Liberal Peacebuilding as Zombie: Workaround Strategies

Warning:  This article is not for the faint of heart or “do-gooders.”  It is written so as to engender (pun intended), unrest.  It contains violent images.

It was a Tarantino moment—-Jabri’s Lynch Lecture, delivered before a cadre of faculty, students and friends of the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution.  She assembled her argument and then slashed the jugular of “liberal peacebuilding-as-enterprise,” and its lifeblood spattered across the faces of all those who believed in peacebuilding, as well as those who held it in deep suspicion.  In my view, the neoliberal approach to peacebuilding that has undergirded conflict resolution practice, collapsed twitching on the floor of that auditorium, gasping for breath, with pleading eyes turned toward faculty and students who themselves aspired to be “instruments for peace,” and then it died.  Gruesome and beautiful was its death.  I was delighted, only to be horrified, days later, to see Liberal Peacebuilding Zombie doing the walk of the undead in the corridors and peering into the classrooms of the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, where once again, the conversations were about reflective practice, problem-solving workshops and dialogue, aimed to “help” others in conflict, while neutrally extending the sovereign power of the state and its discursive apparatus, its narratives about itself.

Peacebuilding, and its henchman brother, statebuilding, has long been an “empire” activity—it is carried out by government agencies and non-governmental organizations, with funding from the Empire and its handmaidens—networks of international banks, NGO’s that rely on donations from the Global North, and/or religious institutions which can carry their own particular “statebuilding” DNA.  Even though most of this activity is anchored in the good intentions of peace workers (paid and unpaid), it is precisely these good intentions that seem to function as the currency, the exchange rate, that justifies the maintenance of institutions which contribute to reproduce relations of domination and maintain marginalization and poverty; as the sign said at the 1968 protest in France: “I participate, you participate, he participates, we participate, you participate, they profit.”

This is a portion of the cover art by Mor Gueye on the 2004 publication of Jesse Ribot’s report “Waiting for Democracy: The Politics of Choice in Natural Resource Decentralization.” See note 1.

And beyond the monies accrued to profit as well as non-profit organizations which rely on peacebuilding funders, there is the other lurking issue, racism. Following in the footsteps of John Speke, British explorer who sought to discover the source of the Nile, much of the peacebuilding efforts today involve the global north “helping” the global south, and indeed, Speke reminds the reader that “we” (Europeans) neglected our duty by failing to provide instruction to educate native Africans (Speke 1908). And as the global north began to fulfill its “duty” to the global south, the north materialized its preferences for some peoples, over others, in and through colonization, and left as we know, war, environmental destruction, and the displacement and death of millions of people in its wake. The ongoing scourge of colonialism continues in the culture of impunity, modeled by colonial powers who “schooled” generations of indigenous leaders in corruption and despotism. But the consequences of colonialism does not deter the would-be peacebuilders today, in our conflict resolution program in the field of conflict resolution—there are many academics and practitioners who hope to participate in peacebuilding processes, helping and educating “parties in conflict” via training, dialogues, or problem-solving workshops.

Fontan (2012) in her excellent new book, Decolonizing Peace, describes her own process of coming into an awareness of the entitlement at the core of the epistemology of liberal peace paradigm which undergirds peacebuilding. Teaching conflict resolution to students from the global south, at UPEACE, they challenged her to consider not only the geographical location of the source of conflict theories she was teaching, but also to deconstruct the liberal peace narrative itself, exposing the epistemology of this narrative. For indeed, it is not just the values at the center of the peace enterprise which are the goals of the liberal peace project, i.e., democracy, rights, good governance, reconciliation, and even peace itself, but also the way that the liberal peace project functions which I would liken to the process of “fracking”—injecting huge amounts of cash into a region, via organizational channels that reproduce the visibility and viability of “external partners” and in the process, destroying the environment, poisoning the groundwater. Profits remain with either external peacebuilding institutions, or in the newly emerging gray and black markets that spring, like mushrooms around peace enterprises. Fontan notes that this often accompanies the increase of human trafficking of women and children in regions where the liberal peace enterprise takes hold. So the liberal, neo-liberal peace project not only functions as a handmaiden to empire, working to remake conflict zones in the image of the global north, but also it violates the vulnerable. Peacebuilding, from this perspective is prurient —it has a “restless desire or longing,” an “itch” [2] that is both aroused and scratched through re-enacting the relation of “superior Other” on those that are at the effects of conflict, poverty and misery.

