In this chapter, I integrate the previous conversation about the intersection of psychology, social justice, restorative justice, and peace education with what we understand about social and cognitive growth as they come of age. I open with broad theoretical lenses that describe the role and interconnection of varied systems in informing development, the particular importance of school contexts, and the ways young people are active agents in making sense of these influences. I then review what moral development can offer, as a wealth of theory and research describes how young people think about what is fair and just, build social and emotional skills, and think about who they are themselves. I link moral development with restorative justice before doing the same for peace education. Each area also brings identity development and meaning making into the conversation, with which I intend to lay the groundwork for the theoretical framework of conceptualized peace. In the final section, I summarize key questions that remain, such as balancing individual agency and contextual influence or the complexity of human development, to help motivate where we are going in the next chapter.

Part II of the book opens with the first empirical chapter describing my dissertation research in Colombia. In the mid-2010s, I conducted a multiyear study of how young people in the country were thinking about peace and connecting it to their lives and identities. This chapter provides a contextualization – a key element of conceptualized peace – of the discourses and social representations related to peace as the Colombian government sought to end decades of armed conflict and build toward a broader harmonious society. The chapter summarizes the methods that involved integrating three datasets to provide multiple viewpoints and understand the context within which these participants were embedded. The young Colombians conveyed nuanced ideas about peace and themselves that related to these social representations, but also showed cognitive flexibility and local contextual influence as they made sense for themselves. I end the chapter by showing how conceptualized peace helps interpret the findings and adds overall value to the study and its implications.

I end the first section of the book with the main contribution: conceptualized peace. This theoretical framework is rooted in social and developmental psychology, and so I begin defining it by reviewing some key ideas within these fields. Specifically, I detail the importance of meaning making and how it has been connected to violence and peace, as well as ecological approaches to these topics. I then argue that there is still a need to go further and define a structure for understanding how young people’s cognition is linked to their identity-based outcomes. To articulate what conceptualized peace entails, I then introduce SRT and PVEST as two ideas within the fields of social and developmental psychology on which my theoretical framework builds. My definition of conceptualized peace also incorporates an argument for its value, which then leads into separate sections addressing its particular utility for peace education and restorative justice.

The aftermath of civil wars is a fraught experience that does not end once a peaceful resolution is established. The study of civil war termination is vital to shaping our understanding of what factors dictate prospects for long-term peace once armed conflicts conclude. In particular, the types of conflict termination – from peace agreements to ceasefires and outright victories – have a strong bearing upon whether sustainable peace will be established, or violence will recur. Chapter 9 explores the relationship between the nature of civil war termination and the prospects for durable peace. It considers the factors and data provided by, for example, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program on which termination processes succeed and why long-term peace might be evasive for some conflicts. These approaches offer a ripe area of contemporary research and debate when seeking to resolve ongoing conflicts.

When reflecting on this book’s insights, a key question is highlighted: What is the prospect for effectively preventing and resolving armed intrastate conflicts globally? The threat of such conflict erupting remains a constant risk for policy-makers and researchers to investigate, and to prepare for constructive intervention. As discussed throughout this text, the challenges inherent to establishing effective peacekeeping policies and resolving intrastate conflict remain. Furthermore, this chapter addresses how areas of non-violent conflict, but high tension, threaten to escalate in the future. Is it possible to successfully intervene and to deescalate future intrastate violence? From the timing of intervention to international cooperation, the debates and critical lessons that we conclude with here will encourage thought-provoking discussions on formulating effective policies to prevent and end intrastate violence.

In Chapter 10, we advance concrete ideas that peace and social activists are invited to adopt when interested in using personal narratives of genocide and/or intractable war in intergroup processes of sustainable peacebuilding and reconciliation. Our suggestions draw on conceptualizations discussed in the book, as well as recommendations derived from previous on-the-ground experiences in such contexts. Our proposals focus on the following four arenas: (1) intergroup methods for moving from narratives of distancing to narratives that encourage peacebuilding; (2) ways to deal with social forgetting and “dangerous memories” of genocide and intractable war in peacebuilding efforts; (3) how to deal with fake news, denial of atrocities, and distancing narratives in reconciliation endeavors; and (4) concrete suggestions for pursuing peace with personal narratives of genocide and war when the macro-social level is sabotaging peace efforts.

