Constructing civil society: Gender, power and legitimacy in United Nations peacebuilding discourse
| Published date | 01 December 2015 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1354066115569319 |
| Date | 01 December 2015 |
| Author | Laura J. Shepherd |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
European Journal of
International Relations
2015, Vol. 21(4) 887 –910
© The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1354066115569319
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JR
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Constructing civil society:
Gender, power and
legitimacy in United Nations
peacebuilding discourse
Laura J. Shepherd
UNSW Australia
Abstract
The United Nations Peacebuilding Commission was created in 2005 to have oversight
of United Nations peacebuilding operations. In the foundational resolution, adopted
simultaneously by the United Nations Security Council (S/RES/1645) and the United
Nations General Assembly (A/RES/60/180), the Peacebuilding Commission is mandated
to encourage meaningful participation in peacebuilding-related activities by civil society
actors. This article investigates the construction of ‘civil society’ as a subject of United
Nations peacebuilding discourse, drawing on both policy documents and interview
data. The inclusion of civil society actors in peacebuilding-related activities is currently
considered central to the success of these activities; if it is taken for granted that the
meaningful participation of civil society actors ensures that United Nations programmes
build better peace, and I argue that it is, then it is important to understand what is
meant by ‘civil society’ and to comprehend the kinds of actions that are prescribed
and proscribed by the meanings attached to the concept. Specifically, I map out a
peacebuilding discourse that (re)produces the United Nations — as representative of
‘the international community’ — as the architect/legitimate knower of peacebuilding
practice, and the communities working on building peace as the labourers/known
objects. This has significant implications for the ways in which civil society organisations,
and the forms of knowledge that these organisations represent, are encountered and
engaged in peacebuilding practices; ‘local’ knowledge is at once valued (in the process
of extraction) and yet subordinated.
Keywords
Civil society, discourse, gender, peacebuilding, post-structuralism, United Nations
Corresponding author:
Laura J. Shepherd, School of Social Sciences, UNSW Australia, Kensington Campus, Sydney, NSW 2052,
Australia.
Email: L.J.Shepherd@unsw.edu.au
569319EJT0010.1177/1354066115569319European Journal of International RelationsShepherd
research-article2015
Article
888 European Journal of International Relations 21(4)
Civil Society is an important actor in peacebuilding and the PBC’s [Peacebuilding
Commission’s] enabling resolutions encourage its active participation. Civil society
representatives have been invited to make presentations at several PBC meetings and
there are established mechanisms in place which should ensure that serious and field-
based civil society organizations receive a seat and a voice in the Commission’s
deliberations. (UN Peacebuilding Support Office, n.d.)
Civil society … is the realm in which the existing social order is grounded;
and it can also be the realm in which a new social order can be founded.
(Gramsci, cited in Cox, 1999: 4)
Introduction
The United Nations Peacebuilding Commission (UN PBC) is the formally recognised
advisory body that oversees peacebuilding strategies and operations under the auspices
of the UN. Through the simultaneous adoption of resolutions in the UN General Assembly
(A/RES/60/180) and the UN Security Council (S/RES/1645) in December 2005, this
body was established to develop outlines of best practice in post-conflict reconstruction,
and to secure the political and material resources necessary to assist states in transition
from conflict to peace. In 2010, under the direction of the founding resolutions, a number
of permanent representatives to the UN coordinated a review of the UN peacebuilding
architecture; the review’s final report was presented to the General Assembly and the
Security Council in July 2010. The report notes with regret that ‘despite committed and
dedicated efforts, the hopes that accompanied the founding resolutions have yet to be
realized’ (UN GA/SC, 2010: 3). This article engages with two of these ‘hopes’: the hope
that the PBC, as a principal actor in the UN peacebuilding apparatus, would ‘integrate a
gender perspective into all of its work’ (UN GA, 2005a: Art. 20; UN SC, 2005: OP 20);
and the hope that the PBC would ‘consult with civil society, non-governmental organiza-
tions, including women’s organizations, and the private sector engaged in peacebuilding
activities, as appropriate’ (UN GA, 2005a: Art. 21; UN SC, 2005: OP 21).
This article interrogates the ways in which competing representations of civil society
in UN peacebuilding discourse cohere according to different logics of gender, space,
legitimacy and authority. These representations are then (re)produced and acted upon,
such that the construction of ‘civil society’ as a subject is contested. The article pro-
ceeds in five parts. First, I offer a brief discussion of my research design, drawing out
the ways in which this project contributes to methodological debates in the study of
global politics. Second, I interrogate the academic literature on civil society organisa-
tions (CSOs) and their roles and functions in global politics. In this section, I am not
aiming to arrive at one true definition of civil society or to establish with certainty how
CSOs exert influence or effect change. Rather, I intend to locate the emergence of
debates about civil society in a particular disciplinary and historical context and to show
how civil society as a concept is represented in these debates. In the third section, I
analyse the representation of civil society in the policy architecture of the UN PBC.
Investigating the representation of civil society in these documents allows me to explore
the ways in which the discursive terrain of the PBC permits certain kinds of knowledge
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