While often framed as a pathway to justice and inclusion, critical scholarship suggests that peacebuilding can reproduce colonial logics of hierarchy, external authority, and epistemic domination. This presentation aims to briefly expand the conversation surrounding modern peacebuilding, emphasizing its critiques as a secondary method of colonial actions and addressing the concept of redefinition in peacebuilding and larger society. By bringing decolonial critiques of peace into dialogue with research on authoritarian governance and digital power, it examines how international peacebuilding efforts may unintentionally consolidate elite control, legitimize illiberal institutions, and deploy digital tools that enable surveillance and data extraction rather than local agency. Moving beyond critique, the session asks what forms of peacemaking are possible when communities assert plural knowledge, democratic accountability, and digital sovereignty. In doing so, it speaks directly to the challenge of building just and sustainable peace in today’s fragmented world.
Speakers:
- Sadie Lockhart, GMU Graduate Student
- Jamie Sackett, GMU Graduate Student
