Abstract

The Gloss of Harmony focuses on agencies of the United Nations, examining the paradox of entrusting relatively powerless and underfunded organisations with the responsibility of tackling some of the essential problems of our time. The book shows how international organisations shape the world in often unexpected and unpredictable ways.

The authors of this collection look not only at the official objectives and unintended consequences of international governance but also at how international organisations involve collective and individual actors in policy making, absorb critique, attempt to neutralise political conflict and create new political fields with local actors and national governments.

The Gloss of Harmony identifies the micro-social processes and complexities within multilateral organisations which have, up to now, been largely invisible. This book will have wide appeal not only to students and academics in anthropology, business studies and sociology but also to all practitioners concerned with international governance.
'This book cannot be missed by any scholar or citizen trying to get a grasp on how today's world is - or should be - governed'
Global Policy Forum
'Highly recommended'
Tania Murray Li, author 'The Will to Improve'
'Brings new perspectives in the anthropology of transnational organisations'
Marc Abélès, Research Director CNRS/EHESS Paris, author of 'The Politics of Survival'
'This fascinating book is an anthropological foray into international institutions'
Sally Engle Merry, author of Human Rights and Gender Violence
'These ethnographic studies shed valuable light on how UN agencies work, how global norms are constructed and negotiated, and how the veneer of consensus is manufactured, often in ways that serve to reproduce the authority of these UN agencies themselves'
Cris Shore, The University of Auckland