Peacebuilding and Postcolonial Subject

P Peacebuilding and Postcolonial Subject Synonyms in order to illustrate the Eurocentric, colonial, and racist gazes that oftentimes inform peacebuilding imaginaries. Moreover, the chapter presents an introductory inquiring on the “local turn” and “hybrid peace” proposals, exploring some of their potentialities and limits. A new set of recommendations to scholars and practitioners working in peacebuilding emerges through the acknowledgment of (post)colonial inflections in peacebuilding processes. Hybrid peace; Liberal peace; Peace operations; Peacebuilding; Statebuilding Introduction Marta Fernández and Lucas Guerra Institute of International Relations (IRI), Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Description The chapter presents postcolonial readings on peacebuilding operations, considering them reproducers of colonial dynamics and hierarchies in the contemporary international scene. Rather than presenting an unequivocal and fixed definition on “postcolonial subjects” in peacebuilding contexts, the chapter aims to highlight how these subjects are problematically produced and represented in international discourses and practices. Examples of peace operations in Haiti, Mozambique, and Somalia are briefly presented Marta Fernández and Lucas Guerra: Funding by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – CAPES – Brazil, Code 001. Traditionally, peacebuilding scholars and practitioners have deemed “postcolonial subjects” as irrelevant or even as problems to be overcome in order to ensure the effectiveness of statebuilding processes. (For more on the relations between peacebuilding and statebuilding processes, see Bhuta (2008) and also C. Wallis ▶ “Participatory Constitution-Making and Peacebuilding” and F. Kühn’s ▶ “Statebuilding in Afghanistan: Inertia and Ambiguity” chapters in this volume.) The understanding of these subjects, sometimes as passive and dependent, and sometimes as dangerous and violent, reproduces colonial imaginaries that inform contemporary peacebuilding operations. Before seeking to know the truth or the essence of “postcolonial subjects” and trying to localize and fix them, we should ask ourselves how these “postcolonial subjects” have been constructed © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 O. Richmond, G. Visoka (eds.), The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Peace and Conflict Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11795-5_81-1 2 throughout history by Western discourses and practices. How, for example, have these subjects been produced by international peacebuilders in the cases of peace operations in Somalia and Haiti? In which ways might these representations affect the effectiveness of peace operations, as they did, for example, in the case of Mozambique? By navigating through this set of questions and examples, our intention is not to provide an accurate perspective on who are the “postcolonial subjects” and how should them be effectively “managed” in peacebuilding contexts. Rather, we seek to turn attention to a necessary constant questioning to the power relations that embed peacebuilding scholars and practitioners in their privileges and protagonism. (For more on a postcolonial critique to international “protagonismo” in a peacebuilding context, see Sabaratnam (2017).) A new set of recommendations to peacebuilders emerges through the acknowledgment of these power positions and their implications in peacebuilding operations. Postcolonial Accounts on Peacebuilding: Eurocentrism and the Production of “Postcolonial Subjects” in Peacebuilding Contexts Postcolonial perspectives share the idea that the hierarchies of race, gender, class, sex, and others which structure the relationship between colonizers and colonized have persisted beyond the limits of formal colonialism (Darby and Paolini 1994; Quijano 2005). Political independence processes, in societies that had been subjected to colonialism and imperialism, have actually enabled the continuity of a set of discourses and practices whereby the West continues to dominate the spaces and bodies it has once colonized. As argued by Stuart Hall (2019[2000], p. 99), “the ‘postcolonial’ does not signal a simple before/ after chronological succession. The movement from colonization to postcolonial times does not imply that the problems of colonialism have been resolved or replaced by some conflict-free era.” In this sense, the reproduction of colonial power relations and hierarchies in contemporary Peacebuilding and Postcolonial Subject global governance processes, as seen in the development field or in the international peace and security agendas, have been theme of important discussions (see Inayatullah and Blaney 2004). It is generally argued that these practices operate in a logic of “modernization,” promoting Western political, social, and economic governance as universal standards to which non-Western societies must conform (Krishna 2009). Thus, from a postcolonial perspective, peacebuilding operations might be seen as reproducing a “modernization” logic, as they aim to reconstruct so-called “fragile” states through the projection of good governance models, thereby effectively imposing a set of Western liberal norms (Jahn 2007). Seen from this angle, peacebuilding operations are informed by a preconceived peace model that is shared among the main actors and international institutions involved in peacebuilding processes: the “peacebuilding consensus” (Richmond 2004; see also Rossone ▶ “Liberal Peace and Peace O p e r a t i o n s ” a n d N e w m a n ’s ▶ “ L i b e r a l Peacebuilding in a Transitional International Order” chapters in this volume). According to this “consensus,” whose roots can be found in the modern political philosophy of the European Enlightenment (see Richmond 2005), a sustainable peace can only be achieved through the implementation of democratic governance institutions, the establishment of the rule of law, and a conducive environment for free market transactions. Considering this bias assumed by peacebuilding operations, postcolonial perspectives tend to