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"This book illuminates the international attempts to build peace amidst a history of ethic confrontation and the clash of demands for self-determination with the doctrine of territorial unity of states. It offers an innovative theoretical framework for the study of international peacebuilding while applying it to a masterful analysis of the case of Kosovo." Marc Weller, Professor of International Law and International Constitutional Studies, University of Cambridge, UK. "Kosovo was the poster child of international intervention. It was a 'good war' against tyrannical dictatorship and afterwards was lavished with international peacebuilding assistance. Fifteen years on, Gëzim Visoka unpacks the story of precarious peacebuilding in Kosovo. This incisive and timely analysis is theoretically and conceptually innovative, and punctures the myth of peacebuilding 'strategy'. Visoka explores the fluid and unfinished nature of peacebuilding, and contends that bottom-up community initiatives have the capacity to change on the ground conditions. This book is a rapier-like critique of failed peacebuilding and will be on my reading lists." Roger Mac Ginty, Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Manchester, UK. This book explores the prospects and limits of international intervention in building peace and creating a new state in an ethnically divided society and fragmented international order. The book offers a critical account of the international missions in Kosovo and traces the effectiveness of fluid forms of interventionism. It also explores the co-optation of peace by ethno-nationalist groups and explores how their contradictory perception of peace produced an ungovernable peace, which has been manifested with intractable ethnic antagonisms, state capture, and ignorance of the root causes, drivers, and consequences of the conflict. Under these conditions, prospects for emancipatory peace have not come from external actors, ethno-nationalist elite, and critical resistance movements, but from local and everyday acts of peace formation and agnostic forms for reconciliation. The book proposes an emancipatory agenda for peace in Kosovo embedded on post-ethnic politics and joint commitments to peace, a comprehensive agenda for reconciliation, people-centred security, and peace-enabling external assistance.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgements -- List of abbreviations -- 1 Introduction: figuring out peace -- PART I Foundations of peace figuration -- 2 How do we know peace? Rethinking liberal and critical epistemologies of peacebuilding -- 3 Peace figuration: towards a new framework for analysis -- PART II Peace figuration in practice -- 4 Peace figuration in Bosnia and Herzegovina -- 5 Peace figuration in Kosovo -- 6 Peace figuration in Timor-Leste -- 7 At peace's end: disfiguring the impact of liberal peacebuilding -- Index

This book examines the adverse impacts of liberal peacebuilding in conflict-affected societies. It introduces 'peace figuration' as a new analytical framework for studying the intentionality, performativity, and consequences of liberal peacebuilding. The work challenges current theories and views and searches for alternative non-conflicted research avenues that are suitable for understanding how peacebuilding intentions are made, how different events shape peace outcomes, and what are the consequences of peacebuilding interventions. Drawing on detailed case studies of peacebuilding in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Timor-Leste, the book argues that attempts to build peace often fail to achieve the intended outcomes. A figurational view of peacebuilding interventions shows that post-conflict societies experience multiple episodes of success and failure in an unpredictable trajectory. This book develops a relational sociology of peacebuilding impact, which is crucial for overcoming static measurement of peacebuilding successes or failures. It shows that international interventions can shape peace but, importantly, not always in the shape they intended.

This article offers a critical outlook on existing debates on state recognition and proposes future research directions. It argues that existing knowledge on state recognition and the dominant discourses, norms and practices needs to be problematized and freed from power-driven, conservative, positivist and legal interpretations and reoriented in new directions in order to generate more critical, contextual and emancipatory knowledge. The article proposes two major areas for future research on state recognition, which should: (a) expose the politics of knowledge, and positionality, and seek epistemic justice and decolonization of state recognition studies; and (b) study more thoroughly recognitionality techniques encompassing diplomatic discourses, performances and entangled agencies. Accordingly, this article seeks to promote a long overdue debate on the need for re-visioning state recognition in world politics.

This article offers a critical outlook on existing debates on state recognition and proposes future research directions. It argues that existing knowledge on state recognition and the dominant discourses, norms and practices needs to be problematized and freed from power-driven, conservative, positivist and legal interpretations and reoriented in new directions in order to generate more critical, contextual and emancipatory knowledge. The article proposes two major areas for future research on state recognition, which should: (a) expose the politics of knowledge, and positionality, and seek epistemic justice and decolonization of state recognition studies; and (b) study more thoroughly recognitionality techniques encompassing diplomatic discourses, performances and entangled agencies. Accordingly, this article seeks to promote a long overdue debate on the need for re-visioning state recognition in world politics.

