Showing papers in "International Political Sociology in 2021"

Colonial Lives of the Carceral Archipelago: Rethinking the Neoliberal Security State

Abstract: Mass incarceration, police brutality, and border controls are part and parcel of the everyday experiences of marginalized and racialized communities across the world. Recent scholarship in international relations, sociology, and geography has examined the prevalence of these coercive practices through the prism of “disciplinary,” “penal,” or “authoritarian” neoliberalism. In this collective discussion, we argue that although this literature has brought to the fore neoliberalism's reliance on state violence, it has yet to interrogate how these carceral measures are linked to previous forms of global racial ordering. To rectify this moment of “colonial unknowing,” the collective discussion draws on decolonial approaches, Indigenous studies, and theories of racial capitalism. It demonstrates that “new” and “neoliberal” forms of domestic control must be situated within the global longue duree of racialized and colonial accumulation by dispossession. By mapping contemporary modes of policing, incarceration, migration control, and surveillance onto earlier forms of racial–colonial subjugation, we argue that countering the violence of neoliberalism requires more than nostalgic appeals for a return to Keynesianism. What is needed is abolition—not just of the carceral archipelago, but of the very system of racial capitalism that produces and depends on these global vectors of organized violence and abandonment. L'incarceration de masse, la brutalite policiere et les controles aux frontieres constituent une partie integrante des experiences quotidiennes des communautes marginalisees et racialisees du monde entier. Des etudes recentes en relations internationales, en sociologie et en geographie ont examine la prevalence de ces pratiques coercitives par le prisme du neoliberalisme « disciplinaire », « penal » ou « autoritaire ». Dans cet article, nous soutenons que bien que cette litterature ait mis en evidence la dependance du neoliberalisme a la violence etatique, elle ne s'est pas encore interrogee sur le lien entre ces mesures carcerales et les formes precedentes d'ordre racial mondial. Cet article s'appuie sur le feminisme noir, les approches decoloniales, les etudes indigenes et les theories de capitalisme racial pour rectifier cette « ignorance coloniale » marquante. Il demontre que les formes « nouvelles » et « neoliberales » de controle national doivent se situer dans la longue duree globale de l'accumulation racialisee et coloniale par depossession. Nous associons les modes contemporains de maintien de l'ordre, d'incarceration, de controle migratoire et de surveillance a des formes anterieures d'assujettissement racial/colonial pour soutenir que contrer la violence du neoliberalisme exige davantage que des appels nostalgiques au retour du keynesianisme. Ce qu'il faut, c'est une abolition : non seulement de l'archipel carceral, mais aussi du systeme de capitalisme racial en lui-meme qui produit et depend de ces vecteurs globaux de violence organisee et d'abandon. El encarcelamiento masivo, la brutalidad policial y los controles fronterizos forman parte de las experiencias cotidianas de las comunidades marginadas y racializadas de todo el mundo. Estudios recientes en RI, Sociologia y Geografia han examinado la prevalencia de estas practicas coercitivas a traves del prisma del neoliberalismo “disciplinario,” “penal” o “autoritario.” En este articulo, sostenemos que, si bien esta literatura puso en primer plano la dependencia del neoliberalismo de la violencia estatal, aun tiene que cuestionar la manera en que estas medidas carcelarias se vinculan a formas anteriores de ordenamiento racial global. Para rectificar este momento de “desconocimiento colonial,” el articulo recurre al feminismo negro, a los abordajes descoloniales, a los estudios indigenas y a las teorias del capitalismo racial. Demuestra que las formas “nuevas” y “neoliberales” de control interno se deben situar dentro de la longue duree global de la acumulacion por desposesion racializada y colonial. Al trazar un mapa de los modos contemporaneos de vigilancia policial, encarcelamiento, control de la migracion y vigilancia sobre las formas anteriores de subyugacion racial-colonial, sostenemos que contrarrestar la violencia del neoliberalismo requiere algo mas que apelaciones nostalgicas de retorno al keynesianismo. Lo que se necesita es la abolicion, no solo del archipielago carcelario, sino tambien del propio sistema de capitalismo racial que produce y depende de estos vectores globales de violencia y abandono organizados.

Families First? The Mobilization of Family Norms in Refugee Resettlement

Abstract: European resettlement programs prioritize the admission of refugee families. While this is seen as the “natural” thing to do, we argue that the mobilization of family norms is crucially political: in everyday bordering practices, interpretations of family norms are decisive for who is admitted to Europe. We study the selection of Syrian refugees in Turkey for humanitarian admission to Germany, which involves national governments, UNHCR, and NGOs. Fusing practice-theoretical approaches to humanitarianism and mobility governance on the one hand, with gender and sexuality scholarship on nationalism, empire, and migration on the other, we show how family norms configure discretionary power in transnational migration governance. First, family norms shape how power is exercised over refugees in vulnerability and assimilability assessments. Vulnerability assessments hinge on whether a family counts as protective and supportive, or deficient and threatening. Assimilability assessments scrutinize whether refugees do family “right”: in a way that will not disturb resettlement countries’ national (gender) order. Second, the mobilization of family norms reflects power disparities between actors. International and non-governmental actors strive to recognize plural family forms, but are disciplined into applying resettlement states’ more constraining family norms, thereby participating in the (re)production of the borders and boundaries of Europe.