conceive them as international interventions aimed to reshaping postcolonial societies in accordance with Western political, social, and economic governance standards (Jabri 2016; Sabaratnam 2017). It is in this sense that postcolonial lenses read contemporary peacebuilding operations as reverberating echoes of modernization theory and even of the civilizing missions that have shaped formal colonialism. In fact, the resemblance between the “new” UN operations and past colonial enterprises is acknowledged even by scholars who subscribe to the “liberal peace” framework. This is the case, for example, of Roland Paris (2002), who argues that UN peacebuilding operations Peacebuilding and Postcolonial Subject carry similar operational logics to the mission civilisatrice of the colonial era. From the author’s perspective, even though the language of “civilized” versus “uncivilized/barbaric” peoples has been abandoned, international peacebuilding efforts still operate in the “belief that the European imperial powers had a duty to ‘civilise’ their overseas possession” (Paris 2002, p. 638). Still, a particular governance model – that is, free market-oriented liberal democracy – is deemed as superior to all others. Therefore, peacebuilding operations continue the colonial process of transferring rules of “acceptable” – or “civilized,” as it used to be labeled – behavior to the domestic arena of conflict-affected states in the Global South It should be noted, however, that Paris does not call into question the liberal-democratic model which, according to him, has been globalized through peacebuilding operations. Instead, his critique is aimed at the ways such model has been transferred to ‘less developed’ countries (see Paris 2004). In his perspective, for a state reconstruction process to be successful, it must focus firstly on building solid institutions and, only afterwards, on fostering democratic political participation and economic liberalization (Paris 2004). In order to understand how these processes are authorized, one must look at the discursive construction of subject representations (Jabri 2013). In general, peacebuilders are represented as protagonists, as subjects whose agency is foregrounded, while postcolonial subjects in intervened societies are portrayed as passive, reactive, and marginally important to peacebuilding processes, if not as “threats” to these efforts (Chandler 2006; Sabaratnam 2017). As a consequence, postcolonial subjects continue to be entangled in power relations that constitute them as beings who are devoid of reason, intellectual capacity, morality, agency, and, ultimately, humanity. In the ongoing colonial imaginary, non-white and non-Western subjects once colonized by Europeans are still represented as inferior and backward in relation to Western white subjects. Such representation, in turn, provides the conditions of possibility for interventions aimed at converting these subjects to hegemonic 3 international norms (see Jabri 2016; Gruffydd Jones 2015; Sabaratnam 2017). Similar processes, through which the discursive construction of misrepresented non-Western subjects enable Western domination over them, are the central theme of the postcolonial analysis proposed by Palestinian literary critic Edward Said (1979). In his classic Orientalism, Said (1979) analyzes a set of academic and literary texts which, since the nineteenth century, have contributed to the construction of the “Oriental” subject as an irrational, depraved, and childish “Other,” as opposed to a Western “Self” portrayed as a rational, virtuous, mature, modern, and normal subject. “Orientalism,” in Said’s words (1979, p. 41), is “knowledge of the Orient that places things Oriental in class, court, prison, or manual for scrutiny, study, judgment, discipline, or governing.” However, such knowledge of the “Orient” does not stem from a direct access to facts about a region, but rather from an exercise of power whereby the “West” itself is shaped and builds its own authority over its “Other” (Said 1979). This binary construction of antagonistic and essentialized identities, opposing the West/ colonizer/developed to the “Rest”/colonized/ underdeveloped, has privileged, since colonial times, the former as agents of civilization, progress, and modernization over the latter. From a postcolonial perspective, peacebuilding operations participate in this civilizing process and, in this sense, reproduce the hierarchical construction of subjectivities of the imperial past (Jabri 2010; Sabaratnam 2011). Thus, UN peacebuilding operations are informed by a hierarchical conception of subjectivity, which places the European/Western liberal “Self” in a position of agency and ability to protect while constructing the mostly non-Western protected ones as devoid of agency. In this vain, notions such as “failed states,” “good governance,” and “responsibility to protect” emerge, informing international peacebuilding with representations that legitimize interventionism through racist imperial hierarchical categorizations similar to the ones which guided colonialism (Gruffydd Jones 2015; Hill 2005; Jabri 2010). As Jonathan Hill (2005) 4 notes, the “failure” of the “failed states” is measured in relation to the allegedly “success” of the modern European statehood model, deemed as a universal framework to be reproduced (or rather, imposed) worldwide. Noting these strands of power relations reproduced in peacebuilding interventions, Meera Sabaratnam (2017) argues that they operate in the logic of the structural relations of “colonial difference.” Departing from “decolonial thinking” (see Quijano 2005; Mignolo 2011) perspectives, the author argues that contemporary interventionist processes – including peacebuilding operations – are inscribed in a global “colonial matrix of power.” (The “colonial matrix of power” is the concept used by decolonial thinkers to metaphorically highlight a new global pattern of power relations inaugurated with the colonial encounter (and subsequent invasion) between Europeans and Amerindians in 1492. Its main characteristics are the hierarchical classification