The logic of (dis)order : how the discourse on peace, conflict and development serves to reproduce inequity, injustice, violence and war : the case of the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Oslo Peace Accords and the interim period of 1993-2000

Abstract

This thesis is primarily concerned with the thinking, writing and speaking on problems of peace, conflict and development. It explores how the historicity of development thinking, guided by the assumption that economic prosperity yields peace and social security, functions primarily as a deployment of power: a regime of knowledge. It argues the discourse (concepts, ideas, assumptions) on, or ways of thinking about, peace, conflict and development obfuscates the root causes of conflict, and reproduces inequity, injustice, violence and war. It seeks to illustrate the gap between how development thinkers and practitioners come to know a problem, and how that problem is experienced on the ground. The case of the Oslo Peace Accords and Interim Period will show the dependency of contexts of "complex emergency" on external agents and agendas of development, and their assumptions, concepts, and ideas, necessarily rearticulates a local, historical, institutionally embedded dependency, and deep social divisions.