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ethnographic lines has arguably led to an improvement of the field’s methodological apparatus and epistemological orientation. These developments helped to go beyond a mere critique of the liberal peacebuilding interventions and give more comprehensive insight into why and how situations of protracted conflict and negative forms of peace were entrenched and not overcome. The collection Statebuilding and state-formation edited by Berit Bliesemann de Guevara (2012) represents a nodal point in the synthesis between sociological literature on state- and peacebuilding intervention.12 The different contributions highlight how international intervention and assistance can facilitate statebuilding and formation processes, but may also stabilise and ossify predatory and reform-averse state structures and situations of protracted conflict and crisis. For instance, trusteeship (2012: ch. 7), transnational profiteering networks (chs. 4 & 5) and internal groups and actors who act as ‘spoilers’ (ch.3) can hamper and block statebuilding processes and establish impractical and structurally violent arrangements (2012: parts I and II).

This analysis of ‘sate-formation under internationalised conditions’ (ibid.: 6) reflects the growth of a literature that tries to establish a critical view of the social, political and

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Although it has been pointed out that such a radical re-thinking of social inquiry can only happen within limited scope within the current regime of knowledge production in academia (Sabaratnam 2015, Nicolson 2017).

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For sake of simplicity, this review is not considering historical sociological perspectives on state formation (for instance Egnell and Haldén 2013, Hobson and Seabrooke 2001) or socio- semiotic analyses (e.g. Lemay-Hébert et al. 2013).

economic dynamics in countries undergoing international statebuilding interventions – and of international interveners’ unawareness of them, leading to trajectories of deepening conflict and protracted crises (Pouligny 2006, Heathershaw and Lambach 2008, Lemay-Hébert 2009). Such analyses shed new light on the material dimensions (economic, military and other strategic sectors) of state- and peacebuilding processes and the political struggles occurring under the surface of ‘transitions’ towards democracy and peace. For instance, different authors have adopted an ethnopolitical lens to show how institutional mechanisms side-line or reinforce ethnic conflicts (Visoka and Gjevori 2013, Visoka 2012, 2011, Finlay 2010, Hehir 2006). Authors with a political-economic angle have shed light on the ‘rentier’ economies (Lemay- Hebert and Murshed 2016) and adjacent organised crime networks forming under conditions of international rule; the creation of ‘bubble economies’ around international organisations’ compounds, that distort and retard a sustainable and independent path of economic development (ibid.: 15-16; Ghani and Lockhart 2008); and the dependency of political power on illicit and predatory practices, under-the-surface infighting and connections to organised crime, which often render the publicly visible politics a charade (Verkoren and Kamphuijs 2013, Sörensen 2012, Dauderstädt and Schildberg 2006, Pugh 2004).

The paradoxical phenomenon is, then, that the emergence of such largely corrupt and in many ways neo-colonial intervention complexes is not challenged, but rather normalised through different discourses and practises of post-conflict states’ structural adjustment and integration into international economic, political and institutional architectures. In order to prepare post-conflict states for such transition and integration, bits of territory, authority, rights and obligations are handed over to international bodies or staff on the ground, which leads to the constitution of ‘global assemblages’ of intervention (Sassen 2006: 22, Ong and Collier

2005, Heathershaw 2012: 255, 2014: 44 ff.).13 Furthermore, the delegation of security functions to corporate actors such as private security companies and multinational companies (MNCs) leads to the emergence of transnational security governance assemblages, which superordinate national sovereignty, international governance and security standards over humanitarian, human rights and livelihood concerns (Hönke 2013, Abrahamsen and Williams 2011, Titeca and de Herdt 2011).

The instantiation of precarious and negative forms of peace with the help of international development, political and corporate actors and structures has also been observed in the case of Central Asian post-Soviet states. Heathershaw has provided comprehensive analyses of how peacebuilding processes and reform processes in Tajikistan led to the consolidation of a ‘virtual’ peace amidst the entrenching of a fragile, and highly unequal political economy, while the government is concentrated on maintaining its grip on power and on mobilising international resources for this purpose (2009, 2011, 2014). He thus concludes that statehood and state sovereignty are performed, as for instance in the utilisation of assistance for the country’s border regime and politico-technical support for a local government reform, which, apart from a new law that is compliant to international standards, did not produce substantive change in local government practices (Heathershaw 2014, 2009). Other discussions have shown how the integration of capital market and state structures into the global architecture of neoliberal financial capitalism enabled state, government and generally elite actors to enhance and maintain their wealth – with the help of offshore financial vehicles and money laundering arrangements – and thus political power (Heathershaw and Cooley 2015, especially Marat 2015). Other similar trends in the region is the utilisation of discourses on Islamic radicalism

