|
|
AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
Show panel list
Contested inclusions: reflections on participatory approaches to �peace building� in Liberia
| Panel |
49. The politics of healing and justice in post-conflict societies: Global discourses and local realities
|
| Paper ID | 379 |
| Author(s) |
Fuest, Veronika
|
| Paper |
View paper (PDF)
|
| Abstract | This contribution presents first findings from ongoing research on the transfer of social and political models by external agents and their local reception, adaptation and transformation in the central part of Liberia, a country that emerged from a devastating civil war in the year 2003 and boasts of the only elected female head of state in Africa. Situated within the recent ‘school’ of an anthropology of policy (e.g. Mosse 2004, 2005; Shore & Wright 1997) the paper focuses on so-called “software projects” that aim to induce social change in the name of enduring peace and highlights some aspects of local agency in post-war development processes. Various NGOs have become involved in activities that claim to contribute to “peace building” in Liberia. Such projects are concerned with interethnic reconciliation, “gender mainstreaming”, leadership training or “good governance” and are usually influenced by a development paradigm that has been polemically labeled as the “tyranny of participation” (Cooke & Kothari 2001). Critiques of participatory procedures and inclusive methods may need to be revisited in the light of evidence from NGO workshops in post-war settings, where institutions are hotly contested and identities and relationships are in flux. “Workshops” are instrumentalized by local actors in different ways, but they also contribute to constructions of social norms. They also furnish novel kinds of discourse (symbolic capital) to political agents intent on legitimizing claims to power. Discourse about human rights and good governance derived from international models is also widely distributed by the media. But the experience of participatory procedures as well as the role model of external facilitators seem to have an impact on constructions of social norms and identities that needs to be further investigated yet. Matters are further complicated as these inclusive models are imported into situations that are marked by - contested - revivals of traditional hierarchical organizations, the elites of which derive their legitimacy from claims to command exclusive secret knowledge. |
|