This chapter summarizes contributions from peacebuilding literature that have incorporated geographic notions as well as critical geography scholarship engaging with peacebuilding. Both recognize the importance of space as a key dimension in peacebuilding, in which practices and discourses shape differing notions of peace. Drawing on this literature, it is argued in this book that international actors promote peacebuilding agendas in targeted spaces of intervention. To grasp this process, the notion of spatial framing is proposed, as international actors imagine those spaces and project values and priorities through which transformation of violent dynamics occur. Spatial framing recognizes the role of socially constructed spaces in shaping peacebuilding practices. The chapter offers relevant definitions of different geographic and administrative spaces that are discussed by international actors. Then, how spatial framing was carried out through online subsidies is explained, alongside some general observations about the sample.

In line with works on peacebuilding and space, this book recognizes the key role of socially constructed spaces to shape peacebuilding practices. At the same time, it takes inspiration from political geography literature portraying peace as interpreted in different ways by different actors in different spaces, scales and times (Megoran et al, 2014). Derived from these insights, the book asks how relevant peacebuilding places and scales of action – from the local to the national – are promoted discursively by international actors involved in peacebuilding efforts through the notion of spatial frames.

Peace studies and space

The spatial focus of peacebuilding studies was inspired by writings in philosophy and geography in the 1990s that proposed a notion of space that went beyond political action. Accordingly, scholars in conflict and peacebuilding started to question how the interaction of actors and ideas at different scales from the local to the global influenced conflict and peacebuilding, how agents and spaces in places of conflict and peace constituted each other, and how the material and symbolical nature of spaces related to power dynamics (Brigg and George, 2020).

These ideas formed part of the local turn in peace studies in the 2000s, led by authors such as Volker Boege, Michael Brown, Thania Paffenholz, Roland Paris, David Chandler, Beatrice Pouligny, Susanna Campbell, Roger Mac Ginty and Oliver Richmond. The local turn critically assessed top-down peacebuilding interventions and called for the understanding of hybrid peacebuilding dynamics between global and local scales of agency, and local meanings and ownership of peace.