Description
In this paper, I offer a feminist lens on international peacebuilding as a means of world ordering. I argue that looking at peacebuilding as a world ordering process through a feminist lens uncovers the patriarchal assumptions underlying world order conceptions that shape how peace is approached and (the gender) order upheld in externally supported war-to-peace transitions. Taking a closer look at the peacebuilding process in post-conflict Sierra Leone, which has been portrayed as one of the most successful cases of international peace- and statebuilding, the feminist lens makes visible how peacebuilding worked as a conservative form of world ordering that strengthened the patriarchal, gerontocratic order. It can be used to reconceptualise important concepts used in peacebuilding-as-world ordering, to analyse how these world ordering processes unfold in practice, and to problematise current injustices and point to alternatives. The feminist lens on world ordering can then be understood as an attempt at re-ordering from the margins (of conventional discourse) by grounding epistemology in the experiences of those at the margins of society.
