This event launches the book Economies of Peace: Economy Formation Processes in Conflict-Affected Societies. Looking beyond and beneath the macro level, the book examines the processes and outcomes of the interaction of economic reforms and socio-economic peacebuilding programmes with, and international interventions in, people’s lived realities in conflict-affected societies.
The contributions argue that disregarding socio-economic aspects of peace and how they relate to the everyday leaves a vacuum in the understanding of the formation of post-war economies. To address this gap, the book outlines and deploys the concept of ‘post-conflict economy formation’. This is a multifaceted phenomenon, including both formal and informal processes that occur in the post-conflict period and contribute to the introduction, adjustment, or abolition of economic practices, institutions, and rules that inform the transformation of the socio-economic fabric of the society.
The contributions engage with existing statebuilding and peacebuilding debates, while bringing in critical political economy perspectives. Specifically, they analyse processes of post-conflict economy formation and the navigation between livelihood needs; local translations of the liberal hegemonic order; and different, sparse manifestations of welfare states. The book concludes that a sustainable peace requires the formation of peace economies: economies that work towards reducing structural inequalities, including gender, race, and class inequalities, and grievances of the (pre-)conflict period, as well as addressing the livelihood concerns of citizens.
The book is edited by Werner Distler, Elena B. Stavrevska, and Birte Vogel, with contributions by Michael Pugh, Jasmin Ramović, Joely Thomas, Kathleen M. Jennings, and Kate Roll.
About the speakers:
Dr Werner Distler
Werner Distler is a postdoc research fellow at the Collaborative Research Centre ‘Dynamics of Security’ and the Center for Conflict Studies at the University of Marburg (Germany). In the Centre, his work focuses on legacies and role of security constructions in cases of international statebuilding since the Second World War (Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste, Kosovo). Furthermore, he works on the social practice and the role of knowledge in the everyday of international interventions, on political authority in statebuilding (in elections, institution-building, and constitutional politics) and on 'economies of peace' after conflict.
Professor Michael Pugh
Michael Pugh, Professor Emeritus, University of Bradford. Served as Honorary Professor, School of International Relations, University of St Andrews, Visiting Professor, Centre for Conflict Analysis and Management, Radboud University Nijmegen, and Leverhulme Emeritus Fellow (2011–12). Editor of the journal, International Peacekeeping 1994-2013 and remains editor of the Cass book series on Peacekeeping. He has written extensively on peace and conflict, with the political economy of peacebuilding and post-Yugoslavia as special interests. In press is 'Distributive Justice' in Carsten Stahn, Jens Iverson and Jennifer Easterday (eds) The Justice of Peace and Jus Post Bellum, Oxford: OUP, 2020.
Dr Kate Roll
Dr Kate Roll, Assistant Professor in Innovation, Development and Purpose at UCL’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, is political scientist interested in vulnerability, with a particular focus on how people in poverty gain greater social and economic security. Her multi-disciplinary work brings together politics, business ethics, and development studies. Committed to grounded research, she has conducted fieldwork in Timor-Leste, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Kenya. Prior to joining IIPP, Kate taught at the University of Oxford. She holds a BA from Brown University, and an MPhil in International Development Studies and DPhil in Politics from the University of Oxford.
Dr Elena B. Stavrevska
Elena B. Stavrevska is a Research Officer at the LSE Centre for Women, Peace and Security, working on the ‘Gendered Peace’ project. Her research has explored issues of gender, intersectionality, and political economy in conflict-affected societies, with a particular focus on Bosnia and Herzegovina and Colombia. Her work has appeared in different edited volumes and international peer-reviewed journals, such as International Peacekeeping and Civil Wars. Recently she co-edited the volume Economies of peace: Economy formation processes in conflict-affected societies, published with Routledge.
Dr Birte Vogel
Birte Vogel is Lecturer in Humanitarianism, Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Manchester. Her research focuses on micro-economic experiences of (peacebuilding) interventions. She is also a Co-Investigator on a major AHRC-funded project on arts and peacebuilding, and part of the International Consortium for Conflict Graffiti. She was Assistant Editor of the journal Peacebuilding and a guest editor for Civil Wars. She has published, amongst others, in Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, International Peacekeeping and Cooperation and Conflict. She has recently edited two co-books: Economies of Peace was published with Routledge (2019), and the Companion to Peace and Conflict Fieldwork will soon be published with Palgrave.
Image credit: Dr Elena B. Stavrevska