The Political Sociology of Peace Committees in Rural Nigeria: Power, Agency, and Exclusion

This study conducts an original political sociological analysis of peace committees as conflict resolution institutions in rural Nigerian communities, examining how power relations, individual and collective agency, and structural exclusion dynamics shape their composition, deliberative processes, and outcomes, with evidence from the North Central, South South, and South East geopolitical zones. Peace committees, despite their proliferation across Nigeria as primary community conflict resolution institutions, have been insufficiently analysed from a political sociology perspective that examines whose interests they serve, who is excluded from their processes, and how power asymmetries within committees shape peace agreement content. Employing a political ethnographic methodology, data were generated through extended fieldwork of fourteen months across six rural community sites in Plateau, Rivers, and Enugu states, involving participant observation of peace committee sessions, in-depth interviews with 90 committee members and excluded stakeholders, and focus group discussions with women, youth, and minority group community members. The theoretical framework integrates Bourdieusian field theory, subaltern studies, and institutional power analysis. The theoretical contribution is an original Political Sociology of Rural Peace Committees Framework, which analyses committees as social fields where capital conversion, symbolic violence, and strategic exclusion produce systematically skewed outcomes. Findings reveal that rural peace committees in all three study zones systematically marginalise women, youth, and ethnic minorities from meaningful deliberation, producing agreements that reflect elite interests and generate compliance only from powerless parties. Recommendations include developing democratic committee composition standards, establishing independent committee auditing mechanisms, and creating parallel peace institutions with explicit mandates to represent marginalised community members. Keywords: peace committees, political sociology, power, exclusion, rural Nigeria.