Toward a critique of algorithmic violence

Abstract: Questions about how algorithms contribute to (in)security are under discussion across international political sociology. Building upon and adding to these debates, our collective discussion foregrounds questions about algorithmic violence. We argue that it is important to examine how algorithmic systems feed (into) specific forms of violence, and how they justify violent actions or redefine what forms of violence are deemed legitimate. Bringing together different disciplinary and conceptual vantage points, this collective discussion opens a conversation about algorithmic violence focusing both on its specific instances and on the challenges that arise in conceptualizing and studying it. Overall, the discussion converges on three areas of concern-the violence under-girding the creation and feeding of data infrastructures; the translation processes at play in the use of computer/machine vision across diverse security practices; and the institutional governing of algorithmic violence, especially its organization, limitation, and legitimation. Our two-fold aim is to show the potential of a cross-disciplinary conversation and to move toward an interactional research agenda. While our approaches diverge, they also enrich each other. Ultimately, we highlight the critical purchase of studying the role of algorithmic violence in the fabric of the international through a situated analysis of algorithmic systems as part of complex, and often messy, practices.

Racial capitalism, Islamophobia and austerity

Abstract: Research funded by the Centre for Urban Research on Austerity (CURA) at De Montfort University. The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.

The Politics of the Anthropocene: Temporality, Ecology, and Indigeneity

Abstract: The notion of the Anthropocene has become an instrumental backdrop against which post-foundational social theory and political research frame political action in a way that defies modern certainty and, somewhat paradoxically, anthropocentrism, under conditions of drastic ecological changes. But what exactly is the theoretical promise of the Anthropocene? This paper seeks to explore what the concept can offer to critical social science and, conversely, how these critical approaches define and locate the analytical and the political purchase of the Anthropocene, through the critical lens of Indigenous scholarship. The paper genealogically retraces the transition from a science-led, discontinuous-descriptive to a continuous-ontological conceptualization of the Anthropocene. It then unpacks how the notions of ecological relationality and non-human agency deployed in the latter closely parallel certain lines of argumentation in Indigenous thought and politics. Drawing on critical Indigenous studies, the paper formulates a critique of how relational perspectives enfold alternative ontologies and politics within an overarching Anthropocene ontology that is not only problematically universalizing, but also replaces the genuine engagement with differences and resistance.

The everyday life of security : capturing space, practice, and affect

Abstract: Security shapes everyday life, but despite a growing literature on everyday security there is no consensus on the meaning of the “everyday”. At the same time, the research methods that dominate the field are designed to study elites and high politics. This paper does two things. First, it brings together and synthesises the existing literature on everyday security to argue that we should think about the everyday life of security as constituted across three dimensions: space, practice, and affect. Thus the paper adds conceptual clarity, demonstrating that the everyday life of security is multifaceted and exists in mundane spaces, routine practices, and affective/lived experiences. Second, it works through the methodological implications of a three-dimensional understanding of everyday security. In order to capture all three dimensions and the ways in which they interact, we need to explore different methods. The paper offers one such method, exploring the everyday life of security in contemporary China through a participatory photography project with six ordinary citizens in Beijing. The central contribution of the paper is capturing — conceptually and methodologically — all three dimensions, in order to develop our understanding of the everyday life of security.

Digital Humanitarianism and the Visual Politics of the Refugee Camp: (Un)Seeing Control

Abstract: Digital visual technologies have become an important tool of humanitarian governance. They allow the monitoring of crises from afar, making it possible to detect human rights violations and refugee movements, despite a crisis area being inaccessible. However, the political effects of such “digital humanitarianism” are understudied. This article aims to amend this gap by analyzing which forms of seeing, showing, and governing refugee camps are enabled by digital technologies. To this end, the article combines scholarship on the politics of the refugee camp with the emerging body of work on digital humanitarianism. It proposes the notion of a “visual assemblage of the refugee camp” to conceptualize the increasing adoption of visual technologies in refugee camp governance. Using the two paradigmatic cases of Zaatari and Azraq, two refugee camps for displaced Syrians in Jordan, the text outlines how this visual assemblage enacts the refugee camp in different ways—thus bringing about different versions of the camp. The case study reveals three such enactments of the refugee camp—as a technology of care and control; as a political space; and, as a governmental laboratory—and discusses how these interact and clash in everyday camp life. Les technologies visuelles numériques sont devenues un outil important de la gouvernance humanitaire. Elles permettent de surveiller les crises à distance tout en offrant la possibilité de détecter les violations des droits de l'Homme, les mouvements de réfugiés, etc. malgré l'inaccessibilité de la zone de crise. Les effets politiques d'un tel « humanitarisme numérique » sont toutefois sous-étudiés. Cet article vise à combler cette lacune en analysant les formes de technologies d'observation à distance, d'affichage et de gouvernance qui seraient adaptées au cas des camps de réfugiés. Pour cela, cet article associe une étude portant sur la politique des camps de réfugiés aux travaux émergents sur l'humanitarisme numérique. Il propose la notion « d'assemblage visuel de camp de réfugiés » pour conceptualiser l'adoption croissante des technologies visuelles dans la gouvernance des camps de réfugiés. Ce texte s'appuie sur les deux cas paradigmatiques de Zaatari et Azraq, deux camps de réfugiés pour les Syriens déplacés en Jordanie afin de décrire comment cet assemblage visuel représente les camps de différentes manières, en faisant ainsi apparaître différentes perspectives des camps. L’étude de cas révèle trois représentations des camps: Technologie de soins et de contrôle, Espace politique et Laboratoire gouvernemental. Il aborde ensuite la manière dont ces représentations interagissent et entrent en conflit dans la vie quotidienne des camps. Las tecnologías visuales digitales se han convertido en una importante herramienta de la gestión humanitaria. Permiten observar las situaciones de crisis a distancia y, así, detectar las violaciones de los derechos humanos, los movimientos de refugiados y demás a pesar de que no se pueda acceder a la zona afectada. Sin embargo, los efectos políticos de ese “humanitarismo digital” no se han estudiado lo suficiente. En el artículo se intenta llenar este vacío mediante el análisis de qué formas de ver, mostrar y dominar las tecnologías remotas sirven en el caso de los campos de refugiados. Para esto, el artículo relaciona los estudios sobre las políticas del campo de refugiados con las nuevas investigaciones sobre el humanitarismo digital. Propone la noción de un “montaje visual del campo de refugiados” para conceptualizar la creciente adopción de tecnologías visuales en la gestión de los campos de refugiados. A partir de los casos paradigmáticos de Zaatari y Azraq, dos campos de refugiados para sirios desplazados en Jordania, el texto esboza cómo este montaje visual representa el campo de refugiados de diferentes maneras y da lugar a diversas perspectivas del campo. El estudio de caso revela tres de estas representaciones del campo de refugiados (como una tecnología de cuidado y control, como un espacio político y como un laboratorio gubernamental) y expone cómo estas interactúan y chocan en la vida cotidiana del campo.

