Everyday Peace at the Border: Kinship, Moral Economy, and Local Mediation in Rote Ndao's Interfaith Tolerance

ABSTRACT This article examines Rote Ndao, an Indonesian outermost‐island district, as a case of negotiated everyday peace rather than conflict‐free harmony. It asks how cross‐faith kinship, moral economy, and local mediation channels contain potential conflict triggers related to shared space, food rules, worship security, religious calendars, and external political or digital narratives. The study contributes to conflict‐resolution scholarship by shifting attention from post‐violence settlement to low‐intensity prevention and by clarifying how communities keep disagreements from escalating before formal dispute procedures are activated. Based on multi‐site qualitative fieldwork in Ba'a, Oenggae, Olafuliha'a, and Batu Tua, this study combines coded interviews, observation, and community documents. Reflexive thematic analysis links practice‐level evidence with the frameworks of everyday peace, intergroup contact, boundary making, and moral economy, while also considering how public narratives of harmony may reflect social desirability and local moral expectations. The findings identify three connected pathways: first, kinship and intermarriage create interpersonal obligations; second, cooperative work and ritual redistribution raise the material and reputational costs of conflict; and third, formal and informal mediation translates theological, customary, and administrative languages into workable compromise. The article develops a pathway model of negotiated everyday peace for resource‐dependent island settings and offers practical indicators for village‐ and subdistrict‐level conflict prevention.