International stabilization interventions in so-called fragile states have failed everywhere they have been tried. In the Sahel, US, French, and United Nations-led missions were recently expelled following a series of military coups d'états. They left conditions of even greater instability than when they were deployed over a decade earlier. Casey McNeill takes these failures as a jumping off point to rethink the spatial logics and imaginaries that ground diagnoses of fragile states and int...

Using detailed insights from those with first-hand experience of conducting research in areas of international intervention and conflict, this handbook provides essential practical guidance for researchers and students embarking on fieldwork in violent, repressive and closed contexts.Contributors detail their own experiences from areas including the Congo, Sudan, Yemen, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Myanmar, inviting readers into their reflections on mistakes and hard-learned lessons....