“We Can Do This”: Merkel, Migration and the Fantasy of Control

Abstract: At the height of the so-called 2015 refugee crisis, Angela Merkel, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, is thought to have opened the country's borders to a million refugees. She was celebrated as an international leader and the refugees’ savior, while the country was seen as having a welcome culture. Retrospectively, however, her refugee policy is construed as a mistake. Both interpretations agree that Merkel opened the border. Deploying a detailed reading of events, this article asks what political imaginary is invoked through this representation and what its consequences are. It draws out how paying attention to temporality reveals the racialization involved in producing the problem. First, the article sets out the centrality of Merkel and the border opening to accounts of the events, drawing out the temporality of events and its implications. Second, it asks what it means to say that the border was opened, complicating this representation. Finally, it shows how the focus on the border opening invoked a political imaginary marked by a fantasy of control that obscures its own exclusions. Recognizing bordering as about control over the temporality of community alerts us to how the impossible desire to control the future racializes those seeking refuge.

Practice Theory and Postsocialist Civil Society: Toward a New Analytical Framework

Abstract: When discussing postsocialist civil societies in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), scholars have predominantly focused on the nonparticipatory and advocacy-oriented activities of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), effectively narrowing the concept of “civil society” to that of the “civic sector.” This actor-focused and normative approach has resulted in a systematic obfuscation of less structured forms of everyday resistance, civic engagement, active citizenship, contentious politics, and social movements, giving only a partial view of civil societies in the region. Through a critical dialogue between state-of-the-art research on postsocialist civil society and the practice turn in international political sociology (IPS), this article postulates an analytical distinction between contentious and compliant practices in order to arrive at a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the ways in which postsocialist civil societies are manifested, enacted, and actualized. On the one hand, the proposed practice turn moves the research agenda away from abstract, universalist, and normative assumptions of what civil society should be in favor of an embedded, contextual, and critical understanding of what it actually is; on the other hand, this shift opens venues for theorizing not only about, but also from the “postsocialist condition” of civil societies in the transnational space of CEE.

Sound Matters: How Sonic Formations Shape the Nuclear Deterrence and Non-Proliferation Regimes

Abstract: Sound matters for international political sociology. Drawing upon liter- ature from cultural geography and sound studies, we argue that sound contributes to political dynamics that are constitutive of world politics. To capture these dynamics, we offer a set of conceptual frameworks to analyze sound. First, we differentiate the concept of sound from noise and show the importance of doing so. Second, we introduce “sonic formations” as a means of capturing how sound contributes to world politics. Third, we make the case for analyzing sound’s historicity, adaptability, relationality, and performativity (SHARP) in any given context. Fourth, using sonic for- mations and the SHARP framework, we examine an illustrative case study: the nuclear deterrence and non-proliferation regimes. By focusing on the role of sound in these regimes, our preliminary findings demonstrate the utility for the field of undertaking additional work to capture the wider significance of sound. This includes its contributions to shaping relations of power.

Periods, Pregnancy, and Peeing: Leaky Feminine Bodies in Swedish Military Marketing

Abstract: The notion of “leaky” female bodies has long rationalized the exclusion of women from military service. Yet, in an attempt to bolster enlistments by appealing to women, the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF) embarked on a marketing strategy that aims to break with gender stereotypes in order to fill its ranks. Most notably, in a 2018 recruitment campaign, an SAF billboard posed the question “Can I have my period in the field?” This article probes how the leaky female body is mobilized in SAF marketing campaigns and outreach activities. While remarkable for their commitment to gender parity, we aver that there is more going on in these campaigns that seemingly render women's bodies normal and unproblematic as military bodies than a move toward gender equality. The representations of female soldiering bodies that emerge reproduce a familiar form of militarism that promotes the necessity of a battle-ready military corps that is predictable, and poised for warring. Moreover, these explicitly feminist SAF campaigns also beckon with the possibility of becoming that transcends the bodily limitations of sex/gender in civilian as well as military life, in war as well as in peace—to become perhaps something/someone/somewhere else that only military service can offer.

