http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1337-5525
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ABSTRACT
In this article, internationally supported peacebuilding is conceptualized as a cross-cultural relational endeavour, with international and local actors engaged in multiple forms of interactions in a local everyday context. Using a cultural-relational approach, two cases of peacebuilding are presented: Bougainville and Sierra Leone, which are at opposite poles of the spectrum of international-local peacebuilding interaction. Peacebuilding on Bougainville has drawn relatively little attention; the international intervention there was modest and small in size, and locals had considerable control of the peace process. By contrast, Sierra Leone is one of the best-known cases of peacebuilding, with massive external engagement and comprehensive external control. Both cases are considered success stories, but they differ considerably due to the differences in local-international relations. This is explained by focusing on two interrelated core aspects of the local-international interface: building relationships and trust, and security provision. Furthermore, another generally underestimated dimension of peacebuilding is explored, namely culturally different understandings of the spiritual realm and their effects on peacebuilding interventions.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Tobias Debiel for insightful comments on an earlier draft of the paper. Special thanks go to local partners James Tanis and Sister Lorraine Garasu who supported the conduct and interpretation of interviews in Bougainville, as well as all of our interview partners. Many thanks also to Philip Cunliffe and Nina Wilén as well as the anonymous reviewers for their constructive and helpful comments on earlier versions of this article.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
About the Authors
Volker Boege is an Honorary Research Fellow with the School of Political Science and International Studies at The University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. His research focuses on post-conflict peacebuilding and statebuilding, with a regional focus on Oceania.
Patricia Rinck is a researcher at Käte Hamburger Kolleg / Centre for Global Cooperation Research, and a PhD candidate at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. Her research interests include peace- and statebuilding, with a particular focus on Sierra Leone.
ORCID
Volker Boege http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1337-5525
Patricia Rinck http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6112-6334
Notes
1 Mac Ginty, “Framing the Local and the International,” 207.
2 Brigg, “Culture,” 15.
3 Ibid., 7.
4 For the difference between ‘substantialism’, which is still prevalent in IR and peacebuilding literature, and ‘relationalism’ as an alternative approach see Eyben, “Power, Mutual Accountability and Responsibility.” Her relational approach to development policy and international aid can be an inspiration for a similar approach to peacebuilding.
5 For a recent critique see Millar, “Introduction”.
6 Duffield, “Risk Management”; Breen, Good Neighbour.
7 Mac Ginty, “Framing the Local and the International”.
8 In the context of the research project which this article is an output of, four more areas were explored, namely the everyday cross-cultural interactions, the peace/development nexus, different conceptualizations of time, and the gender component, see Boege et al., Local-International Relations.
9 For the Bougainville case, 63 interviews were conducted (in 2016) and analyzed altogether: 32 interviews with ‘internationals’ and 31 interviews with ‘locals’, consisting of around 65% men and 35% women. ‘Internationals’ included former members of the UN mission and the regional monitoring groups (mainly Australians and New Zealanders, both military and civilian personnel) as well as diplomats, aid workers and staff of international peacebuilding NGOs (also mainly Australians and New Zealanders). On the side of the ‘locals’, we interviewed military and political leaders of the various factions, traditional authorities such as chiefs and elders, civil society representatives, women’s leaders, church leaders and ‘ordinary’ people from different conflict parties who became peacebuilders in their local contexts. For Sierra Leone, the findings are based on a literature study, combined with 16 complementary interviews conducted in 2016 and 2017, among them with Sierra Leonean academics, employees of NGOs, the UN as well as international INGO staff, but also ‘local non-elites’ like taxi drivers. Important to note, it was not possible to conduct interviews with international staff of the former Sierra Leonean peacebuilding missions. For more details on methodology see Boege et al., Local-International Relations.
