This article examines how the growing complexity of peacebuilding settings is transforming the classic notion of purposeful agency into a non-purposeful, adaptive form of being in such contexts. Through an analysis of critical peacebuilding literature and a reflection on the UN’s peacebuilding practices in the field, the article first argues that complexity has been gradually replacing linear, top-down strategies with approaches seeking to draw attention to interdependencies, relationality and uncertainty. The article then suggests that engaging with complexity has critical implications for the traditional understanding of purposeful agency in the peacebuilding milieu that go beyond those of the governmentality critique, which conceptualizes the complexity turn as a strategy for extending control over post-conflict societies. Complexity is eventually conceived of in the article as a performative contextual quality that stems from the non-linear, co-emergent and unpredictable entanglement of interactions between actors in peacebuilding processes. This state of entanglement hinders the autonomous, purposeful agential condition of these actors in war-torn scenarios – in this article, peacebuilding implementers specifically – in which agency seems more and more restricted to its adaptive nature.

中文翻译：

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重构对复杂性敏感的建设和平机构

本文探讨了建设和平环境日益复杂的情况如何将有目的的机构的经典概念转变为在这种情况下无目的的、适应性的存在形式。通过对重要的建设和平文献的分析和对联合国在该领域的建设和平实践的反思，文章首先认为，复杂性已逐渐取代线性的、自上而下的策略，以寻求引起对相互依存性、相关性和不确定性的关注的方法。然后，文章指出，处理复杂性对于在建设和平环境中对有目的机构的传统理解具有重要意义，这超出了政府批判的理解，后者将复杂性转变概念化为扩大对冲突后社会的控制的策略。在文章中，复杂性最终被认为是一种表演性的语境品质，它源于建设和平进程中参与者之间相互作用的非线性、共同出现和不可预测的纠缠。这种纠缠状态阻碍了这些行动者在饱受战争蹂躏的场景中的自主、有目的的代理条件——在本文中，特别是建设和平的实施者——在这种情况下，代理似乎越来越受限于其适应性。