Extractive Governmentality at Work: Native Appropriations of Oil Labor in the Amazon

Abstract: This paper analyzes the transformations induced by Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the extractive sector, through an ethnographic study of villages neighboring an oil-drilling site in the Peruvian Amazon. It examines the materialization of a specific CSR device—the communal enterprise—which involves the majority of village members in the extractive industry as workers, owners, and managers of a subcontractor that provides services to the oil company. The paper highlights the importance of work and socialization to assess the transformative power of this original CSR device. After an opening section on how to study extractive governmentality “at work,” the paper presents a genealogy of the communal enterprise. It then examines how communal enterprises tend to transform indigenous inhabitants into workers and entrepreneurs and thereby impact the everyday organization of the entire community. By examining the ways residents adopt these social technologies, the paper shows how the partial normalization of individual bodies and collective organization induced by CSR technologies is an ambivalent mix resulting from a process of mutual appropriation between the industrial milieu and the villages. In doing so, it contributes to governmentality studies related to extractive capitalism, corporate strategies for disciplining dissent, and the social transformations they generate locally.Cet article analyse les transformations induites par la Responsabilité sociétale des entreprises (RSE) dans le secteur de l'extraction par le biais d'une étude ethnographique des villages voisins d'un site de forage pétrolier d'Amazonie péruvienne. Il examine la matérialisation d'un dispositif de RSE spécifique : une entreprise communautaire qui implique la majorité des villageois dans l'industrie de l'extraction en tant que travailleurs, propriétaires et gérants d'un sous-traitant fournissant des services à la compagnie pétrolière. Cet article souligne l'importance du travail et de la socialisation pour évaluer le pouvoir de transformation de ce dispositif de RSE original. Après une section introductive portant sur la façon d’étudier la gouvernementalité de l'extraction « au travail », cet article présente une généalogie de l'entreprise communautaire. Il examine ensuite la manière dont les entreprises communautaires tendent à transformer les habitants indigènes en travailleurs et en entrepreneurs et ainsi à impacter l'organisation quotidienne de l'ensemble de la communauté. Cet article montre en quoi la normalisation partielle des corps individuels et de l'organisation collective induite par les techniques de RSE est un mélange ambivalent résultant d'un processus d'appropriation mutuelle entre le milieu industriel et les villages en examinant la façon dont les habitants adoptent ces techniques sociales. Ce faisant, il contribue aux études de gouvernementalité liées au capitalisme de l'extraction, aux stratégies mises en œuvre par les entreprises pour discipliner la dissidence et aux transformations sociales qu'elles génèrent localement.En este artículo se analizan las transformaciones impulsadas por la responsabilidad social corporativa (RSC) en el sector de la extracción mediante un estudio etnográfico de las aldeas que se encuentran cerca de un sitio de extracción de petróleo en la Amazonía peruana. También se examina la materialización de un método específico de RSC, la empresa comunal, en la que la mayoría de los miembros de la aldea participan en la industria como trabajadores, propietarios y administradores de un subcontratista que presta servicios a la compañía petrolera. Además, se destaca la importancia del trabajo y la socialización para evaluar el poder de transformación de este método original de RSC. Después de la primera sección, donde se explica cómo estudiar la gobernabilidad extractiva ``en el trabajo'', en el artículo se presenta una genealogía de la empresa comunal. En esta se explora la forma en la que las empresas comunales suelen transformar a los habitantes autóctonos en trabajadores y emprendedores y, por lo tanto, modifican la organización establecida de toda la comunidad. Al analizar las formas en las que los residentes adoptan estas tecnologías sociales, en el artículo se muestra cómo la normalización parcial de los cuerpos individuales y de la organización colectiva producida por las tecnologías de RSC es una mezcla ambivalente que se produce como consecuencia de un proceso de apropiación mutua entre el entorno industrial y las aldeas. Este análisis contribuye a los estudios de gobernabilidad relacionados con el capitalismo extractivo, las estrategias corporativas para disciplinar la disidencia y las transformaciones sociales que generan a nivel local.

