Book Review: Gender, UN Peacebuilding, and the Politics of Space: Locating Legitimacy, by Laura J. Shepherd

Laura J. Shepherd foregrounds her latest book Gender, UN Peacebuilding, and the Politics of Space: Locating Legitimacy in a discussion of hope. She locates hope within the subject matter – by highlighting that the United Nations (UN) and its peacebuilding architecture is founded, and partially constructed, on a commitment to hope; the normative hope that the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission (UNPBC) will integrate a gender perspective across all of its operations; and through a personal and professional commitment to hope acting as a motivating force for Shepherd’s intellectual endeavor: “It is only through engaging with humility, persistence, and hope that we might contribute in some small way to the construction of a different world” (170). Indeed, Shepherd recalls that it was through a close reading of the 2010 review of the UN peacebuilding architecture, which noted a failure to realize the hopes that this architecture was founded on, that initially prompted this research.