Description
This article introduces the neglected level of organizational mandates and commitments to the analysis of peacebuilding practice. It argues that the persistent depoliticization of peacebuilding practices results from the clash between the commitment of most peacebuilding organizations to the twin principles of impartiality and/or neutrality and the political goals of peacebuilding interventions. The article employs a Bourdieusian framework to reconstruct the emergence of peacebuilding as a new field and scrutinizes the implementation myth of early peacebuilding planning. This myth and the haphazard development of the new field facilitated the role of development and humanitarian agencies in peacebuilding and gave rise to the persistent tension at the heart of depoliticized practice. Based on a comprehensive discourse analysis of the practical reasoning of leading peacebuilding actors, the article identifies the varied mechanisms by which peacebuilding organizations depoliticize their practices in line with their field-specific doxa. Considering the constitutive role that their previous habitus and doxic practices hold for most peacebuilding organizations, the article suggests that the development of a coherent peacebuilding paradigm and of closely coordinated practice is unlikely, if not impossible, given the present configuration of the field and its irreconcilable paradoxes.
