ABSTRACT
This chapter advances “the spatial turn” in peace and conflict research and brings to the fore the purchase of employing space as an analytic vehicle to theorize peace and peacebuilding. It contributes to the growing transdisciplinary research which explores the making of peace geographies. Taking a spatial turn means acknowledging that peace is spatially constructed and that space is a product of agency. Thus, space and peace are co-constitutive, and peacebuilding agency aims to produce spaces of peace. To demonstrate the importance and impact of spatial approaches on peace research this chapter explores some of the novel understandings of peace informed by spatial approaches, such as everyday peace, mobile peace, urban peace, transscalar peace. Moreover, it makes visible the spatial practices of peacebuilding agency in space- and place-making processes that transform spaces of violent conflict and war. It concludes by mapping how transdisciplinary peace research in several subfields, such as memory studies, gender studies, and migration studies, have all contributed ideas and approaches to rethink peace and ask critical questions about where knowledge about peace and conflict is produced.
