Anna Leander | Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID), Geneva (original) (raw)
Papers by Anna Leander
Introduction to International Organization Research Methods
https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/64038/1/9780472903542.pdf
Critical Military Studies, 2024
“Militarization is not the problem” was the title of a recent conference contribution by Mark Neo... more “Militarization is not the problem” was the title of a recent conference
contribution by Mark Neocleous. Many scholars in critical
security studies share its message. Researchers on their account
should shun a concept that does more harm than good. They
should ‘forget militarization’ as Alison Howell puts it. While sharing
the concern that the term might direct attention away from policeviolence
and epistemic racism underpinning such conclusions, this
article argues that the term militarization may be worth preserving
in spite of this because it also does important political and analytical
work that needs to be preserved if not strengthen. Recovering what
Frazer and Hutchings term ‘rhetorical resonance’, I suggest that the
term ‘militarization’ resonates with debates, discursive classifications
and atmospheres, giving us a better grasp of contemporary,
capillary, market militarism in its many morphing guises. Jettisoning
militarization is to relinquish analytical openings and political attunement.
I unpack this argument focusing on the resonances of
militarization with market processes diffusing and deepening the
grip of military concerns and de-mobilizing resistance. The resonances
of militarization make managing, marketing, and materializing
security into infrastructures less innocuous and hence trouble
the de-mobilizing of resistance that ease them. The resonances of
‘militarization’ break the silence surrounding market militarism, the
processes generating it and the imbrication of knowledge practices
(including the academic and scholarly) with them. Militarization
therefore matters even when it stands in tension with epistemic
racism and police violence. Therefore, deepening the engagement
with militarization, to transform it, is important analytically and
politically.
Public Anthropologist, 2024
Science, Technology and Human Values, 2023
How are socially and politically controversial security practices materiallytechnologically scrip... more How are socially and politically controversial security practices materiallytechnologically
scripted into our lives in ever-deeper ways? This essay
proposes that acts of aesthetic design are at the heart of that process and
are being deployed by technology corporations to “smooth” the diffusion
of security practices, discourses, and politics across global space. To
substantiate that claim, we make three moves. First, we propose an
understanding of the “script” that returns to the roots of the concept in
theater and the arts. That understanding stresses that our materialtechnological
enmeshing is governed strongly by aesthetic and affective
factors that operate through forms of resonance (rather that reason). In
consequence—we argue—much of the power of technology conglomerates
is linked to their capacity to harness these aesthetico-affective
resonances. Second, we demonstrate this through a case study focused
on the material-aesthetic design activities of Google, teasing out how
it deploys aesthetic practices to extend its sociopolitical power. Third, we speculatively conclude by introducing the architect Keller Easterling’s
concept of “active form” to show how conceptualizing scripts in aesthetic
terms also provides insights into how security practices are diffused
across global contexts, irrelevant contextual sociopolitical differences,
and seemingly without any limit.
Objects do work creating expertise. This article parses how. It works with, revisits, and develop... more Objects do work creating expertise. This article parses how. It works with, revisits, and develops the notion of “boundary- work”located at the core of science and technology studies by Thomas Gieryn, Susan Leigh Star, and others and adds to it the notion of “orienting work”borrowing from the work of materialist feminists such as Sarah Ahmed and Maria do Mar Pereira. Working with these concepts, it shows that cybersecurity certificates make expertise topological. They demarcate, connect, create affective attachments to, and prefigure shapeshifting boundaries of cybersecurity expertise. They orient toward a maze of routes to cybersecurity expertise, a multiplicity of shifting locations in it, and toward fences that are stretched and straddled. Departing from conventional assumptions about the role of certificates in the formation of expertise, I show that rather than close offand stabilize expertise, the work of cybersecurity certificates opens and unsettles it. The cybersecurity expertise they make is preserved in continuous deformation. I also show that rather than fragment and fracture expertise, the work of certificates stretches, bends, and twists an expertise that remains connected. The work makes expertise of a distinctly topological quality. Engaging this moving, shapeshifting terrain politically is both exceptionally challenging and fundamentally important. The shifting expert terrain is generating a steadily expanding range of cybersecurity concerns that are inscribed ever more firmly in the socio-technical infrastructures of cybersecurity with ramifications for everyday life.
Global Studies Quarterly, 2023
Can we make international things—maps, algorithms, museums, visualizations, computer games, virtu... more Can we make international things—maps, algorithms, museums, visualizations, computer games, virtual reality tools? Objects
that criss-cross global space, exert political influence, and produce novel forms of knowledge? This article, and the special issue
it introduces, suggests that scholars of international relations can and should engage in the task of making concrete material,
aesthetic, and technological objects that exceed the epistemic, logocentric, or textual. It joins a growing conversation focused
on the potential of expanding the praxis of the social sciences into multimodal formats of design, craft, and making. In
this article, we explore the intellectual, social, and political stakes of beginning to make international things, unpack the
disciplinary reticence to engage in this task, and the potential dangers it entails. Most importantly, we suggest five central
benefits moving in this direction holds: (i) generating a future-oriented social science; (ii) cultivating an “atmospheric” social
science faithful to new materialist, feminist, and practice theories; (ii) embracing a radical collaborationist ethos more-suited
to the demands of the day; (iv) investing us in sociopolitically committed scientific praxis; and (v) inaugurating a radically new
disciplinary architecture of scholarly praxis.