of humanity through racial categories, the establishment of a narrative of European superiority and exceptionalism, and the onset of a modern capitalist interstate system. “Coloniality,” then, is the reproduction of this colonial matrix of power’ logics even after the end of formal colonialism (see Mignolo 2011).) One of the structuring characteristics of this “matrix” is the hierarchical classification of humanity, whereby Europe is positioned as the geocultural center of the “West” and of “modernity” while the nonEuropean world is relegated to a marginal position of inferiority. Thus, from the outset of “modernity” – and its inevitable counterpart, “coloniality” – Eurocentrism has become the dominant lens for understanding and acting in the world. According to Sabaratnam (2017), since then, Eurocentrism has shaped predominant understandings on what and where politics is, on who produces legitimate knowledge about it, and on what types of responses are conceivable in that regard. Morgan Brigg (2010) starts from a similar perception. In his critique of the “peacebuilding consensus,” the author argues that such practices are informed by a Eurocentric perspective according to which the main questions about political Peacebuilding and Postcolonial Subject community and order are already resolved in favor of globalized liberalism. In Brigg’s words (2010, p. 339): “[t]o the extent that it does not critically reflect upon the cultural entailments of its heavily European heritage, peace and conflict studies implicitly privileges modern Europe as the moral, scientific, and political capital of the world, and risks serving as an agent of the liberal peace.” The fact that peacebuilding operations assume the centralized state model combined with liberal democratic ideals as a necessary and unquestionable goal limits our understanding of the possible (see Walker 1993) or our ability to imagine alternative and viable forms of political, social, and economic organization. Along similar lines, Vivienne Jabri (2016, pp. 154–155) makes the important observation that: “when peacebuilders land in a zone of conflict, they do not emerge from a social vacuum, nor are their actions informed by the problems they confront afresh on the ground. Peacebuilders might be seen as the embodiment of global governance structures, the discourses and practices of which are mobilized towards the shaping of the future.” This observation indicates that peacebuilding practitioners often carry – consciously or not – Eurocentric understandings of what “peace” is and of how a political community should ideally function, in conformity with the Western liberal standards of statehood (Brigg 2010; Jabri 2016; Sabaratnam 2017). Another expression of Eurocentrism in peacebuilding processes is found in the roles and associated expectations that are attributed to practitioners and local populations. Usually, expectations converge around a dichotomy: on one side is the “international” – composed of peacebuilding practitioners and experts and often equated with the “West” – which would hold the authority and legitimacy to dictate peacebuilding models and “roadmaps.” On the opposite side, there is the “local,” to which one attributes the expectation of compliance with these models or, at worst, the assumption that its actors will spoil their implementation (Hirblinger and Simons 2015; Jabri 2013). In fact, as Oliver Richmond (2010) shows us, approaches to peacebuilding tend to assume that Peacebuilding and Postcolonial Subject international agency is positive while local agencies are problematic. According to the author, “the space of the local, the everyday, and its attendant actors are often seen as sites of violence, poverty, illiberalism, and resistance [. . .] rather than varied and dynamics sites of politics in their own right from which institutions may emerge” (Richmond 2010, p. 683). This derogatory reading of difference conditions us to focus on the allegedly traditional and violent nature of postcolonial societies, seen as mere obstacles to UN’s efforts to rebuild and modernize their states. Such reading, in turn, prevents targeted societies from being included as active co-participants in these reconstruction processes. The materialization of the dynamics abovementioned might be seen, for example, in Meera Sabaratnam analysis of contemporary international interventions in Mozambique. In her account, the relations between interveners and the “target society” reproduce a series of Eurocentric and colonial logics. Firstly, Sabaratnam (2017) notes a desire for protagonism on the part of the interveners – a sort of “ego” of intervention – which results in the centralization of activities by peacebuilders, with little integration of local communities. Relatedly, there is a sense of disposability of target states and societies, as if the time, activities, and material resources invested by them were irrelevant and undesirable. The third element perceived by the author is what she calls a politics of entitlement: a kind of appropriation by interveners over the spaces where they operate, producing relationships of privilege and reward (as seen, for instance, in the high salaries paid to international employees, with significant impacts on local markets). Finally, Sabaratnam points to the dependence that is often generated by large resource flows of international aid, rendering target states more permissive to donors’ demands. Taken together, these elements undermine the effects generally promised by interventions: the establishment of strong state institutions, capacity-building, and local development (Sabaratnam 2017). The same Eurocentric/colonial elements are identified by Haitian sociologist Franck Seguy 5 regarding another peacebuilding operation: the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). According to the author, the peacebuilding interventions in Haiti have been so pervasive that, at a certain point, even Haitian public authorities were banned from entering certain territories, which had been ceded to transnational private enterprises as part of the “development” program proposed