Violence and security reading notes
Lecture 1, Introducing political violence.
Amoore and de Goede (2014)
What is violence?
Violence appears as a rupture in the recognisable order of daily life when medias reports
senseless knife attacks.
We are also aware of violence as an instrument of politics, we know that sometimes violent
acts are carried out in name of a cause or to achieve a political objective.
Even within political realm, distinction between senseless violence and violence with a
political objective persists.
The way in which a problem, danger or threat is represented has a real and material effect
on what can be done, and what kind of response can be formulated.
Violence and targeting in the war on terror.
Drone targeting in Pakistan.
o The borderlands between Afghanistan and Pakistan are cast as a particularly
dangerous and unruly geographical space.
o Amid widespread political consensus that the borderlands represent spatial origins
of future terrorist violence in the West, US started targeted killing of militants using
drones.
o For the state to exercise ‘monopoly of violence’, but to do this without armies, the
future of terrorist violence of northern Pakistan has to be understood in a particular
way.
Financial targeting in Pakistan.
o Global financial authorities expressed concern over Pakistan’s position in global fight
against money laundering and terrorism financing.
o FATF charged with agenda designed to cut off terrorists’ access to financial
resources and global banking systems.
o The global community demanded banking reform and changes in national policing
practice against suspect monies.
Twin targeting in Pakistan.
o It is important to understand way in which financial sanctions work and the effects
they may have.
o Guidelines by financial institutions raise a number of questions concerning
legitimacy of charitable work.
o Seemingly less violent practices make it more difficult in cases of humanitarian
emergency to deliver aid on the ground.
o West’s hesitant reaction to floods in Pakistan in 2010 lays bare the profoundly
conflicting ways of thinking about areas regarded as sources of danger in continuing
war on terror.
o Possible that both drone strikes and financial targeting in case of contemporary
Pakistan may have violent effects on populations.
The relationship between violence and power.
Reflection.
, o Example above shows how difficult it is to distinguish between war and non-war,
combatant, and non-combatant.
o Shows that it is not easy to recognise violence: political measures that are pursued
through diplomacy and international dialogue still have violent implications and
effects on ground.
War as an instrument of politics
o War is considered to be a political instrument involving the military engagement of
strategic aims otherwise pursued through political processes and institutions.
Collective violence
o Question of violence and violent politics is much broader than question of war,
especially in modern conflicts where battlefield is not clearly demarcated or
entrenched.
o Tilly proposes a comprehensive typology of interpersonal violence, in which extent
of coordination among perpetrators, lead to a distinction of ‘brawls’ from ‘broken
negotiations’ from ‘violent rituals’.
Violence as indistinct
o Although Tilly emphasises socially embedded nature of any violence, his typology
still demarcates violence as a distinct form of social interaction.
When politics become violent
o Using the Yugoslavia crisis, Campbell showed how violence was possible. He started
to identify different categories of citizen on basis of ethnic and religious divide.
o Particular representational practices and social discourses are themselves violent.
o For Arendt, power is too often equated with force and violence, when in fact it is a
completely different phenomenon, relying on different social forces.
Visible and invisible power.
For Foucault, it is not the case that war begins at the point where politics reaches its limit,
but precisely that politics itself is deeply inscribed with the techniques and violence of war.
His analysis draws our attention to the everyday forms of violence that become the
preconditions for bombing and killing.
Butler is concerned with forms of violence that are intrinsic to way that human subjects are
dehumanised, such that multiple other violence can be acted upon them with impunity.
Less immediately visible violence that see war spilling over into spaces of everyday life
matter greatly to what is possible in global politics, to what can be said and done.
For Zizek, what comes to count as violence in global politics is that which makes a visible tear
in the fabric of daily life, the subjective violence with its identifiable subjects.
Bigelow’s film illustrates vividly ways in which violence is located not only in visceral acts of
theatre of war, but also within very conditions that make it possible.
Arendt (2006) On violence.
Turning to discussions of phenomenon of power, there exists a consensus among political
theorists from Left to Right to effect that violence is nothing more than most flagrant
manifestation of power.
o Power is an instrument of rule, while rule, we are told, owes its existence to ‘instinct
of domination’.
o The impossibility to localise responsibility and to identify enemy is the most potent
causes of the current world-wide rebellious unrest, its chaotic nature, and its
dangerous tendency to get out of control.
, o Many recent discoveries of an inborn instinct of domination and an innate
aggressiveness in human animal were preceded by similar philosophic statements.
All political institutions are manifestations and materialisations of power; they petrify and
decay as soon as living power of people ceases to uphold them.
o The extreme form of power is All against One, the extreme form of violence is One
against All.
