New Publication by BIGSSS Postdoc Juan Masullo › view all

09.05.2018

"Civilian noncooperation as a source of legitimacy: innovative youth reactions in the face of local violence"


BIGSSS Methods Center postdoc Juan Masullo recently published a book chapter in a volume edited by two leading scholars in the field of peace and conflict studies, Landon E. Hancock and Christopher Mitchell. The volume, Local Peacebuilding and Legitimacy. Interactions between National and Local levels, explores the crucial role that legitimacy, at different levels of action, plays in determining the success/failure of peacebuilding efforts. Juan's chapter contributes to this important topic by exploring sources of legitimacy at the very local level that are forged during war and that turn critical for grassroots peacebuilding in the aftermath of war.

Download chapter "Civilian noncooperation as a source of legitimacy" through the Taylor & Francis Group homepage.

Abstract

This chapter presents a preliminary exploration into the social legacies of war. It builds on the intuition that the potential for communities to build peace is likely to be shaped by the choices they make during war. I explore the links between one of these choices – civilian noncooperation – and the post-conflict reconstruction work that residents advanced when violence subsided in the Colombian municipality of San Carlos. I show that civilian noncooperation forged a new generation of community leaders to which fellow residents, most of them participants in the campaign, granted the legitimacy and support to undertake grassroots peacebuilding.