by the IMF and the World Bank within MINUSTAH’s framework (Seguy 2014). The author also denounces the almost complete absence of Haitian entities in the meetings where MINUSTAH’s reconstruction strategies were discussed. In fact, most of these meetings took place outside the country and, when on Haitian land, occurred in buildings with restricted access, being generally conducted in English, a language that is inaccessible to the majority of Haitian population (Seguy 2015). Moreover, Seguy (2015) highlights the dissonance between the luxury buildings occupied by peacebuilding organizations and the misery and precariousness experienced by most people in the country. The author also criticizes the fact that these organizations pay “blue-eyed foreign boys” salaries that are up to three times higher than those paid to Haitian officials for similar activities. The presence of thousands of highwage international employees has led to rising prices in the housing market as well as for basic goods and services, further hindering the Haitian population’s access to housing and food (Seguy 2015). Actually, the reproduction of Eurocentric/ colonial gazes on Haiti was already present before the deployment of MINUSTAH, in media editorials portraying racist and paternalistic narratives on the “childishness” and “incivility” of the Haitian society (Pressley-Sanon 2014). The mistreatment and misrepresentation of the “postcolonial subjects” in Haiti were also evident in the early military activities of MINUSTAH, in the slums of Bel Air and Cité Soleil. In these episodes, Haitian armed dissident groups were targeted as criminals and chased as such, before serious attempts of negotiation or integration to the peace process (Lemay-Hébert 2014; PressleySanon 2014). Several rebel leaders were 6 summarily executed, civilian casualties were reported, and the accusations of human rights violation in the Mission reached the OAS’ InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights (Lemay-Hébert 2014; Seitenfus 2016). In our perspective, this is exemplary of the inability of peacebuilders to recognize postcolonial subjects (or “target societies”) as actual political subjects, instead ignoring or criminalizing their actions, as Jabri (2010) and Sabaratnam (2017) had already pointed out. Mullings et al. (2010) also point to another racist/colonial trace expressed by MINUSTAH, this time in the context of the earthquake that destroyed the Haitian capital in 2010, while the Mission was fully active in the country. According to the authors, immediately after the earthquake, news and memos portraying the country’s population as “dangerous,” “irrational,” and “violent” circulated among international organizations and agencies operating in Haiti, spreading an atmosphere of fear which in turn contributed to the late arrival of humanitarian aid in the outermost regions of the city. In addition, the authors argue that the priority of MINUSTAH’s troops and US reinforcements arriving in the country at that moment was to contain the population within the country’s borders so as to prevent refugee flows, rather than the provision of humanitarian aid. Considering these elements, Franck Seguy (2014) calls MINUSTAH an attempt to “recolonize Haiti,” arguing that “racism lies in the onto-epistemological genesis of Haitian policies” (Seguy 2014, pp. 523–524). Pressley-Sanon (2014) and Mullings et al. (2010) also converge in pointing out the racist and colonial features found in MINUSTAH’s operation in the country (see also Guerra 2019). A similar perspective on the “recolonization” traces of UN peace operations had already been voiced in the 1990s, during the UNOSOM II (United Nations Operation in Somalia II). In that occasion, the Mogadishu Radio accused the UN and the United States of America of trying to establish a tutelage regime over Somalia. The charge was not without foundation. In an Editorial dating from July 23 of 1992, The New York Times claimed: “[i]f the only alternative to anarchy is a UN trusteeship then the Security Council needs Peacebuilding and Postcolonial Subject to ponder the case.” Such a declaration resonated colonial and racist imaginaries that pervaded Western leadership discourses at the time, representing Somalia as a land of “lacks” (Fernández y Garcia 2017). The then UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, for example, claimed that: Somalia is today a country without central, regional or local administration, and without services: no electricity, no communications, no transport, no schools and no health services. Throughout the country, there are incredible scenes of hunger, disease and dying children. (. . .) The absence of food is both the cause and the result of lack of security. (S/24343, para. 24 in Boutros-Ghali 1996, p. 174) Similarly, the American Ambassador in Kenya, Smith Hempstone, alerted the United States not to send troops to Somalia, seeking to prevent the death of American soldiers in the hands of “natural-born guerrillas” (Hempstone 1992, p. 30). By localizing the causes of the Somali conflict in the allegedly deviant nature of the country’s native inhabitants, Hempstone reproduced the racist tone of the nineteenth-century Italian colonial discourses on Somalia (Fernández y Garcia 2017). In the words of the Ambassador: “The Somali is treacherous. The Somali is a killer. The Somali is as tough as his country, and just as unforgiving. [. . .] In the old days, the Somalis raided for camels, women and slaves. Today they raid for camels, women, slaves and food” (Hempstone 1992, p. 30). Such perceptions are in line with Sabaratnam’s (2017) analysis of contemporary interventions as manifestations of the “colonial matrix of power” that assumes Eurocentrism as a superior reference. The non-white, non-Western, and non-European subjects are relegated to positions of inferiority, whether as postcolonial subjects who are devoid of political subjectivity or as “abominations” and “threats” to Eurocentric “normality.” Peacebuilding and Postcolonial Subject Inquiring the “Local Turn” and Hybridization Processes in Peacebuilding: Postcolonial