PARISS, 2020
This article is an argument about why it is worth taking the trouble to work with feminist, new m... more This article is an argument about why it is worth taking the trouble to work with feminist,
new materialist approaches inspired by Haraway, Mol, Stengers and others, when
studying IR questions. It introduces and exemplifies one specific analytical strategy
for doing so, namely one of "composing collaborationist collages", focusing first on
the main building blocks of the approach and then on the ( dis-)advantages of working
with it In terms of the building blocks, I underline that composing makes it possible
to join the heterogeneous and unlikely, that collaging accentuates the scope for
playing with heterogeneity and that collaborating is a necessary part of this process
as a well as a helpful check on one's positionality. I then proceed by focusing on the
( dis-)advantages of composing collaborationist collages, making the arguments that
this research strategy directs attention to ( dis- )connections and to the temporal politics
of emergence. It also requires a willingness to face the uncertainties associated with
creative academic work. The article introduces composing collaborationist collages as
a research strategy. It does so working with material from feminist new materialism,
practice theories, the exhibition War Games featuring installations by Hito Steyerl and
Martha Rosier and my own work on the politics of commercial security.
Global Studies Quarterly, 2024
International relations (IR) shows growing interest in expanding its practical engagements into d... more International relations (IR) shows growing interest in expanding its practical engagements into different domains: the visual,
the artistic, the aesthetic, the diagrammatic, and so forth. But a gap remains. Despite widespread acknowledgment of the
political transformations caused by material and technological change across world politics, IR rarely fully integrates forms of
material-technological praxis into its work. We rarely make digital, architectural, computational, or other seemingly technical
things within IR. This article suggests we should start doing so, in direct collaboration with practitioners, applied scientists,
and technical experts. Specifically, it suggests that engaging in material-technological making has the potential to (1) increase
our basic scientific knowledge of politics, (2) augment our capacity to theorize politics, and (3) radically expand how we
normatively and political intervene in politics. To make that argument, the paper conducts a speculative form of counterfactual
analysis of the kind of “difference” that might have been made if scholars of IR had been involved in the development
of three technologies designed by the International Committee of the Red Cross for humanitarian purposes. In doing so, we
show that the exclusion of the material-technological from IR’s praxis is not only damaging to its vitality as an intellectual field,
but also an abdication of what Haraway terms its ethico-political response-ability within politics.
Political Anthropological Research on International Social Sciences, 2024
Sozialtheorie, Mar 3, 2023
Defence date: 26 May 1997Examining board: Prof. Gøsta Esping-Andersen (University of Trento) ; Pr... more Defence date: 26 May 1997Examining board: Prof. Gøsta Esping-Andersen (University of Trento) ; Prof. Rémy Leveau (Institut d'Etudes Politique de Paris and Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin); Prof. Ayse Öncü (Bosphorous University) ; Prof. Susan Strange (University of Warwick, supervisor) ; Prof. Jan Zielonka (European University Institute)PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 201
Journal of European Public Policy, Feb 21, 2023
Nordic Academic Press eBooks, Jan 6, 2009
First Monday, Apr 15, 2020
Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Jul 1, 2022
Introduction to International Organization Research Methods
https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/64038/1/9780472903542.pdf
Critical Military Studies, 2024
“Militarization is not the problem” was the title of a recent conference contribution by Mark Neo... more “Militarization is not the problem” was the title of a recent conference
contribution by Mark Neocleous. Many scholars in critical
security studies share its message. Researchers on their account
should shun a concept that does more harm than good. They
should ‘forget militarization’ as Alison Howell puts it. While sharing
the concern that the term might direct attention away from policeviolence
and epistemic racism underpinning such conclusions, this
article argues that the term militarization may be worth preserving
in spite of this because it also does important political and analytical
work that needs to be preserved if not strengthen. Recovering what
Frazer and Hutchings term ‘rhetorical resonance’, I suggest that the
term ‘militarization’ resonates with debates, discursive classifications
and atmospheres, giving us a better grasp of contemporary,
capillary, market militarism in its many morphing guises. Jettisoning
militarization is to relinquish analytical openings and political attunement.
I unpack this argument focusing on the resonances of
militarization with market processes diffusing and deepening the
grip of military concerns and de-mobilizing resistance. The resonances
of militarization make managing, marketing, and materializing
security into infrastructures less innocuous and hence trouble
the de-mobilizing of resistance that ease them. The resonances of
‘militarization’ break the silence surrounding market militarism, the
processes generating it and the imbrication of knowledge practices
(including the academic and scholarly) with them. Militarization
therefore matters even when it stands in tension with epistemic
racism and police violence. Therefore, deepening the engagement
with militarization, to transform it, is important analytically and
politically.
