Vanessa Pupavac

Therapeutic governance: psycho-social intervention and trauma risk management,.

This paper critically analyses the significance of psycho-social intervention as a new form of international therapeutic governance based on social risk management. First, the paper examines the international psycho-social model and its origins in an Anglo-American therapeutic ethos. Second, the paper argues that psycho-social approaches jeopardise local coping strategies. Third, the paper highlights the potential political, social and psychological consequences of the pathologisation of war-affected societies. Finally the paper concludes that therapeutic governance represents the reduction of politics to administration.

Misanthropy Without Borders: The International Children's Rights Regime

The issue of childrens rights has become key to human rights-based international security strategies. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) is being operationalised in complex political emergencies. Childrens rights now inform humanitarian principles. Universal concern for children is viewed as transcending political and social divides and able to mobilise societies to confront social problems and prevent war. The operationalisation of child rights is accompanied by the development of psycho-social programmes to rehabilitate the child victim. Critically analysing the implications of the childrens rights regime for the right to self-determination, the paper unpacks the assumptions underlying childrens rights and psycho-social intervention. The paper begins by examining the conceptualisation of the rights-holding subject universalised under the UN Convention and then goes on to consider Article 39 on the right to psycho-social intervention. Equally important as the novel conceptualisation of childhood and childrens rights under the international childrens rights regime is the (unspoken) mistrust of adulthood and political rights that informs the imperative to institutionalise childrens rights as higher law. Moreover while the rights-based approach consciously sought to move away from the earlier moralising child-salvation model, psycho-social rehabilitation reveals a similar preoccupation with deviancy, but conducted through the paradigm of psychological functionalism. Rather than representing a trend towards more humane international relations, the paper suggests that the elevation of childrens rights is premised on a profound disenchantment with humanity. The logical implication of the international childrens rights regime is to challenge both the moral and political capacity of individuals and their right to self-determination and to institutionalise a more unequal international system.

Framing Post-conflict Societies: international pathologisation of Cambodia and the post-Yugoslav states

This article examines the pathologisation of post-conflict societies through a comparison of the framing of the Cambodian and post-Yugoslav states. The notion of failed states fixes culpability for war on the societies in question, rendering the domestic populations dysfunctional while casting international rescue interventions as functional. The article suggests that the discourse of pathologisation can be understood primarily not as a means of explaining state crisis so much as legitimising an indefinite international presence and deferring self-government.

War on the couch: the emotionology of the new international security paradigm

The emotional state of war-affected populations has become a central concern for international policy-makers in the last decade. Growing interest in war trauma is influenced by contemporary Anglo-American emotionology, or emotional norms, which tends to pathologize ordinary responses to distress, including anger related to survival strategies. The article critically analyses the ascendancy of a therapeutic security paradigm in international politics, which seeks to explain the prevailing political, economic and social conditions in terms of cycles of emotional dysfunctionalism. The article contends that international therapeutic governance pathologizes waraffected populations as emotionally dysfunctional and problematizes their right to self-government, leading to extensive external intervention. However, international therapeutic governance may be detrimental to postwar recovery as well legitimizing a denial of self-government.

Human security and the rise of global therapeutic governance

This article discusses the emergence of global therapeutic governance or the influence of social psychology on international development policy. Therapeutic governance links psychosocial well-being and security, and seeks to foster personalities able to cope with risk and insecurity. The article analyses how Western alarm at the destabilizing impact of development eroded its support for an industrialization model of development. The article then examines how the basic needs model is underpinned by social psychological theories and involves an abandonment of national development. Finally, the article considers development as therapeutic governance and the implications of abandoning national development for the concept of human security.

