APCJ_1528_Win2010_00i_122_4 12/30/10 3:22 PM Page 62 62 AFRICA PEACE AND CONFLICT JOURNAL and respect of the local population? How can international peace workers engage local communities to help ensure that culturally legitimate and locally owned structures are put in place? To ensure that peacebuilding mechanisms are accepted by the population, they must be culturally relevant. Culture provides the worldview and understanding of events that shape conflict, as well as its resolution and any subsequent building of stable peace. Without cultural legitimacy, peacebuilding is doomed to ineffectiveness. CULTURE AS A CONTEXT AND RESOURCE Historically, societies have proven to be open to adapting their cultural norms of conflict resolution and peacemaking. For example, the native inhabitants of North America changed their methods somewhat after the arrival of European settlers to include some European traditions. Although, this only lasted until the settlers were able to assert control over the native tribes and impose their own institutions, the point remains that most cultures are somewhat open to new influences and practices, and conflict resolution methods are frequently adapted and molded by historical changes within a country.3 In African cultures, the colonial powers also had such influence, so it is next to impossible to distinguish between some truly original methods of peacemaking and new forms they may have taken following the introduction of various outside cultures. That said, the study of these indigenous methods can provide insight into the cultural values and norms of a group as well as promote better understanding of their concepts of peace and reconciliation. Culture can provide peace workers with a context as well as a resource for potential conflict resolution activities. The context informs about values, meanings, as well as community practices and allows one to see and make sense of the world through the eyes of the locals. As a resource, culture guides certain activities and may provide tools for responding to new situations, as it remains fluid and flexible, rather than static. International peacebuilding practitioners and their local counterparts should primarily learn from each other, proposing concepts that take into account the traditions and lives of the local community so they can avoid imposing alien cultural change, no matter how desirable or seemingly natural. Dialogue is an important element of interacting and learning about and from post-conflict societies. It helps defy stereotypes and challenges perceptions. It also provides an opportunity to freely speak about a new social order, political institutions, and the concept of the state in general.4 There will always be a temptation to return to standard and universal templates, such as those used by international agencies when they enter a country amid armed conflict or organize post-conflict elections. Unlike dialogue and fluid processes that adjust based on the climate within a country, standard procedures and protocols allow for somewhat transparent and well-defined activities for which personnel can be trained and dispatched; funding agencies often use standard templates as requirements for securing funding. This natural tendency to control, standardize, and man3. Roger Mac Ginty, ‘Indigenous peace-making versus the liberal process’, Cooperation and Conflict, 43:2 (2008), 139–63. 4. Samuel Gdaydee Doe, ‘Indigenizing post-conflict state reconstuction in Africa: A conceptual framework’, Africa Peace and Conflict Journal, 2:1 (2009), 1–16.