Weaving political fields: non-violent INGOs and the global grass roots

Global–local studies elucidate how local actors engage in often unexpected ways with global models, remedying somewhat the binary assumption that homologous global change acts in conflict with local-level agency. Here, I extend the domestication framework by exploring the global–local interaction among transnational and local activists as a ‘weaving’ of global and local fields through (1) the constitution of how new relationships, institutions, and objectives define new fields; (2) the constitution of new forms of actorhood leading to new entitlements within those fields; and (3) the impartation of new rules for field engagement, in this case non-violence. I examine fifteen years of archival documentation from Peace Brigades International in Guatemala during the 1980s–1990s civil war. I explain how the global–local interaction involves the creation of unique fields for political change and new mobilisation opportunities and, in turn, alters the discourse and structure of local and global dimensions of conflict.