Public Anthropologist, 2024
Science, Technology and Human Values, 2023
How are socially and politically controversial security practices materiallytechnologically scrip... more How are socially and politically controversial security practices materiallytechnologically
scripted into our lives in ever-deeper ways? This essay
proposes that acts of aesthetic design are at the heart of that process and
are being deployed by technology corporations to “smooth” the diffusion
of security practices, discourses, and politics across global space. To
substantiate that claim, we make three moves. First, we propose an
understanding of the “script” that returns to the roots of the concept in
theater and the arts. That understanding stresses that our materialtechnological
enmeshing is governed strongly by aesthetic and affective
factors that operate through forms of resonance (rather that reason). In
consequence—we argue—much of the power of technology conglomerates
is linked to their capacity to harness these aesthetico-affective
resonances. Second, we demonstrate this through a case study focused
on the material-aesthetic design activities of Google, teasing out how
it deploys aesthetic practices to extend its sociopolitical power. Third, we speculatively conclude by introducing the architect Keller Easterling’s
concept of “active form” to show how conceptualizing scripts in aesthetic
terms also provides insights into how security practices are diffused
across global contexts, irrelevant contextual sociopolitical differences,
and seemingly without any limit.
Objects do work creating expertise. This article parses how. It works with, revisits, and develop... more Objects do work creating expertise. This article parses how. It works with, revisits, and develops the notion of “boundary- work”located at the core of science and technology studies by Thomas Gieryn, Susan Leigh Star, and others and adds to it the notion of “orienting work”borrowing from the work of materialist feminists such as Sarah Ahmed and Maria do Mar Pereira. Working with these concepts, it shows that cybersecurity certificates make expertise topological. They demarcate, connect, create affective attachments to, and prefigure shapeshifting boundaries of cybersecurity expertise. They orient toward a maze of routes to cybersecurity expertise, a multiplicity of shifting locations in it, and toward fences that are stretched and straddled. Departing from conventional assumptions about the role of certificates in the formation of expertise, I show that rather than close offand stabilize expertise, the work of cybersecurity certificates opens and unsettles it. The cybersecurity expertise they make is preserved in continuous deformation. I also show that rather than fragment and fracture expertise, the work of certificates stretches, bends, and twists an expertise that remains connected. The work makes expertise of a distinctly topological quality. Engaging this moving, shapeshifting terrain politically is both exceptionally challenging and fundamentally important. The shifting expert terrain is generating a steadily expanding range of cybersecurity concerns that are inscribed ever more firmly in the socio-technical infrastructures of cybersecurity with ramifications for everyday life.
Global Studies Quarterly, 2023
Can we make international things—maps, algorithms, museums, visualizations, computer games, virtu... more Can we make international things—maps, algorithms, museums, visualizations, computer games, virtual reality tools? Objects
that criss-cross global space, exert political influence, and produce novel forms of knowledge? This article, and the special issue
it introduces, suggests that scholars of international relations can and should engage in the task of making concrete material,
aesthetic, and technological objects that exceed the epistemic, logocentric, or textual. It joins a growing conversation focused
on the potential of expanding the praxis of the social sciences into multimodal formats of design, craft, and making. In
this article, we explore the intellectual, social, and political stakes of beginning to make international things, unpack the
disciplinary reticence to engage in this task, and the potential dangers it entails. Most importantly, we suggest five central
benefits moving in this direction holds: (i) generating a future-oriented social science; (ii) cultivating an “atmospheric” social
science faithful to new materialist, feminist, and practice theories; (ii) embracing a radical collaborationist ethos more-suited
to the demands of the day; (iv) investing us in sociopolitically committed scientific praxis; and (v) inaugurating a radically new
disciplinary architecture of scholarly praxis.
PARISS, 2020
This article is an argument about why it is worth taking the trouble to work with feminist, new m... more This article is an argument about why it is worth taking the trouble to work with feminist,
new materialist approaches inspired by Haraway, Mol, Stengers and others, when
studying IR questions. It introduces and exemplifies one specific analytical strategy
for doing so, namely one of "composing collaborationist collages", focusing first on
the main building blocks of the approach and then on the ( dis-)advantages of working
with it In terms of the building blocks, I underline that composing makes it possible
to join the heterogeneous and unlikely, that collaging accentuates the scope for
playing with heterogeneity and that collaborating is a necessary part of this process
as a well as a helpful check on one's positionality. I then proceed by focusing on the
( dis-)advantages of composing collaborationist collages, making the arguments that
this research strategy directs attention to ( dis- )connections and to the temporal politics
of emergence. It also requires a willingness to face the uncertainties associated with
creative academic work. The article introduces composing collaborationist collages as
a research strategy. It does so working with material from feminist new materialism,
practice theories, the exhibition War Games featuring installations by Hito Steyerl and
Martha Rosier and my own work on the politics of commercial security.
Global Studies Quarterly, 2024
International relations (IR) shows growing interest in expanding its practical engagements into d... more International relations (IR) shows growing interest in expanding its practical engagements into different domains: the visual,
the artistic, the aesthetic, the diagrammatic, and so forth. But a gap remains. Despite widespread acknowledgment of the
political transformations caused by material and technological change across world politics, IR rarely fully integrates forms of
material-technological praxis into its work. We rarely make digital, architectural, computational, or other seemingly technical
things within IR. This article suggests we should start doing so, in direct collaboration with practitioners, applied scientists,
and technical experts. Specifically, it suggests that engaging in material-technological making has the potential to (1) increase
our basic scientific knowledge of politics, (2) augment our capacity to theorize politics, and (3) radically expand how we
normatively and political intervene in politics. To make that argument, the paper conducts a speculative form of counterfactual
analysis of the kind of “difference” that might have been made if scholars of IR had been involved in the development
of three technologies designed by the International Committee of the Red Cross for humanitarian purposes. In doing so, we
show that the exclusion of the material-technological from IR’s praxis is not only damaging to its vitality as an intellectual field,
but also an abdication of what Haraway terms its ethico-political response-ability within politics.
