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5 - Paternalism and Peacebuilding: Capacity, Knowledge, and Resistance in International Intervention
- from Part III - The Social Relations of Paternalism
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- By Séverine Autesserre, Columbia University
- Edited by Michael N. Barnett, George Washington University, Washington DC
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- Paternalism beyond Borders
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- 01 December 2016
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- 14 November 2016, pp 161-184
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Summary
A European diplomat once explained to me the logic behind his government's approach to the Democratic Republic of Congo: “It is a bit like with a teenager – someone who is 18 or 20; you want to help them, but you have to mind your manners and build the trust that enables you to do so.” Indeed, the diplomat and his international colleagues – other diplomats, African Union and UN officials, and members of NGOs – all wanted to help a much-affected population by facilitating the re-establishment of peace on Congolese territory. However, not only did these foreign interveners regularly forget to “mind their manners and build trust,” but their perception that Congo was like an adolescent who needed to be manipulated into accepting assistance often precluded them from treating the Congolese people as equal partners in the peace process. When the United Nations elaborated a plan to stabilize eastern Congo in 2008, for instance, its expatriate staff designed the strategy without actually involving national or local representatives in the drafting process. The implementation of this initiative suffered multiple setbacks, as well as considerable resistance from local authorities and communities, but UN officials still neglected to invite Congolese stakeholders to participate in the meetings devoted to discussing and revising the stabilization strategy. It took three years for the United Nations to finally do so.
This mode of operation is not limited to Congo. According to several interviewees, there was a similar situation in Timor-Leste for several years after the 2006 riots. International interveners met on a bi-weekly basis in the UN compound. There, they planned the future of the country without communicating with, or involving, any local partners. A Kosovar government official and a Sri Lankan civil society leader deplored similar phenomena in their own countries, where international actors coordinated among themselves without inviting any members of the host population.
What all of these anecdotes have in common is that they show international interveners acting with the best of intentions – to improve the welfare of others by re-establishing peace in conflict zones – but without the input or consent of the intended beneficiaries.
Local Violence, National Peace? Postwar “Settlement” in the Eastern D.R. Congo (2003–2006)
- Séverine Autesserre
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- Journal:
- African Studies Review / Volume 49 / Issue 3 / December 2006
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 23 May 2014, pp. 1-29
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This article develops a conceptual analysis of the dynamics of violence during the transition from war to peace and democracy in the Democratic Republic of Congo between 2003 and 2006. I locate the sources, at the local, national, and regional levels, of continued local violence during this transition. Through an analysis of the situation in the Kivus, I illustrate how local dynamics interacted with the national and regional dimensions of the conflict. I demonstrate that, after a national and regional settlement was reached, some local conflicts over land and political power increasingly became self-sustaining and autonomous from the national and regional tracks.
Peaceland
- Conflict Resolution and the Everyday Politics of International Intervention
- Séverine Autesserre
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- Published online:
- 05 July 2014
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- 19 May 2014
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This book suggests a new explanation for why international peace interventions often fail to reach their full potential. Based on several years of ethnographic research in conflict zones around the world, it demonstrates that everyday elements - such as the expatriates' social habits and usual approaches to understanding their areas of operation - strongly influence peacebuilding effectiveness. Individuals from all over the world and all walks of life share numerous practices, habits, and narratives when they serve as interveners in conflict zones. These common attitudes and actions enable foreign peacebuilders to function in the field, but they also result in unintended consequences that thwart international efforts. Certain expatriates follow alternative modes of thinking and acting, often with notable results, but they remain in the minority. Through an in-depth analysis of the interveners' everyday life and work, this book proposes innovative ways to better help host populations build a sustainable peace.