10 Autesserre, Peaceland, 8.
11 Local/international relations have received more attention in recent years. Severine Autesserre for instance has done groundbreaking research on the everyday practices of international peacebuilding (Peaceland, “International Peacebuilding”), focusing on the internationals. Bliesemann de Guevara and Kuehn (“On Afghan Footbaths”) also focus on the internationals, namely on their ‘urban legends’ about peacebuilding interventions. McWha, “Roles and Relationships”, Hellmueller, International and Local Actors, and Hug, Personal Relationships, address selected aspects, and Hellmueller, Partners for Peace, provides a more thorough analysis of the international/local interface.
12 In our view, the local turn in peacebuilding (research) necessitates an anthropologically informed analysis and interpretation – addressing history, economic and social structures, culture, worldviews, belief systems, norms and values and politics of (the people of) the place. If ‘culture matters’ and if ‘(local) context matters’ – then (political) anthropology matters too. It's ‘active awareness of culture offers an antidote to the naive universalism that continues to characterize much peacebuilding’ Brown, “Anthropology and Peacebuilding,” 138.
13 Randazzo, “Paradoxes of the ‘Everyday’,” 1359.
14 Ibid., 1354.
15 Mac Ginty, “Critical Localism,” 851. On the local turn also see Mac Ginty and Richmond, “Hybrid Turn”.
16 Mac Ginty, “Framing the Local and the International,” 205.
17 Autesserre, Peaceland, 271.
18 Hug, Personal Relationships, 310.
19 Autesserre, Peaceland, 5.
20 Kappler, “The Dynamic Local,” 884.
21 Kappler talks about the ‘commodification of local identity’ or as ‘a business factor’, Ibid., 882–3.
22 See Boege, “Hybrid Forms” for liberal-local hybrid peace in Bougainville, and Mitchell and Richmond, Hybrid Forms, for hybridisation of peacebuilding in general.
23 Regan, Light Intervention.
24 Braithwaite et al., Reconciliation, 46–9.
25 On the TMG and PMG see Wehner and Denoon, Without a Gun; Regan, Light Intervention; Breen, Good Neighbour.
26 Australian Government, Partnering for Peace, 20.
27 UN, UNAMSIL Background.
28 Regan, Light Intervention, 162–3.
29 Richmond, “Post-Liberal Peace,” 576.
30 On the significance of culture in peacebuilding see Braeuchler, “The Cultural Turn”.
31 On ‘the ritual dynamics at play in the act of eating together’ and its importance for peacebuilding see Schirch, Ritual and Symbol, 139.
32 Marcelline Kokiai, interview, February 2, 2016.
33 Stereotyping international peacebuilders according to their nationality is commonplace in peacebuilding interventions, both by locals and internationals, see Higate and Henry, Insecure Spaces, 118–36. This impacts on how relationships develop. Internationals put forward competing claims about who has better insights into local culture, see Bliesemann de Guevara and Kuehn, “Urban Legends,” 33.
34 Breen, The Good Neighbour, 225. At the beginning the Ni-Vanuatu’s inclusion had been rather tokenistic; they were primarily used to give the mission a ‘regional’ flavour.
35 Clarence Dency, interview, March 17, 2016.
36 Almost all the Bougainville interviewees mention these aspects. See also Wehner and Denoon, Without a Gun, and Breen, The Good Neighbour.
37 This observation confirms Autesserre’s findings. Peaceland, 266.
38 Cate Carter (Australian Defence Force, senior intelligence officer in the PMG), interview, January 22, 2016. See also Knollmayer, “A Share House”, 229.
39 This assessment is based on interviews with Sierra Leonean staff of NGOs, INGOs, donor agencies, ministries, state agencies as well as local government institutions conducted in 2016 and 2017.
40 Local INGO staff, interview, December 6, 2016.
41 Local UN staff, interview, December 19, 2017.
42 For the early post-conflict phase see Mitton, “Reconstructing Trust in Sierra Leone”.
43 Breen, Good Neighbour.
44 Bob Breen, interview, January 30, 2016. This resonates well with Autesserre’s plea for ‘moving away from bunkerization’, Peaceland, 269.