Political Anthropological Research on International Social Sciences, 2024
Sozialtheorie, Mar 3, 2023
Defence date: 26 May 1997Examining board: Prof. Gøsta Esping-Andersen (University of Trento) ; Pr... more Defence date: 26 May 1997Examining board: Prof. Gøsta Esping-Andersen (University of Trento) ; Prof. Rémy Leveau (Institut d'Etudes Politique de Paris and Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin); Prof. Ayse Öncü (Bosphorous University) ; Prof. Susan Strange (University of Warwick, supervisor) ; Prof. Jan Zielonka (European University Institute)PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 201
Journal of European Public Policy, Feb 21, 2023
Nordic Academic Press eBooks, Jan 6, 2009
First Monday, Apr 15, 2020
Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Jul 1, 2022
This paper discusses the implications of the rise of private military companies (PMCs) for state ... more This paper discusses the implications of the rise of private military companies (PMCs) for state authority. More precisely it is a paper about how the impact of PMCs on state authority has been and can be assessed. It makes two arguments. The first is that there are two relatively common ways of missing the significance of PMCs for state (and particularly Western state) authority and that is to neglect either the economics or the politics of PMCs and their activities. To appreciate the impact of PMCs on state authority it is necessary to take a “political economy approach” which keeps both in focus. This leads to the second point. There is a varied, rich and interesting political economy literature which has kept both in focus, and acknowledged that the rise of PMCs matters for state authority, including state authority including in the West. However, a crucial aspect of this impact is left aside or marginalised, namely the importance of PMCs in shaping public understandings of security concerns.
The SAGE Handbook on the History, Philosophy and Sociology of International Relations, 2018
Published as Leander, Anna (2016) 'Whitelisting and the Rule of Law: Legal Technologies and Gove... more Published as
Leander, Anna (2016) 'Whitelisting and the Rule of Law: Legal Technologies and Governance in Contemporary Commercial Security', in Monika Heupel and Theresa Reinold, eds, The Rule of Law in Global Governance, pp. 205-36. London: Palgrave.
We suggest that the puzzling sides of the IR/IL boundary-drawing amount to nothing less than a do... more We suggest that the puzzling sides of the IR/IL boundary-drawing
amount to nothing less than a double paradox: 1) the paradox that
disciplinary border-crossings are accompanied by calls aimed at closing
borders; and 2) that in spite of this being so obviously the case, scholars
persist in advancing their conception of legality by affirming disciplinary
boundaries. Scholars in IR and IL in general seem to be involved in a
constant redefinition of their respective disciplinary identities that is at
the same time affirming and consolidating the very disciplinary identities
that they strive to change. Their relationship therefore appears as fraught as a tainted love from which there is no obvious escape. This chapter offers a way of making sense of this dual paradox and perhaps even diminish its grip on the struggle over legality, which is at the heart of this chapter as well as the overall volume.
Afterword for the Handbook of International Political Sociology” edited by Xavier Guillaume and P... more Afterword for the Handbook of International Political Sociology” edited by Xavier Guillaume and Pinar Bilgin.
Global governance links security and finance in four important ways. First, the combined effect o... more Global governance links security and finance in four important ways. First, the combined effect of the financial crisis and the global ‘war on terror’ has been an increasingly explicit merging of finance and security concerns. Second, security and finance were arguably closely linked in the rise of the modern form of government as far back as the late 17th century, a relation still evident in the form of ‘government securities’ such as bonds and treasuries, which in 2010 rose to new prominence in the various sovereign debt crises of the Eurozone. Third, a considerable literature has shown that finance and security share a claim to universal applicability in (all) other social spheres, resulting in various forms of financialization and securitization (Martin, 2002; Langley, 2007; Buzan et al., 1998). Finally, not only have the liberal strategies of finance and security converged in a common vocabulary and epistemology of risk (management), but this technology of governing the future is currently undergoing a critical epistemic transformation that in turn implies finance and security in new relationships. This special issue builds on these four conjunctions in an attempt to move beyond the temptation to treat the governance of security and that of finance separately. It aims to refute the assumption that finance and security ‘sectors’ are equivalent objects of global governance. In place of such a view, it seeks to critically explore different forms of and limits to the enmeshment of security and finance, and to assess the function, agency and politics of the security/finance nexus. How are rationalities of finance and security linked, and how is this link manifested in practice? Where and how are these linkages formed, and how do they evolve? Which discourses inform ideas about adequate global governance structures in finance and security? What kinds of subjectivities are constituted by the nexus, and how do different positions conflict or converge?
The articles assembled in this special issue shed light on the evolving relationship between security and finance by engaging with three interrelated themes: (1) the interlinkage of governmental rationalities in finance and security; (2) the question of the practices in which this interlinkage is (re)produced; and (3) the implications of the interlinking of security/finance for the conceptualization of global governance.