And Girard (1979) would agree. He argues, in Violence and the Sacred, that the victim is ground zero, the location for the process by which people (the global north) come together to make sense of what happened, to tell a story that would define the situation, delineate the good from the bad, and in this process, mores, even law, as well as community itself, are born. Perhaps we could say that global south is the victim, around which the global north gathers, reminding itself, in a mimetic moment, that it is not “I” who have no toilet, no running water, no arm, no home—it is this strange (often dark) other who I can “help” and in that process, continually know myself through the body of the victim. The Global North feeds off the victimization of the Global South. While Girard’s thesis may provide a theoretical excuse for our liberal peace project, i.e. we need to gather over their bodies, it is a sad project indeed. I think there are at least two things for peace programs, located in the global north to do to try and escape the centrifugal force of the liberal peace paradigm.

First, learn. (Richmond and Mitchell 2011) provide a devastating critique of liberal peace [3] but rather than simply admonish against peacebuilding, they invite deeper exploration of the workings of the peace project, on the ground:

"Peace is not a universal concept that can be transposed identically between contexts of conflict. Rather, unique forms of peace arise when the strategies, norms and institutions of international largely liberal-democratic peacebuilding interventions collide with the everyday lives of local actors affected by the conflict. At the site of each international peace intervention…a unique range of practices, responses and agencies—including plural forms of acceptance and appropriation, resistance and the exertion of autonomy—emerges and ‘hybridizes’ the ‘blueprints’ for peace advanced by international actors…As such, the manner in which a particular peace intervention is realized on the ground depends to a great extent on the dynamics of hybridization, which takes place along the shared interface of the local and the international" ( Richmond and Mitchell 2011, p.1).

Attending to the local, hybrid ways that the “blueprints” for peace are appropriated and resisted would give peacebuilders a new lens—rather than attend to the project goals and processes, they can attend to the adaptations, permutations and hybridizations that arise in the interactions between the helpers and the helpees. This would force helpers to attend to second-order processes of meaning making and it would also de-center the hubris that accompanies “helpers”—peacebuilders do not build peace—it materializes in the cracks and fissures of the interactions between local and global and we, as the global north, would do well to not just engage in “reflective practice” which is all too often a solipsistic loop in which the peacebuilder reaffirms the liberal peace paradigm, but to pay attention to ruptures, surprises, resistance, and “sideways” activities that emerge against the blueprint for peace that the international community so earnestly seeks to impose. So this attention to hybridization-as-meaning-making is one way to avoid the Liberal Peacebuilding Zombie and engage peacebuilding in a manner that might avoid reproducing the agenda of the global north.

This would, in turn, require a shift to new methodologies for conflict analysis that steers clear of “root cause” or “human needs” analysis as both of those reproduce the position of the all-knowing analyst, outside the context. Instead we need an epistemology of peace that is reflexive, recognizing the politics of being part of the “observing system” where meaning is created through sense making with others. This is definitely NOT the “co-construction” of reality, as though the helpers and the helpees have the same power to construct and instantiate meaning. Indeed, the weight of the empire and its institutions, which include all the “toolkits” to operate on conflict’s victims, contributes to anchor the global North’s master narrative, which, handily, maintains the marginality of would-be counternarratives. We need critical theories to be able to theorize beyond “neutrality” into the narrative space where we could, on the ground, in local settings, foster hybridization itself, by attending to, and elaborating the stories that disrupt the blueprints for peace.

