The Infrastructure of Peace: Civil–Military Urban Planning in Mali

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the context of the current UN-led stabilization efforts in Mali, the United Nations peacekeeping mission undertakes significant investments in small-scale infrastructure development. The projects not only point to the spatial imprint of peacebuilding on the post-war landscape, but to the imagined performative power of infrastructure. Based on a survey of policy document and official communications, I investigate UN peacekeepers’ narratives of reconstruction, development, and peace promoted through this infrastructure building, and essentially, their role as urban planners in the context of the international military intervention. The account of peacebuilding through infrastructure projects and development resonates with the liberal peace paradigm but also problematizes the practice of civil–military intervention and its focus on infrastructure as device to achieving peace goals.