Berit Bliesemann De Guevara - Böcker

This timely handbook offers a comprehensive, critical overview of current research on knowledge and expertise in international politics that helps readers navigate the growing literature in the field and explore new research agendas. The handbook is based on a shared understanding that knowledge and expertise matter in politics and that knowledge claims are a form of power warranting critical interrogation. The chapters of Knowledge and Expertise in International Politics take different theoretical starting points to explore the complex relationship between knowledge and politics and investigate whose knowledge matters politically, why, how, and with what effects. The contributions are organized into five perspectives, highlighting the role of actors, practices, contexts, structures, and relations in the (re)production, circulation, and contestation of knowledge. Further chapters explore central knowledge debates and cutting-edge avenues for future research in the International Relations (IR) discipline. The handbook addresses themes such as the ethics and politics of knowing, new technologies, and ways to democratize, decolonize, and pluralize politically relevant knowledge. Bringing insights from different sub-disciplines and policy fields together in one place, Knowledge and Expertise in International Politics consolidates the international politics of knowledge as a new, transdisciplinary paradigm in the discipline, providing numerous points of connection with debates around pressing global challenges. With original theoretical expositions and granular thematic case studies, it is an invaluable companion to all those interested in adopting knowledge and expertise approaches in research, teaching, and policy work.Chapters 1, 16, 27, 45, and 67 of this work are available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International open access licence. These parts of the work are free to read on Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

Knowledge about violent conflict and international intervention is political. It involves power struggles over the objects of knowing (problematization/silencing), how they are known (epistemic practices), and what interpretations are taken into account in policymaking and implementation. This book unearths the politics, power and performances involved in the social construction of seemingly neutral concepts such as facts, truth and authenticity in knowing about violent conflict and international intervention. Contributors foreground problems of physical and social access to information, explore practices generating knowledge actors’ authority and legitimacy, and analyse struggles over competing policy narratives. A first set of chapters focuses on the social construction of facts, truth and authenticity through studies of militia research in the DR Congo, politicians’ on-site visits in intervention theatres in the Balkans and Afghanistan, and the epistemic practices of Human Rights Watch and comics journalism. A second set of contributions analyses the strategic side of knowledge through case studies of diplomatic counterinsurgency in Bosnia and Herzegovina, African governments’ active role in the ‘bunkerization’ of international aid workers, and authoritarian peacebuilding as a challenge to the liberal power/knowledge regime in world politics.This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding.

This book examines the ways in which long-term processes of state-formation limit the possibilities for short-term political projects of statebuilding.Using process-oriented approaches, the contributing authors explore what happens when conscious efforts at statebuilding ‘meet’ social contexts, and are transformed into daily routines. In order to explain their findings, they also analyse the temporally and spatially broader structures of world society which shape the possibilities of statebuilding.Statebuilding and State-Formation includes a variety of case studies from post-conflict societies in Africa, Asia and Europe, as well as the headquarters and branch offices of international agencies. Drawing on various theoretical approaches from sociology and anthropology, the contributors discuss external interventions as well as self-led statebuilding projects. This edited volume is divided into three parts: Part I: State-Formation, Violence and Political Economy Part II: Governance, Legitimacy and Practice in Statebuilding and State-Formation Part III: The International Self – Statebuilders’ Institutional Logics, Social Backgrounds and SubjectivitiesThe book will be of great interest to students of statebuilding and intervention, war and conflict studies, international security and IR.

This book aims at a deeper understanding of social processes, dynamics and institutions shaping collective violence. It argues that violence is a social practice that adheres to social logics and, in its collective form, appears as recurrent patterns. In search of characteristics, mechanisms and logics of violence, contributions deliver ethnographic descriptions of different forms of collective violence and contextualize these phenomena within broader spatial and temporal structures. The studies show that collective violence, at least if it is sustained over a certain period of time, aims at organization and therefore develops constitutive and integrative mechanisms. Practices of social mobilization of people and economic resources, their integration in functional structures, and the justification or legitimization of these structures sooner or later lead to the establishment of new forms of (violent) orders, be it at the margins of or beyond the state. Cases discussed include riots in Gujarat, India, mass violence in Somalia, social orders of violence and non-violence in Colombia, humanitarian camps in Uganda, trophy-taking in North America, and violent livestock raiding in Kenya. This book was originally published as a special issue of Civil Wars.