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This is most apparent in the case of Liberia, where the implementation of the UN Governance and Economic Management Assistance Programme (GEMAP) was accompanied by the appointment of foreign staff to national government positions (Andersen 2012: 134), and in the installation of international administrations in Timor Leste (see Jones 2012, Lemay-Hébert 2012 and 2011a) or Kosovo (Visoka 2016, Hehir 2006).

and the ‘threat of terrorism’ (Lemon 2016b, Galdini 2016), as well as related programmes for police and security forces support and capacity building (Lewis 2011a, 2011b).

This literature provides a lot of insight into the processes of establishment and normalisation of internationalised forms of post-conflict governance, peace- and statebuilding in a macro and political discourse perspective. Political sociological analyses of intervention further highlight how such often illiberal and ‘authoritarian’ forms of post-conflict reconstruction are mis-perceived by interveners. To this end, some analyses look at interactions between locals and internationals, and lack thereof, and how they affect the outcome of interventions. The UN Mission to Kosovo (UNMIK), for instance, was unable to foster a positive development and reconciliation between Albanians and Serbs in post-conflict Kosovo and got caught up in the frontline of this ethnic conflict (Lemay-Hébert 2013d: 19, 2009).14 Hughes (2009) delivers further evidence from Timor Leste and Cambodia on how international interveners did not manage to sufficiently engage with the societies they intervened in, at least in terms of engaging with people beyond selective elite groups. The ‘symbolic violence’ (Lemay-Hébert 2011a: 1834; 2014, Bourdieu 1979) exerted by international interventions towards the local population is thus an important insight offered by sociological explorations of international intervention.

Another crucial contribution of the ‘sociology of international intervention’ literature is that it shows how the cognitive dissonance, that interveners are often socially distant from intervened-upon societies whom they are supposed to engage with and empower, is possible and even becomes normalised. Bliesemann de Guevara and Goetze, for instance, look at international statebuilders’ habitus, which they define as ‘the entire set of explicit and implicit knowledge, attitudes, ways of thinking and seeing the world (Weltanschauungen) [and

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A failure which, in Lemay-Hébert’s view, points to the ‘lack of cultural sensitivity and an insufficient understanding of the dynamics of the society, in terms both of power structures and of negotiations’ (2009: 39).

thus] and expression of the multitude of meanings that a person has conferred to his life, and … [the] educational, cultural, social and economic capital at the person’s disposition’ (2012: 201, based on Bourdieu 1979). They conducted a survey among about 70 former and current UNMIK staff in 2008 on their worldviews, life styles, and standpoints in terms of international order and political profiles (2012: 202 ff.) and found that, while ‘the large majority of UNMIK staff shares the same values of liberal human rights and a reformist yet interventionist approach to world politics’, they exposed high sensitivity and deep understanding of the conflict their mission dealt with. Yet, the contradictions faced by the mission did not lead any of the respondents ‘to a major questioning of the international politics of peace- and statebuilding as such’ (ibid.: 208). Such contradictory logics of acting and representing actions and success whilst being aware of inherent limitations and contradictions have been shown to underlie international intervention and assistance practices from the micro level (Heathershaw 2011, Autesserre 2014) to specific institutions (Hunt 2014, Koddenbrock 2015) and the organisational bureaucratic culture in general (Mosse 2005, Veit and Schlichte 2012, Distler 2016). The literature thus sheds light on the ‘innate conservatism’ characterising state- and peacebuilding institutions and actors, which discourage their subjects from reporting problems and demanding reforms (N.a. 2016).

These and other contributions15 elucidate the processes by which the increased sheltering and isolation of aid, development and humanitarian workers entrench their inability to challenge the environment they work in; its underlying logics of practice and knowledge production; and its effects of stabilising and reproducing global (dis-)order rather than transforming it. What many of these accounts are insufficiently including, or seem to be taking for granted, however, is the ‘local’ perspective on peace- and statebuilding, which is usually

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For instance, on the liminality of aid workers (Smirl 2012, 2016) and the ‘bunkerisation’ and ‘humanitarianisation’ of peace and statebuilding (Duffield 2010, Koddenbrock 2012, 2015).