Contributions and Critiques The aforementioned problematic marginalization of local actors (or “postcolonial subjects”) in peace operations under the “peacebuilding consensus” has already been critically scrutinized on different theoretical perspectives and case studies (Richmond 2010). Responsively, a new sensitivity on peacebuilding gradually emerged among scholars and practitioners, pushing for further attention to the need of including “target societies” as protagonists in peace processes. As a result, the political-institutional model embedded in peacebuilding operations has been subjected to critical evaluation, losing its unchallenged position of universal norm in relation to which all other forms of political, social, or economic organization are judged, punished, and/or adjusted (Richmond 2010). Consequently, the understanding of peacebuilding as a one-way process has also been challenged (Charbonneau 2009). More attention has been directed to the ways in which postcolonial subjects and international peacebuilders negotiate, resist, coopt, and transform peacebuilding contexts (see Jabri 2013; Mac Ginty 2010; Mac Ginty and Richmond 2013; Richmond 2010). Along these lines, terms like “local turn” and “hybrid peace” (see Boege’s chapter in this volume ▶ “Hybrid Political Orders and Hybrid Peace”) gain prominence in contemporary peacebuilding debates (see Mac Ginty 2010; Mac Ginty and Richmond 2013; Richmond 2010). The central argument of this approach is that peacebuilding processes are not merely the imposition of “liberal peace” by external actors, but rather a relational dynamic involving agendas, understandings, and practices of international peacebuilders and of local community organizations at various levels (Jabri 2013). In a sense, “postcolonial subjects” in peacebuilding contexts get to be recognized as politically relevant, both in their interactions with peacebuilders and in their everyday practices (Mac Ginty and Richmond 2013). Fundamentally, it is understood that this 7 new sensitivity tends to breed processes of peace “hybridization,” resulting in models that are neither entirely “traditional” nor entirely “liberal” but which emerge instead from the particularities of each context and society (Mac Ginty and Sanghera 2012). In this regard, the contributions of postcolonial thinking also provide some interesting insights for reflection. In fact, discussions on “hybridism” have long been a central concern in postcolonial debates (see Bhabha 1997; Costa 2006). The contributions of Homi Bhabha (1997) are fundamental in these debates. Bhabha argues that the “conversion” of postcolonial subjects is continuously derailed by the fact that these subjects are not a “tabula rasa,” but rather a previously occupied terrain. Thus, any attempt at domination or colonization would always carry within it the possibility of subverting the original (Krishna 2009; Bhabha 1997). In Bhabha’s work, subversion is related to the sliding of the meaning of signs, and creative action is one that subverts, redefines the sign, from a locus of enunciation which is itself dislocated from closed representation systems. It is not an intervention informed by another existing system of representation, but rather one that emerges from the boundary, from a locus that is somehow outside totalizing systems of signification, and which is therefore able to introduce unease and to reveal the fragmentary and ambivalent character of any representation system (Costa 2006). With the concept of “hybridism,” then, the postcolonial critique aims to highlight the contingencies, heterogeneities, and complexities of postcolonial societies and subjects. No hegemonic project can succeed since, according to Bhabha (1997), such an enterprise is continuously fractured and subverted by its recipients. Recognition of the hybrid character of postcolonial societies and subjects allows us to destabilize the dominant discourse in the realm of peacebuilding operations, which continues to reproduce colonial binaries and essentialisms and to identify the “Other” as “violent,” “backward,” “primitive,” and “failed” (see Richmond 2010). As highlighted by Kenneth Menkhaus (2006), the case of Somaliland is exemplary in 8 Peacebuilding and Postcolonial Subject this regard. For the author, Somaliland, a former British colony located in northwestern Somalia, reminds us that external statebuilding efforts may not be a necessary condition for the reconstruction of successful governance mechanisms, as international organizations tend to assume. In Somaliland, the main statebuilding agents were not external; instead, as noted by Tobias Hagmann and Markus Hoehne (2007, p. 23): “This statebuilding process occurred through cooperation between traditional authorities such as elders and sheikhs, politicians, former guerrillas, intellectuals and ordinary people who decided to put their guns aside and solve problems peacefully, and with only marginal external support from international organisations.” According to Boege et al. (2009), Somaliland is an example of an emerging state grounded in a hybrid political order with significant social legitimacy, in which elders play a crucial role in governance. Michael Walls (2009) agrees that many of the processes found across Somaliland are based on traditional conflict resolution institutions, hybridized throughout history. He also claims that such institutions should neither be dismissed because of their innate conservatism, emphasized by mainstream discourses, nor should they be romanticized. To overcome this limitation in dominant discourse, Boege et al. (2010) propose a reconceptualization of so-called failed states as “hybrid political orders.” For them, such a move: allows for a more neutral and nuanced understanding of the complex domains of power and authority in these societies, by widening the frame of reference from the functions and capacities of state institutions to also include the operation of customary and other non-state institutions in providing sources of social peace, justice, political representation, and participation. (Boege et al. 2010, p. 101) Despite