ABSTRACT
This book contributes to the spatial turn in peace research by investigating where and how peace comes about. Our analysis of space and place as vehicles through which transitions from war to peace can be explored has revealed how agency can be captured spatially. We have investigated sites in transformation in post-conflict environments as a way of reading spatial politics and expressions of agency. That way, sites and the transformation that takes place at and around them act as catalysts for both the building of peace as well as the continuation of conflict in a grounded, everyday context of peace and conflict. At the same time, we are cautious of romanticising spatial agency as an act of resistance or leading to progress. We can suggest that agency and structure are constituted by spatial practices. A spatial lens of analysis therefore allows for a nuanced understanding of the interplay of structures of war and peace, as well as the role of individual and collective actors either to engrain them, or to put them openly into question, as is often the case in contexts of transition. The combination of dynamics of space and time can provide a ‘geo-story’ or ‘histo-graphy’ as a way of understanding transition (Galtung, 2017: xii). The stories around space and place provide a nuanced understanding of their embeddedness in a geo-political and socio-economic context. This allows for a reconfiguration of space in time and opens up options for thinking about peacebuilding in new, multidimensional ways.
