Response to Sabrina Karim and Kyle Beardsley’s review of The Distinction of Peace

Sabrina Karim and Kyle Beardsleys review confirms myinitial thought that our books fall on opposite sides ofRobert Coxs distinction between policy-oriented andcritical research. While Karim and Beardsley wish to solvepolicy problems as they present themselves in the givenworld order (how can we keep, lets say, French peacekeepers in Central Africa from prostituting refugee girls)the aim of my book is to ask how we even come to thinkthat it would be a good idea to have French security forcespolice Central African refugee camps. What gives a specificgroup of people in the world the authority to say howpeace must be built and whatgood peace is? I analyse thefield and habitus of peacebuilding in order to understandwhy some people, some ideas, and some practices arerecognized as authoritative while others are not. And this iswhy I do not refer to Haass epistemic communities (orother constructivist ideas of norm entrepreneurs for thatmatter); there, authority derives from the inherent valuesof ideas

Art · Content (measure theory · Content analysis · Humanities · Peacebuilding · Political economy · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Peacebuilding and International Security · Political Conflict and Governance