About the Book
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.
In this volume, 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.
Table of Contents:
Contents: Part I Introduction: Introduction: reconstruction and the worlds that war makes, Scott Kirsch and Colin Flint. Part II Geographies of War and Reconstruction: Intertwined spaces of peace and war: the perpetual dynamism of geopolitical landscapes, Colin Flint; Genocide as reconstruction: the political geography of Democratic Kampuchea, James A. Tyner; Salient versus silent disasters in post-conflict Aceh, Indonesia, Arno Waizenegger and Jennifer Hyndman; Not peace, not war: the myriad spaces of sovereignty, peace and conflict in Myanmar/Burma, Carl Grundy-Warr and Karin Dean; Reconstructing the colonial present in British soldiers' accounts of the Afghanistan conflict, Rachel Woodward and K. Neil Jenkings; Militarising spaces: a geographical exploration of Cyprus, Paul Higate and Marsha Henry; Paying the price for freedom: from destruction toward reconstruction in Northern France, 1940–1960, Hugh Clout. Part III Hegemony and Conflict: Rethinking Peace: Breaking Iraq: reconstruction as war, Carl T. Dahlman; Object lessons: war and American democracy in the Philippines, Scott Kirsch; Mapping intelligence, American geographers and the Office of Strategic Services and GHQ/SCAP (Tokyo), Trevor Barnes and Jeremy Crampton; The US militarization of a 'host' civilian society: the case of postwar Okinawa, Japan, Takashi Yamazaki; War as emergency? Constructing and deconstructing the California agricultural landscape, Don Mitchell; The hidden war: the 'risk' to female soldiers in the US military, Lorraine Dowler; Conclusion, Colin Flint and Scott Kirsch; Index.
About the Author :
Scott Kirsch is associate professor of Geography at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Colin Flint is Professor of Geography and Political Science at Utah State University.
Scott Kirsch, Colin Flint, James A. Tyner, Arno Waizenegger, Jennifer Hyndman, Carl Grundy-Warr, Karin Dean, Rachel Woodward, K. Neil Jenkings, Paul Higate, Marsha Henry, Hugh Clout, Carl T. Dahlman, Trevor Barnes, Jeremy Crampton, Takashi Yamazaki, Don Mitchell, Lorraine Dowler.
Review :
'Scott Kirsch and Colin Flint, with their smart contributors, reveal the falseness of the all-too-easy dichotomies between war and peace. In doing so, they collectively help us all to be far more realistically nuanced in how we think about - and practice - the "post-war" rebuilding of trust and social fabric along with roads and bureaucracies. I learned a lot from reading Reconstructing Conflict.' Cynthia Enloe, Clark University, USA, author of Nimo's War, Emma's War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War 'Reconstructing Conflict is a powerful examination of the violence that remains in place after the bombs have stopped falling or the guns have been silenced. What makes the book work so well is that the detailed empirical studies always have broader questions in mind while remaining faithful to the particularity of sites.' Stuart Elden, Durham University, UK
'Scott Kirsch and Colin Flint, with their smart contributors, reveal the falseness of the all-too-easy dichotomies between war and peace. In doing so, they collectively help us all to be far more realistically nuanced in how we think about – and practice – the "post-war" rebuilding of trust and social fabric along with roads and bureaucracies. I learned a lot from reading Reconstructing Conflict.'
Cynthia Enloe, Clark University, USA, author of Nimo's War, Emma's War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War
'Reconstructing Conflict is a powerful examination of the violence that remains in place after the bombs have stopped falling or the guns have been silenced. What makes the book work so well is that the detailed empirical studies always have broader questions in mind while remaining faithful to the particularity of sites.'
Stuart Elden, Durham University, UK
