The Politics of Post-Liberal Peacebuilding Practice

Abstract

The previous chapter outlined a post-liberal ontology of practice. This chapter turns to the post-liberal politics of practice. When peacebuilding practices are subjected to emergent pressures and tensions of a post-liberal political situation, the unstable relationship between being and becoming can be explored. In addition to the agonistic political tensions between different ways of being, a political situation subjects different ways of being to the emergent tensions actively reshaping what they are becoming. In post-conflict environments, the unstable temporal bridge connecting being to becoming is continually and actively constructed through the organized management of peacebuilding practices. Practices are organized activities; they are organized for some purpose, to address some perceived problem, to bring about some kind of change. While embedded in the past, peacebuilding practices are oriented toward the future. However, peacebuilding practices and the future they are organized to bring about may be contested. Therefore, the temporal politics at play in actively managing the continuity of this relationship stretches out along an uncertain, unfolding continuum in which the limits of power and meaning of emancipation in the post-liberal world are being actively reshaped.