Contents
- Séverine Autesserre, Barnard College, Columbia University
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- Peaceland
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- 05 July 2014
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- 19 May 2014, pp vii-viii
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Frontmatter
- Séverine Autesserre, Barnard College, Columbia University
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- Peaceland
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- 05 July 2014
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- 19 May 2014, pp i-vi
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7 - Daily Work Routines
- Séverine Autesserre, Barnard College, Columbia University
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- Peaceland
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- 05 July 2014
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- 19 May 2014, pp 216-246
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It took an interview with a Kenyan expatriate for me to realize that the daily work routines that I had taken for granted as an intervener – routines whose effects I once thought limited to the lives of Peaceland’s inhabitants – in fact directly influenced peacebuilding effectiveness. Following a prevalent line of inquiry in peacebuilding scholarship, I asked this interviewee if he thought that Western or liberal ideas shaped the international efforts in South Sudan, where he was working. He evaded my question and cut to the core of what he, as a former recipient of intervention, found more important:
People do not like those camps [in which peacekeepers live]: They are closed, barricaded; [interveners] come out of them all armored. It is not a good system, but it will not change because it is the United Nations’ system. [. . .] Like the security system, you have to constantly listen to a handheld radio, so people appear very divorced from reality. [. . .] When they move, they move in big vehicles – two vehicles, five vehicles – and in every vehicle there is only one person, even though one vehicle could have taken ten people. And [the local people] do not understand [. . .] because there are 30 of them in a bus – some even hanging off the back or on the side of the bus – so they look at [the interveners] and think ‘maybe they are just another kind of human being.’
Part I - Constructing Knowledge of the Host Country
- Séverine Autesserre, Barnard College, Columbia University
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- Peaceland
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- 05 July 2014
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- 19 May 2014, pp 59-67
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Michel Losembe, a Congolese businessman, was shocked by the way interveners treated him and other Congolese elites. To him, foreign peacebuilders communicated condescendingly, as though they were saying, “Here is how things work in the rest of the world; don’t you realize how far you deviate from that?!” He felt that the expatriates did not listen to the ideas of the Congolese, and they regularly made their Congolese counterparts feel unqualified. Frustrated by this attitude, Michel decided to conduct an experiment. He was from a mixed background, American-born, with Belgian, Portuguese, and Congolese ancestors, and he could pass for someone of another nationality with relative ease. One day, instead of introducing himself as Congolese, he told the group that he came from Puerto Rico. The result was clear: “The attitude in the meeting” was “completely different.” The interveners listened to his ideas with respect and interest. He found he had much more credibility and influence when he passed as an outsider.
Losembe’s experience illustrates one of the many consequences of the politics of knowledge in Peaceland, where foreign experts have a lot more clout than local ones. Successful peacebuilding requires a nuanced understanding of the intervention area and of the specific dynamics of peace and conflict on the ground. Too often, though, such knowledge is absent because international interveners rely upon thematic rather than country expertise and regularly ignore insights from local stakeholders. In Part I of this book, I study the process of knowledge construction that produces this pattern, and I examine how it has both positive (usually intentional) and negative (unintentional) consequences for peacebuilding effectiveness.
6 - A Structure of Inequality
- Séverine Autesserre, Barnard College, Columbia University
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- Peaceland
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- 05 July 2014
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- 19 May 2014, pp 194-215
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A non-governmental organization (NGO) once sent its human resources director, Philippe Rosen, to visit its mission in Kenya. Upon arrival, Philippe was impressed by the progressive management style that the country team had adopted. The expatriates did everything they could think of to promote leadership by the local staff. One of their initiatives empowered Kenyan employees, even the lowest-ranking ones, to chair the biweekly coordination meetings on a rotating basis. Despite these efforts, Philippe heard multiple complaints about the international staff from the local personnel. He found most worrisome the various grievances indicating that expatriates inadvertently abused their position of authority. They would, for instance, ask Kenyan colleagues to run an errand; the Kenyans would accept with a smile, not daring to explain that doing so would mean forfeiting their lunch break, given their schedule. Then, they would run the errand and lose the opportunity to eat and rest during the day. The problem, Philippe realized, was that the Kenyan staff felt that they could not refuse to do anything the expatriates requested. Philippe brainstormed how to address this issue with the country management team, but even he did not appreciate just how insidious the problem was. One morning, he arrived in the office, entered the kitchen, and grumbled upon discovering that there was no coffee left. Ten minutes later, the cleaner told him that he could now have a cup. Philippe later realized that the cleaner had been so scared at the idea of having upset an expatriate (especially one sent by the headquarters) that she had dropped everything she was doing to run and buy coffee. “And yet,” Philippe said, “I had not requested anything. I had just showed that I was annoyed.”
