Peaceland (Problems of International Politics)

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.

My son liked it, delivered on time.

Detailed and insightful study into the complex world of those who make conflict zones their home.

and it's interesting

Going on 8 years working in DRC and frustrated with the aid world, this was releaving to read. Great book.

This book explains very important issues in many Peace Missions. As I come from Yemen, it explains why the international community focus only on Marc-level of the conflict, avoiding to tackle the grassroots. Also, the book explains the usage of dominate narratives in explaining the conflict, yet these narratives can lead the focus on the effects, but not the sources of such conflict! I strongly recommend this book...

This book shows how everyday factors, which usually go overlooked, such as peacebuilders' habits, procedures, and narratives, significantly affect the effectiveness of their efforts. The argument adds a major piece to the puzzle of explaining international interventions' successes and failures. The book is masterfully written, weaving together extensive primary ethnographic research from many conflict zones, including Congo, Sudan, Afghanistan, Burundi, and Timor Leste, alongside a thorough reading of secondary sources, and the authors' personal reflections on her time as a peacebuilder. Peaceland is a pleasure to read and is set to become a major contribution to the field of peacebuilding. I enthusiastically recommend it to scholars and practitioners alike.

I had the fortune to study under Severine and read in depth her two books ("Peaceland" and "The Trouble with the Congo"). She has quite literally changed my life and perspective on international interventions and peacebuilding. Many before have tried to simply express the challenges of International interventions, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding- but I find Severine was the first to call out certain behaviors as a "culture" of their own. Those of us in this “Peaceland” or “Peace inc.” industry might recognize what she speaks about, but Severine has seamlessly woven our frustrations together and given them a framework, explanation, and legitimacy.After reading Peaceland- I was searching for answers of what does work in peace. Severine answered my prayers and wrote another book which is coming out in March 2021- "Frontlines of Peace". This is in some ways an answer to her book Peaceland and provides practical, easy to read tips & examples, about peacebuilding success stories from literally around the globe.Severine in all her books invites us, without judgment, to be more reflective about our work & choices and think about how we can do and be better.

Autesserre clearly communicates the challenges inherent to the present model of international intervention. She is a clear writer (actually, I found her a joy to read) with a wealth of expertise in this area. If you are a student, a military officer, or a practitioner in the field of development, humanitarian intervention, or disaster response, you will benefit from the ideas she presents.