Malte Riemann | Universiteit Leiden (original) (raw)

Books by Malte Riemann

RMA Sandhurst has long played a key role in the intellectual development of British Army and inte... more RMA Sandhurst has long played a key role in the intellectual development of British Army and international officers. In this book, members of our Academic Faculty bring together a distinguished team of scholars and military practitioners to tackle a key concept which challenges those, military and civilian, who seek to better understand the evolving nature of contemporary conflict and how-or indeed whether-external interventions can improve matters. Maj Gen PAE Nanson CBE General Officer Commanding and Commandant Sandhurst About the Book Recent conflicts have required the armed forces to engage in what has been termed 'war amongst the people'. Such conflicts increasingly require a type of soldier deployed to function as an 'armed social worker', as was seen most recently in operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. If this increased focus on societal relations has-and should-become the area of prime concern for contemporary armed forces, this poses a series of conceptual and practical questions regarding the 'people' concerned and the nature of the society amongst which war is conducted. Scholars and practitioners come together in this volume to explore how armed forces can make sense of such complexity in conceptual terms and how military actors have practically interacted with local power structures and relations, with both positive and negative effects. It examines armed forces' engagement at the local level in a contemporary context and contextualises this within the broader political, strategic, tactical and legal implications this engagement has had at home and overseas.

Der Krieg ist ein Chamäleon, bemerkte der berühmte preußische General Carl von Clausewitz im 19. ... more Der Krieg ist ein Chamäleon, bemerkte der berühmte preußische General Carl von Clausewitz im 19. Jahrhundert. In der Tat kann der Krieg unterschiedliche Erscheinungsformen annehmen. Gerade in den letzten 120 Jahren haben sich die Wege und Strategien des Krieges mehrfach geändert, von dem Volkskrieg und totalen Krieg, über den Kalten Krieg bis hin zum "humanitären" und asymmetrischen Krieg. Alle diese Kriegsformen geben Auskunft über die gesellschaftlichen, politischen und wirtschaftlichen Verfasstheiten der Staaten, von denen sie geführt werden. Die Beschäftigung mit dem Krieg ist deshalb keine militärhistorische Spezialwissenschaft, sondern integraler Teil einer kritischen Geschichtsbetrachtung. Malte Riemann bietet eine konzise Einführung in die unterschiedlichen Erscheinungsformen des Krieges und ihren Entwicklungen seit dem Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts. Anschaulich befasst er sich mit den Kriegsarten, Kriegstechnologien und militärischen Strategien. Über den engen militärischen Bereich hinaus werden aber auch die Wirkungen des Krieges auf die Gesellschaften und die Politik der kriegführenden Länder beschrieben. In der Einführung beschreibt der Autor den geistesgeschichtlichen Diskurs zum Wesen des Krieges in der Neuzeit. Im Anschluss folgen sieben chronologisch angeordnete Kapitel, wobei zunächst der Erste Weltkrieg (Volks-, Stellungs- und Kolonialkrieg) beschrieben wird. Es folgt eine Darstellung des Zweiten Weltkrieges als "totalem" Krieg. Die folgenden Kapitel widmen sich unter anderem dem Kalten Krieg sowie den Kriegen im Gefolge der Auflösung der Sowjetunion. Als Ausblick entwirft der Autor am Ende mögliche Szenarien über die "Zukunft des Krieges", wobei er von den gegenwärtigen Entwicklungen (Krieg gegen den Terror, asymmetrischer Krieg, Drohnenkrieg, "privater Krieg" durch Söldner und automatisierter Krieg) ausgeht. Dass das Thema Krieg seit 1990 nie von der politischen Agenda verschwunden ist und wir auch in Deutschland keineswegs in einem Zeitalter des absoluten Friedens leben, wird besonders dann deutlich, wenn der Bundestag erneut über einen Auslandseinsatz der Bundeswehr zu entscheiden hat. Gerade diese Aktualität des Themas hat zum Aufschwung der Neuen Militärgeschichte geführt und trifft auf ein breites Interesse in Gesellschaft und Wissenschaft.

