This volume investigates the interaction of a variety of actors and institutions involved in the provision of peace, security and justice in volatile environments.

It aims to take current debates about peacebuilding and statebuilding, the formation of political community, and the foundations of security and social order in conflict-affected or fragile environments further and deeper, by drawing on field research from West Africa and Oceania, but also through theoretical critique and engagement. The key debates in peacebuilding and statebuilding relate to concepts, practices and...

This book, newly available in paperback, argues for greater openness in the ways we approach human rights and international rights promotion, and in so doing brings some new understanding to old debates. Starting with the realities of abuse rather than the liberal architecture of rights, it casts human rights as a language for probing the political dimensions of suffering. Seen in this context, the predominant Western models of rights generate a substantial but also problematic and not always emancipatory array of practices. These models are far from answering the questions about the nature...