![Sample our Global Development journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5929/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Global-Development.jpg"})
Abstract
From a critical perspective, what might we learn from applying constructivism to peacebuilding? We analyse a common clash that arises in the context of peacebuilding: between ontological assumptions based on liberal individualism and those based on local relatedness. We find that this clash has both epistemological and methodological consequences for critical research on peacebuilding, which highlights why the shift to more reflexive understandings of hybrid peacebuilding provides space for making more complex and less certain ontological assumptions in conflict-affected societies. While this raises ethical considerations, this processual position offers an advance on older, static ‘enlightenment’ approaches to peacebuilding debates.
Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the organisers of, and participants at, the writers’ workshop on ‘Hybridity: History, Power and Scale’ held at the Australian National University in December 2016. Joanne acknowledges the support of Australian Research Council Discovery Project 160104692, ‘Doing State-building better? Practising Hybridity in Melanesia’.
Notes
1. Doyle, “Three Pillars.”
2. Richmond, “Becoming Liberal”; and Mac Ginty, “Hybrid Peace.”
3. Human Security Study Group, “From Hybrid Peace.”
4. UNDP, Governance for Peace.
5. World Bank. World Development Report 2011. See also recent interviews in the UN system, especially, UNPBC, DPKO and the World Bank by co-author, February 2015 and March 2016.
6. OECD, Supporting Statebuilding.
7. UN News Centre, “At UN Peace Operations Review”; and Boulding, Cultures of Peace.
8. Finnemore and Sikkink, “International Norm Dynamics.”
9. Ruggie, Constructing the World Polity; Finnemore, National Interests; Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention; Katzenstein, The Culture of National Security; and Wendt, Social Theory.
10. Onuf, “Constructivism: A User’s Manual,” 66; and Kratchowil, Rules, Norms, and Decisions.
11. Reus-Smit, The Moral Purpose; and Hopf, Social Construction.
12. Ashley, “The Geopolitics”; Campbell, Writing Security; and Zehfuss, Constructivism in International Relations.
13. Linklater, The Transformation; Cox, “Social Forces”; and Gramsci, Selections.
14. Guzzini, “A Reconstruction.”
15. Adler, “Constructivism.”
16. Ibid., 121.
17. Wendt, “Constructing International Politics,” 73.
18. Popper, The Open Universe.
19. Searle, The Construction.
20. Gould, “What is at Stake.”
21. Adler, “Constructivism.”
22. Klotz, Norms in International Relations.
23. Sikkink, “The Power of Principled Ideas.”
24. Checkel, “Why Comply?”
25. Reus-Smit, The Moral Purpose.
26. Price, The Chemical Weapons Taboo.
27. Zabusky, Launching Space.
28. Barnett, Dialogues.
29. Wendt, Social Theory.
30. Guzzini and Leander, Constructivism.
31. Wight, “The Shoot Dead Horses.”
32. Wight, Agents, Structures.
33. Adler, “Constructivism,” 134.
34. Barkawi and Laffey, “The Postcolonial Moment”; Ayoob, “Inequality and Theorizing”; and Tickner, “Seeing IR Differently.”
35. Finnemore, National Interests; and Legro, Rethinking the World.
36. Adler, “Constructivism,” 123; and Weldes, Constructing National Interests.
37. Ruggie, Constructing the World Polity.
38. Dessler, “What’s at Stake.”
39. Adler, “Constructivism.”
40. Finnemore and Sikkink, “International Norm Dynamics.”
41. Wendt, “Anarchy.”
42. Barnett and Finnemore, “The Politics, Power.”
43. Risse, “‘Let’s Argue!’”; and Kornprobst, Irredentism in European Politics.
44. United Nations General Assembly, An Agenda for Peace.
45. March and Olsen, “The Institutional Dynamics”; and Finnemore, National Interests.
46. Adler, “Constructivism.”
47. Kratochwil, Rules, Norms; and Waever, “Securitization and Desecuritization.”
48. Diez, “Speaking ‘Europe’,” 603.
49. Neumann and Sending, “‘The International’.”
50. Advisory Group of Experts on the Review of the Peacebuilding Architecture, Challenge of Sustaining Peace.
51. World Bank, World Development Report 2011.
52. Ibid., 106.
53. Paffenholz, “Unpacking the Local Turn,” 857; and Mac Ginty, “Everyday Peace.”
54. Mac Ginty, “Everyday Peace.”
55. Mac Ginty and Richmond, “The Local Turn.”
56. Richmond, “The Dilemmas,” 51.
57. Ibid., 60.
58. Weber, “Science as a Vocation”; and Tilly, Coercion, Capital.
59. Publius, The Federalist Papers.
60. United Nations General Assembly, An Agenda for Peace.
61. Latour, We Have Never Been Modern.
62. Comaroff and Comaroff, Theory from the South.
63. Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice; and Sillitoe, “The Development.”
64. Richmond, Failed Statebuilding.
65. Berlin, Four Essay, 103.
66. Gray, Isaiah Berlin, 179; and Honig, Political Theory.
67. Barnett, “Social Constructivism.”
68. Lefebvre, The Production of Space.
69. Chandler, “Reconceptualising.”
70. Ayoob, “Inequality and Theorizing,” 29.
71. Ibid.
72. Ibid.
73. Nadarajah and Rampton, “The Limits of Hybridity.”
74. Grenfell, “Rethinking Governance.”
75. Interview with a Timorese intellectual and government advisor, 12 May 2010.
76. Boucher and Kelly, “Introduction,” 10.
77. Richmond and Franks, “Liberal Peacebuilding”; and Trindade, “Reconciling Conflicting Paradigms.”
78. Constantinou, “Aporias of Identity.”
79. Castañeda, The European Approach.
80. Interview with a Confidential Civil Society Source, Colombo, 15 November 2015.
81. Visoka, “Three Levels of Hybridisation.”
82. Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies.
83. Forster, “Hermeneutics.”
84. Forster, “Hermeneutics,” 33.
85. Kalb, “Uses of Local Knowledge.”
86. Cooke and Kothari, Participation.
87. Rawls, A Theory of Justice.
88. Starr, Freedom’s Power.
89. Mac Ginty, “Between Resistance,” 170; and Pattie, Seyd, and Whiteley, Citizenship in Britain.
90. Mac Ginty, “Between Resistance,” 171.
91. Cooke and Kothari, “The Case for Participation as Tyranny,” 3.
92. Fraenkel, The Manipulation of Custom.
93. Wallis, Jeffery, and Kent, “The Dark Side of Hybridity.”
94. Mac Ginty, “Everyday Peace,” 559; and Chandler, “Resilience and the ‘Everyday’.”
95. Richmond and Mitchell, “Peacebuilding and Critical Forms,” 334.
96. Wallis, “Is ‘Good Enough’ Peacebuilding Good Enough?”
97. Interview with a member of Timorese civil society, 17 July 2013.
98. Hughes, Ojendal, and Schierenbeck, “The Struggle,” 820.
99. Scott, Domination.
100. Ibid.
101. Richmond, “Resistance,” 669.
102. Kalb, “Uses of Local Knowledge.”
103. Laclau, Emancipation(s).
104. Horkheimer, Critical Theory.
105. Hohe and Nixon, Reconciling Justice; and Howely, Breaking Spears.
106. Chopra, Ranheim, and Nixon, “Local-level Justice.”
107. Millar, “Disaggregating Hybridity.”
108. Peterson, “A Conceptual Unpacking.”
109. Björkdahl and Hoglund, “Precarious Peacebuilding.”
110. Porter, Peacebuilding, 62.