Affect and the Response to Terror: Commemoration and Communities of Sense

Abstract: This article examines affective responses to terror and the emergence of communities of sense in the commemoration of such attacks. We challenge the predominant framing of responses to terror which emphasize security and identity. We focus on the singular response by the city of Manchester in the aftermath of the 2017 Arena bombing, drawing on fieldwork conducted at the 1-year anniversary commemorative events. Our discussion focuses on the ways improvised, transient communities crystallized around the cultural significance of music during these events. The article explores these communities of sense through two case studies: those drawn together around the figure of Ariane Grande; and those assembled through a mass sing-along. In contrast to national or municipal responses to terror which orchestrate affect to establish narratives about security, borders and identity, we argue for the importance of paying attention to the improvised, affective ways in which people respond to terror. These plural, affective responses suggest another form of collective subjectivity. They also demonstrate the transient, plural, and everyday ways in which politics is practiced, assembled, and negotiated by different publics in response to terror.Cet article examine les réactions affectives au terrorisme et l’émergence de communautés de sens dans la commémoration de tels attentats. Nous remettons en question le cadre prédominant des réactions au terrorisme qui met l'accent sur la sécurité et sur l'identité. Nous nous concentrons sur la réaction singulière de la ville de Manchester au lendemain de l'attentat à la bombe de l'Arena de 2017 en nous appuyant sur le travail de terrain qui a été mené lors des événements commémoratifs de son premier anniversaire. Notre discussion s'axe sur les manières dont des communautés transitoires improvisées se sont cristallisées autour de la signification culturelle de la musique durant ces événements. L'article explore ces communautés de sens par le biais de deux études de cas: celles qui se sont rassemblées autour d'Ariane Grande, et celles qui se sont réunies dans le cadre d'un chant de masse. Contrairement aux réactions nationales ou municipales au terrorisme qui orchestrent les affects en élaborant des discours sur la sécurité, les frontières et l'identité, nous soutenons qu'il est important de prêter attention aux manières improvisées et affectives dont la population réagit au terrorisme. Cette pluralité de réactions affectives suggère une autre forme de subjectivité collective. Elle démontre également la pluralité des façons transitoires quotidiennes dont la politique est pratiquée, composée et négociée par les différents publics en réaction au terrorisme.En este artículo se examinan las respuestas afectivas al terrorismo y la aparición de comunidades de sentido en el marco de la conmemoración de dichos ataques. Cuestionamos el marco predominante de respuestas al terrorismo que hacen hincapié en la seguridad y la identidad. Nos centramos en la singular respuesta de la ciudad de Manchester tras el bombardeo del Arena en 2017 a partir del trabajo de campo realizado en los actos conmemorativos del primer aniversario. Nuestro análisis se centra en las formas en las que las comunidades improvisadas y transitorias se cristalizaron en torno a la importancia cultural de la música en estos eventos. En el artículo se exploran estas comunidades de sentido mediante dos estudios de caso: las que se unen en torno a la figura de Ariane Grande y las que unen sus voces con un canto masivo. A diferencia de las respuestas al terrorismo a nivel nacional y municipal que orquestan el afecto para establecer narrativas sobre seguridad, fronteras e identidad, defendemos la importancia de prestar atención a las formas improvisadas y afectivas en las que las personas responden al terrorismo. Estas diversas respuestas afectivas sugieren otra forma de subjetividad colectiva. También demuestran las formas transitorias, múltiples y cotidianas en que diferentes públicos ponen en práctica, instauran y negocian políticas en respuesta al terrorismo.

Outsourcing Hotspot Governance within the EU: Cultural Mediators as Humanitarian–Border Workers in Greece

Abstract: Responding to the self-declared “Mediterranean migration crisis” in 2015, the European Commission launched a Hotspot Approach to speed up the handling of incoming migrants in the “frontline states” of Greece and Italy. A key element in this operation is the identification of those eligible for asylum, which requires effective communication across cultural and linguistic difference between the asylum system and the migrants, facilitated by officially designated “cultural mediators.” We assess the hotspot governance as a form of outsourcing border control within the EU territory. Beyond sorting out and separating migrants into the categories of deservingness and undeservingness, we propose that the hotspot mechanism represents “governing by communication,” with cultural mediators as key players in this humanitarian–bordering strategy. A focus on how cultural mediators provide the precarious human labor for this governance, offers, we argue, a productive inroad into the ways in which the hotspot economies of deterrence, containment, and care sustain inequalities embedded in race, socioeconomic status, and citizenship.

International Political Sociology as a Mode of Critique: Fracturing Totalities

Abstract: This paper asks how international political sociology (IPS) can articulate its criticality so that it can continue to engage with lineages that privilege processes and practices emerging from the always fluid and multiple entanglements of fragments without resorting to totalizing logics. IPS and IR more generally have experienced an intensified interest in situated and micro analyses. Engaging the fragmentation of the international, however, has gone hand in hand with pulls towards thinking big and wholes as a condition for critical analysis. We share the position that critical thought needs a conception of the structural if it does not want to remain locked in simply describing un-connected fragments of life. However, the challenge is to do so without making the meaning of fragments derivative of conceptions of wholes that reinsert horizons of totalization. Drawing on Deleuzian thought, the paper opens towards a conception of the structural and its relation to fragments that embraces heterogeneity, multiplicity, and fluidity with the express intent of vacating lingering totalities and foregrounding creativity in life. In a context of fragmenting international relations, we see re-engaging the question of how to separate structural thought from horizons of totalization as a contribution to ongoing debates on the nature and limits of critique.Cet article étudie la manière dont la criticité de la sociologie politique internationale (SPI) peut être articulée afin de continuer à impliquer des lignes qui privilégient les processus et pratiques émergeant d'intrications de fragments toujours plus fluides et multiples sans avoir recours à des logiques totalisantes. D'une manière plus générale, l'intérêt porté aux analyses ciblées et aux micro-analyses dans la SPI et dans les relations internationales s'est intensifié. L'implication d'une fragmentation de l'international est cependant allée de pair avec des enclins à penser grand et à adopter une vision d'ensemble qui conditionnent l'analyse critique. Nous partageons l'avis qu'une conception du structurel est nécessaire à la pensée critique pour éviter qu'elle ne se cantonne à décrire des fragments de vie déconnectés. Le défi est toutefois de le faire sans faire dériver la signification des fragments des conceptions d'ensemble qui réintroduisent des horizons de totalisation. Cet article puise dans la pensée deleuzienne pour s'ouvrir sur une conception du structurel et de sa relation avec les fragments qui englobe l'hétérogénéité, la multiplicité et la fluidité avec l'intention expresse d’évacuer les totalités persistantes et de mettre la créativité au premier plan de la vie. Dans un contexte de fragmentation des relations internationales, nous voyons le réengagement de l'interrogation sur la manière de séparer la pensée structurelle des horizons de la totalisation comme une contribution aux débats actuels portant sur la nature et les limites de la critique.En este artículo se plantea cómo la sociología política internacional (SPI) puede articular su criticidad para poder seguir interactuando con los linajes que privilegian los procesos y las prácticas que surgen de los cambiantes y múltiples entrelazamientos de fragmentos sin recurrir a lógicas totalizadoras. En términos más generales, la SPI y las RR. II. han adquirido un interés más profundo en los análisis situados y los microanálisis. La fragmentación de lo internacional, por su parte, ha ido acompañada de las presiones para pensar en grande y en conjunto como condición para el análisis crítico. Consideramos que el pensamiento crítico necesita una concepción de lo estructural para no quedarse encerrado en la simple descripción de fragmentos de la vida que no están conectados. Sin embargo, el desafío es lograr esto sin que el significado de los fragmentos derive de ideas integrales que reinserten perspectivas de totalización. A partir del pensamiento deleuziano, el artículo se abre hacia una concepción de lo estructural y su relación con los fragmentos que abarca la heterogeneidad, la multiplicidad y la variabilidad con el claro objetivo de dejar de lado las persistentes totalidades y dedicar especial atención a la creatividad en la vida. En este marco de fragmentación de las relaciones internacionales, creemos que volver a plantear la cuestión de cómo separar el pensamiento estructural de las perspectivas de totalización supone un aporte a los debates actuales sobre la naturaleza y los límites de la crítica.

