Discourses, representations, organisations – discursive policy-making and the rise and

rise of liberal peacebuilding

Tobias Denskus

ComDev CCMA seminar, Malmö, 7-8 February 2014

There You Go!

‘Watch this short, satirical film, written by Oren Ginzburg and narrated by actor and comedian David Mitchell, which tells the story of how tribal peoples are being destroyed in the name of “development”’.

http://www.survivalinternational.org/thereyougo

Outline Discourses, representations, organisations

Professionalization & InstitutionalizationThe backbones of development discourses

Discursive policy-making & implementation cycle – The rise and rise of liberal peacebuilding

Conference chairs & peacebuilding in Nepal

From the inside of the Radisson Hotel to the front page of a ‘bottom-up’ peace report

Professionalization & institutionalization

‘The concept of professionalization refers to a set of techniques and disciplinary practices through which the generation, diffusion, and validation of knowledge are organized, managed, and controlled; in other words, the process by which a politics of truth is created and maintained’. (Escobar 1989)

Professionalization & institutionalization

‘(Institutionalization) refers to the establishment of an institutional field in which, and from which, discourses and techniques are produced, recorded, stabilized, modified, and put into operation. (…)The knowledge of development is utilized by theseinstitutions through applied programs, conferences, expert meetings, consultancies, and so on. By using certain forms of knowledge and producing specificforms of intervention, these institutions constitute a network that organizes visibilities and makes the exercise of power possible’ (Escobar 1989).

Discursive policy-making & implementation circle

- The rise and rise of liberal peacebuilding

Phase I: Enthusiasm (1990-1992) Post-cold war, end of history, democratic peacePhase II: Stock-taking (1992-1994) ‘Trickle-down’ of concept into large donors

organizations, but also INGOs Perceived lack of expertise and instruments

(‘Rwanda shock’)Phase III: Capacity-building (1994-1996) Demand for external advice increases Calls for ‘best practices’ and ‘products’

The rise and rise of liberal peacebuilding

Phase IV: Professionalization (1996-1998; but repeated as necessary) Toolkits, Training, Academia ‘wakes up’Phase V: Mainstreaming (1998-2002) Government policy, ‘cross-cutting theme’ (see

also ‘gender’ and ‘participation’), disgruntled field staff over new reporting rules

Phase VI: Rituals & routines (2002-2006) Conferences on ‘the future of…’; new MA

graduates

The rise and rise of liberal peacebuilding

Phase VII: Malaise (but also getting reading for new ‘Phase I’ again) (2006-today) Liberal peacebuilding partially (un)successful UN Peacebuilding Commission ‘Responsibility to Protect’ BRICSs and ‘norm diffusion’ New (social) media, ICT & peacebuilding

From liberal peacebuilding to discursive policy-making

Conference chairs & peacebuilding in Nepal

Spatial symbolism & controlled movements

Producing products – ‘Bottom up’ Brussels style

Live to tell the story – the workshop as starting and end

point (?)

Spaces, power & the body

The body is a political field: “Power relations have an immediate hold upon it; they invest

it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry

out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs.”

The body is the most basic and fundamental level of power relations, the “microphysics”

of the micropolitics of power. Ritualization is a central way that power operates; it constitutes a political technology of the body. (Bell 1992)

In summary

Development discourses work in/through/with different spaces, artefacts, rituals and structures

Policy-discourses are cyclical and need to be interpreted with historical understandings of ‘development’

We need to self-reflexive and reflective about our own positionality in discourses

References

Bell, Catherine M. "Ritual theory, ritual practice." Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Denskus, Tobias: “Performing Peace-building: Conferences, Rituals and the Role of Ethnographic Research”. IDS Bulletin, 45.2 (2014) (forthcoming, March)

Escobar, Arturo. “The Professionalization and Institutionalization of 'Development' in Colombia in the early Post-World War II Period”. International Journal of Educational Development 9.2 (1989): 139-154.

Thank you!

Emailtobias.denskus@mah.se

Bloghttp://www.aidnography.de

Twitter @aidnography