included in the form of a number of press articles and selective interviews. Local people are thus understood to be an implicit part of ‘intervention society’ (Distler 2016), while the dynamics of internalisation or challenges and controversies around intervention and post- conflict peace- and statebuilding policies remain unexplored (Bonacker et al. 2010, esp. Bonacker’s chapter). Thus, although it is commendable that sociology and other disciplines have made inroads into traditionally IR- and political science-dominated intervention studies, the currently prevalent focus on interveners in this literature is ironically reflecting the very ‘self-referentiality’ of Western interventions initially critiqued by proponents of the sociology of international intervention themselves (Bliesemann de Guevara 2012: 15-16). This bias can and needs to be balanced by inquiring the legitimisation and fortification of hegemonic forms of peace through discourses and practices in the domestic realms of the societies intervened upon (Sabaratnam 2017, Millar 2014a, Heathershaw 2009). In the following, I discuss the claim that ethnographic perspectives on statebuilding, similarly to sociological ones, can fill this gap and provide yet ‘better’ insights into the dynamics of intervention.

The deceptive potential of ethnography and anthropology in peace- and conflict studies The reception of ethnography and anthropology in the critical peacebuilding literature can be seen as part of the gradual establishment of the critique of the ‘liberal peace’ and corresponding research agendas on ‘hybrid’ and ‘post-liberal forms of peace’.16 The interest in previously unexplored aspects of international interventions required new methodologies and research approaches for a field largely embedded in the scientific discourse of IR and political science (see II.1). Different pronouncements that ‘anthropological sensitivity’ was needed to study the ‘bottom-up’ dynamic of peacebuilding (Mac Ginty 2008: 139); that ‘some varieties of anthropology and sociology are well placed to capture these dynamics’ (Mac Ginty 2011: 4);

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or that ‘ethnographic methodology’ could enable ‘an understanding of the local, locality, context and their interactions with and against the liberal peacebuilding architecture’ (Richmond 2011a: 14, see also 146, 199 ff.) capture the hope that ethnographic methods would, in Vrasti’s words, ‘promise a type of knowledge … more empirically accurate than that provided by discursive theories of the political’ (2008: 295).

Gearoid Millar’s An Ethnographic approach to peacebuilding (2014a) presents and applies an ethnographic research framework and thus comprehensively forges a way forward in this synthesis. The ethnographic approach, it is argued, departs from the point where critical peacebuilding scholarship usually stops, as it ‘demands a willingness to study closely the local social and cultural context’ and ‘understand how international projects are experienced by people on the ground’ (2014a: 3, 2). The added value of this approach is identified in ‘ethnographic preparation’ (trying to get as thorough knowledge of the context as possible), and on the appraisal of cultural differences between the understandings and worldviews held by researchers and the researched (ibid., chs. 4 & 5). The book also, however, presents an instrumentalist understanding of the potential role of ethnography in studying post-conflict transitions. The challenge to ‘fully capture the local experiences of [peacebuilding] projects’ (81) is thus framed as methodological question: ‘there are dynamics within societies that demand purposeful sampling within a population if “local engagement” is to be achieved’ (83). According to this reasoning, the contextual picture of society drawn by the researcher can be approximated to the ‘real’ empirical situation so that data gathering and analysis enables the best possible understanding of the effects (and shortcomings) of peacebuilding interventions. Therefore, besides having the right methodological toolkit (including ethnographic methods), the research also has to be based on the ‘anthropological knowledge developed over decades by scholars with a deep understanding of Sierra Leone’s society and culture’ (79).

It can be argued that this reliance on ethnographic data gathering and the results of previous research is reflective of an empiricist-positivist epistemological approach, which is focused on the gathering of data that confirms or disproves a certain theory or argument. It does enable Millar to make critical arguments vis-à-vis international interveners. For instance, he demonstrates how the post-conflict reconciliation and FDI projects in question benefited mostly local elites, who had the educational capital to make sense of the interventions as well as the networks and financial resources and professional qualifications to seize the opportunities brought about by the projects (94-95). Yet, consistent with this heuristic logic, attention to complexity and detail are relegated to a matter of choice: ‘[A]n ethnographic approach should not be seen as an extension of anthropology but as a tool for any discipline … even non- anthropologists unwilling or unable to commit to this mode of ethnography can adopt and benefit from (it)’ (Millar 2014a: 6). Still, Millar also adds that adopting this approach requires ‘a healthy “anthropological imagination”’ (ibid.).

