States of violence (original) (raw)
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States of Violence: Geopolitics, Law, Technology
borderlands e-journal, 13.1, 2014
This special issue of borderlands engages with Joseph Pugliese's recently published book, State Violence and the Execution of Law, an important intervention that provides a perceptive and insightful exposition into state violence post 9/11 and the formation of a new geo-political order where 'torture is invariably situated as productive: of truth, knowledge and the prevention of prospective violence and terror ' (2013, p. 1). The originality of State Violence and the Execution of Law lies in the weaving together of poststructuralist critique (Foucault on biopolitics, Derrida on deconstruction) with critical race and whiteness studies, and critical legal theories, to offer a powerful analysis of the military-industrial-security complex that animates and dominates the present. To engage with Pugliese's central concern, the violence of state power, we invited senior academics working in different yet related geopolitical contexts to dialogue, comment on, grapple with or draw on points of connection with their own work. Each of these scholars, who have been meticulous in mapping violence in the context of their work, has generously agreed to speak to the concerns of the book. These contributors include Nadera Shalhoub
Violence, Civilization and the State
2011
Resumo Drawing on Elisian notions of civilization this paper explores the violent character of modern states. In discussing violence we are concerned with 'organized physical violence in the most material sense of the term: violence to the body'(Poulantzas, 1978: 29). There may be a good case for defining violence more broadly in some criminological contexts (Salmi, 2004; Tombs, 2007) but what concerns us here is the close relationship between organized physical violence and the state.
The Mosaic of Violence – An Introduction
Civil Wars, 2009
Violence leads to destruction and, especially in form of collective violence and war, unfolds enormous destructive capacities, bringing about distress, hardship, suffering and horror. Violence destroys social relations, economic opportunities and political institutions. Widespread violence furthermore hints at profound shortcomings of the states affected: their incapability to monopolise the means and use of violence and to provide security for their citizens. These aspects commonly associated with collective violence have contributed to the general assumption that violence belongs mainly into the realm of failure, lack of order and chaos.
The Modern State or the Myth of 'Political Violence'
Max Weber defines the state as the holder of the monopoly of the legitimate use of force over a given territory and he adds that this monopoly is only possible because those who are subject to the authority of the state, to some extent accept it or consent to it. I think that this definition effectively captures the essential of what constitutes the modern state – a state which I believe is in a process of radical transformation – but I propose one modification to the wording of this definition: the modern state is the holder of the monopoly of legitimate violence. I prefer 'legitimate violence' to 'the legitimate use of force' because it indicates more clearly that between legitimate and illegitimate violence, the only difference is that it is legitimate, in both cases what we are dealing with is violence. Max Weber's wording suggests that there is between the 'legitimate coercive force' of the state and illegitimate violence a difference in nature, as if 'coercive force' was something radically different from violence. This is not to say of course that legitimacy is simply a sham, an illusion or a lie, its effects as we will see are very real. Further, the word 'use' , used by Weber, suggests rationality in the state's recourse to force, 'the monopoly of legitimate violence' implies no such connotation (nor does it exclude it). Finally, the modified formulation also aims to draw our attention to the fact that violence and legitimacy are intimately linked. Legitimacy, political legitimacy, I argue, is inseparable from the ability to make the distinction between good and bad violence and that ability is ultimately rooted in violence itself. A second important aspect of the modern state concerns its function. According to just about every modern political theory the fundamental, in the sense of the primary, function of the state is to protect its citizens against violence, to protect them both from the violence which they may exercise against each other, and from the violence of external enemies. These two aspects of the modern state are closely related for it is through its monopoly of legitimate violence that the state protects its citizens from violence. Further, this function of the state does not only exist in the minds of political theorists and philosophers, a modern state that works, as opposed to a failed state, is one that can effectively impose its monopoly of legitimate violence over its whole territory and thereby protect
2009
Citizens of the Western world live in an unprecedented era of peace and security. Of course, the headlines from Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan and parts of Central America remind us that this pacific order is not global. But there is little doubt that the incidence (and probably severity) of armed conflict–and, more importantly, levels of domestic or internal violence–have declined dramatically when compared over a long historical perspective.
Journal of Regional Security, 2019
The Rise of Organised Brutality is the latest book in a series of books and articles on the sociological study of war and violence written by the University College Dublin professor, Siniša Malešević. The author uses historical sociological approach to address the question if (organised) violence is really in decline? The book hence is a part of a larger social and philosophical debate about the decline of violence in history. Malešević is firmly opposed to authors such as Steven Pinker or Azar Gat, claiming that violence in human history is not in decline, on the contrary, it increases. Historical sociological method in examining the long-lasting social structures is the cornerstone of understanding why violence increases, despite the long period of peace in the second half of the 20th century.
State-Conducted Political Violence: A Persistent Juridico-Political Phenomenon
Global Transformations and Türkiye, 2024
According to liberal constitutionalizm, the legitimacy of the actions of the sovereign state finds its grounds in democratically formed political power that is subjected to national law inside. The reflection of this thought in IR is the thesis of liberal international order. As such, the state is also deemed to be bound by international law in its relations with other sovereign states, comprising an international order valuing liberal principles of state rule and actions. The defenders of liberal constitutionalizm and liberal constitutional order consider democracy and violence incompatible. However, political violence conducted by states is integral to many democracies. Let alone democracy excluding violence and sovereign state practices, the state practices' legitimacy has been ultimately based on violence. In navigating the complex interplay between state practices and (national and international) norms, this paper looks at the power-law nexus in the national and international orders. It centers this nexus by looking into the emergency and war powers in the legal order, political power and democratic legitimacy, and notions of sovereignty to discuss the spatially selective political violence conducted by states. It argues that domestic and international security politics co-constitute each other. The mutual relationship between democratic notions and violence accompanies this co-constitution. Through the justification on the grounds of political 'necessities', referring to democracy and liberal order, violence can become something processed and laid the basis for through the state institutions formed as a part of democratic requirements. In effect, violence becomes justified as the logical extension of emergency or war prerequisites to save the nation/state. When the subject that is framed as a threat is the same for the state's internal and external actions, national and international aspects of sovereignty merge into the notion of violence, legitimized on the same grounds at both national and international levels.
Violence and social change. The new routes of sovereignty in the globalised world
2020
Violence, far from being a residual or marginal element of social life, remains one of its endogenous factors whose logic is still partly to be investigated. Its forms are various and yet recognizable. The moving geography of the global world is still dotted with this force which operates not only based on identity(religious, ethnic) and gender but also on a technical and systemic basis (economic, financial, technological and communicative). Indeed, modernity and globalization not only did not erase "ancient" violence (for example, violence connected to borders or directed against women, children, indigenous people, infidels), but they also contributed to producing new forms of violence on a technical-procedural and global basis. In the global world, both the "renewed" forms of traditional violence and the forms "new" and unexplored violence that cross other territories than those traditionally regulated by law and politics are manifested. The aim of this essay is to identify the common content between the different forms of violence and the new faces of violence that are unfolding in the global world.