Knowledge and Expertise in International Interventions: The Politics of Facts, Truth and Authenticity

Berit Bliesemann de Guevara · Roland Kostic

shk 2018 · Routledge

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Knowledge about violent conflict and international intervention is political. It involves power struggles over the objects of knowing (problematization/silencing), how they are known (epistemic practices), and what interpretations are taken into account in policymaking and implementation. This book unearths the politics, power and performances involved in the social construction of seemingly neutral concepts such as facts, truth and authenticity in knowing about violent conflict and international intervention. Contributors foreground problems of physical and social access to information, explore practices generating knowledge actors’ authority and legitimacy, and analyse struggles over competing policy narratives.

A first set of chapters focuses on the social construction of facts, truth and authenticity through studies of militia research in the DR Congo, politicians’ on-site visits in intervention theatres in the Balkans and Afghanistan, and the epistemic practices of Human Rights Watch and comics journalism. A second set of contributions analyses the strategic side of knowledge through case studies of diplomatic counterinsurgency in Bosnia and Herzegovina, African governments’ active role in the ‘bunkerization’ of international aid workers, and authoritarian peacebuilding as a challenge to the liberal power/knowledge regime in world politics.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding.

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Berit Bliesemann de Guevara is a Reader at Aberystwyth University’s (Wales) International Politics Department and Director of the Centre for the International Politics of Knowledge. Her current research explores knowledge in international politics through projects on transnational think tanks, knowledge transfers, remote/local conflict knowledge, myths in international politics, and politicians’ fieldtrips.

Roland Kostić is an Associate Professor in Peace and Conflict Research and Senior Lecturer in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Uppsala University’s Hugo Valentin Centre, Sweden. His current research analyses knowledge production in peacebuilding interventions, its diversification/privatisation through think tanks, experts, policy makers and diplomats, and the role of informal networks.