This ethnographic approach might be effective for engaging multiple audiences, but its implications require critical reflection. Especially given the different ways in which anthropological research has been utilised by states, militaries and the peacebuilding industry (Denskus and Kosmatopoulos 2015, Finlay 2015), it is worth pausing at the point where ethnography is offered as a tool to be applied at one’s convenience. What does the ‘healthy anthropological imagination’ necessary for adopting this approach look like? The understanding implicit in An ethnographic approach and the debates leading up to it implies an empiricist positivism for which anthropological strands had been criticised on various occasions in the discipline’s controversial legacy (Vrasti 2008, Hale 2006, Restrepo and Escobar 2005).

In this empiricist-positivist imagination, ethnography is conceived of as a tool for gathering data to confirm or refine theories, or to help carry out peacebuilding practices more

effectively. However, as Denskus (2007) has argued, a focus on developing the right instruments and analysing the effectiveness of peacebuilding in delivering its alleged goals also forecloses discussion about how peacebuilding is embedded in, extends and re-produces a global web of power relations (see also Turner and Kühn 2016). In this sense, peace and conflict studies need to confront the biases and blind spots potentially emanating from its self- understanding as academic discipline rather than nurturing an illusion of accessing better knowledge (and policy) if only the right methodology can be developed. Whether the development of a methodological toolkit alone facilitates the field’s potential to contribute to the creation of better peacebuilding practices and policies (as suggested by Millar 2014a: ch. 9; Paffenholz and Reychler 2005 among others) appears rather doubtful (Denskus 2007, Brunner 2014, Finlay 2015).

The idea of instrumetalising ‘peace knowledge’ (Visoka 2015) for the improvement of peacebuilding missions across the globe thus invites a further reflection on the limits of peace, conflict and intervention studies and their complicity with empire from a decolonial perspective. The universalist ontology and the empiricist positivism that inform the anthropological imagination in peace and conflict studies are linked to a Western-/Eurocentric understanding of the world, according to which ethnographic exploration of the supposedly ‘savage’ but also ‘pure’ periphery can yield new knowledge to better understand and solve problems of peacebuilding in the global periphery (Sabaratnam 2013a). Anthropology is thus located in the ‘savage slot’ within the intellectual division of labour of the modern episteme as it came about during the Enlightenment (Restrepo and Escobar 2005: 111).17 It is construed as a ‘[form] of knowledge that present[s] the West with its own limits by confronting it with difference and the unconscious. [It] nevertheless find[s] in Western ratio – and, hence, in

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For instance, Souillac and Fry argue that ‘[a]nthropology, with its vast documentation of indigenous societies ... can remind the West of the diversity of successful approaches to creating and maintaining peace’ (2016: 75).

European dominance – [its] reason for being’ (ibid.).18 This implicit cognitive mapping of the world – often implicit and used as a shorthand without bad intentions – depoliticises and dehistoricises the way in which the ‘periphery’ or ‘Global South’ have been created through the process of imperial expansion and colonialism in the first place.19

The empiricist anthropological imagination in peace and conflict studies and the predominance of positivist epistemology and universalist ontology in this field bear testimony to the relative isolation in which the ‘local turn’ and ‘post-liberal’ or ‘hybrid forms of peace’ were theorised (Comaroff and Comaroff 1992).Writing on the ‘strange case’ of the analogous ‘ethnographic turn’ in IR, Wanda Vrasti noted how, ‘[d]isregarding the historical controversies and political aporias of ethnographic knowledge has been a necessary condition for such a ‘turn’ to occur in the first place’ (2008: 195). She and other authors (Restrepo and Escobar 2005) have shown how the ‘writing culture’ and ‘Third World feminism’ debates had already pulled into doubt and partly done away with ideas about ethnography that have flattered peace and conflict scholars in recent years. The main lesson for peace and conflict research from these debates is that, rather than accepting abstract and potentially problematic categories and assumptions, inquiry should focus on the very effects of categories, assumptions and ideas about how the world works (Lottholz 2017b, Finlay 2015). Critical peace research, ethnographic or otherwise, should inquire how ‘how so-called communal identities and indigenous practices are produced, subsumed and reproduced in peacebuilding, i.e. how they are made useful to government’

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Richmond notices this ‘fork in the path’ but does not provide an immediate solution or positioning on it (2014; 697-698).

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Different scholars have thus argued that ‘the local’ is somehow ‘always-already’ global (Chandler 2013: 25, Bhambra 2014: ch. 4). In fact, it can be argued then that ‘indigenous’ and ‘local’ are analytical fictions created from the universalist and positivist vantage point of IR and political science-dominated peace and conflict studies (Chandler 2013).

(Finlay 2015: 225). Such an endeavour can arguably best be realised through a practice-based and cooperative approach to knowledge production, which I propose in turn.