Peace Through Violence and Violence Through Peace: Peacebuilding Practices and a Conflictual Peace in Lebanon

Abstract

The literature on peace has been filled with notions of peacebuilding in crisis or creating more problems than it solves. However, as peacebuilding is critiqued for not fulfilling its promises, the nuances of peace and violence present in peacebuilding practices are often left ignored. Arguing that peace is a continuum of peace and violence seen by understanding peace as embodied, spatial, and political, the article analyses peacebuilding practices creating a conflictual Lebanese peace. The article looks closer at three such practices: service provision, local interactions, and Lebanese local governance. Through empirical material, the article illustrates how service provision, local interactions and local governance are performed through power relations sustaining a continuum of peace and violence. As such, the article argues that rather than a continuum between peace and violence, Lebanese peacebuilding is a simultaneous process of peace and violence. This questions the assumed opposition between violence and peace and claims that by emphasising peace as embodied, situated, and political we can discern different peace(s) more peaceful for some than others.