This book examines the ways in which long-term processes of state-formation limit the possibilities for short-term political projects of statebuilding.Using process-oriented approaches, the contributing authors explore what happens when conscious efforts at statebuilding ‘meet’ social contexts, and are transformed into daily routines. In order to explain their findings, they also analyse the temporally and spatially broader structures of world society which shape the possibilities of statebuilding.Statebuilding and State-Formation includes a variety of case studies from post-conflict societies in Africa, Asia and Europe, as well as the headquarters and branch offices of international agencies. Drawing on various theoretical approaches from sociology and anthropology, the contributors discuss external interventions as well as self-led statebuilding projects. This edited volume is divided into three parts: Part I: State-Formation, Violence and Political Economy Part II: Governance, Legitimacy and Practice in Statebuilding and State-Formation Part III: The International Self – Statebuilders’ Institutional Logics, Social Backgrounds and SubjectivitiesThe book will be of great interest to students of statebuilding and intervention, war and conflict studies, international security and IR.

Knowledge about violent conflict and international intervention is political. It involves power struggles over the objects of knowing (problematization/silencing), how they are known (epistemic practices), and what interpretations are taken into account in policymaking and implementation. This book unearths the politics, power and performances involved in the social construction of seemingly neutral concepts such as facts, truth and authenticity in knowing about violent conflict and international intervention. Contributors foreground problems of physical and social access to information, explore practices generating knowledge actors’ authority and legitimacy, and analyse struggles over competing policy narratives. A first set of chapters focuses on the social construction of facts, truth and authenticity through studies of militia research in the DR Congo, politicians’ on-site visits in intervention theatres in the Balkans and Afghanistan, and the epistemic practices of Human Rights Watch and comics journalism. A second set of contributions analyses the strategic side of knowledge through case studies of diplomatic counterinsurgency in Bosnia and Herzegovina, African governments’ active role in the ‘bunkerization’ of international aid workers, and authoritarian peacebuilding as a challenge to the liberal power/knowledge regime in world politics.This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding.

This book systematically exploreshow different theoretical concepts of myth can be utilised to interpretivelyexplore contemporary international politics. From the international communityto warlords, from participation to effectiveness – international politics isreplete with powerful narratives and commonly held beliefs that qualify asmyths. Rebutting the understanding of myth-as-lie, this collection of essaysunearths the ideological, naturalising, and depoliticising effect of myths.Myth and Narrative inInternational Politics:  Interpretive Approaches to the Study of IRoffers conceptual and methodological guidance on how to make sense of differentmyth theories and how to employ them in order to explore the powerfulcollective imaginations and ambiguities that underpin international politicstoday. Further, it assembles case studies of specific myths in different fieldsof International Relations, including warfare, global governance,interventionism, development aid, and statebuilding. The findings challengeconventional assumptions in International Relations, encouraging  academics  in IR and across a range of different fieldsand disciplines, including development studies, global governance studies,strategic and military studies, intervention and statebuilding studies, andpeace and conflict studies, to rethink ideas that are widely unquestioned bypolicy and academic communities.

This book aims at a deeper understanding of social processes, dynamics and institutions shaping collective violence. It argues that violence is a social practice that adheres to social logics and, in its collective form, appears as recurrent patterns. In search of characteristics, mechanisms and logics of violence, contributions deliver ethnographic descriptions of different forms of collective violence and contextualize these phenomena within broader spatial and temporal structures. The studies show that collective violence, at least if it is sustained over a certain period of time, aims at organization and therefore develops constitutive and integrative mechanisms. Practices of social mobilization of people and economic resources, their integration in functional structures, and the justification or legitimization of these structures sooner or later lead to the establishment of new forms of (violent) orders, be it at the margins of or beyond the state. Cases discussed include riots in Gujarat, India, mass violence in Somalia, social orders of violence and non-violence in Colombia, humanitarian camps in Uganda, trophy-taking in North America, and violent livestock raiding in Kenya. This book was originally published as a special issue of Civil Wars.

Using detailed insights from those with first-hand experience of conducting research in areas of international intervention and conflict, this handbook provides essential practical guidance for researchers and students embarking on fieldwork in violent, repressive and closed contexts.Contributors detail their own experiences from areas including the Congo, Sudan, Yemen, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Myanmar, inviting readers into their reflections on mistakes and hard-learned lessons. Divided into sections on issues of control and confusion, security and risk, distance and closeness and sex and sensitivity, they look at how to negotiate complex grey areas and raise important questions that intervention researchers need to consider before, during and after their time on the ground.

Using detailed insights from those with first-hand experience of conducting research in areas of international intervention and conflict, this handbook provides essential practical guidance for researchers and students embarking on fieldwork in violent, repressive and closed contexts.Contributors detail their own experiences from areas including the Congo, Sudan, Yemen, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Myanmar, inviting readers into their reflections on mistakes and hard-learned lessons. Divided into sections on issues of control and confusion, security and risk, distance and closeness and sex and sensitivity, they look at how to negotiate complex grey areas and raise important questions that intervention researchers need to consider before, during and after their time on the ground.