Thinking about peacebuilding, the subject of “Peaceland”, Séverine Autesserre’s new book, makes it hard to imagine that such an endeavor could ever work well enough to be critiqued. There are the operational difficulties inherent in coordinating varied participants, some of whom had been recently trying to kill others in the group, conflicting goals among local stakeholders, pressure from outside sources pursuing their own agendas and the presence of not quite disarmed or demobilized groups on the fringe of the action. Tribal, ethnic, linguistic and religious antagonism among groups of people combined with competition for resources and histories of domination of one group over another seems to make long-term or even limited peace impossible.
But dedicated people still set out from the United Nations, the International Rescue Committee, Catholic Relief Service and myriad other organizations in order to help countries recover after they have experienced mass slaughter, marauding armies, mob violence and the atrocities that accompany internecine warfare.
Séverine Autesserre defines peacebuilding “to include any and all elements identified by local and international stakeholders as attempts to create, strengthen, and solidify peace...thus encompasses the various elements of the security, socioeconomic and political dimensions that scholars study.” This includes work from immediate post-conflict situations where peacebuilders work alongside peacekeepers to demobilize combatants and help them reintegrate into society by preventing the resumption of violence through reconciliation of the warring parties and reconstruction of the material basis of the community.
So they are faced with a difficult task to begin with. Autesserre asks why peacebuilders aren’t more successful more often. She took an ethnographic approach, immersing herself in the activities of a community of interveners in the eastern Congo for over a year, drawing on her history as an intervener and researcher in the Kivus where a number of locals and expats knew her or her work. She was able to build relationships of trust over time to get beyond the party lines created for outsiders—the press, donors, drop-in researchers—and find out what the peace workers personal opinions were. She accompanied them on patrols, shadowed them in their daily work, participated in missions and spent days and nights in base camps and compounds—research like this is not for the faint of heart. This was supplemented by comparative research in eight other conflict zones to refine and extend her work in the Congo.
She found that the daily practice of peacebuilding—what happened on the ground where, with the best of intentions, years of training and experience, expats continue to carry out programs that haven’t worked in the past and continue to fail. One telling example involves security routines and risk management. “Bunkerization” with fortified compounds, guards, tight restrictions on movement outside the compounds, essentially a military view of security, has become the norm in most missions. This leads to further isolation from the local population, lessens opportunities for communication and creates resentment among those they are trying to help. And it creates an unnecessary climate of fear among those deployed. Autesserre, in a great example of using her own experience in the field as part of her research, writes that interveners were more fearful than business travelers and scholarly researchers in the same area. “My husband, several other contacts, and I noticed that when we were attached to an intervening organization in a conflict zone we felt much more scared than when we worked in the same area for other reasons.”
This is just one of about a zillion examples that Autesserre uses to show that the political assumptions, career concerns and organizational bureaucratic demands of interveners have a significant, perhaps telling, effect on the success of peacebuilding missions. She is an indefatigable researcher, pounding home her points with lessons learned in the field so that her conclusions are reliable. She writes well—while “Peaceland” is an academic work anyone interested in how nations that have been to hell and not quite all the way back can stitch themselves back together and avoid the scourge of civil war and communal strife in the future.
Loading your book clubs
There was a problem loading your book clubs. Please try again.
Not in a club? Learn more
Join or create book clubs
Choose books together
Track your books
Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free.
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Customers who bought this item also bought
Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
About the author
Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Reviewed in the United States on August 15, 2014
Reviewed in the United States on March 16, 2015
Reviewed in the United States on September 24, 2018
Reviewed in the United States on January 22, 2021
Top reviews from other countries
Joanne - Ottawa, ON
I found her a joy to read) with a wealth of expertise in this ...
Reviewed in Canada on January 14, 2018
