Winning wars, building (illiberal) peace? The rise (and possible fall) of a victor’s peace in Rwanda and Sri Lanka

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Third World Quarterly on 25th September 2015, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/01436597.2015.1058150.© 2015 Southseries Inc., www.thirdworldquarterly.com.The literature on peacebuilding dedicates very little space, empirically and theoretically, to countries that are emerging from a war waged to a decisive outcome. This review essay looks at Sri Lanka and Rwanda, two countries where a victorious leadership has led the process of post-conflict reconstruction, largely by employing illiberal means. It looks at the effect of decisive war on statebuilding and at the role of local agency and illiberal practices in a post-victory context. It concludes by assessing the global significance and long-term sustainability of post-victory illiberal statebuilding

On the relational dynamics of caring: a psychotherapeutic approach to emotional and power dimensions of women’s care work

Care is double-edged and paradoxical, inspiring a vast range of strong feelings in both care-givers and care-recipients. This paper draws on ideas about psychotherapeutic relationships to offer a theorisation of the complex emotional and power dynamics and imaginative geographies of care. Examining the humanistic approach developed by Carl Rogers as well as the psychoanalytic tradition, I advance an interpretation of psychotherapeutic practices that foregrounds the fundamental importance of the emotional and power-inflected relationship between practitioners and those with whom they work. I show how different traditions offer conceptualisations of the shape of therapeutic relationships that are highly relevant to consideration of the emotional and power dynamics of giving and receiving care. Against this background I discuss current debates about care, emotions and power, drawing especially on feminist and disability perspectives and arguing that psychotherapeutic approaches offer a powerful lens through which to understand the emotional and power dynamics of caring relationships. I conclude by emphasising how this theorisation helps to illuminate ubiquitous features of women’s care work