ABSTRACT
This chapter explores different theoretical approaches and cases that might inform people as to how civil society can respond to conflicts. The ‘local turn in peacebuilding’ calls on people to question our own past assumptions, particularly about liberal peacebuilding and the role of international actors. Democratization theorists, on the other hand, have regarded civil society as a precondition of democracy. Stephenson describes social conflict as disagreements over values, to the extent that groups are prevented from even recognizing “the other”. Community-based leaders are well placed to shape the emergence of such new social imaginaries necessary for conflict transformation. New visions of the future are socially constructed. Non-state, civil society actors are better placed to identify problems in society and the underlying causes of conflict. During the 1990s in Algeria, an estimated 200,000 people were killed in the Islamist insurgency known as the Black Decade, following cancelled elections in 1992.