The chapters in this book reveal that the landscape of conscription is less homogenous and clear ... more The chapters in this book reveal that the landscape of conscription is less homogenous and clear cut than is typically assumed when conscription is presented as an outmoded system, soon to be history. Indeed, the most common account of the 'crisis of conscription' is that it is only a matter of time before the few conscript laggards are also forced to abandon this anachronistic military recruitment system because of the contemporary changes in the military, economic, social, and political context discussed in the introduction. However, this version of the crisis of conscription is not born out in the chapters of this book. Rather, in the countries discussed here, the crisis of conscription discussed in the introduction takes many different forms. In most of them (with the exception of France) the crisis has not ended conscription. Rather, conscription has been reformed to varying degrees. Finland has done the least to reform its conscription system, Germany and Norway have reluctantly engaged in a reform process, while Sweden and especially Denmark are clearly heading towards what the introduction termed a 'neo-conscription' system. In none of these countries does abolishing conscription rank high on the agenda. This variety of reactions to the overall trends assumed to create a crisis of conscription underlines the need for a more complete explanation of the divergent responses. An approach emphasizing common trends and that simply assumes common reactions is, for obvious reasons, ill-suited to provide such an explanation. This book has gone some way towards providing an alternative. It is based on the idea that the fate of conscription is ultimately determined by the meaning of conscription. National grammars and vocabularies of conscription decide how broad, overall changes are understood and reacted to. Hence the chapters in this book present the national lexica of conscription and discuss how they translate 'the crisis of conscription'. This conclusion draws on these accounts to show first, why we find the meaning of conscription - and hence the lexica of conscription - essential. The conclusion then proceeds to discuss how national lexica shape the fate of conscription. We argue that whether or not national lexica can be used to tell convincing stories about conscription is pivotal. Whether or not they can, depends on the degree to which the lexica are restrictive and constraining, locking conscriptions into given functions and forms. The more restrictive the national lexicon is, the more conscription appears as an either or choice: either conscription unreformed or no conscription at all. Inversely, the less constraining the lexicon is, the more scope is available for innovation and reform of conscription.
Along with a handful of other countries, Sweden is a puzzling exception with regard to conscripti... more Along with a handful of other countries, Sweden is a puzzling exception with regard to conscription. In Sweden conscription has not had its day. It has been radically reformed. In 1994 the law on värnplikt (defence duty) was replaced with a law on totalförsvarsplikt (Total-Defence-Duty). All residents aged 16 to 70 now have Total-Defence-Duty, including women and foreign citizens who have lived 1110re than five years in Sweden. Moreover, 'universality' (which never included women) has been shelved as decreasing numbers are called to do active service. Sweden's decision to reform (as opposed to abolish) conscription can only be explained by the specific meaning of conscription in Sweden. Sweden's version of conscription, its värnplikt, has been a profoundly consensual, vague and malleable institution. This vagueness of värnplikt reflects the necessity to accommodate two contradictory understandings of Sweden, Swedish politics, and Swedish society: that of Military Sweden and that of Political Sweden. Vagueness made it possible to delineate a politically neutral terrain where these views can coexist (Kis, 2003). The limits of this terrain were drawn in
the process of introducing värnplikt and then sharpened through the conflicts over how värnplikt related to key social and political institutions. The current reforms of värnplikt have also been placed on this terrain. However, as the chapter concludes the forces driving these reforms may also erode the terrain of neutrality on which Swedish värnplikt rests and depends.
Feminism has played a central part in the resurgence of the individual in world politics. It is t... more Feminism has played a central part in the resurgence of the individual in world politics. It is the explicit self-reference of many of the movements through which individuals engage in transnational politics. NGOs (non-governmental organizations) such as those demanding extended rights for women, the AWLUML (the Association of Women Living Under Muslim Law), the women's peace movement, or the movements demanding equal rights for homosexuals, are directly tied to feminist politics. Likewise, feminism has brought attention to the effects world politics has on individuals and in particular on women. The experiences of women are an integral part of reporting on issues as diverse as the Taliban take-over in Kabul, the war in Bosnia, transition in Russia or welfare cuts in Great Britain. Finally, feminism has contributed to making individuals a more central part of conventional interstate relations. It has been directly active in bringing about the proclamation of the UN decade for Women, the integration of aid programmes and lending policies specifically directed at women, the adoption of the CEDAW, and the staging of the women's conferences which all undermine 'sovereignty' by making individuals, as opposed to sovereign states, the objects of international law and international relations (IR).
In spite of this direct link between feminism and the individualization of world politics, feminist approaches to the study of world politics are usually not individualist. In IR particularly, feminist approaches are squarely anti-individualist. They oppose philosophical individualism, above all in the form of political liberalism, they attack methodological individualism, and, most frequently, they do both. This stark and seemingly paradoxical anti-individualism of feminist approaches in IR is the subject of this chapter. A first section shows that, in part, this anti-individualism has its origins in the overall development of feminist approaches in academia, which has tended to lead feminist scholars away from individualism. However, in IR the anti-individualism of feminism has gone further than in feminist academia in general and has led to the virtual exclusion of a variety of more or less individualist feminist approaches, which are certainly present and part of the debate elsewhere, even if they are not dominating. A second section proceeds to show that this disproportionate anti-individualism of feminism in IR is comprehensible only with reference to the development of IR theorizing. During the heyday of Realism there was little space for feminist thought. But with the epistemological turn during the eighties, feminism - and in particular its post-structuralist, that is, its most anti-individualist, version - was more easily plugged into the central theoretical debates. However, and this is the claim of the last section, the pendulum is on its way back. Current developments in IR as well as in feminist thought are beginning to widen the range of feminist app roaches which arc part of IR. Non-individualist rediscoveries of individuals by feminism are now complemented by
a critically individualist rediscovery of women. Correspondingly, any simplistic view of the relationship between feminist approaches and individualism in the study of world politics is rapidly being undermined.