Pathologizing Populations and Colonizing Minds: International Psychosocial Programs in Kosovo

Through a case study of international responses in Kosovo, this article critically analyses how the international therapeutic model constructs war-affected populations as traumatised and subject to psychosocial dysfunctionalism. The international therapeutic model may be summarised as follows: traumatic experiences cause trauma symptoms producing low self esteem and dysfunctionalism leading to abuse/violence, requiring external intervention to break the cycle of trauma and violence. The first half of the paper contends the international projection of the population as traumatised. The second half of the paper examines psychosocial intervention as a new mode of external therapeutic governance. The paper suggests that concern for war trauma in international policy does not necessarily represent a positive development for war-affected populations. International psychosocial intervention has been criticised as a form of cultural imperialism, that is, the imposition of a Western therapeutic model on other societies, which have their own coping strategies.

International Therapeutic Peace and Justice in Bosnia

During the 1990s international policy highlighted the psychological effect of war on populations and promoted psychosocial programmes to facilitate psychological healing. The rapid rise of concern for war trauma is influenced by the contemporary Anglo-American therapeutic ethos, which analyses political, economic and social issues in terms of cycles of emotional dysfunctions. The article critically examines the development of an international therapeutic paradigm. The article contends that international therapeutic governance pathologizes war-affected populations as psychologically dysfunctional and lacking the capacity for self-government without extensive external empowerment. Yet international therapeutic governance may actually inhibit post-war recovery even as its model of therapeutic justice and development seeks that populations lower their expectations of the peace and curb their aspirations.

PSYCHOSOCIAL INTERVENTIONS AND THE DEMORALIZATION OF HUMANITARIANISM

This paper critically analyses from a political sociology standpoint the international conceptualization of war-affected populations as traumatized and in need of therapeutic interventions. It argues for the importance of looking beyond the epidemiological literature to understand trauma responses globally. The paper explores how the imperative for international psychosocial programmes lies in developments within donor countries and debates in their humanitarian sectors over the efficacy of traditional aid responses. The aim of the paper is threefold. First, it discusses the emotional norms of donor states, highlighting the psychologizing of social issues and the cultural expectations of individual vulnerability. Second it examines the demoralization of humanitarianism in the 1990s and how this facilitated the rise of international psychosocial work and the psychologizing of war. Third, it draws attention to the limitations of a mental health model in Croatia, a country which has been receptive to international psychosocial programmes. Finally it concludes that the prevalent trauma approaches may inhibit recovery and argues for the need to re-moralize resilience.

Empowering women? an assessment of international gender policies in Bosnia

International policy-making promises to empower women in Bosnia through encouraging their participation in the political process, giving them a voice in civil society and providing enhanced opportunities for economic independence. This essay challenges these claims, suggesting that while a narrow echelon of young middle-class urban professionals have benefited from international gender approaches, the prospects for ordinary Bosnian women have not improved. First, the essay considers international attempts to promote the political empowerment of women through quota mechanisms and support for womens organizations operating in civil society. Secondly, it considers international policies intended to further the economic empowerment of women and how these relate to broader neo-liberal prescriptions for the post-war state. It concludes that international policies, in both the political and economic realms, contain fundamental limitations which look likely to frustrate the long-term advancement of women in Bosnia.

The International Children’s Rights Regime

The virtually universal ratification of the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child has been hailed as inaugurating a new era of international human rights. Mobilization around children’s rights through international initiatives such as the Global Movement for Children is viewed as significant not only for child welfare but for promoting universal human rights values. The cause of children is regarded as capable of transcending national, political and social divisions and enlisting people globally to counter social problems and militate against disorder and conflict. Echoing the UN Charter’s opening declaration ‘We the Peoples’, the Secretary General’s end-of-decade review entitled We the Children encapsulates how the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is increasingly being invoked as a core international document to develop human rights protections in the new millennium (UN, 2001). The cause of children has indeed come of age. No longer confined to the agenda of international welfare organizations or human rights advocates, children have received unprecedented interest in the last decade. In all areas of international policy-making, from development strategy to security matters, the rights of children are being taken up. Even the Security Council has begun to highlight children’s issues in its deliberations, reflected in various resolutions on their behalf.2