Description
This paper 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 paper employs a Bourdieusian framework to reconstruct the emergence of peacebuilding as a field in global governance and scrutinizes the implementation myth of early peacebuilding planning. This myth and the haphazard development of the 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 paper 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 paper suggests that the development of a coherent peacebuilding paradigm and of closely coordinated practice is impossible, given the configuration of the field and its irreconcilable paradoxes. In conclusion, the paper also addresses the implications of these paradoxes for the future of multilateral peacebuilding in an increasingly fragmented international system.
