| Summary/Abstract |
This essay revisits Johan Galtung's early articulation of the concept of “positive peace” in order to re-surface its fundamental radicalism, together with some of its inherent tensions, paradoxes, and politics. It then explores the linkages and contested relationship between the concept of positive peace and the prevailing peacebuilding paradigm of our day: liberal peacebuilding. I argue that our understanding of debates about both positive peace and liberal peacebuilding can be clarified when viewed through the lens of contested liberalisms and conflicting liberal values. Such debates often appear to reflect more of a political and ideological debate within the larger liberal tradition itself and between competing liberal values than some kind of choice between liberal, illiberal, or “postliberal” peacebuilding. Advancing peace theory and praxis at this stage would benefit from an increasing willingness to more openly confront some of these choices and a greater degree of transparency about our liberal commitments, including in the hard, “real world” cases where tensions seem irreconcilable.
|