And there is a second strategy for managing the Undead, one that I am, at present trying. While Richmond and Mitchell’s insights are certainly powerful, the issue remains as to what can be done about these international Zombies before they invade. Resistance in local settings must be complemented by a change from within the very structures of power that continue to animate the ranks of the Undead. A new strategy might require moving away from the view of the state and neoliberalism as a unified whole and focusing on the key institutions within the state essential to its reproduction and maintenance. Since the liberal peace paradigm runs parallel to the military industrial establishment in the US, I am working to infiltrate into the very machinations where the liberal peace narrative is anchored—in war and war making. I am supporting the development of an interagency process that would alter the way the military conducts their analysis of their own plans; when confronted with the need to integrate USAID and State Department actions, on the ground, in contexts that are not only unstable, but complex in terms of dynamics (unintended consequences, non-linear processes), uncertainty is increased, and that is one of my goals. Downloading a narrative lens into the military’s analytic community, not so they can “kill off” other narratives, requires and enables an epistemological shift that allows military to learn from locals, from partners, engage in ways that makes sense for those locals, and adapt to them. I have a second project, with the State Department’s Center for Counterterrorism Communication, challenging the way they are responding in their digital outreach—instead of launching counternarratives at extremists in digital forums, counternarratives which function to deny, justify or excuse the US’s actions, I am using narrative theory to imagine how to shift the interaction such that engagement, rather than contestation, would be the outcome. Many might call me naïve arguing that from within the “belly of the beast” I will never be able to make a difference. But I am working in a location where narratives about Others are created, instantiated, and materialized in military plans and public diplomacy efforts. And indeed I will not be able to make huge changes overnight, but rather than sit on the sidelines, avoiding the Liberal Peace Zombie where possible, I prefer to work, conversation, by conversation, to make sense, with others, including the US government agencies, about how to make sense of their Others. Call me a girl—naïve and silly. But I would rather connect, engage, and talk with folks that are telling bad stories about their Others, than wait around for the burial of liberal peace, standing around at the wake, toasting its death, and crafting snide or caustic epitaphs, knowing that the next day, Liberal Peacebuilding will rise from its grave, limp towards us, oblivious to the havoc it wrecks on the world. Viva Vivienne Jabri, for her “cautionary tale” about the possibility, and the limitations of peacebuilding.

Notes

[1] See the text that describes the cover art: “The cover image was designed by the author and painted by the Senegalese reverse glass-painting artist Mor Gueye. As a government officer organizes a “participatory” meeting, a child is conjugating on the wall “I participate, you participate, he/she participates, we participate, you (plural) participate, they profit.” This graffiti was first brought to my attention by Lisa Peattie (personal communication April 2004), who saw this writing on a wall in Paris in 1968. The graffiti was written following President Charles De Gaulle’s May 1968 speech in which he spoke of the need for more “participation” and proposed a referendum on the topic (Rohan 1988; Atelier Populaire 1969; Gunn and Iain1998 at www.marxist.com/1968/may68.html).”

[2] See http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/prurient.

[3] See Richmond (2011) as well as Richmond and Franks (2011) for explorations of the implications of the critique of liberal peace, exploring the relation between statebuilding and peacebuilding.

Works Cited

Fontan, Victoria C. 2012. Decolonizing Peace. Dignity Press.

Girard, René. 1979. Violence and the Sacred. The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Richmond, Oliver. 2011. A Post-Liberal Peace. Routledge.

Richmond, Oliver, and Jason Franks. 2011. Liberal Peace Transitions: Between Statebuilding and Peacebuilding. Edinburgh University Press.

Richmond, Oliver P., and Audra Mitchell, ed. 2011. Hybrid Forms of Peace: From Everyday Agency to Post-Liberalism. Palgrave Macmillan.

Ribot, J.C. (2004). “Waiting for Democracy: The Politics of Choice in Natural Resource Decentralization.” In M. Schultz and E. Yaghmour (Eds.), WRI Report. Washington, DC: World Resources Institute.

Speke, John Hanning. 1908. Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile. J.M. Dent & Company.