The Importance of individual agency

By Isaac Otter

The homepage of our website--you can find it here

This course has taught me many things, but what I think I will take away from it more than anything, is the agency we have to build peace. Before this course, my viewpoint of peacebuilding was centred around international aid, and although this does play a major role, I feel like there is a serious neglect – especially in IR theory – of the importance of individual agency in peacebuilding. On the local level, it is arguably much more important for the realisation of individual agency, rather than top down, bloated institutions, many of which seem to perpetuate the neo-colonial dynamics they were implemented to stop. Hearing talks from people like Dieudonné, someone so passionate about local peace building, it caused a genuine shift in my perception of what is possible.

 
This gradual shift in perspective over the course of Peace Lab culminated in the final project and our excitement for it. In the beginning we were going to write stories for a book, but instead we decided to make a website (you can find it here). This website has the aim of being a space for people to share inspirational stories of people in Kosovo, to promote transformative dialogue. One key feature of the website is the ease to switch between: English, Albanian, and Serbian – aligning with our goal of accessibility. This project showed me the individual agency I had to create something. In a world of increasing commercialism, there is little room or value given to acts of kindness without reciprocation. This sad truth is partially the reason for my blindness against my own agency, as without monetary value it is often deemed unimportant.
 
So how will I take this into my future? Remembering my own agency is what I aim to do with the teachings I have received in this course. Although its perceived value may be undermined by the capitalist systems at play, I think its relative local importance can be incomparable to that of larger institutional work – for example, projects enacted by the UN. The empowerment of people to act on their own terms, for their own problems, seems to be either an overlooked, or under-published version of peacebuilding – which I plan to pursue further.  
 
Overall, this course has not only taught me about the history of the Balkans, but also about the realities of peacebuilding. Although sad we were not able to visit Kosovo due to different financial priorities at our school, I think that the course (and its very intensive nature), broadened my insight into the value of individual agency.