Response to Sabrina Karim and Kyle Beardsley’s review of The Distinction of Peace: A Social Analysis of Peacebuilding

Sabrina Karim and Kyle Beardsley’s review confirms my initial thought that our books fall on opposite sides of Robert Cox’s distinction between policy-oriented and critical research. While Karim and Beardsley wish to solve policy problems as they present themselves in the given world order (how can we keep, let’s say, French peacekeepers in Central Africa from prostituting refugee girls) the aim of my book is to ask how we even come to think that it would be a good idea to have French security forces police Central African refugee camps. What gives a specific group of people in the world the authority to say how peace must be built and what“good” peace is? I analyse the field and habitus of peacebuilding in order to understand why some people, some ideas, and some practices are recognized as authoritative while others are not. And this is why I do not refer to Haas’s “epistemic communities” (or other constructivist ideas of norm entrepreneurs for that matter); there, authority derives from the inherent values of ideas.