Elsevier

Political Geography

Volume 31, Issue 1, January 2012, Pages 34-43
Political Geography

Localising peace: The young men of Bougainville’s ‘Crisis generation’

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2011.09.003Get rights and content

Abstract

Postconflict societies are often plagued by violence long after formal declarations of peace. There is a need to understand why peace often remains elusive. This article develops a theory of participation in peace and violence in postconflict societies, which it understands as being rooted in interactions between local structures and agency. Evidence to inform this theory comes from a study of young men in postconflict Bougainville, Papua New Guinea. We find that young men seek pathways to achieve positively valued and contextually relevant goals. However, difficulties with trauma, education and work, achieving social standing, and escaping from cultures of violence limit the capacity of young men to participate peacefully in society. Disenfranchised and marginalised, some young men may turn to acts and displays of violence. We argue that peace occurs when individuals choose to make and sustain it, and so, if the end of conflict does not bring with it changes in the structures which constrain the capacity of individuals to choose peaceful pathways, the risk of violence remains.

Highlights

► We construct theory of participation in peace and violence. ► We provide evidence to inform this theory from Bougainville, PNG. ► Peace arises when people can choose non-violent pathways to achieve valued goals. ► If structures constrain peaceful choices the risk of violence may persist.

Introduction

After two decades of UN sanctioned peace operations, localised violent civil conflicts persist (Elbadawi & Sambanis, 2002). According to some, these local conflicts persevere, on average, over ten times longer than international wars (Collier, Hoeffler, & Rohner, 2007). They endure in so-called ‘postconflict’ societies, where high levels of violence often continue even after formal declarations of peace, states are weak, and development efforts rarely succeed (Collier et al., 2003, Doyle and Sambanis, 2000). The progress of peace and development in these societies is an important concern for the international community, as conservative figures suggest more than a quarter of postconflict societies relapse into conflict within a decade (Suhrke & Samset, 2007). Intractable forms of violence other than war also commonly persist at heightened levels in the aftermath of conflict (Moodie, 2010).

The causes of postconflict violence are much debated (see Collier et al., 2003). Some fault the liberal peacebuilding model almost universally implemented in postconflict settings (Pugh, 2005, Richmond and Franks, 2008). Others identify issues around small arms control and the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration of former combatants (Ozerdem, 2009), or demographic phenomena - especially youthful populations - that arguably predispose a state to instability (Cincotta, Engelman, & Anastasion, 2003). Recently, Collier and others (2008) find that stability appears to be related to the value of UN peacekeeping expenditures and progress in economic recovery. Notably, through all these possible causes there remains a problem of knowing what happens on the ground, of moving from general structural causes to understanding the decisions people make and the particular local contexts in which they are made. Thus, there is a need for more ‘localised’ examinations of postconflict societies.

In this article we propose a theory of participation in peace and violence. We then seek evidence to inform this theory through a study of the interactions between localised structures and the perceptions and actions of young men in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea. We find that ongoing violence in Bougainville is strongly related to the structuring of leadership, education and employment, and youth cultures in that these structures may constrain the capacity of individuals to choose peaceful pathways through which to achieve positively valued goals. We therefore argue that if the end of large-scale violent conflict does not induce changes in the structures which constrain the capacity of individuals to choose peaceful pathways, then the risk of persistent violence remains.

This article is divided into five key sections. First, is a note on methodology. Second, a theory of participation in postconflict peace and violence is proposed. This theory draws attention to the effects of violent conflict on the interactions between localised structures and individual agency. Third, we provide the background necessary to understand violent conflict in Bougainville and the young men of Bougainville’s ‘Crisis generation’. Fourth, we examine three social structures influential in shaping the choices available to young men and the implications of these choices for peace. These sections progressively reveal how locally specific structural environments interact with the agency of youth to construct and maintain choices for peace or violence. Finally, the article concludes by discussing the implications of this analysis for the theory and practice of building peace in postconflict societies.

Section snippets

Method

Data informing this article were collected during 6 weeks of fieldwork in the island of Bougainville throughout June and July, 2010. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 60 young men and 25 open-ended interviews with key informants, including: community leaders in the churches, government, non-government, and educational organisations. An extensive review of secondary and grey sources was also conducted. Field research was undertaken by the first author who, as a cultural ‘outsider’,

A theory of youth participation in postconflict peace and violence

Geographical scholarship has a history of employing localising analysis to question and interrogate large-scale social phenomenon. Localising here means studying the interplays and exchanges between local and ‘global’ institutions and accepting that the boundaries used to categorise social groups, scales, and processes are porous (Escobar, 2001). The specific arrangement of social structures in a given locality, the reading of which translates ‘spaces’ into ‘places’, is therefore not fixed or

The making of Bougainville’s ‘Crisis generation’

Bougainville is an Island and the easternmost province of Papua New Guinea marked by a high degree of ethno-linguistic diversity and a complex colonial history (Regan & Griffin, 2005). Over 20 distinct language groups are spread across the island, which although diverse, were often traditionally governed by non-hereditary (‘Big-Man’) patrimonial systems of chieftainship and hereditary matrilineal systems of land ownership. Although frequent, violence when it occurred was highly ritualised, with

Three important structures and four kinds of choices

The Crisis most strongly affected three social structures that influence the social status of young men, the opportunities available to them, and their ability to feel empowered. First, it changed the nature of community leadership, which has become more variable across the island dependent upon localised experiences of Crisis era violence. Second, it changed the opportunities for youth to access education and employment, made more frustrating by high expectations of better services and more

Conclusion

This article proposed and examined, through an analysis of young men in postconflict Bougainville, a theory of youth participation in peace that can help to localise peace, understand the persistence of violence, and examine the position of youth in postconflict societies. We argued, and demonstrated with evidence from Bougainville, that peace (or violence) arises from the exercise of individual agency within complex structural environments. Thus, understanding peace involves understanding the

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