Settler Military Politics: On the Inclusion and Recognition of Indigenous People in the Military

Abstract: After decades of refusal, neglect, and tacit admittance, the service of Indigenous people in the national armed forces of settler colonial states such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States is finally gaining acknowledgment. Indigenous people are now integrated in the regular forces and represented in national war commemoration. This article maintains that while inclusion and recognition of Indigenous military service is a positive transformation in the direction of post-colonial reconciliation, it still operates within the logics of settler colonialism intended to eradicate Indigenous stories of connection to land and assimilate Indigenous people in settler society. Using the case study of Indigenous militarization in Australia, this article argues that, under conditions of settler colonialism, the inclusion and recognition of Indigenous people in national militaries advances the settler colonial project intended to dispossess Indigenous people from their land and assimilate them in the new settler society. It highlights that historically, military organization has supported settler colonialism, and positions the present inclusion and recognition of Indigenous people in the military as a continuation of this history.

Decolonizing Trauma with Frantz Fanon

Abstract: Recent scholarship across a range of disciplines has critically engaged with the concept of trauma, interrogating its role in political processes such as commemoration, post-conflict reconciliation, and identity formation. Together this scholarship has called for a rethinking of trauma in order to more accurately represent the social and political dynamics of the concept. However, whilst offering insights into the politics of trauma, this literature remains distant from the concept's original discipline—psychiatry. This article contends that Frantz Fanon, as a psychiatrist and political revolutionary, presents a unique viewpoint from which to problematize the relationship between psychiatry and politics as it continues to structure trauma (and trauma scholarship) in the present day. Drawing on Fanon's sociogenic psychiatry, this article contends that both Fanon and contemporary approaches to trauma are constrained by an exclusive, Eurocentric psychiatry. Subsequently, it argues that a rethinking of trauma is insufficient. Rather, a decolonization of psychiatry is required. Three themes in Fanon's practice—the universal, morality, and gender—demonstrate the necessity of engaging with psychiatry's positionality within the contemporary sociogenic principle. Here, international political sociology provides for an analysis of trauma attentive to the relationship between society, health, and power. Des études récentes dans diverses disciplines se sont intéressées de manière critique au concept de trauma en s'interrogeant sur son rôle dans les processus politiques tels que la commémoration, la réconciliation post-conflit et la constitution d'identité. Ces études ont communément sollicité une réétude du concept de trauma pour représenter plus précisément ses dynamiques sociales et politiques. Toutefois, bien qu'elle offre des renseignements sur la politique du trauma, cette littérature reste éloignée de la discipline d'où provient le concept : la psychiatrie. Cet article affirme qu'en tant que psychiatre et révolutionnaire politique, Frantz Fanon présente un point de vue unique à partir duquel problématiser la relation entre psychiatrie et politique car elle continue à structurer le concept de trauma (et les études du concept de trauma) de nos jours. Il s'appuie ensuite sur la psychiatrie sociogénique de Fanon pour soutenir que les deux approches du trauma, que ce soit celle de Fanon ou l'approche contemporaine, sont limitées par une psychiatrie eurocentrique exclusive. Il affirme ensuite qu'une réétude du concept de trauma est insuffisante. Au lieu de cela, une décolonisation de la psychiatrie serait nécessaire. Trois thèmes de la pratique de Fanon (l'universel, la moralité et le genre) démontrent la nécessité d'impliquer la positionnalité de la psychiatrie dans le principe sociogénique contemporain. La sociologie politique internationale propose ici une analyse du trauma attentive à la relation entre société, santé et pouvoir. Un estudio reciente en diversas disciplinas ha abordado de manera crítica el concepto de trauma al cuestionar su función en procesos políticos como la conmemoración, la reconciliación posterior a los conflictos y la formación de la identidad. Juntos, este estudio sugiere repensar en el trauma para representar de manera más precisa las dinámicas sociales y políticas del concepto. No obstante, si bien ofrece una visión de la política del trauma, esta literatura se aleja de la disciplina original del concepto: la psiquiatría. Este artículo sostiene que Frantz Fanon, como psiquiatra y revolucionario político, plantea un punto de vista único desde el cual problematiza la relación entre la psiquiatría y la política a medida que continúa estructurando el trauma (y el estudio del trauma) en la actualidad. Se basa en la psiquiatría sociogénica de Fanon y argumenta que tanto Fanon como los enfoques contemporáneos del trauma se ven limitados por una psiquiatría exclusiva y eurocéntrica. Luego, sostiene que la reflexión sobre el trauma es insuficiente. En su lugar, se requiere una descolonización de la psiquiatría. Los tres temas en la práctica de Fanon, el universo, la moralidad y el género, demuestran la necesidad de involucrarse con la posicionalidad de la psiquiatría dentro del principio sociogénico contemporáneo. En este caso, la sociología política internacional prevé un análisis del trauma que se enfoca en la relación entre la sociedad, la salud y el poder.

