The research project "Local Peace in Central Eurasia" led by Dr Anna Kreikemeyer has been successfully completed. (c) private

Embracing the Diversity of Peacebuilding

Conclusion of the research project on traditional peacemaking in Central Eurasia

In many societies, ordinary people, informal groups and local associations contribute to peacemaking from the grassroots up. They do so in everyday conflicts such as neighbourhood disputes over resources, but also in the face of local violent clashes. The Local Peace in Central Eurasia profile project, funded by the German Foundation for Peace Research, therefore sought to understand how, why and to what extent people in traditional contexts in this region contribute to peacemaking.

Women from local non-governmental organizations in Osh, Kyrgyzstan, attending a presentation on the IFSH research project ‘Studying Peacemaking in Customary Contexts in Central Eurasia’. (c) private

Based on the concept and methodology of Ethnographic Peace Research, an interdisciplinary and interregional team investigated peacemaking from below between 2023 and 2025. Dr Mariam Darchiashvili, a social anthropologist from Georgia, and Dr Arzuu Sheranova, a political scientist from Kyrgyzstan, carried out fieldwork and held regular online meetings with Dr Anna Kreikemeyer, a peace researcher at the IFSH. An international and interdisciplinary advisory board provided guidance to the team. Against the backdrop of widespread socio-economic conflicts, the team carried out various individual studies. These included, for example, research in villages in the Georgian region of Dusheti, in the Uzbek municipality of Zhibek-Zholu and in the ethnically mixed city of Osh in Kyrgyzstan, as well as in the predominantly rural Kyrgyz region of Kara-Suu. The research team developed a framework for societal peacemaking in traditional contexts and investigated women’s peacemaking practices and strategies within such patriarchal and hierarchical social orders.

Panel of the project team and colleagues at the European International Studies Association (EISA) 2025 in Bologna.
F.l.t.r. Arzuu Sheranova, Vadim Romashov, Mariam Darchiashvili, Bronwyn Winch, Anna Kreikemeyer (c) private

The findings of the IFSH project team fill gaps in post-liberal peace research, which seeks ways to better understand non-liberal social orders. The analysis of the collected data shows how the interplay of worldviews, everyday practices and informal institutions is understood as ‘peace from below’ and can contribute to harmony and social cohesion. However, the analyses also show how state and international power structures, as well as social change, can influence and disrupt this locally confined peace. Without romanticising, the systematisation of traditional peace practices and strategies highlights the high importance of informal networks of relationships within the extended traditional family and in neighbourhood and community networks. These relational structures strengthen social embeddedness, but also mutual interdependencies. They are relatively independent of external influences and also play a role in migration processes. Furthermore, they shape women’s capacity to act in peacemaking within patriarchal and hierarchical contexts. In socially respected settings, many women employ unseen practices of silence or facade behavior, and rely on specific women’s networks to contribute to conflict prevention, mediation, solidarity and self-organisation. As a result, some of these women not only have the means to combat early child marriage and domestic violence, but to a certain extent they also succeed in jointly overcoming economic hardship, the main cause of conflict.

Overall, the findings of the IFSH project Local Peace in Central Eurasia contribute to post-liberal peace research. Local capacities become visible when differences in traditional and Indigenous peacemaking are no longer overlooked, and the diversity of peacemaking approaches is valued more highly. Peace research should therefore strengthen its reflexivity to recognise this diversity even more effectively and understand it more deeply, moving beyond liberal blueprints. In order to truly strengthen ‘peace-in-difference’ (Behr 2018), it is also essential to develop inter-regional cooperation on an equal footing and to promote transdisciplinary and solidarity-based co-learning for peace beyond the state.
 

Publications of the project 

Special Section Indigenous Peacemaking
Guest editor: Anna Kreikemeyer
Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding
https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/risb20/current

Peer reviewed single articles  

  • Kreikemeyer, A., Darchiashvili, M. and Sheranova, A. (2026) ‘Societal peacemaking in customary contexts in Central Eurasia”, Peacebuilding, online first, 1-14, https://doi.org/10.1080/21647259.2025.2610142.

  • Kreikemeyer, A., Darchiashvili, M. and Sheranova, A. (2026) ‘Ethnographic Perspectives on Female Peacemaking in Customary Contexts in Central Eurasia’, Central Asia and the Caucasus 27 (1), pp. 75-91, DOI: https://doi.org/10.61841/px0czz30.

  • Sheranova, A. (2026). ‘Ethnographic Studies of Everyday Situated Peace between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in Osh Bazaars and Workplaces’. Central Asian Affairs, https://doi.org/10.30965/22142290-bja10082.

Research report

  • Kreikemeyer, A., Darchiashvili, M. and Sheranova, A. (2026). Embracing Difference in Peacemaking, DSF-Forschung kompakt+, 11 (in publication).
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