Programming peacebuilding: representations, misrepresentations and a shift to the production of interventionary objects

Abstract

The epistemologies of international interventions are receiving increased attention. An emerging literature on knowledge production in peace- and statebuilding has questioned any given authority of western epistemologies in conflict contexts. However, this article argues that by not interrogating into the conditions of producing representations, the literature paradoxically leaves interveners’ representations and knowledge forms intact. The article develops a conceptual framework for a reflexive analysis of how phenomena in conflict contexts are made known and representable. The framework’s value is illustrated in an analysis of the epistemic practices and their conditions of possibility that from 1995 to 2015 produced the ‘informal economy’ as interventionary object in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The multifaceted work of production included international standard-setting procedures, survey distributions and a development of calculative techniques. Conditioned by this work, various ‘informalities’ were produced as interventionary object, with distinct stakes brought into the respective object through the acts of producing it.