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JournalISSN: 1749-5679

International Political Sociology 

Wiley-Blackwell
About: International Political Sociology is an academic journal published by Wiley-Blackwell. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Politics & International relations. It has an ISSN identifier of 1749-5679. Over the lifetime, 498 publications have been published receiving 13316 citations. The journal is also known as: IPS.


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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors suggest that Lefebvre's work contains insightful observations on the relationship between states, space and territory, and develop this reading with reference to three key dimensions of his approach to state space as territory: the production of territory, state territorial strategies, and the "territory effect".
Abstract: In this article, we offer an account of how the French Marxist philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre can be read as a theorist of territory. While Lefebvre’s writings on state space have generated some interest in recent years, the territorial dimensions of his thinking on this issue have not been explored. Meanwhile, the question of territory has been oddly undertheorized in the post-1970s literatures on international relations and spatialized political economy. Against this background, we suggest that Lefebvre’s work contains some insightful, if unsystematic, observations on the relationship between states, space and territory. Following consideration of Agnew’s (1994) influential injunction that social scientists transcend the ‘‘territorial trap,’’ we develop this reading of Lefebvre with reference to three key dimensions of his approach to state space as territory—first, the production of territory; second, state territorial strategies; and third, the ‘‘territory effect,’’ namely, the state’s tendency, through its territorial form, to naturalize its own transformative effects on sociospatial relations. Thus construed, Lefebvre’s approach productively raises the issue of how the territorial trap is actually constructed and reproduced. In this article, we offer an account of how the French Marxist philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre (1901–1991) can be read as a theorist of territory. While Lefebvre is well-known as a theorist of space, his works on the state are only now beginning to be discussed in English-language literature. During the last decade, in the context of a broader intensification of scholarly interest in the geographies of state space (Brenner, Jessop, Jones, and MacLeod 2003), Lefebvre has been appropriately credited for his pioneering, reflexive attention to the spatial articulations of state power (Brenner 1997a,b, 2004; Elden 2004). 1

274 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the role of private security in two such assemblages in Sierra Leone and Nigeria is analyzed, showing how a range of different security agents and normativities interact, cooperate and compete, to produce new institutions, practices and forms of security governance.
Abstract: To date, most discussion of security privatization in international politics has been focused on the role of private military companies and mercenaries. This article seeks to shift the focus away from the battlefields and toward the less spectacular privatization and globalization of commercial private security. Drawing on Saskia Sassen’s notion of state ‘‘disassembly,’’ we situate the growth of private security within broader shifts in global governance. Pointing to the weakness of seeing the rise of private security as an erosion of state power and authority, we show instead a re-articulation of the public ⁄private and global ⁄local distinctions and relationships into what we term ‘‘global security assemblages.’’ Analyzing the role of private security in two such assemblages in Sierra Leone and Nigeria, we show how a range of different security agents and normativities interact, cooperate and compete, to produce new institutions, practices and forms of security governance. Global security assemblages thus mark important developments in the relationship between security and the sovereign state, structures of political power and authority, and the operations of global capital. Spurred by the apparent return of mercenary activities in Africa at the end of the Cold War, and given further impetus and urgency by the substantial involvement of private military contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq, the privatization of security has become one of the most controversial issues in contemporary international politics. Once obscure companies such as Blackwater, Triple Canopy, and Erinys have joined with tales of ‘‘neo-mercenaries’’ like Executive Outcomes in Sierra Leone and Simon Mann’s attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea in 2004, to become the focus of widespread journalistic coverage, increasingly sophisticated scholarly analysis, as well as popular books, entertainment and Hollywood films. Yet the privatization of security and its consequences go well beyond the activities of the private soldier. Away from the battlefields, in the day-to-day activities of ordinary life, private security has also become ubiquitous. Less spectacular than the ‘‘return of the dogs of war,’’ commercial private security activities, ranging from manned guarding and alarm installation, to risk analysis and surveillance, have expanded at a phenomenal rate. Worldwide, the commercial private security market is now valued at $165 billion, and its growth is forecast to continue at an annual rate of 8% for the foreseeable future (Securitas 2007). Indeed, what was once described as a ‘‘quiet revolution’’ in security provision has become global in scope (Shearing and Stenning 1981).

252 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a collective article briefly describes the specificities of cyber mass surveillance, including its mix of the practices of intelligence services and those of private companies providing services around the world and investigates the impact of these practices on national security, diplomacy, human rights, democracy, subjectivity, and obedience.
Abstract: Current revelations about the secret US-NSA program, PRISM, have confirmed the large-scale mass surveillance of the telecommunication and electronic messages of governments, companies, and citizens, including the United States' closest allies in Europe and Latin America. The transnational ramifications of surveillance call for a re-evaluation of contemporary world politics' practices. The debate cannot be limited to the United States versus the rest of the world or to surveillance versus privacy; much more is at stake. This collective article briefly describes the specificities of cyber mass surveillance, including its mix of the practices of intelligence services and those of private companies providing services around the world. It then investigates the impact of these practices on national security, diplomacy, human rights, democracy, subjectivity, and obedience.

243 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Neoliberal penalty is paradoxical in that it purports to deploy "more state" in the realm of the police, criminal courts and prisons to remedy the generalized rise of objective and subjective insecurity which is itself caused by "less state" on the economic and social front in the leading countries of the First World as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Neoliberal penalty is paradoxical in that it purports to deploy ‘more state’ in the realm of the police, criminal courts and prisons to remedy the generalized rise of objective and subjective insecurity which is itself caused by ‘less state’ on the economic and social front in the leading countries of the First World. It reaffirms the omnipotence of Leviathan in the restricted domain of public-order maintenance, symbolized by the running battle against street delinquency and clandestine immigration that has everywhere surged to the forefront of the civic stage, just when the state claims and proves to be incapable of stemming the fragmentation of wage labor and of bridling the hypermobility of capital that converge to destabilize the entire social edifice. And, as I showed elsewhere (Wacquant 1999; 2001a), this is no mere coincidence: it is precisely because the governing elites, having converted to the new ruling ideology of the all-mighty market radiating from the United States, relinquish the state’s prerogatives in socioeconomic matters that they must everywhere enhance and reinforce its mission in matters of domestic ‘security’1 after having abruptly reduced the latter to its sole criminal dimension, and furthermore to festering lower-class crime in the streets as opposed to mounting upper-class lawbreaking in corporate suites.

223 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the legal and practical elements of the policing of movement with this crucial site of politics, using two understudied concepts from Foucault, the heterotopia and the confessionary complex, illustrated how contemporary aviation security arrangements are dependent on both the exceptional nature of the airport and the propensity of citizens to confess in the face of agents of the state.
Abstract: Airports are barometers of the balance between mobility and security sought by governments, industry, and the traveling public. This article examines this dynamic at a Canadian international airport, evaluating the legal and practical elements of the policing of movement with this crucial site of politics. Using two under-studied concepts from Foucault, the heterotopia and the confessionary complex, it is illustrated how contemporary aviation security arrangements are dependent on both the exceptional nature of the airport and the predisposition of citizens to confess in the face of agents of the state.

218 citations

Performance
Metrics
No. of papers from the Journal in previous years
YearPapers
202313
202224
202133
202019
201931
201826