| | The World Bank's booklet 'Post-Conflict Reconstruction: The Role of the World Bank' suggests that in its eyes the ravages of war-torn Africa present international financial institutions with an opportunity to create 'market friendly' opportunities on the levelled playing fields assumed by 'post-conflict' discourse. As well as downplaying the conflict-laden and complex aspects of post-war situations, the illusion of peace and ordered government encouraged by 'post-conflict' language allows the traditional humanitarian side of the 'relief' and (neo-liberal) 'development' continuum in post-war situations to be obliterated. Thus, the World Bank and similar agencies are able to enter the killing fields even during conflict to lay the seeds - or 'embed' , to use a reversal of Polanyian perspectives - of individual property rights and other aspects of neo-liberal economic, social and political good governance. Perspectives from 'social capital' discourse also buttress this view. Such ideologies coincide with and justify the diminishing material resources allocated to a more traditional humanitarian agenda for post-war reconstruction, as well as sidelining alternatives. |