How Do Metrics Shape Polities? From Analogue to Digital Measurement Regimes in International Health Politics

Abstract: Cet article analyse le passage historique des regimes de mesure analogiques aux regimes numeriques qui ont produit des metriques de sante internationales. L’etude comparative historique montre que chacun de ces regimes de mesure a profondement faconne la politique de sante internationale. Cet article conceptualise les regimes de mesure en se basant sur des etudes scientifiques et technologiques en tant qu'assemblages techno-sociaux producteurs de metriques de sante internationales. Je soutiens que ces regimes exercent des effets de participation, de problematisation et de mode d'intervention dans la politique internationale en m'appuyant sur la theorie politique. J'analyse la maniere dont le regime analogique international de mesure de la sante a acquis une position dominante apres la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Il reposait sur des infrastructures statistiques nationales, des organisations internationales et une politique de sante internationale problematisee pour guider les nations sur la voie du developpement des pays du Nord. Il limitait la participation aux experts medicaux et statisticiens. Le regime numerique, qui est influent depuis les annees 90, est integre a un institut de recherche prive et se concentre sur le recalcul numerique des metriques de sante. Il a faconne le champ de la politique internationale de sante de par sa recherche continue des problemes negliges, son extension de la participation a un large groupe d'utilisateurs passifs et son soutien des interventions rentables. Cet article contribue conceptuellement et empiriquement a la sociologie politique internationale dans le domaine de la sante. Il decrit la maniere dont les assemblages socio-techniques tels que les regimes de mesure faconnent les politiques internationales.

A Feeling of Unease: Distance, Emotion, and Securitizing Indigenous Protest in Canada

Abstract: Why do public officials sometimes avoid using security claims to frame an issue, even when there are strong incentives and historical precedent for doing so? Efforts to portray indigenous protest as a security issue are a recurring feature of Canada's settler colonial history. Recently, however, a series of public officials have emphatically rejected these kinds of claims. To explain this puzzle, I argue that a growing feeling of unease over the history of settler colonialism has transformed once acceptable security claims into sources of controversy and racism. Generated through diverse social repertoires linked to indigenous-led forms of reconciliation, this unease has resulted in officials facing pressure to distance themselves—through denials, apologies, and euphemisms—from claims that have become increasingly controversial. The result is not a direct end to the securitization of indigenous protest—some figures may actively court controversy, while others can still make these claims in private conversation or internal documents. Instead, the effect of this unease is to render these claims less publicly defensible and thus make security practices targeting indigenous communities appear increasingly illegitimate.

Field Heteronomy and Contingent Expertise: The Case of International Tax Justice

Abstract: The international tax system is targeted by a diverse range of networked civil society actors, from critical professionals mobilizing their expertise to anti-austerity protestors targeting the consequences of tax dodging. The years following the 2008 financial crisis saw an increase in the range of these actors and their cooperation with one another. This paper argues that a transnational field analysis complements existing expertise-oriented approaches, by identifying the overarching objective of the tax justice agenda as increasing heteronomy in the international taxation field relative to political fields. This objective requires the mobilization of diverse resources across different fields, resulting in network relationships crossing field boundaries to contest inter-field relations, rather than any single bounded field struggle. The findings are supported by an analysis of tax justice advocacy after the 2008 financial crisis in the United Kingdom and Australia, including thirty-seven in-depth interviews with different organizations involved in the network.

Secrecy and Subjectivity: Double Agents and the Dark Underside of the International System

Abstract: Drawing on a wide range of material, from memoirs of former spy masters to the highly acclaimed TV series Le Bureau des Légendes, this article shows how documentary as well as fictional accounts of double agents cast light on a “dark underside” of the international system. This dark underside is made up of exceptional spaces of secrecy in which intelligence organizations and spies operate. The article's main point of entry when analyzing these spaces is the intimate connection between secrecy and subjectivity. While secrecy as a social practice has received increased attention in sociological accounts of secret intelligence, the constitutive role of secrecy in relation to subjectivity is a much less explored theme. This theme, it is argued, becomes especially valuable for thinking about the conflicting lines that constitute the life and becoming of the double agent. In particular, it can be drawn on to show how this subject both is captured by the transparent norms and limits of the international state system and effectively transgresses those limits. In this way, rather than upholding a dichotomy of secrecy and transparency as two separable sides of the international system, the double agent emerges as a disruptive figure calling for its deconstruction.

