Curing strangeness in the political economy of peacebuilding: traces of liberalism and resistance

Abstract

Introduction Operations to ‘save strangers’ from war and abuse have seemingly morphed into efforts to cure strangeness.1 Agencies of international intervention – from IGOs such as the EU, UN and the coalitions in Iraq and Afghanistan to international financial institutions and aid donors – have attempted to cure strangers of the political, social and economic illiberalisms, which were assumed to have led societies into disaster. This chapter contends that within a liberal peace context, an essential part of the cure has been to provoke neoliberal economic transformation, perhaps taking advantage of the war shocks to facilitate the import of a species of economic values and policies.2 The purpose of this chapter is to highlight the way in which curing strangeness has impacted upon political economies through liberal peacebuilding. The liberal project has had differential impacts that have favoured capital accumulation rather than income generation, employment and livelihoods. The prescriptions are, it is argued, compounded by the repercussions on war-torn societies of the 2007 casino crisis in advanced capitalism. Nevertheless, local agency and resistances to the stressful dynamics of economic reform are partly expressed through the unaudited economies of everyday life, leading to what Oliver Richmond has termed ‘hybrid peace’.3