Over the past decade the scale and scope of private military company (PMC) activity have both exp... more Over the past decade the scale and scope of private military company (PMC) activity have both expanded to a degree few believed possible. Charles Moskos for example, writes that 'little did I realize when I first proposed a quarter century ago that the military was shifting from an institution to an occupation (the I/O thesis) that private profit making companies would one day actually do military jobs. This rise of PMCs has triggered considerable discussion about regulation. The problem is not that PMCs are 'unregulated': as the chapters in this volume testify, PMCs are 'regulated' by, among other things, export licensing systems and international humanitarian law.2 PMCs and their employees can be held accountable
individually. And the armed forces regulate their relations to contractors, as do states? In fact, industry representatives present during a workshop organized for this volume talked about overregulation and considered themselves burdened by multiple, contradictory, and patchy rules that are often unclear about which administration is responsible when and for what.
One regulatory issue has nonetheless been strangely - and unacceptably - marginal, namely the regulation of the role PMCs play in shaping understandings of security and politics. Close to nothing has been said or done to adjust existing regulation to the rise of PMCs. Yet, as the first section of this chapter shows, this classical regulatory concern is as real when the 'specialists on violence' shaping politics are 'private' and work for PMCs, as it is when they are 'public' and enrolled in the armed forces. While elaborate institutional and sociological regulatory frameworks cover the public armed forces' role in shaping security and politics, or 'civil-military relations', nothing equivalent has been developed-or is even being contemplated-to cover the role of PMCs in shaping security and politics, or 'civil-PMCs relations'. As the second and third sections of this chapter show, the institutional regulatory frameworks covering public armed forces generally do not apply to PMCs and sociological regulation is largely dysfunctional. The aim here is to argue that the 'realistic' approach to regulation this volume strives to develop needs to encompass also this regulatory concern of classical realist thinkers such as Karl von Clausewitz.
On September 16, 2007 the employees of the US security firm Blackwater became involved in a shoot... more On September 16, 2007 the employees of the US security firm Blackwater became involved in a shooting incidence in the Nisour Square in Baghdad. They were escorting a US State Department delegation, which according to the firm, came under attack. According to bystanders, the Blackwater employees opened fire unprovoked, shooting in all directions and seemingly at anyone moving, including those trying to flee or help those wounded. Seventeen Iraqi civilians died in the incidence and at least twice as many were wounded. President AI-Maliki immediately came out to "revoke Blackwater's license" for operating in Iraq and Iraqi authorities engaged the process of ending contractor impunity in their country. However, it soon became clear that there was no license to revoke and that the Iraqi government may not have the authority to deny Blackwater the right to operate in Iraq, let alone decide the fate of private contractors more generally. On their part, the US authorities promised to open their own investigation and expressed regret at the civilian casualties but did not end their contracts with Blackwater in Iraq or elsewhere. The incapacity of the Iraqi government to impose its authority and right to control the use of force on its territory, to hold Blackwater and/or its employees accountable for the incidence, made Jeremy Scahill conclude that "nothing gives a more clear indication to the Iraqis that they don't have a sovereign government" (2007b) . Scahill is right in pointing to the limitations of the Iraqi government's role as the ultimate authority deciding on laws on Iraqi territory. However, it does not follow that the Mansour incidence is illustrative of the extent to which the private markets for force have undermined sovereignty generally. The Blackwater incidence usefully high lights the complex ways in which sovereignty has been both transformed and secured through the extensive privatization of the use of force. This chapter discusses this dual process of transformation and securing. It does so departing from the notion of a sovereignty game introduced by the editors that it gives a Foucauldian twist. Sovereignty in this chapter is thought of as specific form of governance, organizing politics around a central authority and working through a hierarchical and unitary system of law (Foucault 2004, 92-113; Dean 1999, 103-110). In this context, the sovereignty game is a rather specific game: it is a game organized around states' claims to ultimate authority in politics. However, at the same time both sovereignty and the sovereignty game are highly variable. Politics can be (and has been) ordered around states in very many different ways. The question at the heart of this chapter is how sovereignty and the sovereignty game are rearticulated as other forms of governance develop. The answer departs from Foucault's hunch that ordering principles for politics do not replace each other but coexist historically. The aim is to give substance to this hunch by looking at how the coexistence of neoliberal" and sovereign forms of governance functions in the field of security. The chapter does this by looking at how visible and widely agreed upon changes have combined with dissimulated and denied ones to produce both profound alterations and continuity in the sovereignty game. It begins with a discussion of the rules of the sovereignty game in security and then proceeds to look at its players.
