A new study led by Yale anthropologist Catherine Panter-Brick examines how stakeholders in socially diverse, conflict-affected societies conceptualize everyday peace, drawing on a comparative analysis across different groups of people. The findings offer insights that can inform peacebuilding policies and strategies across the globe.
For the study, Panter-Brick and her coauthors convened structured mapping sessions with different stakeholder groups - students, student refugees, diplomats, university professors, and community members - in Mauritania, a country in northwest Africa. Participants were asked to visually map factors they associate with "everyday peace," reflecting how they navigate life in a socially divided context.
Their analysis, described in the journal Frontiers in Political Science, found clear differences in how different groups view pathways to everyday peace and where opportunities for systemic change may lie.
"One of the clearest messages from our work is that different groups view peace through different priorities, and those differences matter for peacebuilding policy," said lead author Panter-Brick, the Bruce A. and Davi-Ellen Chabner Professor of Anthropology, Health, and Global Affairs in Yale's Faculty of Arts and Sciences and at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs. "Our comparison across groups shows where dialogue is needed most. You cannot identify meaningful change without first understanding where perspectives diverge."
The study was conducted in Nouakchott, Mauritania's capital and largest city. Nouakchott sits at the crossroads of the Maghreb, a region that stretches across western and central North Africa, and the Sahel, the semi-arid zone that spans the continent below the Sahara. Often described as politically stable, Mauritania nonetheless contends with regional insecurity, including the consequences related to persistent conflict and human trafficking in neighboring Mali and wider instability across the Sahel.
"Mauritania feels the pressures of regional conflict, migration, and economic change, yet continues to foster coexistence," said Panter-Brick, who also directs the Conflict, Resilience, and Health Program at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale. "This makes it a valuable place to study how different groups reason about peace. People navigate ethnic diversity, historic grievances, rapid urbanization, and refugee inflows. In this context, it takes notable effort to sustain everyday peace."
Listening across these perspectives revealed how peace is lived in everyday practice, rather than only how it appears in policy language, she said.
