Displaced security? The relationships, routines and rhythms of peacebuilding interveners

Abstract

This article considers what treating individual international interveners engaged in peacebuilding work as referent objects can tell us about emplaced security. This is important because individual interveners are diverse, embodied agents who can impact the agency, peace and security of conflict-affected populations. It argues that applying an ontological security lens can provide a partial explanation for why interveners develop narratives and perform practices, including why they sometimes identify and behave in counterproductive, and even damaging, ways. The final section considers why an analytical focus on place is valuable, noting that place-based experiences and place-identities are formative of ontological security. It argues that treating interveners as a referent object provides opportunities to rethink the tendency to focus on home as the key site of emplacement in the ontological security literature. Building on this, it argues that examining the emplaced security of interveners invites us to examine the political nature and consequences of interveners’ physical and ontological security-seeking narratives and practices, including their creation of the material and ideational structures of intervention spaces and places.