Peacebuilding as Practice: Discourses from Post-Conflict Tajikistan
Heathershaw, John
Date: 1 April 2007
Journal
International Peacekeeping
Publisher
Taylor & Francis (Routledge)
Related links
Abstract
Peacebuilding is a contested concept which gains meaning as it is practised. While academic
and policy-relevant elaboration of the concept is of interest to international experts,
interpretations of peacebuilding in the Central Asian arena may depart immensely from
those envisaged within the western-dominated ‘international community’. ...
Peacebuilding is a contested concept which gains meaning as it is practised. While academic
and policy-relevant elaboration of the concept is of interest to international experts,
interpretations of peacebuilding in the Central Asian arena may depart immensely from
those envisaged within the western-dominated ‘international community’. This article
opens up the dimensions and contingent possibilities of ‘peacebuilding’ through an
investigation of two alternative approaches found in the context of Tajikistan. It makes
the critique that peacebuilding represents one contextually grounded basic discourse. In
the case of Central Asia, and in particular post-conflict Tajikistan, at least two other
basic discourses have been adopted by parties to the post-Soviet setting: elite mirostroitelstvo
(Russian: peacebuilding) and popular tinji (Tajik: wellness/peacefulness). Based
largely on fieldwork conducted in Tajikistan between 2003 and 2005, the argument here
is that none of these three discourses is merely an artificial or cynical construct but that
each has a certain symbolic and normative value. Consequently, a singular definition of
Tajik ‘peacebuilding’ proves elusive as practices adapt to the relationships between
multiple discourses and identities in context. The article concludes that ‘peacebuilding’ is
a complex and intersubjective process of change entailing the legitimation of new relationships
of power.
Social and Political Sciences, Philosophy, and Anthropology
Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
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