A car journey uninterrupted by a police checkpoint. The ability to visit a shopping centre in an area that you previously avoided. Less sectarian graffiti in the town centre. Catholics and Protestants joining more regularly in joint cultural activities. Tescos and Sainburys opening stores. These are everyday indicators of change in Northern Ireland after the ceasefires of the mid-1990s. Every individual, family and community has their own indicators of change that are often grounded in their everyday reality of getting the kids to schools, travelling to work, doing the weekly shopping. These indicators are often highly localised and rely on anecdotal observations that may mean a lot to a particular individual or family but may not mean a lot to others. They will depend on what was ‘normal’ before and how this has changed.
While these everyday indicators of change may seem obvious to people on the ground, they are often overlooked by governments, international organisations, donors, and academics. In other words, there is often a gulf between how people on-the-ground and people in positions of power see peace and change. This article aims to address this gulf and to argue that observations dismissed as ‘anecdotal’, ‘too local’ or ‘journalistic’ are incredibly valid and contain important evidence of how a society is changing (for better or worse).
The paper finds that:
- Governments, international organisations and academics have developed very sophisticated tools to measure peace and conflict. For a variety of reasons, these tools tend to be top-down. That is, decisions about what is to be measured and how it is to be measured are usually made by governmental or policy elites who many have limited connection with the communities experiencing the conflict or the transition to peace. These elites are often disdainful of locally rooted observations and indicators that are embedded in daily life.
- The experience suggests the need to think of epistemologies and methodologies that can be holistic and inclusive. It is too much to expect very radical change from many of the organisations that adopt traditional approaches to peace and conflict indicators. There are substantial vested interests in perpetuating essentially conservative and top-down approaches to indicators, and much monitoring and evaluation. However, one possible way forward would be to think of ways in which top-down and bottom-up indicators could be combined. Top-down indicators do have advantages, and many international and state-based actors are wedded to this type of indicator.
- But are there ways in which these actors could take more locally-derived data more seriously? This would enable existing data platforms to benefit from more localised and nuanced information. One way of approaching this would be to envisage supplementary reports to existing top-down indicators. These supplementary reports would be based on bottom-up information, and would have their research design influenced by the communities under study. A side-by-side examination of top-down and bottom-up approaches to research would help ground the top-down research and steer local perceptions towards policy relevance.
- Despite the vested interests in current approaches to measuring peace, there is a growing recognition in the INGO world, and among some international organisations and governments, that the current suite of peace and conflict indicators is deficient. A number of organisations are investigating changes to peace and conflict indicators. The G7+ countries, for example, published a draft list of peacebuilding and statebuilding indicators in late 2012. The draft indicators do show some evidence of moving beyond traditional indicators, and it is interesting that the initiative is coming from countries that have been in receipt of international peace-support assistance. It is unclear, at the time of writing, how many of the draft indicators will make their way into policy.
- The key point is that issues of ‘positionality’ are becoming more prominent in research. Positionality refers to an awareness among researchers of their own biases and stances, and how this influences research outcomes. This should make for better research.