Articles by Malte Riemann

Defence Studies, 2021

This article analyses remote warfare from an ontological security perspective, arguing that remot... more This article analyses remote warfare from an ontological security perspective, arguing that remote warfare needs to be understood as a response to states’ internal self-identity needs. We develop this claim by analysing an emerging aspect of remote warfare: Security Force Assistance (SFA). SFA is aimed at building up the security forces of partners, sharing best practice, assisting in security sector reform, fostering collaboration, and overall contributing to conflict resolution. Focusing on the UK, we show how and why ontological security needs are a driving force behind the UK’s SFA program. We outline the UK’s specific autobiographical narrative, which we call a “global engagement identity,” explore the crises that induced ontological insecurity, and show how the UK’s SFA program can be read as a routinised foreign policy practice aimed at taming uncertainty and reinforcing ontological security. This paper makes three contributions. First, it analyses remote warfare through an ontological security framework, thereby moving the focus from “security-as-survival” to “security-of-being.” Second, it highlights the importance of SFA as a remote warfare tool. Third, it shows the centrality of ontological security in understanding UK defence policy.

Small Wars & Insurgencies , 2021

The history of the mercenary seems little less than the history of organized warfare itself. From... more The history of the mercenary seems little less than the history of organized warfare itself. From the dawn of recorded history to the recent rise of Private Military Companies, mercenaries appear as a historical constant that allows scholars to make grand historical claims about the organisation of force within world history. This article cautions against this view, arguing instead that the analysis of this actor has been compromised by the failure to adequately historicise and contextualize the concept of the mercenary due to the uncritical acceptance that mercenaries are a trans-historical occurrence. Informed by a historicist contextual approach, I show how two foundational characteristics of the mercenary concept, a Westphalian understanding of ‘foreignness’ and a modern account of ‘self-interest’, were absent in the periods preceding the 18th century. I demonstrate this absence through an analysis of ‘mercenaries’ in Ancient Greece and the Middle Ages, exposing how the problematization of these actors within their own historical context displays a radical difference if compared to our contemporary understanding of the mercenary. In doing so this article raises awareness to the historical specificity of this seemingly uni- versal concept and cautions against the uncritical backward projection of this concept into the past.

Journal of Peace and War Studies, 2021

Decolonizing as a project and practice has generated renewed attention since the global Black Liv... more Decolonizing as a project and practice has generated renewed attention since the global Black Lives Matter protests’ demand for a far-reaching engagement with the structural racism prevalent within society. Civil-military relations have not been untouched by this. While calls to decolonize higher education (HE) are not new (Bhambra, Gebrial, and Nişancıoğlu, 2018), such calls have not yet found resonance in the professional military education (PME) domain. This is an important gap as military education institutions, similar to western universities, are key sites where “colonialism—and colonial knowledge in particular—is produced, consecrated, institutionalized and naturalized” (Bhambra, Gebrial, and Nişancıoğlu, 2018). In this paper we provide a rationale for the importance of decolonizing PME as well as the benefits for decolonizing teaching and learning in a PME setting by drawing on existing attempts developed to decolonize HE institutions. Though building on these, our decolonizing rationale links issues identified in relation to HE to the specific sensitivities of PME. Our argument unfolds as follows. First, we outline how we understand the process of decolonizing and how it relates to PME. Second, we explain how the armed forces benefit from decolonizing PME. Third, we look at two avenues in need of decolonizing: the curriculum and the educator. In our conclusions we reflect on the importance of decolonization for creating truly diverse and inclusive forces and its significance in crafting effective military leaders for the twenty-first century.

Wavell Room , 2021

Journal of Global Security Studies, 2020

IR scholarship has increasingly begun to scrutinize the ahistorical, and ahistoricist assumptions... more IR scholarship has increasingly begun to scrutinize the ahistorical, and ahistoricist assumptions pervading the discipline. Specifically, attention has been turned to those concepts, actors, and practices that appear to be without history, and that therefore assumed the status of universals. This article contributes to this scholarship by critically investigating the seemingly trans-historical figure of the mercenary, whose history, it appears, is little less than the history of organized warfare itself. This article questions this assumption by investigating how the Renaissance Landsknechte, actors invoked to support the trans-historical mercenary claim, were problematized within their own historical specificity. Through this analysis, this article rejects the notion that the mercenary is a trans-historical phenomenon as the ideas and categories associated with this figure are tied to specific modern accounts of statist political community and individual identity, as well as a modern account of self-interest. It is argued that the mercenary is not a phenomenon that predates the emergence of the modern state and the system of states, but its own existence is grounded within them. This article, thus, reinstates the historicity of this figure, and argues that the mercenary is not ‘as old as war itself’ but a product of specific modern conditions.

Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice , 2020

This article investigates the consequences of adopting a public health-based approach to conflict... more This article investigates the consequences of adopting a public health-based approach to conflict analysis and conflict resolution. We use the Cure Violence project (CV) as an example of such an approach. CV sees violence as a disease that can be controlled and contained via epidemiological methods and strategies that are applied in disease control. Initially originating to tackle urban violence in the US, CV is now extending globally, and it is broadening its scope of action to international conflict resolution. Despite its short-term successes in reducing levels of violence, we argue that such an approach is at risk of de-politicizing conflict-resolution. Rooted in methodological individualism and evidence-based epistemology, this approach has the tendency to overlook structural causes and drivers of conflict, while concentrating its efforts on the individual alone. Conflict resolution, henceforth, becomes an individualized task, and the responsibility for its success and failure is transferred entirely on the individual. This overlooks the centrality of complex structural conditions as well as the role of collective agency in conflict resolution.

Critical Public Health, 2019

Violence has in recent years been framed as a public health problem. The medicalization of violen... more Violence has in recent years been framed as a public health problem. The medicalization of violence has involved various public health initiatives, with the USA based violence prevention initiative Cure Violence (CV), being one of the most prominent. CV, which operates in 23 US cities and multiple countries abroad, was launched in 2000 by former WHO epidemiologist Gary Slutkin with the aim to reduce violence. Its public health approach maintains that violence is an actual disease, which can be controlled and contained via epidemiological methods and strategies applied in disease control. This study used discourse analysis to explore how CV’s medicalization of violence is tied to a neoliberal rationality of governing that disentangles violence from structural factors and explains violence solely by reference to individual pathology. In doing so, CV produces new identities based on assumptions concerning biological infection or immunity resistance, which, as its visual language shows, are grounded in race. Through a politics of exclusion, CV turns these ‘at risk’ identities into appropriate targets for health intervention, with the aim of encouraging these to act upon themselves to improve or restore their productive capacities in order to achieve the idealized form of healthy citizenship that CV propagates.

Discover Society, 2019

Public-health-based approaches to violent crime prevention are increasingly endorsed by governmen... more Public-health-based approaches to violent crime prevention are increasingly endorsed by governmental agencies in the UK, in an attempt to address the recent upsurge in violent crime. The example of the USA based Curve Violence initiative highlights, however, the societal and political costs of such an approach.

Since the end of the Cold War Private Military Companies have emerged as important players within... more Since the end of the Cold War Private Military Companies have emerged as important players within international politics. Their significance is expressed by the fact that the United States of America are unable to wage war without the assistance of such companies. Due to the strong reliance of states on such private actors various studies have investigated this phenomenon. This paper contributes to this literature by conceptualising the status of private contractors in relation to society. It will do so by looking at the different perceptions towards private contractors and soldiers when they die and when they kill.

Edited Volumes by Malte Riemann

Recent conflicts such as those in Syria, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan are increasingly characteris... more Recent conflicts such as those in Syria, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan are increasingly characterised by a pluralisation of irregular and privatised forms of violence. These actors include, among others, warlords, mercenaries, terrorists, transnational organised crime groups, foreign fighters and Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs). While some pose a direct challenge to the state, others are in a complementary and symbiotic relationship with it. As such, violent non-state actors are both competing and cooperating with state actors in modern conflicts and their hybrid nature raises questions with regards to how best to understand these actors, as they often escape neatly defined categorisations. In modern conflicts the lines between terrorists and organised crime groups, irregular and regular forces, as well as economic and political motivations to fight, are increasingly blurred. As a result, ‘new’ and ‘old’ types of violent non-state actors are defining elements of modern conflict. The extreme complexity of twenty-first century conflicts requires a more integrated approach between military and civilian actors in order to respond more effectively to its challenges.

Howgate Publishing, 2020

Since the early 1990s, the challenges posed by fragile and failing states have been a contentious... more Since the early 1990s, the challenges posed by fragile and failing states have been a contentious and enduring part of the debates on post-Cold War international security. Though extensive, these debates have so far yielded little agreement on either the essential nature of state fragility and failure and what, if anything, potential outside intervenors can and should do to prevent it from developing, restore state functionality, or at least mitigate its impact and consequences. In this book, an international team of authors examine both the conceptual and practical challenges posed by this phenomenon. They consider the essential nature of the problem and through a variety of case studies, examine the effectiveness or otherwise of various regional and wider international responses in Africa, the Middle East and South America. This book will be of interest to both academics and practitioners engaged in studying and responding to the ongoing challenges posed by the existence of fragile and failing states in the contemporary international system.

