Interview, Militarized Global Apartheid, with New Books Network (original) (raw)
Related papers
Current Anthropology, 2019
New regimes of labor and mobility control are taking shape across the global north in a militarized form that mimics South Africa's history of apartheid. Apartheid was a South African system of influx and labor control that attempted to manage the "threat" posed by black people by incarcerating them in zones of containment while also enabling the control and policed exploitation of black people as workers, on which the country was dependent. The paper argues, first, that the rise of a system of global apartheid has created a racialized world order and a hierarchical labor market dependent on differential access to mobility; second, that the expansion of systems of resource plunder primarily by agents of the global north into the global south renders localities in the global south unsustainable for ordinary life; and, third, that in response, the global north is massively investing in militarized border regimes to manage the northern movement of people from the global south. The paper argues that "global apartheid" might replace terms such as "transnationalism," "multiculturalism," and "cosmopolitanism" in order to name the structures of control that securitize the north and foster violence in the south, that gate the north and imprison the south, and that create a new militarized form of apartheid on a global level. 1. As of this writing, the closure decision has been suspended. 2. This paper is a highly abbreviated version of a book project that develops the arguments, theoretical concepts, and ethnographic examples in much greater detail, including the cases of India, East Asia, and China, which are not discussed here due to space limitations. Furthermore, because the article condenses a broadly comparative and nuanced argument, I am aware that it may appear to reify categories like the "global north" and the "global south." I hope readers will understand that these categories are, of course, internally complex and diverse and that my use of broad-brush tactics here is a heuristic necessity.
2024
Does apartheid South Africa point to an emerging paradigm in international relations? Catherine Besteman dares us to raise this provocative question in her book Militarized Global Apartheid. While the question may seem counterintuitive because apartheid was considered a “crime against humanity” by the United Nations General Assembly in 1966, Besteman's arguments rely on a critical view of history, inspired especially by Cedric Robinson, that is far from a redemptive “narrative” of liberation from oppression.
Militarized Global Apartheid, An Interview with William Katrup
Brown Journal of International Affairs, 2022
What is global apartheid, and how does Militarized Global Apartheid, your book's title and theorization of the same name, add to this term? Catherine Besteman: Global apartheid, of course, is a term that has been used by many scholars before me. Militarized Global Apartheid is very much informed by those scholars' analyses. I came to study the concept of global apartheid through two avenues. One was tracking folks that I had known from my period of eld work in Somalia in the late 1980s, right before the civil war, through their next 20-year journey as resettled refugees until they landed up here in Maine. rough that process, I began to get an understanding of how the organization of border crossings across the world made it really, really di cult for them to nd safety. e second avenue emerged from the decade of work I had done in South Africa during the post-apartheid period, which required me to develop a thorough understanding of how apartheid worked in that speci c context, which is, of course, where the word comes from. So, those two streams of research made the term "global apartheid" make a lot of sense to me and helped me understand
Besteman Militarized Global Apartheid for circulation.docx
New regimes of labor and mobility control are taking shape across the global north in a militarized form that mimics South Africa's history of apartheid. Apartheid was a South Africa system of influx and labor control that attempted to manage the "threat" posed by black people by incarcerating them in zones of containment while also enabling the control and policed exploitation of black people as workers, upon which the country was dependent. The paper argues: first, that the rise of a system of global apartheid has created a racialized world order and a hierarchical labor market dependent upon differential access to mobility; second, that the expansion of systems of resource plunder primarily by agents of the global north into the global south renders localities in the global south unsustainable for ordinary life; and third, that in response the global north is massively investing in militarized border regimes to manage the northern movement of people from the global south. The paper argues that 'global apartheid' might replace terms like 'transnationalism,' 'multiculturalism,' and 'cosmopolitanism' in order to name the structures of control that securitize the north and foster violence in the south, that gate the north and imprison the south, and that create a new militarized form of apartheid on a global level. PLEASE CITE AS: BESTEMAN, CATHERINE. IN PRESS. MILITARIZED GLOBAL APARTHEID. CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY.
2021
This book argues that militarised global apartheid is a new emergent world order, in which race and mobility became the 'primary variables'. It is an intentional world order that privileges the broadly defined 'Global North', 1 at the cost of controlling and exploiting the 'Global South'. The author argues that speaking of a global apartheid is more useful than using such concepts as imperialism, globalisation or nationalism, as it shifts the frame to capture the use of race and nativist language to structure mobility, belonging, class inequality, elimination and extermination, as well as the relevance of border controls and the hierarchical modes of excluding or incorporating racially delineated people into a polity for labor exploitation. (p. 8
2014
© 1990 Z im babwe Institute o f D evelopm ent S tudies P .O. B ox 880 H arare Zim babwe F irst Printing A ll rights reserved P rinted and published in th e R epu b lic o f Zim babwe. T he paper w as originally p resented at a sem inar h eld under th e au spices o f Z ID S on T h e D ism antling o f th e A partheid War M achine and th e Problem s o f C onversion o f th e M ilitary Industrial Complex" o n A pril 10 ,1 9 9 0. T h e author, H o ra ce C am pbell, is a V isitin g S cholar under th e Program m e o f A frican S tu d ies at N orthw estern U niversity, E vanston, Illin ois, U S A , and w as attached to Z ID S at th e tim e o f th e sem inar. T he view s expressed in th is paper are, how ever, personal and d o not reflect th e official p o sitio n o f Z ID S nor d o th ey reflect th e opinions o f N orthw estern U niversity or m em bers o f its staff.
Review of Lennart Bolliger's Apartheid's Black Soldiers
Southern Journal for Contemporary History, 2023
Apartheid's Black Soldiers examines the experiences of combatants from Namibia and Angola who fought in the security forces of the apartheid regime, above all the Southwest Africa Territorial Force (SWATF), Koevoet, and 32 "Buffalo" Battalion. As the author, Lennart Bolliger, argues, these experiences challenge the dominant notion that southern Africa's decolonisation should be understood in terms of "national liberation" struggles, wherein liberation movements representing distinct African nations fought against colonial regimes and their "collaborators." Rather, the encounters and trajectories of Bolligers's research participants point to the complex and highly constrained circumstances in which black men joined the security forces and the social alienation which they have collectively experienced in postapartheid Namibia and South Africa, the countries in which most now live.
BLACK MEN IN A WHITE MAN'S WAR: THE IMPACT OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR ON SOUTH AFRICAN BLACKS*
1982
The past decade in European and Anglo-American historiography has witnessed a steady growth of literature in what is generally termed 'war and society ' studies. This development is largely a reaction against the 'drum and trumpet1 school of military history; a field of inquiry that may be valid in its own right, but one that often degene-rates into a discussion of uniforms and badges and seldom rises above campaigns and battles- the major weakness being an inclination to divorce the fighting side of war from its socio-economic and political context. Practitioners in the field of 'war and society ' therefore seek to place warfare in its total historical milieu and they share inter alia a common interest in war as an agent of social change.1 In comparison with the position in Britain, America and Europe, the historiography of 'war and society ' in Africa
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.