Emancipatory Peace

The quest for emancipation remains an aspirational project in critical peace and conflict studies. Recently, however, new proposals for emancipatory peace have emerged in conflict-affected societies. This chapter gives an overview of different visions of emancipatory peace and examines their key features. Whereas, for the proponents of liberal peace, local subjects need to be freed from the local practices, identities, habits, and structures that have caused violent conflict in the first place, critical scholars focus their emancipatory project on the importance of not only tackling the root causes of conflict but also unmaking the negative legacies of liberal peacebuilding’s failed attempts to resolve the tier-one suppressive structures. The first part of the chapter briefly outlines the significance of emancipation for different strands of critical theory. The tensions between deconstructive and reconstructive modes of critique will be examined to shed light on the extent to which critical theory can contribute to the development of emancipatory knowledge for social and political change. The discussion then surveys the early critiques of liberal peacebuilding and outlines some of the emerging visions of what emancipatory peace would look like in conflict-affected societies. Finally, the chapter traces some of the critiques of and responses to the visions of an emancipatory peace, and it concludes by exploring the limits of existing work in critical peace and conflict studies and exploring ideas for a future direction.