the optimism often present in the approaches to these “local turn” and “peace hybridization” initiatives, it should be noted that these processes are not free from limitations and criticism (Sabaratnam 2013). A first important element in this regard is the fact that there is no consensus on what or who should count as “local” in peacebuilding processes (Mccandless et al. 2015). Thus, often the “local” ends up being defined by interveners, according to their own agendas and understandings of what an ideal peacebuilding process is and who should be included in it (Chandler 2013; Hirblinger and Simons 2015). Analyzing the cases of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) and the United Nations Operation in Burundi (ONUB), Hirblinger and Simons (2015) identify an instrumentalization of local actors according to political interests of intervening forces. A second important element concerns the risks of romanticization and essentialization of the “local” where peace hybridization processes can take place. If, on the one hand, a postcolonial critique denounces the propensity of the peacebuilding literature to associate the “local” with “tradition” and, consequently, with “backwardness,” “disorder,” and “violence,” it is also aware of the opposite risk of romanticizing and praising the “local” (Lidén 2009; Kaplan 2009; Richmond 2010; Mac Ginty 2010). Thus, as highlighted by Thania Paffenholz (2015), there is often a tendency to construct the “local” as an idyllic, supposedly more legitimate and authentic dimension, the locus of a “greater truth” on how peace processes should be conducted. As a result, one can lose sight of power relations and oppressions reproduced at the level of local communities. Another strand of critiques to the “local turn” and “peace hybridization” calls into question the very binary opposition between the “global” and the “local.” In this perspective, the notion of “local turn” tends to reproduce a conception of the “international” as a monolithic entity, generally conceived as the domain of the “Global North” or “West,” a dynamic locus of agency in the design and implementation of peace processes (Nadarajah and Rampton 2015). The “local,” in turn, continues to be frequently reproduced as an atomized locus, fixed and taken for granted, to which a depoliticized, passive, and strictly reactive role is attributed in relation to international agendas and practices (Jabri 2013; Nadarajah and Rampton 2015). This kind of binary representation, often reproduced in approaches to a “hybrid peace,” Peacebuilding and Postcolonial Subject echoes some problematic features noted by Arjun Appadurai (1988) in discourses opposing “natives” and “Westerners.” In these discourses, the “natives” are represented as authentic, pure, and fixed identities, while the “modern” Westerns societies are set apart from this possibility of authenticity, for their alleged complexity, dynamism, and diversity. In this sense, the “natives,” according to Appadurai (1988, p. 37): “are not only people who are from certain places, and belong to those places, but they are also those who are somehow incarcerated, or confined, in those places.” In contrast to these contained, incarcerated, and culturally isolated beings are the free-flowing Westerners. Taking up, over history, the roles of explorers, missionaries, anthropologists, administrators, and today, we might add, peacebuilding agents, Westerners have represented themselves as “the movers, the seers, the knowers,” in contrast to the natives immobilized by belonging to a “place” (Appadurai 1988, p. 37). Having these problematic dichotomies in mind, there are approaches that defy the usual association between the “global” and domination, on one hand, and between the “local” and resistance, on the other, assuming a perspective which takes the “global” to reside within the framework of the “local,” as proposed by Phillip Darby (2004). In such a framework, there is the acknowledgment of the colonial involvement in the reconfiguration of local identities. The same might be said regarding the compliance of international peacebuilding agents in recent outbreaks of violence in postcolonial societies (see LemayHébert 2014). In a similar logic, we may conceive that the “local” can also affect, negotiate, and modify “global” agendas and policies, constituting what Jabri (2013) calls the “postcolonial international.” Finally, another critical strand of the “local turn” concerns the invisibility and silencing of historical and structural power relations. In this sense, critique is directed to the absence of historical accounts on colonialism, imperialism, and neocolonialism in analyses and prescription under the label of the “local turn” (De Heredia 2018; Sabaratnam 2017). Similarly, power 9 hierarchies and relations that are fundamental to the structuring of the “modern international” – such as racism, capitalism, and patriarchy – are often invisible in approaches to the “local turn” (Chandler 2013; De Heredia 2018; Nadarajah and Rampton 2015). As a consequence, despite labeling themselves as critical, these approaches still reproduce and rely on Eurocentric, state-centric, (neo)liberal worldviews, subjectivities, and political responses (De Heredia 2018; Jabri 2010; Sabaratnam 2013). Final Remarks As seen in the set of perspectives, debates, and problems presented throughout this chapter, we consider that the issue of an ethical-political engagement with “postcolonial subjects” is central to theoretical and practical debates on peacebuilding. In this sense, we follow Meera Sabaratnam (2017) as she argues that a serious consideration of the various local actors in peacebuilding contexts as relevant political subjects can lead to deep structural changes in the ways these peace processes are (or are not) conceived and executed. However, we also agree with the author as she claims that, prior to these larger structural changes, small steps can be taken by scholars and practitioners in order to avoid colonial biases in their approaches to peacebuilding. An essential step consists in the construction of bottom-up