About the Book
Peace Infrastructures examines how United Nations peace operations build, finance, and govern infrastructure in conflict-affected settings. Through roads, bridges, energy systems, and other forms of public infrastructure, peace operations increasingly shape the material foundations of everyday life.
The book explores how these projects are connected to broader goals of peacebuilding, sustainability, resilience, and statebuilding. Drawing on extensive research, it shows how infrastructure has become an important—yet often overlooked—tool of international intervention.
Rather than treating infrastructure as a purely technical matter, Peace Infrastructures highlights its political, social, and environmental dimensions and asks what role infrastructure should play in building more peaceful and sustainable futures.
What others say
At a historical moment when peace seems to be literally about building, Silvia Danielak has written a timely, highly original book that compels us to rethink how the physical infrastructures of UN peace operations relate to the spatial imaginaries of peace and—most importantly—possible, more sustainable futures.~Alex de Waal, author of New Pandemics, Old Politics and Mass Starvation
Infrastructure is crucial but is often unnoticed. Silvia Danielak’s important new book reveals what the infrastructures built and used by United Nations peace operations can tell us about power, exclusion, and peace. Highly recommended.~Roger Mac Ginty, author of Everyday Peace and International Peacebuilding and Local Resistance
Peace Infrastructures is a groundbreaking exploration of how UN peace operations employ infrastructural projects—roads, bridges, solar farms—as tools to foster sustainable peace in conflict-affected regions. Danielak masterfully examines the promises, risks, and long-term impacts of such interventions, revealing how they shape the socio-spatial and environmental landscapes of host communities. This thought-provoking book is essential reading for anyone interested in peace operations and sustainable development.~Lise Howard, author of Power in Peacekeeping and UN Peacekeeping in Civil Wars
Access Information
Peace Infrastructures is published by MIT Press.