Knowing Afghanistan
Interveners’ Knowledge Production in the in-Between
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6436339 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Amelie Harbisch (0000-0002-6743-129X, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 28 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 509-536 |
| Publication date | 2025-09-05 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of International Relations and Development (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1408-6980 • E-ISSN: 1581-1980 |
| Publisher | Palgrave Macmillan (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1057/s41268-025-00359-4 |
| OpenAlex | W4414030475 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 89 |
This article advances a sociological analysis of the knowledge production about peacebuilding in an intervening country. Departing from Bourdieusian field theory, I analyse the production of knowledge about Afghanistan in German think tanks and academia, combining biographical data of Afghanistan experts, in-depth interviews with 18 such experts, and a bibliographic review. The analysis reveals that this knowledge production on Afghanistan in Germany occurs in an interstitial field, a space located between and dependent on multiple fields. I investigate the effects of this structuration of knowledge production on its outcome. First, topical (security) knowledge is more likely to be rewarded rather than deep country-specific knowledge. Second, the logics of policy orientation reward (critical) knowledge that enables the implementation of existing policies rather than questioning the political project of the intervention overall. The article highlights the need to dissect the social conditions of knowledge production about peacebuilding in the metropole, rather than focusing exclusively on the site of intervention, to apprehend and transform practices of peacebuilding
Development studies · Economic system · Economics · International political economy · International relations · International studies · Knowledge management · Knowledge production · Microeconomics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Production (economics · Sociology · Computer Science · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · Law · Peacebuilding and International Security · Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East
Think Tanks in America
The Politics of Expertise
Imagining Afghanistan
Beyond Individual War Trauma
Disciplining Terror
The Distinction of Peace
The Disenchantment of the Orient
Security Expertise
Laboratory Life
Peaceland
A Theory of Fields
Towards better theories of peacebuilding
Introduction
Reconceptualising the politics of knowledge authority in post/conflict interventions
Knowledge and the governing of the interventionary object
The epistemological crisis of counterterrorism
International vs. area? The disciplinary-politics of knowledge-exchange between IR and Area Studies
Learning in Peacebuilding – Mission Impossible
The Use of Statebuilding Research in Fragile Contexts
The Local, the ‘Indigenous’ and the Limits of Rethinking Peacebuilding
Elite Consensus as a Determinant of Alliance Cohesion
The Production of Legitimacy
Forum
Practices of Policy Orientation
Programming peacebuilding
IR theory and Area Studies
Hidden politics of power and governmentality in transitional justice and peacebuilding
The perils of recognising local agency
Uses of ‘the East’ in international studies
The responsibility to remain silent? On the politics of knowledge production, expertise and (self-)reflection in Russia’s war against Ukraine
Memoirs of women-in-conflict
Social Forces, States and World Orders
The Imperial Sociology of the ‘Tribe’ in Afghanistan
Studying the International Crisis Group
Transnational think-tanks
The Local Turn in Peace Building
Veritable inventions
Avatars of Eurocentrism in the critique of the liberal peace
Provincializing Europe
Dialectics of International Interventions through Scale, Space, and Time
Field Overlaps, Normativity, and the Contestation of Practices in China's Belt and Road Initiative
Securitizing images
From subjects to objects
The House of IR
Knowledge in and of military operations
Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of Science from Non-Science
The Colonial State as a Social Field
The impact of colonialism on policy and knowledge production in International Relations
The German politics of war
De-centring the 'White Gaze' of Development
All the way? The evolution of German military power
An Invitation of Reflexive Sociology
The specificity of the scientific field and the social conditions of the progress of reason
Decolonizing Methodologies
Symbolic capital and social classes
Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and Decolonial Freedom
Interstitial Power in Fields of Limited Statehood
Hegemonic Battles, Professional Rivalries, and the International Division of Labor in the Market for the Import and Export of State-Governing Expertise
Bourdieu and organizational analysis
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |