The Legitimisation of Post-Conflict Intervention: Narrative Frames of Backwardness and Progress

Much of the peace and conflict literature sustains the claim that, whilst intervention during war may require military and diplomatic tools, post-conflict peacebuilding intervention enables more locally-led and emancipatory approaches. This article focuses on the case of Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) to ask whether a change in how international actors narratively frame their role vis-à-vis BiH confirms this assumed turning point between the conflict and post-conflict scenario. It first investigates the binary frame of ‘local backwardness’ and ‘international progressiveness’, which was promoted by the international community during the war and suggests that local actors were situated in an inferior time zone, in need of external help. Second, it analyses the European Union’s post-conflict intervention to find that there is a continued presence of the narrative frame of ‘backwardness vs progress’. Suggesting that the discursive framing of local actors as backwards serves as a legitimation of continued intervention, the article concludes that the alleged turning point between conflict and post-conflict situations is not clearly reflected in the interveners’ narratives on BiH

Peacebuilding and lines of friction between imagined communities in Bosnia-Herzegovina and South Africa

With specific reference to Bosnia-Herzegovina and South Africa, this article looks at how peacebuilding actors constantly recreate public space and the discourses within it. The formation of imagined political communities reflects the extent to which peacebuilding interactions can be rather horizontal or vertical in nature, producing different types of friction in the encounter between peacebuilding actors. In Bosnia, the predominantly horizontal nature of international peacebuilding processes has resulted in the emergence of fragmented local sub-spaces. Those are often in conflict with international and national political communities, with frictions emerging between local, national and international actor networks. The article will contrast those processes with the mosaic developing in South Africa, where boundaries between actors are more blurred. Due to strong vertical cooperation, sporadic frictions tend to emerge within those spaces rather than exclusively at their boundaries. The article will analyse the extent to which different patterns of peacebuilding interaction impact upon the constructive and destructive frictions that those produce

Coping with research: local tactics of resistance against (mis-)representation in academia

Research on fieldwork methods in Peace and Conflict Studies has often tended to examine the tools through which researchers can more easily access information about and from their ‘local subjects’. This article, however, takes into account the ways in which people in conflict/post-conflict societies deal with and resist researchers when they conduct fieldwork. With particular reference to Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Basque Country, the article casts light on the mechanisms the researched upon invent and develop to protect themselves from being misrepresented and/or over-researched. The tactics deployed by a variety of actors in deeply divided societies can be considered complex and subtle in that they often draw on hidden transcripts and parallel narratives. The divergences between formal and informal narratives in turn shed light on the agency of the research subjects to frame the ways in which knowledge is produced and represented. At the same time, this calls into question the abilities of researchers to represent local voices authentically unless research is conducted in a self-reflective and critical manner. Against this background, the article explores ways of conducting fieldwork in ethically responsible ways, which are expected to benefit both researchers and research subjects

Book review – Cities at war: global insecurity and urban resistance

Cities at War: Global Insecurity and Urban Resistance edited by Mary Kaldor and Saskia Sassen. New York: Columbia University Press, 2020. 264 pp., £74 hardcover 9780231185387, £25 paperback 9780231185394, £25 e-book 978023154613

The dynamic local: delocalisation and (re-)localisation in the search for peacebuilding identity

This article challenges the notion of the ‘local’ as a static identity or set position and argues for a processual understanding of localisation, in which constant processes of delocalisation and (re-)localisation serve as tools by which peacebuilding actors position themselves in the political economy and the social landscape of peacebuilding. Peacebuilding agency and -identity are viewed as situated in time and space and subject to constant transformation. Using the cases of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Cyprus, I argue that the positionality of local identity is contingent on the ever-changing social context and political economy of peacebuilding. By viewing processes of (re-)localisation and delocalisation as markers of agency, we can overcome the binary between local and international and investigate more subtle forms of agency in a fluid peacebuilding environment. The article identifies the ways in which peacebuilding agency facilitates the creation of a particular set of identities (identification), before investigating the processes of delocalisation and (re-)localisation in detail. The article goes on to argue that, rather than being mutually exclusive, these two processes tend to happen in parallel and thus challenge the seemingly neat binary between local and international peacebuilding identities

Spaces of Peace

This chapter shows that war-making and peace-making “take place” and that sometimes the legacy of conflict obscures manifestations of peacebuilding. The analysis of a “bridge that divides” in the city of Mitrovica in northern Kosovo and a “wall that unites” in Belfast, Northern Ireland, casts light on the benefits that a spatial reading of peace can provide to understand the ways in which spatial infrastructures are lived by the people who use them. The process of space-making (the generation of meanings from a material location) will help explain the agency that emerges by the creators, users, and inhabitants of (post)conflict spaces

Peacebuilding, Structural Violence & Spatial Reparations in Post-Colonial South Africa

Traditionally, peacebuilding approaches have placed emphasis on the restoration of political relationships as well as more symbolic notions of community reconciliation and dialogue, resulting in limited attention to the material causes of violence. One example of this is South Africa, wherein the historical structural economic violence of the unequal distribution of resources has been maintained, and after the formal end of apartheid, a lack of equitable distribution of resources is ongoing. This article conceptually and empirically argues that distributive justice and spatial reparations are a way of compensating those affected by structural economic violence and addressing structural inequalities. Reparations should be considered as mechanisms to support readjustment of the socio-economic causes and consequences of violence and war in conjunction with long-term projects promoting social justice