Everyday Peace

<strong>An exploration of how so-called ordinary people can disrupt violent conflict and forge peace.</strong> <p/>In this pathbreaking book Roger Mac Ginty explores everyday peace-or how individuals and small groups can eke out spaces of tolerance and conciliation in conflict-ridden societies. Drawing on original material from the Everyday Peace Indicators project he blends theory and concept-building together with contemporary and comparative examples. Unusual for the disciplines of peace and conflict studies as well as international relations <em> Everyday Peace</em> also utilizes personal diaries and memoirs from World Wars One and Two. The book unpacks the core components of everyday peace and argues that it is constructed from a mix of sociality reciprocity and solidarity. This exploration of bottom-up and community-level approaches to peace challenges the usual concentration on top-down approaches to peace advanced by governments and international organizations. Indeed the book goes to the lowest level of social organization - individuals families and small groups of friends and colleagues -<br>and looks at everyday interaction in workplaces the stairwells of apartment buildings and the queue for public transport. <p/>Mac Ginty sees peace and conflict as being embodied lived and experienced - and constructs a multi-layered definition of peace. Importantly he applies his evidentiary base of micro-acts that constitute everyday peace to societies that have emerged out of conflict and have not experienced recidivism on a large scale. Unlike most who focus on top-down processes he demonstrates that what matters is the interaction between top-down and bottom-up peace and how in an ideal scenario they can have a symbiotic relationship. By focusing on how the small-scale can have big and lasting effects <em>Everyday Peace</em> will reshape our understanding of how peace comes about.<br>