Anthropologists increasingly take roles in international organizations (as the UN) in the context of transnational political interventions and peace building missions. Simultaneously, anthropologists critically reflect upon such activities in their own research.

Peace keeping missions, humanitarian interventions and internationally mediated conflict resolution are some of the components of a growing global field that connects different localities, systems of knowledge, professional practices and social groups. As ‚engineers' of such interventions, international organizations contribute to the development of new organizational cultures, to the production and flow of normative orders as well as to the emergence of transnational actors' constellations. This workshop aims to explore the anthropological significance of such international organizations on the following three levels:

- the translocal flow and ‚moving' of categories, concepts, values and metaphors (such as "peace building", "civil society" or "gender equality") in the context of such interventions;
- the emergence of specific organizational practises, social fields and institutional cultures - inside and surrounding "international organizations" - which can be explored by the approaches and methods of an ‚anthropology of organizations';
- the formation of fields of interaction, sites of encounter, and spaces of contest between the representatives of international organizations and ‚local' actors in the concrete geographical areas of such political interventions.
We invite anthropological positions and case studies that focus especially on international organizations - as the United Nations - that act in the area of conflict prevention, peace building, and related fields.

Convenors: Jens Adam (Humboldt University Berlin), Michael Lidauer (Goethe University Frankfurt)

Papers have to be submitted via the website; if you are interested in
proposing a paper, please follow this link:
http://www.nomadit.co.uk/easa/easa2010/panels.php5?PanelID=683