Donor Love Will Tear Us Apart: How Complexity and Learning Marginalize Accountability in Peacebuilding Interventions

Abstract: Complexity theory and systems thinking are increasingly popular in both academic and practitioner discourses to “improve” peacebuilding. Recently, they have also been considered to make peacebuilding interventions more bottom-up and less exclusive. Contributing to the debate in international political sociology on the role of (professional) knowledge in shaping interventions, I examine this claim with an analysis of professional peacebuilding discourse. Drawing on an extensive corpus of operational guidance, policy documents, and interview material, I situate the emerging uses of concepts of complexity in peacebuilding against the backdrop of the power struggles of its actors and institutions. Against the introduction of measures of managerial control, professional peacebuilding discourse has cast its interventions as exceptional and in need of different methods. Thus, learning replaces donors’ standardized measures of accountability. However, the peculiar conflation of accountability as learning that emerges from these struggles legitimizes self-referential expert rule and learning, and marginalizes debates on peacebuilders’ accountability. Rather than “de-colonizing” or making peacebuilding more inclusive, the way complexity concepts have emerged in peacebuilding discourse reproduces—rather than questions—the power structures of international interventions, and denies the people targeted by interventions the status of subjects to be accountable to.

Foodways and Foodwashing: Israeli Cookbooks and the Politics of Culinary Zionism

Abstract: The paper explores the political narratives produced in English-language Israeli cookbooks. We examine an understudied, yet central component of everyday international relations, everyday nationalism, and identity contestations as practiced through gastronomy, and highlight the dilemma between the different political uses of popular culture in the context of conflict resolution and resistance. Our argument identifies different narratives represented in what we term Culinary Zionism. One narrative is explicitly political, discusses Israeli cuisine as a foodway, and contributes to creating a space of, and a path for, coexistence and recognition of the Other. A second narrative is found in tourist-orientated cookbooks that offer a supposedly apolitical story of culinary tours in Israel. We problematize the political and normative implications of these narratives by exploring the potential role of these books to open space for dialogue and to increase the familiarity and interest of foreign audiences of Israel and the conflict. We contrast this possibility with their potential to what we term foodwashing, namely the process of using food to symbolically wash over violence and injustices (the violence of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in this case).

The People's Paving Stones: The Material Politics of International Human Rights in the Baldosas por la Memoria of Buenos Aires

Abstract: Baldosas por la memoria are memorial paving stones handcrafted by loosely networked activists. Produced continuously from 2006 to an informally established protocol, they memorialize “the disappeared” and others murdered by the state terrorism of the Argentinian dictatorship (1976–1983). As a synecdoche of the “down and dirty” everyday pavements, they function as a metonym for democratic struggle and popular sovereignty. Aesthetically, they work against the “forgetting” and kitschification to which conventional memorials become subject. Through remediation into books and a DVD documentary, they participate in controversies within the international politics of human rights. Using a “material turn” within visual analysis, yet distinct from the “new materialism,” this article explains how they function within familiar genres of memorialization but in wholly novel ways. Baldosas create ethical complexity and moral ambiguity by troubling collective memory. Thus, we examine their relation to guilt, complicity, trauma, and affect.

Occupation, Sight, Landscape: Visibility and the Normalization of Israeli Settlements

Abstract: This article contributes toward the understanding of social and political mechanisms that work to normalize and naturalize contested political conditions on the part of privileged segments of the public. I engage these issues via an ethnographic study of Israel's so-called non-ideological settlements in the occupied West Bank, which attract Israelis due to socioeconomic advantages rather than a nationalistic and/or religious appeal. Nonetheless, the settlers’ suburban experiences are in stark contrast to the geopolitical status of their communities as well as the local and international resistance they generate. I draw empirically on interviews and observations conducted in the settlement of Ariel to make sense of this dynamic. Utilizing insights from critical investigations of visuality and landscape, I argue that the normalization of everyday life in the settlements is achieved through the operation of a particular scopic regime linked to the landscape formations in the West Bank. Employing these concepts to investigate the everyday politics of seeing, I show how they channel the settlers’ sight in a way that makes the Israeli rule seem uncontested, naturalized, and even aesthetic in three registers: the depth of visual field, the surroundings, and the people who inhabit the settlements’ landscape.

Midwives and Humanitarian Bureaucracy: Managing Migration at a Postcolonial Border

Abstract: Drawing on Foucauldian biopolitics, Max Weber's and Hannah Arendt's understandings of bureaucracy, and Achille Mbembe's theoretical insights into necropolitical power, I propose the notion of humanitarian bureaucracy to account for the involvement of medical personnel in the summary deportations of pregnant Comorian women in Mayotte, a French overseas department in the Indian Ocean. In addition to their usual consultations, hospital midwives are asked to assess the health of pregnant women arrested at sea in order to state whether they can be lawfully detained, while deportations happen within hours owing to the specificities of this postcolonial migration regime. The notion of humanitarian bureaucracy traces how a series of bureaucratic acts, duly sanctioned by qualified professionals, performs a minimal and fragmented biopolitical surveillance that neutralizes the question of responsibility and rejects the racialized Other into a liminal space between failing to “make live” and avoiding to “let die.” The article argues that humanitarian bureaucracy represents an ambivalent power, stemming from biopolitics yet producing necropolitics through processes of racialization. The article draws on three months of fieldwork conducted in Mayotte in 2017 and analyzes midwives’ discourses and bureaucratic practices as materialized by the medical certificates they deliver in the context of these assessments.