Description
Existing scholarship on victor’s peace and illiberal peacebuilding follow macro level analysis around state policies and practises, and therefore offer a singular narrative of peace. Everyday peacebuilding troubles this singular narrative and displaces peace, however, the analysis it offers is micro level and is focused on individual experiences. Consequently, there remains a critical gap in understanding variations of peace that arise from the interplay between individual experiences and overarching political processes at the regional level, and how these understandings are gendered. In order to build peace nationwide, we need methods through which we can grasp and make visible these varied manifestations of peace. Based on a study in post-military victory Sri Lanka, we show how a methodology based on objects and mapping used in focus group interviews could effectively tap into hidden personal stories and enable eliciting distinct ways in which women and men conceptualise and represent regional narratives of peace. In doing so, the paper problematises singular narratives of peace associated with state-centric peace processes and calls for a nuanced approach that is contoured to specific regional histories and gendered cultural and political conditions across the country.
