Peaceland: Conflict Resolution and the Everyday Politics of International Interventions

Abstract

PEACELAND: CONFLICT RESOLUTION AND THE EVERYDAY POLITICS OF INTERNATIONAL INTERVENTIONS Severine Autesserre New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2014 329 pages, paper, $34.99Peaceland, by Severine Autesserre, offers a fresh and insightful contribution to the small but growing body of literature that advocates for increased focus on the roles and influence of the 'everyday' in international peacebuilding interventions. As Autesserre astutely observes, some social science scholars have begun to call for more holistic and contextualized accounts of the factors that promote and/or impede peacebuilding efforts, particularly the ways that "local" cultures, politics, and practices impact and are impacted by interventions. However, these scholars remain in the minority despite the fact that "local ownership" has become commonplace lexicon for peacebuilders.What sets Peaceland apart from the relative abundance of material that has emerged in recent years on the "local" in peacebuilding, and to a lesser extent the "everyday," is the subject matter of Autesserre's "everyday" inquiry into international interventions. In Peaceland Autesserre turns her ethnographic lens onto investigation of the everyday practices of those expatriates that intervene to perform international interventions. That is the habitual and mundane actions, attitudes, and approaches of the transnational community of aid workers, humanitarians, peacekeepers, peacebuilders, and diplomats who occupy the metaphorical world of Peaceland.Autesserre draws on 15 years of professional experience as an inhabitant of Peaceland and as an academic studying peacebuilding in developing her arguments, including a year of ethnographic study in Congo with shorter research trips to Burundi, Cyprus, Israel and the Palestinian Territories, South Sudan, and Timor-Leste for Peaceland specifically. The unique position Autesserre is able to adopt, situating herself as both "insider," as a fellow intervener, and "outsider," as a researcher, in inquiring into the everyday politics of international peace interventions establishes her as a member of a very small group of authorities possessing the gravitas and ability to access the inner dynamics of Peaceland. Autesserre sets out to engage with a number of overarching questions that have long plagued policy-makers and scholars engaged in the study and practice of international interventions. These are: Why do peace interventions regularly fail to reach their full potential? What accounts for the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of international peacebuilding efforts? How can interveners be more successful when they are already effective and avoid failure otherwise?Autesserre contends that part of the answer to these persistent challenges lies in developing understandings of the underlying culture of international interveners in conflict zones; their shared social habits, standard security protocols, and ways of collecting information and constructing knowledge about conflicts and peacebuilding. Together these attributes establish common cross-cultural and transnational 'dominant modes of operation' (i.e., actions, behaviors, and discourses based on prevailing practices, habits, and narratives) that guide interveners as they traverse the landscape of Peaceland in diverse conflict settings around the globe. These "modes" are not unlike the "communities of practice" that naturally evolve around groups of individuals who share a professional affiliation and through the process of sharing information and experiences learn from one another, gain knowledge related to a specific field, and develop themselves personally and professionally.Yet, paradoxically in Peaceland^ the community of practice that has been established around international interveners has had unintended and often counterproductive consequences for successful interventions and the realization of sustainable peace. Autesserre finds that this is an outcome of similar educational backgrounds and professional socialization processes that "equip" interveners with a standardized set of pre-existing ideas, narratives, and knowledge about how to practice peacebuilding. …