Journal of Peace, Conflict & Development www.peacestudiesjournal.org.uk

Issue 18, December 2011 ISSN 1742-0601

BOOK REVIEW

Civil Society and Peacebuilding: A Critical Assessment

By Thania Paffenholz (ed.)1

Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner, 2010

ISBN: 978-1-58826-672-9

Paperback, 511 pages

Reviewed by Prof. Jenny Pearce2

This well organised, conceptually and empirically informed collection of essays on civil

society and peacebuilding is a benchmark in the peacebuilding debate. As we approach the

twentieth anniversary of Boutros Boutros Ghali’s 1992 Agenda for Peace, this book gives a sense

of where we have reached in terms of peacebuilding potential outside the state. It reminds us

that ‘civil society’ is not a solution to everything, as tended to be assumed in the optimistic

decade or so after 1992. This book is more nuanced and careful in what it sets out to explore and

what is claimed. As such, it offers stronger arguments than some other contributions on the topic,

and at the same time ensures that civil society remains an important arena for the theory and

practice of peacebuilding.

Paffenholz herself in a particularly good literature review chapter on civil society and

peacebuilding acknowledges that there is a theoretical deficit in this arena. Her review brings

1 Thania Paffenholz is lecturer in peace, development, and conflict studies and senior researcher at the Centre for Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. She is coauthor of Aid for Peace: A Guide to Planning and Evaluation for Conflict Zones and coeditor of Peacebuilding: A Field Guide. 2 Jenny Pearce is Professor of Latin American Politics and Director of International Centre for Participation Studies at the University of Bradford, UK. She has worked for many years with international NGOs working in Latin America, including Christian Aid, Oxfam, CAFOD, Project Counselling Services, Novib, Hivos, Plan Netherelands and others. She has also played a role in helping the University to think through its Community Engagement strategy within its locality.

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this out very well. On the one hand we have two counterposed visions of peacebuilding: Liberal

Peacebuilding and Sustainable Peacebuilding. On the other we have the critique of the Liberal

Peace. The debates between these have tended to dominate the literature for some time. This

book is in a way a welcome call to move us on. Pfaffenholz herself comes up with a useful

definition which tries to balance these extremes: (p.49) ‘Peacebuilding aims at preventing and

managing armed conflict and sustaining peace after large-scale organized violence has ended.

It is a multidimensional effort; its scope covers all activities that are linked directly to this objective

across five to ten years. Peacebuilding should create conducive conditions for economic

reconstruction, development and democratization as preconditions for legitimate democratic

order, but should not be equated and thus confused with these concepts’.

This is a useful working definition for the policy and practice world, but does not tackle

head on those who argue that the endeavour is ontologically flawed, given that it emanates

from a Western worldview and is non-detachable from the securitising logics of hegemonic

powers. This book is not for those who hold that view. However, those who do hold that view and

call for the need to give voice to alternative and oppressed actors, often do not, as Paffenholz

argues (p. 56) ‘actually analyze these alternative voices’. Rather they limit themselves to the

critique of liberal peace actors in the international community. So this book locates itself within

the need for more evidence, context and engagement with such voices. And it offers a rich set

of case studies to explore the roles of civil society, from Guatemala, to Northern Ireland to Sri

Lanka; eleven in all.

The editor and collaborators have developed their own framework which is then used to

analyze each case. The framework is based on a distinction between an actor-oriented and a

functional view of civil society. The former is rejected for good reasons. It has led to the exclusion

of some groups in ‘civil society’ who might in fact be playing important roles in peacebuilding

activities. For instance, the focus on organisations with a specific ‘civil’ oriented approach. They

adopt, instead, a functional approach, which does not privilege any one idea of civil society,

but instead looks at the ‘essential functions’ of civil society.

This approach gives consistency to the case studies and a real coherence to the edited

collection. The idea of functions, which civil society offers, is appealing as it offers a kind of

middle-range theorising about the relationship between civil society and peacebuilding.

Christopher Spurk identifies seven ‘functions’ building on the work of Merkel and Lauth, two

German authors, which has not yet been translated into English. The list ranges from protection of

citizens, to building community to intermediation and facilitation between citizens and state to

service delivery. However, I am not totally convinced by the approach despite its practical

usefulness. There is a dangerously closed circuit in both identifying the functions and then

applying the functions to the range of cases, as if these are what we must look for if civil society is

to contribute to peacebuilding.

The outcomes shown are certainly helpful in differentiating contexts and the role civil

society organisations play in different phases of war and post war, and within varied situations of

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state effectiveness and weakness. The problem is that it is difficult to get away from the

complexity and contestations around the idea of civil society and the real challenges of

understanding associational dynamics. The functional approach leaves many questions

unanswered about the actual socio/historical processes in each country and key issues about

who associates and why. Thus the difficult question of whether ‘civil society’ includes kinship and

tribal-based organisations as well as ‘modern’ voluntary associations is set aside in favour of

whether associations fulfil the functions identified as critical to peacebuilding. This does not then

answer the question, in what contexts do kinship-based organisations manage to overcome

particularism, for instance? Although the concept of civil society has always been hindered by

the conflation of the normative ideal with the empirical reality, it has always seemed important

to me to hang onto the former as long as it isn’t confused with the latter. This collection is very

conscious of these dilemmas and opts, as it were, to focus on the empirical. I would make the

case for hanging onto the normative but being very explicit and careful about why. The idea of

‘civility’ does have an affinity with peace and it does imply some shift from communal interests to

broader human concerns beyond those of particular groups. Peacebuilding suggests some shift

in that direction, I would argue, and without it we are left with limited social interactions which

may lay the ground for potential conflicts. It can in fact be seen in a number of the case studies -

Northern Ireland, Guatemala, Afghanistan - that ongoing group affinities remains a significant

limitation to sustainable peace. As the authors show, empowering marginalised groups has been

important in history but can also contribute to conflict and persistent social chasms even after

peace processes. Our challenge is to understand norms and values and what changes them

and why in a direction which fosters the conditions for us to live without violence. One of these is

how to overcome the persistent ‘horizontal inequalities’, as Frances Stewart calls them, that

discriminate between social groups. How do we overcome the tendency to protect and

privilege particular social groups (based on class, caste, religion, gender, race and ethnicity) in

ways which generate harmful stratifications, the impoverishment of some and enrichment of

others and justified resentments? As such, understanding agency for change (and I agree with

the authors, this should not be limited to selected actors) and the values that drive it, becomes

vital.

Despite this caveat, I warmly welcome this effort to take the civil society and

peacebuilding debate forward and would recommend this book strongly to all scholars

concerned with our ongoing struggles to build peace in the world.