Scott Kirsch - Reconstructing Conflict. Critical Geopolitics [2011][A]

Book Description
Publication Date: May 1, 2011 | ISBN-10: 1409404706 | ISBN-13: 978-1409404705
Reconstruction - the rebuilding of state, economy, culture and society in the wake of war - is a powerful idea, and a profoundly transformative one. From the refashioning of new landscapes in bombed-out cities and towns to the reframing of national identities to accommodate changed historical narratives, the term has become synonymous with notions of 'post-conflict' society; it draws much of its rhetorical power from the neat demarcation, both spatially and temporally, between war and peace. The reality is far more complex. Here, reconstruction is identified as a process of conflict and of militarized power, not something that clearly demarcates a post-war period of peace. Kirsch and Flint bring together an internationally diverse range of studies by leading scholars to examine how periods of war and other forms of political violence have been justified as processes of necessary and valid reconstruction as well as the role of war in catalyzing the construction of new political institutions and destroying old regimes. Challenging the false dichotomy between war and peace, this book explores instead the ways that war and peace are mutually constituted in the creation of historically specific geographies and geographical knowledges.

About the Author
Scott Kirsch is associate professor of Geography at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Colin Flint is Director of the Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security (ACDIS) and associate professor of Geography and Political Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.