Conclusion - Transforming Peaceland
- Séverine Autesserre, Barnard College, Columbia University
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- Peaceland
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- 05 July 2014
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- 19 May 2014, pp 247-274
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Every morning, when Véronique arrived at the office of the Congolese human rights agency where she volunteered, Deo, the janitor, would be hard at work scrubbing the floor. Half an hour later, one of the Congolese lawyers would come in and see the young man cleaning. Every time, the passing lawyer would kick Deo’s bucket of water over, forcing him to start scrubbing all over again. Every senior member of the office participated in this routine, so that whoever arrived first and saw Deo finishing his work would carry out the ritual of kicking over the bucket. Véronique was outraged. She was also puzzled: Why did the young man not protest? Above all, how could lawyers dedicated to the defense of human rights behave this way? Her first reaction was to put an end to the injustice (as most other expatriate interveners would have done). Then, Véronique stopped herself. She was a newcomer to Peaceland. She had just arrived in Congo, and she did not know the culture there. Her husband came from a developing country, and he had seen firsthand the problems that well-meaning interveners who knew little of local conditions could create. That, plus Véronique’s extensive interactions with other cultures in her previous professional life, had made her wary of using her own Franco-Swiss frame of reference to judge the practices of others. Besides, as a subordinate of the organization’s Congolese leadership, she had an unusually low rank for an expatriate, which deprived her of the power and legitimacy to sanction her colleagues. So, instead, she waited.
Appendix - An Ethnographic Approach
- Séverine Autesserre, Barnard College, Columbia University
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- Peaceland
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- 05 July 2014
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- 19 May 2014, pp 275-288
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As I mentioned in the Introduction to this book, scholars of international interventions have yet to investigate thoroughly the influence of everyday practices and habits on peacebuilding effectiveness. This gap in current research, which my book aims to narrow, is due in part to the extreme difficulty in documenting factors predicated on background knowledge. Such knowledge is not easily conveyed through words because it is practical rather than representational – meaning that it is implicit and automatic rather than explicit or deliberate – and because its contents are, in essence, “unsaid and unthought.” Moreover, practices and habits themselves are often taken for granted to such an extent that asking their enactors to identify them is usually about as productive as “asking fish, if they could speak, to describe the water in which they swim.” As a result, researchers interested in this subject cannot rely solely on the most common political science methodologies like surveys, interviews, or document analyses. To understand the influence of such everyday elements, researchers must experience those elements personally and learn them through practice. Both these objectives can be achieved only through participant and field observations.
Admittedly, such an approach, which is typical of ethnographic research, presents several complications for scholars of international relations. To begin with, its emphasis on direct contact requires researchers to gain privileged access to organizations that have a culture of secrecy, such as diplomatic missions or United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations. Furthermore, researchers must reconcile international topics, which are usually macro-level subjects, with empirical methodologies that work best in “very localized fields of study.” Finally, the findings of such research are often so controversial that the “subjects” of a given study may attempt to prevent the publication of results because they feel that ethnographies “objectify” or expose them. As I have experienced in the past, and as David Mosse similarly relates, publically scrutinizing informal or behind-the-scenes relationships and behaviors risks not only infuriating colleagues and supervisors, but also closing doors to future research and consulting opportunities.
Figure and Tables
- Séverine Autesserre, Barnard College, Columbia University
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- Peaceland
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- 05 July 2014
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- 19 May 2014, pp ix-x
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2 - The Politics of Knowledge
- Séverine Autesserre, Barnard College, Columbia University
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- Peaceland
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- 05 July 2014
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- 19 May 2014, pp 68-96
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In mid-2011, the United Nations (UN) Integrated Office tried to recruit an international consultant to conduct an analysis of conflict dynamics in Congo. The study would serve as a basis for the new UN five-year plan to fight poverty in the country, so it was a high-stakes exercise. The job description for the consultancy enumerated the desired technical skills: a master’s degree in conflict studies or political science, ten years of experience managing peacebuilding programs, knowledge of French, and analytical and synthesis skills. Country expertise was not required. The listing simply stated that “knowledge of the DRC and/or of countries in transition would be a plus.” Needless to say, with only six weeks to complete on-the-ground research and write a fifty-page report on the complex conflict dynamics of a country the size of Western Europe, it would be impossible for someone without preexisting knowledge of the situation to develop an accurate and useful analysis.
Unfortunately, job posts like these are not unique to the UN Integrated Office. They exemplify a pervasive trend in Peaceland. That same year, the European Commission sent out a request for applications to its upcoming election observation mission in Congo. Positions available included “political/country analyst,” “legal analyst,” and “human rights/gender analyst.” The document enumerated a series of criteria for choosing applicants. Candidates did not need specific knowledge of Congo to secure a place on the short list. Country expertise was included in the criteria for final selection, but it was last on the list.
Bibliography
- Séverine Autesserre, Barnard College, Columbia University
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- Peaceland
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- 05 July 2014
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- 19 May 2014, pp 289-320
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4 - Fumbling in the Dark
- Séverine Autesserre, Barnard College, Columbia University
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- Peaceland
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- 05 July 2014
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- 19 May 2014, pp 115-158
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Interveners used several analogies when they reflected on the process of trying to understand what was going on in their areas of deployment. To one diplomat, it was “like a puzzle.” A United Nations (UN) official likened the process to that of “four blind men feeling an elephant.” While the man touching the elephant’s leg claims that they have arrived at a tree, the man touching the trunk retorts instead that it is a snake. Meanwhile, the man touching the belly argues that they have found a big balloon, and the one touching the ear maintains that it is in fact a giant palm leaf. To that official, this was exactly the problem that plagued interveners deployed in Congo: “There are lots of perspectives that we can take on what Congo is and what its problems are.” But, as he crucially added, foreign peacebuilders rarely considered the perspectives of the Congolese – for reasons analyzed in the previous chapters.
After working for many years in Peaceland, the analogy that came to my mind was the experience of standing in the dark with only a blinking flashlight. The fleeting illumination reveals one fragmentary image after another. The pictures are limited to the immediate surroundings, so the observer can make little sense of what lies beyond the circle of light. The scene as a whole is disjointed. At any moment, a change in one shadow can occur undetected while the flashlight is pointed somewhere else. Ultimately, this experience provides sparse and fragmented information, which cannot help one develop a clear image of the overall conditions.
Acknowledgments
- Séverine Autesserre, Barnard College, Columbia University
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- Peaceland
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- 05 July 2014
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- 19 May 2014, pp xi-xiv
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Introduction
- Séverine Autesserre, Barnard College, Columbia University
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- Peaceland
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- 05 July 2014
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- 19 May 2014, pp 1-19
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I made a number of faux pas during my first day as an international intervener in a conflict zone. In July 2000, I arrived in Kosovo for a six-month mission and was preparing to attend my first coordination meeting with representatives of the United Nations, non-governmental organizations, donors, and military contingents of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. My colleagues had told me that these meetings always began with some significant delay, so I decided to postpone my departure and finish some office work in the meantime. When I finally got there, however, I discovered that this particular gathering was under the supervision of a few military actors who, as it turned out, were invariably punctual. To make matters worse, the room’s creaking door and regrettable arrangement eliminated any chance for stragglers to enter discretely. Not that I would have been inconspicuous anyway: I was visibly out of place from the moment I stepped inside. In the hope of being easily recognizable to my new colleagues, I had proudly put on a vest emblazoned with my employer’s logo, but, to my dismay, the peacekeeping soldiers were the only people displaying their organizational affiliation. Eyes turned from the speaker to me and, for a few interminable moments, I became the center of attention. Mortified, I scurried to the back of the room to find a seat (and hide).
As my first month progressed, I made fewer missteps. Still, I was puzzled. I had two graduate degrees in international affairs and a year of experience as an intern with various humanitarian and peacebuilding agencies in New York. I had even worked as a volunteer for grassroots organizations in India, Nicaragua, and South Africa. By industry standards, I was perfectly qualified for my entry-level role in Kosovo, yet I felt utterly lost.
3 - Local Reactions
- Séverine Autesserre, Barnard College, Columbia University
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- Peaceland
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- 05 July 2014
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- 19 May 2014, pp 97-114
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Time and again, across all of my field sites, I heard the same kind of criticisms levied against interveners, and so did researchers working in other conflict zones. Our local interviewees would complain that international peacebuilders were “arrogant,” “condescending,” and “paternalistic.” Certain phrases recurred constantly: Interveners were characterized as “bossy” and “preachy” (“donneurs de leçons”) because “they arrive and immediately tell people what to do.”