War Amongst the People: Critical Assessments, 2019

Recent conflicts have required the armed forces to engage in what has been termed ‘war amongst th... more Recent conflicts have required the armed forces to engage in what has been termed ‘war amongst the people’. Such conflicts increasingly require a type of soldier deployed to function as an ‘armed social worker’, as was seen most recently in operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. If this increased focus on societal relations has – and should – become the area of prime concern for contemporary armed forces, this poses a series of conceptual and practical questions regarding the ‘people’ concerned and the nature of the society amongst which war is conducted. Scholars and practitioners come together in this volume to explore how armed forces can make sense of such complexity in conceptual terms and how military actors have practically interacted with local power structures and relations, with both positive and negative effects. It examines armed forces’ engagement at the local level in a contemporary context and contextualises this within the broader political, strategic, tactical and legal implications this engagement has had at home and overseas.

Book Chapters by Malte Riemann

Remote Warfare - Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 2021

Late modern warfare is increasingly characterised by ‘the technical ability and ethical imperativ... more Late modern warfare is increasingly characterised by ‘the technical ability and ethical imperative to threaten and, if necessary, actualise violence from a distance – with no or minimal casualties’ (Der Derian 2009, xxi). The term remote warfare has been coined to capture this process where states and societies of the Global North are progressively distancing the effects of war. New technologies, such as drones, and actors, such as private military and security companies (PMSCs) and special forces, are a fundamental feature in enabling such types of warfare, and their importance has attracted increasing attention (Chamayou 2015). In this chapter, we focus on what Der Derian has referred to as the ‘ethical imperative.’ This imperative, we argue, underpins the commitment towards forms of remote warfare and actively shapes the direction and focus of the techniques it employs. In order to think about remote warfare, it is necessary to recognise the normative commitment that underpins this way of war. This is a commitment which emerges clearly from the definition of remote warfare as a series of methods and approaches, such as the use of proxies, special operations forces, PMSCs and drones, to ‘counter threats at a distance’ (Watts and Biegon 2017). The chapter focuses on the ethical imperative sustaining the process of distancing by looking at the normative commitment embedded within forms of remote warfare. We do so by exploring remote warfare’s socio-political effects on intervening states, which so far has generated only limited attention from scholars.

War Amongst The People: Critical Assessments, 2019

War Amongst the People: Critical Assessments, 2019

In a volume such as this discomfort is good, it generates debate and leads to change." -Sir Ruper... more In a volume such as this discomfort is good, it generates debate and leads to change." -Sir Rupert Smith (preface) This volume treated the war amongst the people (WAtP) less as a fixed and established phenomenon, and more like a conceptual prism through which contemporary intrastate conflicts can be read and questioned. As such, it treated the WAtP not as a monolithic 'new type' of war, but as a framework that can shed light on complex networks and dynamics which are always context dependent. Taken together, the different contributions to this volume therefore provide not only new empirical knowledge on WAtPs, but through the prism encourage also novel ways of seeing and assessing WAtPs. It is the aim of this conclusion to capture some of the implications that arise from the contributions across the four analytical lenses; the conceptual, the practical, the legal, and the domestic. A discussion along the interjections of these four lenses shows how the contributions create shared themes across the four dimensions examined, thereby recomposing the prism. A key tenant that the prism illuminates is how politics and war overlap in WAtPs, which we will consider in the final part of this conclusion.

Podcasts by Malte Riemann

From 28 February to 1 March, the Remote Warfare Programme held a two day conference entitled ‘Con... more From 28 February to 1 March, the Remote Warfare Programme held a two day conference entitled ‘Conceptualising Remote Warfare: The Past, Present and Future’. Sponsored by the British International Studies Association, the conference brought together a wide range of experts from the military, academia, civil society and parliament and explored the many aspects of remote warfare.

https://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/event-podcast-the-cost-and-consequences-of-remote-warfare

https://socialsciencetalks.wordpress.com/2015/07/15/009-social-science-talks-starship-troopers/

