Practicing Post-Liberal Peacebuilding

Abstract

Post-conflict peacebuilding interventions are complex processes. In order to make sense of such overwhelming complexity, the budding post-liberal literature in critical International Relations and Peace Studies has introduced the theory of hybridity. In Practicing Post-Liberal Peacebuilding, Julian Graef applies 'practice theory' to develop a critical methodology for mapping the shifting circulation of international power in a Liberian context. His study highlights the contested meaning of emancipation in an emerging post-liberal world and draws from practice-based approaches to chart the ongoing process of translation that played out in the course of designing, implementing and evaluating an experimental legal empowerment intervention in rural Liberian communities. When these various points of translations are mapped, they reveal a series of performative discontinuities which, in turn, add up to a process of emergent hybridity. Such emerging hybrid processes are actively contesting the 'liberal' monopoly on the legitimate practice of justice in Liberia and creating post-liberal political space for new justice practices and different peacebuilding practitioners in Liberia. This innovative study will be of great interest to academics and practitioners in the fields of International Relations, African Politics and Conflict Resolution and Peace Studies. Introduction -- PART I: A PRACTICE-BASED THEORY OF PEACEBUILDING -- 1. A Genealogy of Hybridity in Peace and Conflict Studies -- 2. A Post-Liberal Ontology of Peacebuilding Practice -- 3. The Politics of Post-liberal Peacebuilding Practice -- 4. Mapping Peacebuilding Practice: a Post-Liberal Methodology -- PART II: MAPPING PEACEBUILDING PRACTICE IN LIBERIA -- 5. Practicing Justice in Liberia: a Brief History -- 6. Translating Statutory Justice into Legal Empowerment -- 7. Translating Legal Empowerment into Liberian Communities -- 8. Translating Legal Empowerment into a Randomized Controlled Trial -- 9. Translating Legal Empowerment into Political Impact -- Conclusion.