In case studies focusing on contemporary crises spanning Africa,
the Middle East, and Eastern Europe, the scholars in this volume
examine the dominant prescriptive practices of late neoliberal
post-conflict interventions -- such as statebuilding,
peacebuilding, transitional justice, refugee management,
reconstruction, and redevelopment -- and contend that the
post-conflict environment is in fact created and sustained by this
international technocratic paradigm of peacebuilding. Key
international stakeholders -- from activists to politicians,
humanitarian agencies to financial institutions -- characterize
disparate sites as 'weak,' 'fragile,' or 'failed�' states and, as a
result, prescribe peacebuilding techniques that paradoxically
disable effective management of post-conflict spaces while
perpetuating neoliberal political and economic conditions. Treating
all efforts to represent post-conflict environments as problematic,
the goal becomes understanding the underlying connection between
post-conflict conditions and the actions and interventions of
peacebuilding technocracies.