Practices of Intervention: Assembling Security Force Assistance in Lebanon

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the material-discursive assemblages at work in Security Force Assistance (SFA) programs. Departing from the idea that SFA follows a patron-client type relationship, or that it is normatively bounded, it argues that SFA is emergent and negotiated via epistemic practices. It identifies three sets of practices at work – i) identifying the epistemic object; 2) establishing boundaries of action; and 3) rendering visible the material nexus. The article draws on the case of SFA to Lebanon since 2006 to demonstrate how heterogeneous material elements, global discourses, and actors' interests and agendas are translated and stabilised in SFA programs.