| Publication |
2009.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Peacebuilding has been promoted as a new international paradigm guided by
humanitarian values and with the objective of bringing peace and justice to war-torn
countries. Critics say, however, that peacebuilding is a form of imperialism designed to
serve the interests of the powerful in the Bretton Woods system by pacifying and even recolonising
the countries of the South. We assess these perspectives to better understand
the main issues and implications of this unfolding debate. Despite the appearance of
something new, peacebuilding has the same assumptions as modernisation theory,
the Bretton Woods path of development. Most peacebuilding literature, by being nonreflexive,
helps legitimise this dominant ideology.
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