Since the 1990s, Western agencies have put considerable effort into peace building after the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and generally in societies afflicted by civil war, such as Rwanda. This has given rise to an important body of work on postconflict reconstruction. Others have turned their attention to reconstruction after civil wars of the past. This burgeoning literature is problematic in a variety of ways. Often based on an essentialized notion of reconstruction, what exactly is to be reconstructed remains undefined. Reconstruction is presented as a homogeneous ‘‘blueprint’’project, aimed mainly at institution building from above in order to promote stability, democracy, and good governance. It is assumed that after the violence has ended, societies depart afresh from what the Germans called a Nullstunde1 and can re-create political and social relations from scrap. The specific historical and political context that has created conflict in the first place, which must inevitably influence postconflict dynamics, is obscured.

As the chapters in this volume show, most civil wars do not ‘‘end’’with a blank slate. Even when the violence has ended and democracy is restored, the civil war may continue with different means or even be transmitted to the next generation. Much of the literature assumes uncritically that people want to restore their former livelihoods as they were before and thus underestimates the deep restructuring of societies under the impact of the civil war. A second problem concerns temporalities. Obviously, the current