peace has failed in
its goal to build peace, scholars have increasingly reversed the traditional ‘top-down’
perspective to focus instead on the potential of ‘bottom-up’ peacebuilding efforts, which
Corresponding author:
Gearoid Millar, Department of Sociology, Institute for Conflict, Transition, and Peace Research, School of
Social Science, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB24 3FX, UK.
Email: g.millar@abdn.ac.uk
904390CAC0010.1177/0010836720904390Cooperation and ConflictMillar
research-article2020
Article
Millar 311
have come more and more to be tagged with the ‘everyday’ label. This refocusing has
increased attention on the informal activity of groups outside institutionalized politics. In
this tradition the everyday is seen as a space of local pro-peace activity distinct from
elite-driven top-down politics which, for good or ill, is often considered disinterested in
local processes (at best). This is the lynchpin, for example, of Richmond’s (2016) recent
theory regarding ‘Peace Formation’, but it is integral also to the contemporary debates
emerging on the heels of the local turn regarding local agency, empowerment, inclusion
and resistance.
The problem with this approach to the everyday, however, is that it has the potential
to appropriate the concept for tasks for which it is not best suited within peacebuilding.
Indeed, this can often be seen in uses of the concept that imply the ‘everyday-ness’ of
what this article will argue are not best viewed as ‘everyday’ events. Such uses have a
tendency either to apply the ‘everyday’ label to politically motivated activities at the
local level, or to interpret actions at the local level (no matter how motivated) as political.
Both moves reflect what Brewer et al. (2018: 211) described as ‘the disciplinary closure
through which the concept of everyday life is understood’ within international relations
(IR), in that they have a tendency to deploy the everyday via a political lens; shorn of its
‘everyday-ness’, which I define here as the pre-political character of emergent practice
(this will be revisited below).
Before proceeding further, I want to make it very clear that the intent here is not to
argue that there is one correct definition of ‘the everyday’, or that X number of scholars
are simply getting it wrong. On the contrary, just as has been true of other concepts that
have been imported into peace studies from various other disciplines (hybridity, friction,
complexity, etc.), the notion of ‘the everyday’ should rightly be debated within our field
in order for peacebuilding scholars to learn to use it and deploy it to the best possible
ends (theoretically, methodologically, pedagogically and practically). My argument here,
however, is that the concept of the everyday as it has been developed in disciplines out-
side IR provide it with substantially more value for peace theory than is provided by the
tendency within IR to see everything through a political lens. As I will argue, this ten-
dency to see everything as political inadvertently strips away the very everyday-ness that
gives the concept so much of its value for the study of peace and peacebuilding. This
everyday-ness is about the mundane, embodied, emergent character of everyday prac-
tice; the fluid, organic and creative tactics individuals deploy to get along within com-
plex socio-cultural milieux.
Echoing an older argument by Scott (1985: 293–294), it is important to preserve this
everyday-ness specifically because the forms of agency and empowerment made visible,
and even conceivable, through the everyday when conceived in this way are more dis-
tinct and potentially more revolutionary than those made visible when we see the every-
day largely as politics played out in informal venues or on a micro scale. This article,
therefore, takes a more sociological or anthropological approach to ‘the everyday’ which
allows for the recognition of more diverse forms of response to complex assemblages of
stimuli, and which may sometimes even be unconscious (Millar, 2014). While recogniz-
ing that such responses may have political effects – that is, may influence the distribution
of power and authority – and should not, therefore, be considered a-political, this
approach also does not assume that there will be any specific political impacts or that
To continue reading
Request your trial