Toward an Affective-Relational Ontology of Peace

Abstract

Critical Peace and Conflict Studies (CPCS) has played an important role in questioning liberal peace through the local turn and the concept of hybridity. Much of this work, however, has tended to focus on epistemological concerns related to recognition and representation, while paying comparatively less attention to the ontological assumptions that underpin how peace is imagined. This tendency is particularly visible in discussions that describe peace as a process, which often continue to imply a normative horizon of positive peace. This paper engages with these debates by foregrounding vulnerability as a constitutive condition of being. Drawing on feminist care theory, it develops an affective-relational perspective that understands beings as inherently exposed, responsive, and relationally embedded. Rather than approaching care as a moral value or normative ideal, the paper treats it as a relational condition through which questions of ontology, epistemology, and ethics become intertwined. From this perspective, the ambivalence frequently associated with hybridity and the local can be read not simply as a problem of practice, but as reflecting broader tensions within prevailing ways of thinking about peace. By taking vulnerability and affectability seriously, the paper contributes to ongoing discussions by reorienting how peace is approached, and by suggesting the relevance of extending relational thinking beyond human-centred frameworks to include human–nonhuman relations.