"Train up peers, use their experience, whatever your life experience is": Community Mobilization, Peacebuilding, and the Local Turn"

Abstract

Twelve community mobilization (CM) programs exist throughout Manitoba. CM is a process whereby stakeholders in a community come together to address social issues associated with health and safety, crime prevention, and community development. Based on interviews and document reviews of one CM initiative in the rural community of Winkler, Manitoba and informed by the concept of positive peace (Galtung, 1996) and the "local turn" (Mac Ginty, 2013; Mac Ginty & Richmond, 2013), we describe the Winkler model of CM and examine the presence of peacebuilding indicators. Our analysis shows that CM may hold the potential to enact bottomup approaches to peacebuilding. We conclude by discussing the possibility of mobilizing communities as a way to build peace by directly addressing causes of crime and attending to problems of liberal equality, standardized governmental control, and the dominance of powerful institutions found in other crime-prevention practices. This paper fills a gap in the literature by seeking to understand the implications of the local turn in community conflict and systemic violence faced by local communities.