Power, strength, force, authority, violence—words to indicate means by which man rules
over man; they are held to be synonyms because they have same function.
o Power corresponds to human ability not just to act but to act in concert.
o Strength designates something in singular, an individual entity; it is property
inherent in an object or person and belongs to its character.
o Force should be reserved, in terminal language, for the “forces of nature” or the
“forces of circumstances”, to indicate energy released by physical or social
movements.
o Authority can be vested in persons or it can be vested in offices.
o Violence is distinguished by its instrumental character. Phenomenologically it is
close to strength.
Institutionalised power in organised communities often appears in guise of authority,
demanding instant, unquestioning recognition; no society could function without it.
o Must admitted that it is tempting to think of power in terms of command and
obedience.
o Chances of revolution have significantly decreased in proportion to increased
destructive capacities of weapons at unique disposition of governments.
o Where power has disintegrated, revolutions are possible but not necessary.
No government exclusively based on means of violence has ever existed.
o Power is indeed of the essence of all government, but violence is not.
o Power needs no justification, being inherent in the very existence of political
communities; what it does need is legitimacy.
o Power and violence, though they are distinct phenomena, usually appear together.
o To substitute violence for power can bring victory, but the price is very high; for it is
not only paid by the vanquished, it is also paid by the victor.
Terror is not the same as violence; it is rather, the form of gov that comes into being when
violence having destroyed all power, does not abdicate but remains in full power.
Krause (2016) From Armed Conflict to Political Violence.
International relations as a discipline focuses on “war” side of this situation and it starts its
analysis when large scale violence has already occurred.
There are four good reasons for moving, empirically and conceptually, “beyond war” to
study political violence in general terms and from a holistic perspective.
o Narrow empirical focus on war obscures scope and scale of intentional harm
associated with “nonwar” forms of violence.
o It limits scope of debate on moral and legal responsibility to forms of violence
covered by just war principles, while obscuring morally equivalent responsibility.
o It hinders understanding of way different forms of violence maybe linked through
processes that escalate and exacerbate conflicts.
Four facts about contemporary violence make good starting points.
o Most lethal violence does not occur in conflict zones.
, o Majority of states most affected by lethal violence are not at war.
o Levels of lethal violence in some non-conflict settings are higher than in war zones.
o Much of this violence is organised, non-random, and in some sense political.
First three claims can be substantiated by approaching violence form a sociological,
criminological, or public health perspective.
o For the fourth claim, there are few systematic overviews of scope of political
violence in nonwar settings.
Zooming in on war-related violence highlights limitations in way in which human and social
costs of war are presented.
o Interstate war is all but obsolete.
A focus on numbers can highlight two important ways in which widely cited figures
systematically underestimate impact of armed conflict.
o First is undercounting of direct victims of lethal violence within armed conflicts,
which arises from methodological choices and data limitations of conflict.
o The second is the lack of attention to large-scale indirect consequences, some of
which are lethal, of conflict and violence.
o Direct impact of conflict does not rest on narrow concept of agency but includes
diffuse actions by corporate or collective agents.
Most scholarship assumes that political violence can be identified and categorised by
focusing on degree and scale of organisation of violent actors.
o Dominant focus has been on physical nature of act of violence causing death or
injury.
o Attempts to move beyond a somatic understanding of violence have included
psychological violence, sexual and gender-based violence.
Large-scale “legal violence” has two important consequences.
o When perpetrated in nonconflict contexts, it undermines respect for state security
institutions, creating a vacuum in which other violent actors can operate.
o It is wrapped up in pre-conflict dynamics, as weakening legitimacy or efficiency of
state institutions facilitates resort to violence by diverse actors to resolves conflicts.
o A broad conception of violence is critical to understand how different forms of
violence may be linked to war and armed conflict.
Extending how we think about political violence has implications of just war theory, and for
ethics of violence.
o We lack clear and integrated concepts to help us understand “just and unjust
political violence”.
o The focus of ethical debate remains on war, and we have few reasons to think
patchwork of legal doctrine adds to normative framework.
Linking war and other forms of political violence and adopting a holistic approach to
measuring and monitoring draws attention to phenomena traditionally ignored.
o Dynamics of violence could work both ways: microlevel violence can feed upward
into large-scale conflict.
A second generative consequence of violence is temporal and can be seen in relationship
between conflict and post-conflict violence.
o A third form of mutual reinforcement can be seen where violent actors pursuing
political and private goals interact and support each other.
o Seemingly disconnected forms of violence can be linked in complex ways.