45 Duffield, “Risk Management”; Autesserre, Peaceland.
46 Cate Carter, interview, January 22, 2016.
47 Roger Mortlock, interview, May 27, 2015.
48 There were only comparatively modest exercises in the field of DDR and SSR. The UN and the PMG supported weapons disposal (Breen, Good Neighbour), and in later stages the NZ police carried out a community policing programme. These Community Auxiliary Police (CAP) work closely together with the chiefs and other local leaders, they operate at the state/non-state interface (Dinnen and Peake, “Experimentation and Innovation”).
49 Yabi, “Sierra Leone”.
50 Gbla, “Security Sector Reform”.
51 Denney, “Liberal Chiefs”.
52 E.g. see Wambua, “Police Corruption”.
53 In Bougainville, Christianity which was introduced by European missionaries from the nineteenth century onwards, was closely linked to and fundamentally affected local custom and culture – to such an extent that these days many Bougainvilleans think of Christianity as an integral part of their own indigenous custom. On the other hand, Christianity adapted to local circumstances and became to a certain extent ‘customised’. This process is a telling expression of the relationality of culture which also plays out – as we are demonstrating in this article – in today’s peacebuilding processes. Boege and Garasu, “Bougainville”.
54 On Bougainville reconciliations see Boege and Garasu, “Bougainville”.
55 On the linkages between emotion and reconciliation see Hutchinson and Bleiker, “Emotional Reconciliation”.
56 This is the general tone of the Bougainville interviews, see for example interview with Bougainville women’s leader, July 19, 2016.
57 Mac Ginty, “Framing the Local and the International,” 206.
58 For some internationals, the entry point for engaging with the locals was the shared Christian faith, e.g. by attending church. There was, however, a clear instrumental aspect to this. Mac Ginty rightly observes that all too often ‘where religion is recognised by international peacebuilding projects, it is as something to be instrumentalised.’ Ibid., 205.
59 By contrast, in Bougainville no TRC or special courts were established, the main argument being that such institutions would not fit with Bougainville culture.
60 Local academic; local NGO staff, interviews, December 5, 2016.
61 Shaw, “Memory Frictions,” 195.
62 Ibid., 200. Also see Millar, “Disaggregating Hybridity,” 9.
63 Kelsall, “Truth, Lies, Ritual,” 363.
64 Tom, “Emancipatory Hybridity”.
65 Kelsall, “Truth, Lies, Ritual,” 385.
66 Local INGO staff, interview, December 6, 2016. In addition, many victims who had testified at the TRC were disappointed because they had hoped to receive economic assistance in return for testifying, former TRC staff, interview, December 5, 2016; also see Millar, “Local Evaluations of Justice”.
67 Kelsall, “Truth, Lies, Ritual,” 390.
68 Tom, “Emancipatory Hybridity,” 251–2.
69 Local INGO staff; local NGO staff, interviews, December 6, 2016.
70 Given that it was culturally uncommon to talk about the atrocities that had happened, Fambul Tok staff were reportedly overwhelmed by women’s wish to openly talk about cases of rape. Many women wanted to speak about this in public ‘because they had been raped in public’ and wanted the perpetrators – e.g., the uncle or the section chief – to be known by the community, local INGO staff, interview, December 6, 2016.
71 For instance, in Moyamba, local women decided to have busts built as a commemoration for the only two sons of a woman who had both died during the war. Without consulting the chiefs, they decided to have a big ceremony, which was also attended by government officials and internationals. This was seen as an extremely important symbolic act as a sign to the mother who had lost her only children during the war, local NGO staff, interview, December 8, 2016.
72 Local INGO staff, interview, December 6, 2016.
73 Of course, there are others who get deeply involved, who have lived there for a long time or keep coming back, e.g. international NGO personnel who stayed during the Ebola outbreak to help although they could have left.
74 Local NGO staff, interview, December 6, 2016. Also see Bøås and Tom, “International Interventions”.
75 Brigg, “Relational Peacebuilding,” 59.
76 Ibid.
77 Autesserre, “International Peacebuilding”, 124.
78 Brigg, “Relational Peacebuilding,” 64.
79 Mac Ginty, “Framing the Local and the International,” 200.
80 Ibid., 207.