In Chapter 5, we propose our categorization of the four main kinds of personal narratives of genocide and intractable war – Distancing, Victimhood, Ambivalence/Paradoxes, and Embracing the Other while Remaining in One’s Pain – that joins conceptualizations and understandings connected to the development and dynamics of group identity, intergenerational trauma and types of coping, and genuine dialogue between former and present-day “enemies.” We combine these conceptualizations into a theoretical model that proposes the conditions that can either encourage sustainable reconciliation and positive peacebuilding or, unfortunately, obstruct peace endeavors, in contexts of genocide and/or intractable war. The theoretical model focuses on conditions that exist on two main levels: the personal and intergroup level, and the macro-social level.

Chapter 9 concludes the book by highlighting implications that are relevant for academic researchers as well as policymakers. The book’s findings suggest at least three areas for future research. First, a more comprehensive analysis of the sources of perceptions of bias in conflict settings would productively inform scholarship and practice. Second, future work should investigate the conditions under which communal peace aggregates up to the national level. Third, scholars should examine whether governments and their partners succeed in leveraging gains from localized peace enforcement into states with robust institutions. The book also has two important implications for the practice of peacekeeping. First, given the importance of perceptions, policymakers must ensure that peacekeepers remain impartial. International actors perceived by local populations as relatively impartial are much more effective at promoting intergroup cooperation and facilitating the peaceful resolution of communal disputes. Second, given that communal peace in the analysis relies so heavily on the presence of UN peacekeepers, the international community must consider how to design peaceful transitions out of PKOs.

This introductory chapter explains the book’s motivating puzzles and outlines its theoretical and empirical strategies. The book focuses on local-level peacekeeping operations designed explicitly to prevent communal violence. It argues that deploying UN peacekeepers to fragile settings fundamentally changes the structural incentives facing communities in conflict. Scholars typically pinpoint the UN’s success at the negotiating table: peacekeepers help armed group leaders make lasting agreements that stabilize conflict settings from the top down. Yet such negotiations seem unable to prevent communal violence in places as diverse as South Sudan in East Africa, Mali in West Africa, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Central Africa. This book shifts the analytical lens to the local level to investigate the conditions under which peacekeepers successfully build peace from the bottom up. The book’s main argument is that UN peacekeepers succeed when local populations perceive them to be relatively impartial enforcers who are unconnected to the country of deployment, the conflict, and the parties to the dispute. Impartial peacekeepers convince all parties that they will punish those who escalate communal disputes regardless of their identity, which increases communities’ willingness to cooperate without the fear of violence.

Chapter 8 draws together the major themes of the analysis and prompts further thinking on decolonial feminist modes of conflict resolution. This chapter concludes that the UN’s attempt to stay relevant through developing mediation expertise is counterproductive, and contends that it should instead adopt a solidaristic approach that foregrounds politics and aims to produce ‘knowledge encounters’ between different worlds. The bulk of the chapter discusses some principles for decolonial feminist approaches to mediation, which include encounters across different ontologies of peace, decolonising expertise, solidarity, and establishing relations of care and accountability.

The conclusion of the book summarizes its main arguments and findings and considers their implications for research on forced migration, conflict, and political violence. Beyond strategic displacement, the book illuminates the politics of civilian movements in wartime, which can shape the perceptions of civilians as well as combatants during and after war. To demonstrate this, the chapter provides evidence of a survey experiment from Iraq that shows how displacement decisions during the ISIS conflict influence people's willingness to accept and live alongside others after war. The chapter also discusses the policy implications of the analysis in five areas: displacement early warning, justice and accountability, humanitarian aid, post-conflict peacebuilding, and refugee resettlement and asylum. It also discusses some of the limitations of the analysis in the book and pathways for future research.

This chapter considers five practices, or constellations of practices, that emerge from imitating Jesus: (1) care for the poor and needy, including the contested practice of seeing Christ in the poor; (2) sacramental practices of the Lord’s Supper and baptism; (3) prayer, including lament; (4) forgiveness, reconciliation, and peacemaking; and (5) self-giving or kenōsis. Each practice flows in its own way from the twin imperatives to love God and the neighbor.