Delivering output and struggling for change: Tacit activism among professional transitional justice work in Sierra Leone and Kenya
| Author | Anne Menzel |
| DOI | 10.1177/00108367211000800 |
| Published date | 01 December 2021 |
| Date | 01 December 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/00108367211000800
Cooperation and Conflict
2021, Vol. 56(4) 414 –431
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/00108367211000800
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Delivering output and
struggling for change: Tacit
activism among professional
transitional justice work in
Sierra Leone and Kenya
Anne Menzel
Abstract
The professionalization of transitional justice (TJ) has received extensive academic attention in
TJ and related international relations and peacebuilding scholarship. This article adds an element
that has received hardly any attention: namely the presence of activism even among professional
and usually donor-funded TJ work. I argue that noticing activism in professional contexts requires
attention to the ‘everyday’, meaning to life in between, aside and beyond high politics and officially
important actors, actions, processes and events. Based on field research in Sierra Leone and
Kenya, I describe and discuss everyday examples of a specific form of activism, namely tacit
activism that I encountered with three key interlocutors, one Sierra Leonean and two Kenyan
nationals involved in professional donor-funded TJ work. Their activism was ’tacit’ in the sense
that it was not part of their official project activities and my interlocutors did not advertise their
extra plans and efforts to (prospective) donors. And yet, it was precisely through these tacit plans
and efforts that they hoped to meet at least some of the expectations that had been raised in the
context of professional TJ projects.
Keywords
Activism, everyday international relations, Kenya, professionalism, Sierra Leone, transitional
justice
Introduction
The professionalization of transitional justice (TJ) − including measures such as interna-
tional and national criminal trials, truth commissions, legal and institutional reforms and
reparations programs − has received extensive academic attention in TJ and related
Corresponding author:
Anne Menzel, Freie Universität Berlin, Edwin-Redslob-Strasse 29, 14195 Berlin, Germany.
Email: anne.menzel@fu-berlin.de
100080CAC0010.1177/00108367211000800Cooperation and ConflictMenzel
research-article2021
Article
Menzel 415
international relations (IR) and peacebuilding scholarship. Professional TJ has been
described as a ‘global project’ (Nagy, 2008) and, increasingly, as a standardized and usu-
ally donor-funded component of liberal peacebuilding and development cooperation
(e.g., Subotić, 2012). As such, it has been shown to often marginalize grassroots voices
and agendas (e.g., Madlingozi, 2010; Menzel, 2020a). It has also often failed to deliver
on its promises, at least when assessed in terms of local experiences and perceptions
(e.g., Hirsch et al., 2012; Millar, 2015).
This article adds an element that has received hardly any attention, though many in
the academy and those involved in practical TJ (or peacebuilding and development)
work will likely be aware of it on some level. It points to the presence of activism even
in the context of professional and usually donor-funded projects. Inspired by encounters
and conversations during field research in Sierra Leone and Kenya, I analyze activism
among ‘everyday’ professional TJ work. Focusing on the everyday means paying atten-
tion to life in between, aside and beyond high politics and officially important actors,
actions, processes and events: to people’s more or less deliberate micro-level practices as
well as to their experiences, intuitions, reflections and choices that may seem trivial but
can reveal much about wider power relations by ‘adding greater density and nuance to
how we understand the space for agency and change’ (Björkdahl et al., 2019: 125). At
best, everyday perspectives generate unexpected insights and add depth to seemingly
well-known IR topics, such as professional TJ (for a similar argument on a different
topic, see Visoka, 2019).
This article makes two contributions. Firstly, based on field research in Sierra Leone
and Kenya, I draw attention to a specific form of activism in professional contexts. I
present examples from key interlocutors – one Sierra Leonean and two Kenyan nationals
involved in professional donor-funded TJ work – who engaged in combinations of pro-
fessional work and activism that I have come to think of as tacit activism. Their activism
was ‘tacit’ in the sense that it was not part of their official project activities and my inter-
locutors did not advertise their extra plans and efforts to (prospective) donors. And yet,
it was precisely through these tacit plans and efforts that they hoped to meet at least some
of the expectations that had been raised in the context of professional TJ projects.
Secondly, in the process of analyzing and interpreting these examples, I developed a
conceptual distinction between activism and professionalism that I found helpful for think-
ing about and exploring real-world relations and combinations between the two. In short,
this distinction holds that activism, as a particular mode of struggling towards desired
change, is directly concerned with effecting change in people’s lives. Professionalism, on
the other hand, focuses on designing, implementing and overseeing sophisticated meas-
ures; such measures are often (and certainly in the case of TJ) associated with promises and
expectations of change but do not directly focus on or prioritize them. The tacit activism I
describe in this article is a combined form that sneaks activism into professional contexts.
Producing such a combined form is not necessarily a strategic or fully conscious process.
Probably more often than not, tacit activism emerges from actors’ desire to achieve mean-
ingful change while largely adhering to the logics and demands of professional work.
Gaining a closer understanding of contemporary forms of, and conditions for, activ-
ism is relevant beyond TJ, as activism and professionalism also have complex and entan-
gled histories and relationships in other national and inter-/transnational fields such as
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