Reviews by Malte Riemann

Defence Studies, 2021

Small Wars & Insurgencies , 2021

Journal of Peace and War Studies, 2021

Wavell Room , 2021

Journal of Global Security Studies, 2020

Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice , 2020

Critical Public Health, 2019

Discover Society, 2019

Howgate Publishing, 2020

War Amongst the People: Critical Assessments, 2019

Remote Warfare - Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 2021

War Amongst The People: Critical Assessments, 2019

War Amongst the People: Critical Assessments, 2019

https://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/event-podcast-the-cost-and-consequences-of-remote-warfare

https://socialsciencetalks.wordpress.com/2015/07/15/009-social-science-talks-starship-troopers/

Klaas Voß's article examines the use and usefulness of mercenaries in U.S. covertoperations durin... more Klaas Voß's article examines the use and usefulness of mercenaries in U.S. covertoperations during the Cold War. His detailed historical analysis, which draws extensively on previously unexamined archival material, effectively shows that the "doctrine of plausible deniability" lies at the heart of the allure that mercenaries had for intelligence services and U.S. policymakers during the period that his article investigates. Mercenaries were a useful tool in covert operations that needed a degree of 'plausible deniability' because they "did not require written orders or much of a paper trail at all, could be controlled without a proper chain of command or a rigid bureaucratic hierarchy, and, most significantly, were not US government personnel and frequently not even US citizens" (41). In order to analyse the genesis and evolution of U.S.backed mercenary interventions, Voß advances his argument through an analysis of four case studies: Congo, Angola, Rhodesia, and Nicaragua.

War Amongst the People: Critical Assessments, 2019

Republished in Small Wars Journal.

Paper Presented at the Remote Warfare conference, Oxford Research Group, 2019

Conceptualizations of war have always hinged on a war/peace dichotomy sustained by clear spatial ... more Conceptualizations of war have always hinged on a war/peace dichotomy sustained by clear spatial and temporal distinctions. Conditions of war or peace, therefore, cannot simultaneously occupy the same space and time. The recent turn towards remote forms of warfare is increasingly challenging these spatial and temporal distinctions. For example, the ability of drones to carry out strikes across diverse geographies strengthens the disconnection between geography and warfare (Gregory: 2011) and the use of private proxies by polities formally at peace veils the very presence of war and simultaneously externalizes its costs (Krieg & Rickli: 2018). In a multiplicity of ways thus remote warfare radically modifies the spatial and temporal configurations of war, thereby collapsing the functional relation linking politics and war that has traditionally been at the center of the Clausewitzian understanding of war. This creates a paradoxical condition in which war is continuously present in the spaces in which it takes place, but simultaneously absent from the politics of the states operating ‘remotely’. The effects are twofold. First, for the spaces in which remote warfare takes place, war is no longer an exceptional state of affairs but becomes ever present, turning war into a perpetual socio-political condition. Drones, almost permanently occupying the skies, are a case in point. Second, by externalizing the burdens of war to private proxies, polities that conduct war ‘remotely’ not only obfuscates the presence of war but also challenge their own political authority. As military remembrance rituals have a constitutive function in the production and reproduction of sovereign claims and the creation of national identities, the externalization of sacrifice to private proxies raises important questions regarding the constitution of sovereign claims, as ‘the location of death within a series of meaningful and consecrated events ultimately lies at the base of all endeavors to support the autonomous dignity of the polity resting on force.’ (Weber: 1946)

https://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/event-podcast-the-cost-and-consequences-of-remote-warfare

Medical approaches to violence prevention are progressively being adopted by various governmental... more Medical approaches to violence prevention are progressively being adopted by various governmental and non-governmental actors around the globe. For example, the World Health Organization has made violence 'a public health priority' and centered its global strategy for violence prevention around the public health model; the World Bank pronounces the public health approach the most effective form of violence intervention; UNICEF made the public health model a high-priority strategy to reduce violence against children and in the UK Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, and home secretary Sajid Javid, have both endorsed public health approaches to address the so-called 'knife crime epidemic'. Violence is therefore increasingly framed as a public health problem in need of intervention by health care professionals. On the back of the perceived success of the public health approach attempts are being made to extend it to the broader field of conflict resolution. In our forthcoming publication in Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice, titled 'The Perils of Public Health based approaches to Conflict Resolution,' we critically examine the application of the public health approach to conflict resolution and engage with the possible risks and limitations of its extension to the domain of violent conflict. We argue that a health-based approach to conflict resolution carries the risk of underplaying the structural factors of violence, which in turn risks de-politicizing the way in which we understand and approach conflict resolution. This carries the risk of undermining the establishment of positive peace in a post-conflict environment.

Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, Mar 9, 2023

Critical approaches to IR have often been criticized for lacking methodological rigour. Especiall... more Critical approaches to IR have often been criticized for lacking methodological rigour. Especially, authors informed by the works of Michel Foucault have faced challenges to justify their methodology, given that Foucault did not provide scholars with a methodological blueprint. This article argues that Carol Bacchi's 'What's the problem represented to be?' (WPR) approach provides a robust critical methodology for policy analysis. WPR is a method that facilitates the critical examination of public policies to analyse 'how the "problem" is represented within them and to subject this problem representation to critical scrutiny' (Bacchi, 2012b). This way of questioning differs from other forms of policy analysis in that it shifts the focus of analysis from policy as a 'problem-solving' exercise towards seeing policy as an act which is constructive of 'problems'. Policies are therefore not analysed from a problem-solving perspective, but from a problem-questioning perspective. By making the 'problem' itself the focus of analysis, it becomes possible to uncover the political, epistemological and historical contexts which are constitutive of the problem representation. I demonstrate the value of this approach by subjecting the Cure Violence Global NGO to a WPR analysis.

Routledge eBooks, Oct 19, 2022

Peace Review, 2020

Medical approaches to violence prevention are progressively occupying a center-stage in global re... more Medical approaches to violence prevention are progressively occupying a center-stage in global responses to violence. The World Health Organization has made violence “a public health priority” and has centered its global strategy for violence prevention around the public health model; the World Bank pronounces the public health approach the most effective form of violence intervention; and UNICEF made the public health model a high-priority strategy to reduce violence against children. Violence is therefore increasingly framed as a public health problem in need of intervention by health care professionals. Sparked by this medicalization of violence, it is unsurprising that the public health model is beginning to be endorsed for application in conflict environments and considered as a tool in conflict resolution. Calls for integrating the health sector in conflict prevention and conflict resolution are not new and neither is the use of medical metaphors and analogies to describe and ...

Defence Studies, 2021

ABSTRACT This article analyses remote warfare from an ontological security perspective, arguing t... more ABSTRACT This article analyses remote warfare from an ontological security perspective, arguing that remote warfare needs to be understood as a response to states’ internal self-identity needs. We develop this claim by analysing an emerging aspect of remote warfare: Security Force Assistance (SFA). SFA is aimed at building up the security forces of partners, sharing best practice, assisting in security sector reform, fostering collaboration, and overall contributing to conflict resolution. Focusing on the UK, we show how and why ontological security needs are a driving force behind the UK’s SFA program. We outline the UK’s specific autobiographical narrative, which we call a “global engagement identity,” explore the crises that induced ontological insecurity, and show how the UK’s SFA program can be read as a routinised foreign policy practice aimed at taming uncertainty and reinforcing ontological security. This paper makes three contributions. First, it analyses remote warfare through an ontological security framework, thereby moving the focus from “security-as-survival” to “security-of-being.” Second, it highlights the importance of SFA as a remote warfare tool. Third, it shows the centrality of ontological security in understanding UK defence policy.

Critical Public Health, 2018

Violence has in recent years been framed as a public health problem. The medicalization of violen... more Violence has in recent years been framed as a public health problem. The medicalization of violence has involved various public health initiatives, with the USA based violence prevention initiative Cure Violence (CV), being one of the most prominent. CV, which operates in 23 US cities and multiple countries abroad, was launched in 2000 by former WHO epidemiologist Gary Slutkin with the aim to reduce violence. Its public health approach maintains that violence is an actual disease, which can be controlled and contained via epidemiological methods and strategies applied in disease control. This study used discourse analysis to explore how CV's medicalization of violence is tied to a neoliberal rationality of governing that disentangles violence from structural factors and explains violence solely by reference to individual pathology. In doing so, CV produces new identities based on assumptions concerning biological infection or immunity resistance, which, as its visual language shows, are grounded in race. Through a politics of exclusion, CV turns these 'at risk' identities into appropriate targets for health intervention, with the aim of encouraging these to act upon themselves to improve or restore their productive capacities in order to achieve the idealized form of healthy citizenship that CV propagates.

Globalizations, Aug 10, 2022

Small Wars & Insurgencies