Dissertation Defense - Seth Cohen: Partnering for Peace: Practitioner Stories of International North-South Peacebuilding Partnerships

Dissertation Defense: 

Partnering for Peace: Practitioner Stories of International North-South Peacebuilding Partnerships

Thursday, October 17, 2013
10:00am-12:00pm
Metropolitan Building 5183 

Efforts to resolve protracted social conflicts, rebuild war-torn countries, or prevent future violence often require partnerships between local experts who are from those conflict settings and skilled professionals who are “outsiders.” Learning how those involved in peacebuilding activities partner with others, and what they do together, therefore matters greatly for understanding what works and what is problematic about insider-outsider joint collaborations. As a result, this research elicited and analyzed narratives of peacebuilding partnerships from highly experienced practitioners who work as outsiders and insiders in a variety of conflict settings.

Peacebuilding interventions should be carefully planned and implemented in any conflict setting,, but they arguably require extra sensitivity and awareness when outsider-Northerners (North America & Western Europe) partner with insider-locals in the global South. Such collaborations motivated specific inquiries into how these North-South partnerships develop and unfold from the perspective of both Northern and Southern based “peacebuilders.” The results of this study present an interpretive analysis of the stages of North-South partnerships and, more importantly, reveal how seasoned practitioners make sense of their goals, actions, and interactions in partnership with others as they address “critical moments” that arise from such dynamics as identity, culture, and power in their interpersonal and organizational relationships. An overarching goal of this dissertation is to improve praxis in the fields of conflict resolution and peacebuilding.