Critical Theory and Peace Processes: Gramsci, Civil Society and the Struggle for Hegemony

This volume provides the first book-length analysis of peace processes from a critical theory perspective. While engaging with the variety of the critical theory tradition, it focuses on Gramsci’s notion of hegemony to examine how political antagonism develops within civil society around alternative nationalist projects. Accordingly, it expands on the conceptual and empirical scope of existing critical peace and conflict studies. Conceptually, it argues that civil society is strictly intertwined with political society and contributes to shape the evolution of peace processes in contradictory and unexpected ways. Unlike the prevailing understanding of civil society instilled by liberal notions, this volume considers hegemonic struggles as an instance of political competition which, depending on the relation of forces of the opposing camps, is open to different outcomes. Empirically, it examines three cases of hegemonic/counter-hegemonic competition involving both domestic and so-called global civil society: Northern Ireland, Bosnia-Herzegovina and, with regard to global civil society, France. These cases provide a compelling picture of what hegemonic struggles entail and how conflict can be transformed into agonistic pluralism, where diversity is recognized and expressed as a value.