approaches, which take the experiences and standpoints of target societies regarding peacebuilding processes as their starting point (Sabaratnam 2017). This might involve peacebuilding hybridization processes which place target societies as protagonists in the formulation and implementation of peacebuilding policies, instead of merely including certain “local” segments in ways that fit interveners’ agendas. Another step requires interveners and peacebuilders to be aware that the activities they perform are fundamentally political, rather than strictly “technical.” In this regard, practitioners should be more sensitive to the history of colonial interventions in societies in which they operate and to the ways their own actions can be 10 interpreted in relation to these contexts. This means “racializing the international,” understanding it as an environment where colonial power relations are reproduced. Beyond efforts to amplify the voices of postcolonial subjects in peace operations (a step that is surely fundamental), an effective decolonization of peacebuilding processes requires this revisionism and self-criticism by peacebuilders themselves, as they usually possess the knowledge that is considered legitimate and the resources needed to turn this knowledge into political practices. Cross-References ▶ Culture, Anthropology and Ethnography in Peace Research ▶ Hybrid Political Orders and Hybrid Peace ▶ Islam and Peace ▶ Local Peacebuilding ▶ Reflexive Methodologies for Peace and Conflict Research ▶ Stabilization Operations and Their Relationship to Liberal Peacebuilding Missions ▶ Stalled Peacebuilding: Dealing with the Violence of Colonisation and its Legacy References Appadurai, A. (1988). Putting hierarchy in its place. Cultural Anthropology, 3(1), 36–49. Recuperado de https://www.jstor.org/stable/656307 Bhabha, H. K. (1997). O Local da Cultura. Belo Horizonte: Editora UFMG. Bhuta, N. (2008). Against state-building. Constellations, 15(4), 517–542. Boege, V., Brown, A., Clements, K., & Nolan, A. (2009). On hybrid political orders and emerging states: What is failing – States in the Global South or research and politics in the West? In M. Fischer & B. Schmelzle (Eds.), Berghof handbook for conflict transformation (Dialogue series, Vol. 8, p. 23). Berlin: Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management. Boege, V., Brown, M. A., Clements, K., & Nolan, A. (2010). Challenging statebuilding as peacebuilding: Working with hybrid political orders to build peace. In O. Richmond (Org.), Palgrave advances in peacebuilding: Critical developments and approaches (pp. 99–115). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Peacebuilding and Postcolonial Subject Boutros-Ghali, B. (1996). The United Nations and Somalia: 1992–1996. New York: Department of Public Information, United Nations. Brigg, M. (2010). Capítulo 17, Culture: Challenges and possibilities. In O. Richmond (Ed.), Palgrave advances in peacebuilding: Critical developments and approaches (pp. 329–346). Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Chandler, D. C. (2006). Empire in denial: The politics of state-building. London: Pluto. Chandler, D. (2013). Peacebuilding and the politics of nonlinearity: Rethinking ‘hidden’ agency and ‘resistance’. Peacebuilding, 1(1), 17–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 21647259.2013.756256. Charbonneau, B. (2009, fevereiro). The colonial legacy of peace(building): France, Europe, Africa. Apresentado em Paper at the ISA’s 50th Annual Convention exploring the past, anticipating the future, New York. https:// www.prio.org/Publications/Publication/?x¼4113 Costa, S. (2006). Desprovincializando a sociologia: A contribuição pós-colonial. Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais, 21(60), 117–134. https://doi.org/ 10.1590/S0102-69092006000100007. Darby, P. (2004). Pursuing the political: A postcolonial rethinking of relations international. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 33(1), 1–34. Darby, P., & Paolini, A. J. (1994). Bridging international relations and postcolonialism. Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 19(3), 371–397. De Heredia, M. (2018). The conspicuous absence of class and privilege in the study of resistance in peacebuilding contexts. International Peacekeeping, 25(3), 325–348. https://doi.org/10.1080/13533312.2018.1449650. Editorial Desk. (1992, July 23). The hell called Somalia. The New York Times. Fernández y Garcia, M. (2017). Rethinking peacebuilding practices through the Somaliland experience. Review of African Political Economy, 44, 1–19. Gruffydd Jones, B. (2015). ‘Good governance’ and ‘state failure’: The pseudo-science of statemen in our times. In A. Anievas, N. Manchanda, & R. Shilliam (Orgs.), Race and racism in international relations: Confronting the global colour line (pp. 62–80). New York: Routledge. Guerra, L. (2019). The “coloniality of peace”: Searching for (decolonizing) methods in the study of peace processes – The case of MINUSTAH. Working paper prepared for the Workshop Studying Humanitarian Interventions, USP, São Paulo. https://www.academia. edu/41444473/The_Coloniality_of_Peace_searching_ for_decolonizing_methods_in_the_study_of_peace_ processes_the_case_of_MINUSTAH. Hagmann, T., & Hoehne, M. V. (2007). Failed state or failed debate? Multiple Somali political orders within and beyond the nation-state. Politorbis. Zeitschrift zur Aussenpolitik, 42. http://www.nccr-north-south.unibe. ch/Pages/Publication/659/Failed-state-or-faileddebate?-Multiple-Somali-political-orders-within-andbeyond-the-nation-state Peacebuilding and Postcolonial Subject Hall, S. (2019). The multicultural question [2000]. In D. Morley (Ed.), Essential essays/Stuart Hall. Durham: Duke University Press. Hempstone, S. (1992). Thinking three times before you embrace the Somali Tarbaby: An ambassador’s warning (Excerpts from U.S. Ambassador to Kenya). U.S. News & World Report. Hill, J. (2005). Beyond the other? A postcolonial critique of the failed state thesis. African Identities, 3(2), 139– 154. Hirblinger, A., & Simons, C. (2015). The good, the bad, and the powerful: Representations of the ‘local’ in peacebuilding. Security Dialogue, 46(5), 1–18. Inayatullah, N., & Blaney, D. (2004). International relations and the problem of difference. New York: Routledge. Jabri, V. (2010). Capítulo 4, War, government, politics: A critical response to the hegemony of the liberal peace. In O. Richmond (Ed.), Palgrave advances in peacebuilding: Critical developments and approaches (pp. 41–58). Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Jabri, V. (2013). Peacebuilding, the local and the international: A colonial or a postcolonial rationality? Peacebuilding, 1(1), 3–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 21647259.2013.756253. Jabri, V. (2016). Post-colonialism: A post-colonial perspective on peacebuilding. In O. Richmond, S. Pogodda, & J. Ramovic (Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of disciplinary and regional approaches to peace. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Jahn, B. (2007). The tragedy of liberal diplomacy: Democratization, intervention, statebuilding (Part II). Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 1(2), 211–229. Kaplan, S. (2009). Rethinking state building: Fixing fragile states. The Broker, 16(12). Krishna, S. (2009). Globalization and postcolonialism: Hegemony and resistance in the twenty-first century. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Lemay-Hébert, N. (2014). Resistance in the time of cholera: The limits of stabilization through securitization in Haiti. International Peacekeeping, 21(2), 198–213. Lidén, K. (2009). Peace, self-governance and international engagement: A postcolonial ethic of liberal peacebuilding. Working paper prepared for the ISA Convention, New York. https://www.prio.org/Publica tions/Publication/?x¼4113 Mac Ginty, R. (2010). Capítulo 18, Gilding the lily? International support for indigenous and traditional peacebuilding. In O. Richmond (Ed.), Palgrave advances in peacebuilding: Critical developments and approaches (pp. 347–366). Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Mac Ginty, R., & Richmond, O. P. (2013). The local turn in peace building: A critical agenda for peace. Third World Quarterly, 34(5), 763–783. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/01436597.2013.800750. Mac Ginty, R., & Sanghera, G. (2012). Hybridity in peacebuilding and development: An introduction. 11 Journal of Peacebuilding & Development, 7(2), 3–8. https://doi.org/10.1080/15423166.2012.742800. Mccandless, E., Abitbol, E., & Donais, T. (2015). Vertical integration: A dynamic practice promoting transformative peacebuilding. Journal of Peacebuilding & Development, 10(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 15423166.2015.1014268. Menkhaus, K. (2006). Governance without government in Somalia spoilers, state building, and the politics of coping. International Security, 31(3), 74–106. Mignolo, W. (2011). The darker side of western modernity: Global futures, decolonial options. Durham: Duke University Press. Mullings, B., Werner, M., & Peake, L. (2010). Fear and loathing in Haiti: Race and politics of humanitarian dispossession. ACME: An International Journal for a Critical Geographies, 9(3), 282–300. Nadarajah, S., & Rampton, D. (2015). The limits of hybridity and the crisis of liberal peace. Review of International Studies, 41(1), 49–72. https://doi.org/ 10.1017/S0260210514000060. Paffenholz, T. (2015). Unpacking the local turn in peacebuilding: A critical assessment towards an agenda for future research. Third World Quarterly, 36(5), 857– 874. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2015.1029908. Paris, R. (2002). International peacebuilding and the “mission civilisatrice”. Review of International Studies, 28, 637–656. Paris, R. (2004). At war’s end: Building peace after civil conflict. Nova York: Cambridge University Press. Pressley-Sanon, T. (2014). Haitian (pre)occupations: Ideological and discursive repetitions: 1915–1934 and 2004 to present. Caribbean Studies, 42(2), 115–153. Quijano, A. (2005). Colonialidade do poder, eurocentrismo e América Latina. In E. Lander (Org.), A colonialidade do saber: Eurocentrismo e ciências sociais. Perspectivas latino-americanas (pp. 117–142). Buenos Aires: CLACSO. Richmond, O. P. (2004). The globalization of responses to conflict and the peacebuilding consensus. Cooperation and Conflict, 39(2), 129–150. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0010836704042865. Richmond, O. P. (2005). The transformation of peace. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Richmond, O. (2010). Resistance and the post-liberal peace. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 38(3), 665–692. Sabaratnam, M. (2011). IR in dialogue. . . but can we change the subjects? A typology of decolonising strategies for the study of world politics. Millennium, 39(3), 781–803. Sabaratnam, M. (2013). Avatars of Eurocentrism in the critique of the liberal peace. Security Dialogue, 44(3), 259–278. https://doi.org/10.1177/0967010613485870. Sabaratnam, M. (2017). Decolonizing intervention: International statebuilding in Mozambique. London: Rowman & Littlefield International. Said, E. (1979). Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books. 12 Seguy, F. (2014). A catástrofe de janeiro de 2010, a “Internacional Comunitária” e a recolonização do Haiti. Tese (doutorado) – Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas, UNICAMP. Recuperado de http://diversitas.fflch.usp. br/sites/diversitas.fflch.usp.br/files/tese-franck% 20seguy.pdf Seguy, F. (2015). Racismo e Desumanização no Haiti. Educere et Educare: Revista de Educação, 10, 16. Peacebuilding and Postcolonial Subject Seitenfus, R. (2016). Reconstruir Haití: entre la esperanza y el tridente imperial. Santo Domingo: Ediciones Fundación Juan Bosch. Walker, R. B. J. (1993). Inside/outside: International relations as political theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Walls, M. (2009). The emergence of a Somali state: Building peace from civil war in Somaliland. African Affairs, 108(432), 371–389. Recuperado de http:// library.africa-union.org/emergence-somali-state-build ing-peace-civil-war-somaliland-4