Field Notes: Fighting Commodification and Disempowerment in the Development Industry: Things I Learned About PCIA in Habarana and Mindanao

Elsewhere, I have described the  commodification of peacebuilding  as: “a process in which peacebuilding as an idea and as a set of practices is (to be churlishly provocative) simply stuffed into the standard operating systems of the standard [actors] who do the same old song and dance to get the cash/ funding. When ‘new monies’ are found, or existing monies are reallocated, to support ‘peacebuilding’ activities, the old wine-new bottle syndrome is as prevalent as the faces at the funding trough.” (Bush 2004a, 116). This idea is developed further below in the discussion of the “branding” of PCIA. To be (more) blunt, the commodification of peacebuilding involves the selling of a product – with the overwhelming emphasis being on the selling, rather than the “product.” The product is tailored largely to the buyers: development agencies, rather than the communities themselves who live and die in dirty war zones; who are the objects/ subjects/ beneficiaries/ targets/ victims of both peacebuilding projects and armed stakeholders; and who were there before the international community arrived on the scene, and will be there long after they leave (which, at the level of staffing, they do every 3 or 4 years, as ex-pats roll in and roll out of their field postings). Commodification is obvious in the content, structure, style and marketing practices of the marketers, as discussed below.