This book is reminiscent of my shocking encounter with the conflict in Ambon in 1999. I was on the passenger ship Dobonsolo on the way from Jayapura to Jakarta. Our ship was not allowed to anchor in Ambon harbour as the city was on fire, as I saw from a safe distance. Black smoke covered the harbour and passengers could only board on and off the ship through lifeboats. After the conflict, I visited Ambon, the capital of Maluku province, several times until early 2020 to observe its post-conflict development, so Birgit Bräuchler's work is pertinent to mine.

Bräuchler proffers a new anthropology of peace to ‘desacralize a one-sided (Western) understanding of reconciliation and justice by allowing for other understandings of what conflict, peace and reconciliation imply’ (p. 208). Grounded in solid ethnographic research at multiple sites across the Maluku Islands, the author criticises the existing approach to Transitional Justice (TJ), which she frames as ‘peace from IKEA’ (p. 4). Her critique is not just fancy jargon. On the contrary, it derives from a critical engagement with the broad literature on TJ, which is largely produced and reproduced by Western narratives. The core concepts in international peacebuilding literature such as peace, justice, reconciliation have become elements of a knock-down template which tend to overlook the dynamics and nuances of peacebuilding in local contexts, as in the case of Maluku, and beyond.

In filling this gap of understanding, Bräuchler proposes a cultural approach to peacebuilding which she centres in this book on two major concepts of ‘culture’ or, to be more specific, adat (customary law), and ‘the local’. In chapter 3, she examines three key adat concepts that have played an instrumental role in ending the conflict in Maluku and rebuilding the lives of the Molluccans, namely the pela (village alliance), gandong (common ancestry) and uli (village federation) systems. In the context of post-Suharto decentralisation in Indonesia, the author describes how these systems, particularly the Bakubae movement and the Interfaith Network of Maluku (LAIM), have been translated into various peace initiatives which were effective in stopping the violence, and helped to create a space of humanitarian dialogue and rebuild peoples’ lives.

Further, she reveals that the revival of adat is far from a romanticised nostalgia for the past. She depicts the complexity, limitations and challenges of this process in the context of real conflict in Maluku. These includes the diversity of cultures of Maluku, Christian–Muslim sentiments, Islamist penetration, national politics and the black economy around the conflict. For instance, the revival of the role of the traditional village heads, the raja, which was central in restoring peace to Maluku, does not have overwhelming acceptance across the islands. The legacy of conflict between villages, the co-optation by government of the raja, the public's limited understanding of role of raja, and the personalities of the raja — all determine how the raja have been treated by different actors in Maluku during and after conflict. Bräuchler convincingly argues that the institution of the raja is not a remedy developed overnight to bring peace to Maluku, but it has been proving to be promising and effective for rebuilding broken social ties.

To complicate the picture, the author contextualises the revival of adat in the ongoing debate on legal pluralism in Indonesia in chapter 4. Adat, national law, and shariah law co-exist in the contemporary Indonesian political landscape. Adat is oral tradition whereas the formal legal system of the country and shariah law are written and formalised. So far there has been no clear and coherent solution to this gap except a piecemeal approach.

For instance, in the case of Papua, under the Special Autonomy Law for Papua, indigenous Papuans have representation in the Majelis Rakyat Papua, but the latter has no veto power over state policies that impact indigenous Papuans, such as land rights. Meanwhile, in Aceh, sharia law can suspend the implementation of the national criminal code when it comes to corporal punishment. These glimpses of the incoherent legal pluralism in Indonesia concur with Bräuchler's analysis of the contested area of adat when it comes to its formal adoption into the legal system.

Further, in Maluku, more than two decades after conflict, we have not seen the significant role of adat in uncovering the past. The pela, gandong, and uli systems that were reactivated during the Maluku conflict have not turned to truth-seeking once the violence was over. Establishing the true facts about the causes and perpetrators of the violence seems no longer a state priority, although the memory of conflict remains vivid in the collective memory of the Maluku people whenever they talk about the period. The power of collective memory of people's suffering can be the source of rebuilding their lives (see Budi Hernawan, Torture and peacebuilding in Indonesia: The case of Papua, 2018).

Apart from the challenges of adat revival that Bräuchler has investigated at length, one piece of the story is still missing: the key finding in research conducted by Roem Topatimasang and his team in 1993–94, namely how the Maluku people perceive having been defeated by three major powers or forces which paralysed them: ‘capital invasion, over centralisation of power and the imposition of strange values’ (Orang-orang kalah: Kisah penyingkiran masyarakat adat Kepulauan Maluku, ed. Roem Topatimasang, 2016, pp. 24–7). This sense of defeat might explain further why the efforts at adat revival in Maluku is an unfinished business as Bräuchler identifies.

Finally, Bräuchler's work resonates with Samsu Rizal Panggabean's work on conflict and peace in Indonesia (Konflik dan perdamaian etnis di Indonesia, 2018). Panggabean zooms in all 14 locations across Indonesia that suffered from communal violence in the immediate post-Suharto era, including Ambon. Unlike the current work by Bräuchler, which focuses on a single location, Panggabean juxtaposes Ambon and Manado (in North Sulawesi) to identify the factor of ‘non-event/ non-incident’ in the latter, which reveals another significant missing link in the study of peacebuilding in Indonesia and beyond: the ability of stakeholders to act together effectively at a critical juncture to prevent violence. Panggabean has identified that the ‘space of violence, role of relationships and strategic interaction are the key to understanding conflict, not the characteristic of actors’ (ibid., pp. 5, 189). In other words, understanding the local is instrumental to preventing conflict, not only to rebuilding lives after conflict.