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This book analyses the everyday emotions of international peacebuilding practitioners as practices that hinder - and potentially help - them to listen more receptively to their local partners. It develops 'emotional practices' as an analytical framework by integrating critical feminist perspectives insights into practice approaches. Effective peacebuilding requires international actors to listen to local partners, which sounds simple but often fails in practice. Examining how everyday emotions help or hinder internationals' receptivity to local perspectives, the book's approach challenges conventional wisdom that emotions do not matter - at least not those of internationals who are the privileged party in peacebuilding partnerships. The book is based on interviews with peacebuilding practitioners, donors and researchers working in the Balkans and East Africa as well as in the UK, the US and Sweden, and gives a detailed and no-nonsense description of daily dilemmas regarding listening and partnerships. Johansson provides concrete recommendations of how internationals can practice personally, organizationally and geopolitically to build emotional capacity that will help them listen better to local actors. Drawing on the author's expertise in political science and peace and conflict research, this volume speaks to scholars in international relations, political theory, sociology, cultural studies, development studies, critical theory and anthropology.

Why are "international" actors so bad at listening to "local" peacebuilding partners? That internationals should listen to locals is a widely accepted norm in peacebuilding, yet, research consistently documents that local actors do not feel heard. To understand this puzzle, scholars have increasingly focused on ordinary peacebuilding practices, finding that these practices keep internationals separate from local actors and make it harder for them to listen. However, despite the focus on practices as embodied habits and understandings, emotions are usually considered irrelevant. My dissertation challenges this conventional wisdom, arguing that we should pay attention to emotions that international peacebuilding practitioners experience as a key to understanding possibilities of change. Building on research in cognitive science, organizational learning, and political theory, which finds emotions to be a crucial component of listening, I examine over sixty in-depth interviews with INGOs, donors, and researchers in peacebuilding. Based on these interviews, my dissertation makes three main arguments regarding how internationals' emotions matter to listening in peacebuilding partnerships.First, internationals' emotions impact internationals' ability to listen receptively, that is, in a way that is open to new understandings and ways of doing things. Second, analyzing emotions reveals that many peacebuilding practices are still "sticky" with a colonial hierarchy where all the focus is on improving the local actor. Internationals thus keep the privilege of "invisibility" as political actors, leaving their own practices outside explicit contestation. I liken this privilege to an "invisibility cloak" which keeps internationals comfortable and able to carry on as usual without reason to change. And third, the analysis alerts us to emotional consequences for internationals who do attempt change, that is, to break the colonial hierarchy and listen receptively. The accompanying loss of privilege involved in shedding the invisibility cloak and "appearing" as political actors (with stakes in the partnership) involves vulnerability, discomfort, and uncertainty; the emotional is political. To make these arguments, I integrate feminist, decolonial, and queer scholarship into practice-based approaches. In addition to practical recommendations for how to develop embodied (personal, organizational, and geopolitical) change strategies, the dissertation provides empirical, methodological, and theoretical contributions to several scholarly fields.

The national strategies for a circular economy set the overall targets for implementation of circular economy in the country. Putting theory into practice via local strategies can be a good means for the transition towards a circular economy in the construction sector. Municipalities can set demands for CE solutions by requiring, e.g. the use of recycled and/or recyclable construction materials, the application of design for disassembly principles in construction and requiring resource mapping, and reuse and recycling in the demolition phase. The study identifies and presents cases and experiences from the implementation of CE concepts at the local level in the Nordic communities with a focus on construction, renovation and demolition. Barriers and drivers for the uptake of CE solutions are analysed, and enabling factors that could support the implementation of circular economy concepts and identified barriers in norms, legislation and guidelines are described. As part of the project, the project group gave 10 policy recommendations.