AbstractNationalism is arguably one of the most detrimental peace‐breaking factors in conflict‐affected societies. This article examines how ethno‐nationalist elites, subterranean movements, and ordinary people can become blockages to sustainable peace and reconciliation after violent conflict. It argues that peacebuilding and state‐building imposed from outside as conflict transformation approaches without acceptable peace settlement and resolute solution of the disputes among parties in conflict risk enabling the co‐optation of power‐sharing arrangements by ethno‐nationalist elites, contestation of peace and reconciliation by subterranean mono‐ethnic movements, and the occurrence of vernacular peace‐breaking acts. This negative mutation of nationalism not only harms peace, justice, and development but also undermines the rights and needs of distinct identity groups. Under these conditions, escaping the nationalism trap in conflict‐affected societies requires seeking political change through post‐ethnic politics and reconciliation through everyday pacifist acts undertaken by the affected communities themselves. The article draws on Kosovo to illustrate empirically the dynamics of peace‐breaking and practices of everyday nationalism. It seeks to bridge debates on nationalism and post‐conflict peacebuilding and offer alternative pathways for rethinking strategies of peace in divided societies.

How do emerging states obtain international recognition and secure membership of international organizations in contemporary world politics? Using the concept of 'metis', this article explores the role of everyday prudent and situated discourses, diplomatic performances and entanglements in the enactment of sovereign statehood and the overcoming of external contestation. To this end, it describes Kosovo's diplomatic approach to becoming a sovereign state by obtaining international recognition and securing membership of international organizations. Drawing on institutional ethnographic research and first-hand observations, the article argues that Kosovo's success in consolidating its sovereign statehood has been the situational assemblage of multiple discourses, practiced through a broad variety of performative actions and shaped by a complex entanglement with global assemblages of norms, actors, relations and events. Accordingly, this study contributes to the conceptualization of the everyday in diplomatic practice by offering an account of how micro-practices feed into macro-practices in world politics.

This article critically interrogates the episteme of alternativity in international relations (IR) to rethink the purpose of critical knowledge in global politics. It questions what critical knowledge is for and whose purpose it serves. While alternativity is the very condition that has given rise to critical approaches, there is a deep-rooted division among critical scholars regarding the relationship between criticality and alternativity. This article argues that alternativity provides an opportunity for critical scholars to remain relevant without being affiliated with positivist logics of inquiry. In examining the potential of alternativity, the article explores three modes of alternativity in peace and conflict studies: critique-without-alternative, critique-as-alternative, and critique-with-alternative. It probes the merits and limits of the episteme of alternativity in generating new possibilities for advancing emancipatory interests and saving critical theory from losing its original transformative impetus. In the final part, the article explores future directions for rejuvenating the purpose of critique by exploring the nexus between criticality and alternativity on postparadigmatic and practical grounds.

How do emerging states obtain international recognition and secure membership of international organizations in contemporary world politics? Using the concept of 'metis', this article explores the role of everyday prudent and situated discourses, diplomatic performances and entanglements in the enactment of sovereign statehood and the overcoming of external contestation. To this end, it describes Kosovo's diplomatic approach to becoming a sovereign state by obtaining international recognition and securing membership of international organizations. Drawing on institutional ethnographic research and first-hand observations, the article argues that Kosovo's success in consolidating its sovereign statehood has been the situational assemblage of multiple discourses, practiced through a broad variety of performative actions and shaped by a complex entanglement with global assemblages of norms, actors, relations and events. Accordingly, this study contributes to the conceptualization of the everyday in diplomatic practice by offering an account of how micro-practices feed into macro-practices in world politics.

AbstractThis article critically interrogates the episteme of alternativity in international relations (IR) to rethink the purpose of critical knowledge in global politics. It questions what critical knowledge is for and whose purpose it serves. While alternativity is the very condition that has given rise to critical approaches, there is a deep-rooted division among critical scholars regarding the relationship between criticality and alternativity. This article argues that alternativity provides an opportunity for critical scholars to remain relevant without being affiliated with positivist logics of inquiry. In examining the potential of alternativity, the article explores three modes of alternativity in peace and conflict studies: critique-without-alternative, critique-as-alternative, and critique-with-alternative. It probes the merits and limits of the episteme of alternativity in generating new possibilities for advancing emancipatory interests and saving critical theory from losing its original transformative impetus. In the final part, the article explores future directions for rejuvenating the purpose of critique by exploring the nexus between criticality and alternativity on postparadigmatic and practical grounds.