Peaceland: Conflict Resolution and the Everyday Politics of International Intervention.

Wisor, Scott

Peaceland: Conflict Resolution and the Everyday Politics of International Intervention. By Severine Autesserre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Severine Autesserre follows up her excellent The Trouble with the Congo with further investigation into the role of interveners in conflicts around the world. While the Democratic Republic of Congo is still her primary area of research, Autesserre added in depth qualitative research with interveners and local stakeholders in eight other conflict zones to understand everyday intervention. Rather than focus on grand theories of how and why third parties might contribute to conflict prevention or resolution, Autesserre productively focuses on the everyday practices and habits of those who inhabit "peaceland," including international nongovernmental organizations, foreign diplomats, aid agencies, and international organizations. The peacelanders, while internally diverse, share a set of common characteristics and practices the cut across most interveners. These practices come in for heavy criticism from Autesserre. Familiar critiques include the habit of traveling in convoys, bunkering in compounds, socializing only with other expatriates, failing to speak the local language, having high turnover of staff, and excluding local staff from senior positions. But these critiques are understood in a new light in Autesserre's competent hands. She helps readers understand the reasons that various policies and practices are in place, as well as how these policies undermine the prospects of interveners for productively contributing to peacebuilding. Autesserre also highlights less familiar problems in peacebuilding such as the role that graduate programs play in fostering problematic encounters between interveners and domestic populations. Students are trained to have cross-cutting thematic experience and discouraged from gaining extensive understanding of a particular place and conflict. The result is highly trained staff who know little about the people they are supposed to serve. Autesserre concludes with a useful set of concrete recommendations for how interveners can change their practices to embrace and promote local knowledge, foster enduring local connections, and conduct themselves on a day-to-day basis in a way that makes it possible to better contribute to peacebuilding. Reviewed by Scott Wisor