ABSTRACT
The conceptual shift from the promotion of presumably universal norms or externally prescribed reform to prioritizing the subjective, culturally constructed understandings and claims of local actors requires an a priori recognition of local contexts in their own right. This is a particular strength of the anthropological discipline. The social anthropological focus on really existing divergences, convergences and often fluid conflations between actors and concepts can therefore help link empirically grounded governance research with the more theoretical discourses on global norm diffusion.62 After all, the centrality which subjective agency enjoys in the human security paradigm implies the freedom of ‘the others’ to define their own vernacular meanings and forms of security and good governance.63 The search for such forms will require social spaces that make deliberations and consensus building among the affected groups possible and it will take much time. Activities that support the creation of such spaces and their use can help overcome the super-imposition type of external interventions that have in many cases not brought along sustainable betterment, but a proliferation of dysfunctional governance.