This chapter suggests that marketing by private security companies is undermining the potential f... more This chapter suggests that marketing by private security companies is undermining the potential for de-securitization through acts of citizenship, not because of spectacular fear mongering, but because of the scope for acts of citizenship and securitization it re-produces. To make this point I look at the decidedly sober webmarketing of the respectable commercial security company Control Risks (CR) and explore how it co-constitutes the two processes at the core of this volume: acts of citizenship and securitization. I argue that marketing restricts the space for 'acts of citizenship' (AoC) to reclaim politics/constitute political subjectivities, and entrenches 'securitizations' that turn something into an existential threat. This argument addresses a broader concern, namely what happens to the potential for de-securitization through AoC in a context that goes under the general (disputed and ambiguous) name 'neo-liberalism’, where an increasing number of things (including security) are governed through (quasi-)market mechanisms. The chapter does not (and could not possibly) analyse all the processes linked to the commercialization of security. Instead, it focuses on one specific process –marketing by security companies.
Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) are increasingly visible and controversial. Publi... more Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) are increasingly visible and controversial. Public discussion about how these companies should be regulated is particularly intense. The Blackwater killing of 17 civilians on 16 September 2007 in Nisour Square, Baghdad, has come to epitomize the issue. However, the problem of regulation runs deeper and is more complex than the scapegoating of Blackwater, which focuses on the killing of civilians in Iraq and the ensuing legal process. It spans not only accountability for violations of human rights norms, but also accountability in the economic, social and political sphere. Moreover, it has deep roots in the contemporary neoliberal governance practices, which makes accountability exceedingly difficult. This chapter does not deal with all the complexities tied to the issue of what amounts to nothing less than a 'culture of impunity' benefitting PMSCs (Leander, 2007a; Human Rights First, 2008). Although this chapter will hint at some of these wider issues, it will deal in detail only with one sub-question about accountability, namely the question of whether or not it is necessary to expand international regulation and assign new roles to external actors to regulate private military and security companies (PMSCs). Contradictory and seemingly incompatible answers to this question abound. While there is a general consensus that regulation needs to be improved, there is little clarity about what this means. On the one hand, it is often suggested that there is a lack of regulation and that PMSCs operate in a legal vacuum. Thus, what we need is ultimately more international regulation and new roles for external actors (Bailes & Holmqvist, 2007; Singer, 2007b). On the other side of the argument, these assertions are confronted by statements underlining that PMSCs are covered by international law and therefore do not operate in an international vacuum. The problem is rather the multiplicity of contradictory legal norms and standards and too many external regulators, whose numbers should be reduced and roles clarified (Scoville, 2006; Zarate, 1998; Doswald-Beck, 2007). This chapter argues that both positions are partly valid. A multiplicity of indirect international legal instruments coexists with a scarcity of specific ones. But mote centrally, it argues that the focus on whether or not there is a regulatory vacuum distracts attention from the more fundamental question of what regulation should be about. On this question disagreement is profound, but well masked by the mantra that we need to improve regulation. This chapter maps the key positions in this disagreement.
In July 2010, the Washington Post (WP) published the results of a project on "Top Secret America"... more In July 2010, the Washington Post (WP) published the results of a project on "Top Secret America" on which twenty investigative journalists had been working for two years. The project drew attention to the change and growth in National Intelligence following 9/11 (Washington Post 2010a). The initial idea had been to work on intelligence generally, but given that this proved overwhelming, the team narrowed down to focus only on intelligence qualified as "top secret." Even so, the growth in this intelligence activity is remarkable. This public is returning, or in this case expanding at an impressive speed confirming the general contention of this volume. Between 2001 and 2010 the budget had increased by 250 percent, reaching $75 billion (the GDP of the Czech Republic). Thirty-three building complexes for top secret work had been or were under construction in the Washington area; 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies were working on programs, while over 850,000 Americans had top secret clearances. The project built up a searchable database on the basis of "hundreds of interviews" combined with the scrutiny of "innumerable publicly available documents" (Washington Post 2010c). This has proved to be a gold mine of information available from the project website (Washington Post 2010a). Yet, the exact nature of this public transformation is surprisingly difficult to pin down. At the end of their two-year project, the journalists
still refer to their findings as "estimates" and underscore the "opaque" and "elusive" nature of the top secret programs they studied (Washington Post 2010d). Even more surprising, their interviews and documents show that the leaders inside Top Secret America share their uncertainties. They do not know its dimensions or purpose, nor do they feel capable of controlling it. This paradoxical combination has begun to define US intelligence. It has turned into a fleeting omnipresence, there for any observer to see (which justifies and creates the ambition for a team of twenty journalists to investigate it) and a mirage fading away when attempts are made to understand it, hold it accountable, or just simply quantify or describe it. This tension is not only analytically intriguing; it is unsettling. Considering the resources spent on US National Intelligence as well as the implications of US intelligence activities
for people across the planet - including misinformation leading to war, torture, extrajudicial assassinations, and extraordinary rendition programs, as well as transformations of the handling of migrants, borders, and personal information - "capturing" National Intelligence in the dual sense of "understanding" and "detaining" is urgent (e.g. Bigo and Tsoukala 2008; Kessler and Werner 2008; Leander 2011 b, 201 Ob; Salter and Mutlu 2010).
