ABS International Strategy & Marketing Seminar: Samer Abdelnour (RSM)

"Actorhood and Postwar Intervention. The Role of Institutional Anchors"

Event

War-to-peace transitions require the dismantling of wartime institutional orders and the assertion of institutions that support peace and economic recovery. For this reason, interventions to remobilize fighters towards productive civilian livelihoods are integral for successful postwar reconstruction. This study analyzes a postwar intervention to reintegrate thousands of fighters in Sudan into agricultural cooperative. A thematic analysis using the institutional theory notion of actorhood—institutional templates of social identities, roles and practices—points to the emergence of a postwar professions, where formerly warring parties adopt new roles and practices as agents of development and beneficiaries. Postwar intervention resources such as equipment, enterprise models, and finance are theorized to be institutional anchors, or techniques for organizing specific social practices. Findings also reveal point to an intervention paradox: though institutional anchors may be effective for promoting new social practices, they risk reproducing institutional inequalities in intervention settings.

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Published by  ABS-RI