My contacts then emphasized a point that is critical for the debates on international peacebuilding: They explained that the arrogance of foreign interveners resulted from their valuing thematic expertise over local knowledge. This attitude stems from the belief that outside approaches are better than local ones and from the attendant disregard of local ideas. For instance, a Congolese elite criticized the “pride” interveners take in seeing themselves as experts who employ a scientific approach to extricate people from crises and promote development. A Congolese grassroots peacebuilder concurred: For the international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the United Nations (UN) agencies, “there is conceit around this idea of assistance.” To him, the “‘I help you, I bring you aid’ idea leads to arrogance” because the international expert “arrives with his methods and his knowledge, and tells you ‘you should do this and not that’” and discounts local ideas and expertise. Recipients of intervention whom the Listening Project teams interviewed in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Ecuador, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, the Solomon Islands, and Thailand made a similar point. They complained that “outsiders ignore their ideas and knowledge,” a process that they found “fundamentally disrespectful.” A South African diplomat acknowledged that he and his colleagues were guilty of such prejudice, explaining: “We treat African counterparts with a lot of arrogance,” based on the idea that “we know better, we know that this works so you should do this.” He attributed this attitude to the politics of knowledge at work in Peaceland.
Index
- Séverine Autesserre, Barnard College, Columbia University
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- Peaceland
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- 19 May 2014, pp 321-329
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5 - The Interveners’ Circle
- Séverine Autesserre, Barnard College, Columbia University
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- Peaceland
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- 05 July 2014
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- 19 May 2014, pp 161-193
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During my formal conversations and in informal settings, certain phrases recurred that revealed how the inhabitants of Peaceland often perceived the interveners’ identity. Foreign peacebuilders would start sentences with “we, the international community” or “we, the expatriates.” They would refer to “the international system” or “the international machinery” and would mention their feeling of being part of a “huge family” that is here to help the country of intervention. The phrases that noninterveners – including local elites, business expatriates, or missionaries – used to refer to interveners were often less kind, such as “the humanoids” or “les criseurs” (those who come when there is a crisis, behave as though everything is an emergency, and act with reckless impatience to resolve a problem). Reflecting on her experiences in various conflict zones, including Juba (South Sudan) and Aceh (Indonesia), a peacebuilder working for a non-governmental organization (NGO) explained:
It is personal and professional. When we talk about multiculturalism, there is a shared nod around the table: We are here as a bloc, as the international community; we operate as one. [. . . .] You just assume it. It is a given.
International interveners and local citizens have even created blogs that discuss – and mock – this community, such as Stuff Expat Aid Workers Like and Stuff Malai Like (“Malai” referring to expatriates deployed in Timor-Leste).
This chapter demonstrates that interveners on the ground form a specific group – one that might be called a community of practice. Four elements enable a group identity to develop in spite of internal differences and tensions: a shared official goal (to help the host country and its people), a common experience of life in conflict zones, dense professional and social interactions, and the presence of an “Other” (host populations) against whom interveners can construct their identity. This chapter analyzes the group’s shared characteristics, its internal dividing lines, its relations with nonmembers, and the exceptions to its dominant trends. Throughout, I study not only the intended effects of the social dynamics I describe (to enable interveners and their organizations to function in conflict zones and to help the host country build peace), but also their unintended effects, particularly the construction of boundaries between international peacebuilders and local populations.
1 - Studying the Everyday
- Séverine Autesserre, Barnard College, Columbia University
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- Peaceland
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- 05 July 2014
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- 19 May 2014, pp 20-58
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At first glance, one might assume that a peacekeeping soldier from Pakistan, a diplomat from the United States, and a human rights advocate from Senegal would approach their jobs quite differently. Yet, while in Congo for a previous research project, I observed striking similarities in the ways that international interveners understand the situations they face and in the strategies they adopt, despite their otherwise extremely different national, professional, social, and economic backgrounds. This observation prompted a new research project that confirmed my original insight, highlighted the importance of the interveners’ everyday life and work in accounting for these commonalities, and eventually resulted in this book.
In this chapter, I present the theoretical and methodological framework that I use to analyze the everyday dimension of international interventions. The first two sections describe my overall approach: In the first, I discuss the contested notions of intervention success and failure, and in the second, I demonstrate that considering the specific dynamics of on-the-ground peacebuilding is essential. The next section of the chapter presents the three most helpful concepts for analyzing everyday peacebuilding, namely practices, habits, and narratives. In the fourth section, I outline my explanation of the dynamics of intervention in the field and of the processes of change. The fifth and final section elucidates how my analysis complements the existing literature on peacebuilding effectiveness, drawing attention to gaps in those explanations that emphasize constraints, vested interests, liberal values, or the marked differences among interveners.