This paradox is the point of departure for this chapter. The argument is first that the reason this expansion of the public is so difficult to capture (understand, arrest, and control) is its hybridity – and more specifically the "chimerical" side of this hybridity - and second that analyzing "the public as practice" is a way of dealing with this difficulty. This is a hybridity of the public and the private, in the strong sense of the two categories being joined into a new kind of "public" practice. It is not possible to understand this hybridity from the starting point of the traditional distinction between the public and the private - a distinction that is integral to the liberal "art of separation" (as emphasized in the Introduction) and that also acts as a "practical category" structuring the world of intelligence and most observations of it. This kind of tidy public/private distinction splits up the hybrid obscuring its enmeshment, elusiveness, and power. Efforts to study this phenomenon that start from the public/private divide can therefore do little more than (re-)produce an opaque and powerful elusiveness; that is the chimerical side of this hybrid. Inversely, conceptualizing the "public as practice" makes it possible to endogenize the public/private divide and analyze how its capacity to obscure hybridity is integral to reconstituting the public as an enmeshed, elusive, and powerful hybrid. This chapter shows how.
Heikki Patomiiki, The Political Economy of Global Security: War, Future Crises and Changes in Glo... more Heikki Patomiiki, The Political Economy of Global Security: War, Future Crises and Changes in Global Governance. London and New York: Routledge, 2008, 292 pp.
ISBN 978-0-415-41672--6.
The Market for Force: The Consequences of Privatizing Security Deborah D. Avant Cambridge: Camb... more The Market for Force: The Consequences of Privatizing Security
Deborah D. Avant
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, 324pp.
ISBN: 978-0-521-61535-8
Pierre Bourdieu, Les structures sociales de l’économie, Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2000. Althou... more Pierre Bourdieu, Les structures sociales de l’économie, Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2000.
Although entitled ‘the social structures of the economy’, Pierre Bourdieu has published a book that is basically an empirical study of the housing market in France. True, in the introduction and conclusion Bourdieu spells out his critique of contemporary economic method. He lays down the ‘principles of an economic anthropology’. He also ends his book with a short postscript on the increasing internationalization of the economy. Yet, the question is still justified, whether we – as international political economy scholars – should bother reading this book and the articles related to it. The following claims that we should. The primary reason is not that Bourdieu is extensively read (and criticized) and that one therefore has to read him. Nor is it that Bourdieu, who has finally begun to direct his attention directly to the international (or global) economy, has managed to say such novel and profound things about it that we simply must integrate his thoughts. Rather, I will argue that his ‘frontal attack on economics’ (p. 29) is useful for IPE scholars because it spells out and demonstrates the application of an approach, which has the virtue of sharing traditional concerns if IPE scholars with (1) empirical economic reality as opposed to abstract modelling; and (2) with the structural power inherent in this reality. But, in addition to this, Bourdieu’s approach lays more weight on (3) critical scholarship and above all reflexivity, than has so far been common in our subject. I want to suggest that given the recent sociological turn of much international political economy thinking, Bourdieu is essential reading, whether or not one agrees with him.
As the editors of this volume explore above, the approaches to security and have expanded consid... more As the editors of this volume explore above, the approaches to security and have expanded
considerably as have the conceptualizations of security tied to them. Part and parcel of this
expansion has been the consolidation of “Critical Security Studies” (henceforth CSS) as integral
to the “mainstream” in Security Studies (Fierke, 2007 for an overview and introduction). CSS is
best characterised as a broad family of approaches that share a post “post-linguistic turn”
approach to the study of international security rather diverse security. As such CSS has played a
core part in placing issues of pertaining to “culture” in generally and security culture in particular
on the agenda of security studies. In the process, they have also been at the forefront when it
comes to developing “methodologies” for post-linguistically informed studies in the realm of
security. However, while the contribution of CSS to enlarging, enriching and advancing the
security studies agenda is well acknowledged, its methodological this contributions are far less
so. While the CSS “campfire” (Sylvester, 2014) seems to have the capacity to warm
debates well beyond the own inside circles, its methodological part is more like a faint glow
turning into ashes that capable of attracting no one, not even really the card-carrying, flagwaving
members of the CSS group. The consensus on the outside seems to be that CSS is
underdeveloped, unclear and messy methodologically speaking and on the inside that methods
questions are tedious relics from a positivistic past. In spite of a stream of publications from the
CSS camp on methods expressly intent on breaking this consensus, the image is very “sticky”.
Hence scholars flirting with CSS ideas often prefer to dodge the methods questions and if forced
to be explicit on them will often desert their own camp. This chapter is (yet another) contribution
to this flow of arguments.
The chapter picks up on one specific source of scepticism as regards CSS methods (the
idea that it is not “objective”) and tries to turn the tables by showing that in reality CSS scholars have a “strong understanding of objectivity”, that is a step forward (not backwards) in terms of
thinking about how to study security generally and security cultures specifically. The chapter
develops this point in three steps: it begins by introducing the idea of a “strong objectivity”
anchored in the nitty-gritty steps of research and proceeds to demonstrate how it is practiced in
the process of gathering and presenting results in ethnographic CSS research insisting along the
way that what is often interpreted as lack of “objectivity” is in fact a reflection of a more
adequate understanding of what “objectivity” may entail.