Militarization & Power

NATO, EU Treaty of Lisboa and Portugal: Foreign & Security/Defense Multilevel Governance and Political Authority

by Sandra Rodrigues Balão

Power and Polarity in the International System

by Jeffrey Hart

in Alan Ned Sabrosky (ed.), Polarity and War (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1985).

“Rock, Enroll: Music and Militarization since 9/11,” in The Politics of Post-9/11 Music: Sound, Trauma, and the Music Industry in the Time of Terror. Edited by Joseph P. Fisher and Brian Flota (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011), 13–30.

by Samuel Dwinell

“A Microscopic Insurgent”: Militarization, Health, and Critical Geographies of Violence

by Jenna Loyd

Annals of the Association of American Geographers, special issue on Geographies of Peace and Conflict. 2009 99(5): 863-873.

Wars do not maim with bullets and bombs alone, but cause economic and environmental destruction that leave enduring... more Wars do not maim with bullets and bombs alone, but cause economic and environmental destruction that leave enduring bodily harms. Preparations for war-making also cause negative health effects, from toxic waste to the redirection of social wealth from investment in social needs. But the commonsense juxtaposition of exceptional war to normal peace makes it difficult to recognize processes of militarization, the violent continuities between war and peace, and geographic ties binding spaces of relative health with spaces of harms. This article advances a critical geographic analysis of violence to analyze the ways in which militarization and structural violence reinforce one another. A 2007 cholera epidemic in Iraq was militarized through material and discursive geographies of cholera and violence. Humanitarian claims to cure cholera rested on this dualistic geopolitical imagination, distorting the agents of violence and erasing the grave effects of peacetime and wartime structural violence. By situating cholera within a broader historical and geographic context that shows links between “wartime” and “peacetime” places also suffering premature deaths from the destruction or abandonment of necessary infrastructures, a critical human geography can contribute to struggles for peace and justice.

"War is not healthy for children and other living things"

by Jenna Loyd

Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. 2009 27(3): 403-424. doi:10.1068/d12107

In opposition to the Vietnam War, the US-based group Another Mother for Peace (AMP) coined the compellingly simple... more In opposition to the Vietnam War, the US-based group Another Mother for Peace (AMP) coined the compellingly simple slogan, ‘War is not healthy for children and other living things.’ I analyze the changing ways in which these women connected health and war. They transformed the imagined geography of where war is not healthy from the fields of Vietnam to include their own back yards. In this way they reworked Cold War strictures of motherhood and challenged the sturdy fiction that war is about real men protecting vulnerable women and children. Nonetheless, by failing to examine social hierarchies among different groups of mothers and children, they obscured differential vulnerabilities to premature death domestically. Because AMP did not adequately confront the privileging of white domesticity that structured national security discourses, I argue that they unwittingly reproduced the racial-gender commonsense for war. I draw upon intersectional analyses to situate discourses of health within the racial-gendered constructions of home and nation. These works allow me to question both the apparent neutrality of ‘health’ and examine the limitations of not recognizing ‘the home’ as a space of whiteness in US white women’s antiwar activism.

The New Egypt: A Return to Dictatorship?

by Nivien Saleh

Article written for Miller-McCune, October 20, 2011

Analysis: The military strongmen who oversaw Egypt’s political hierarchy for six decades hover ominously over the... more Analysis: The military strongmen who oversaw Egypt’s political hierarchy for six decades hover ominously over the nation’s new democracy. Nivien Saleh argues the U.S. has the power to pry the generals’ fingers off the levers of power...

The Power to Rebuild

by Lian Gogali

Publish in www.insideindonesia.com

Before a crowd of thousands of Poso residents in late 2009, roughly three years after Christian-Muslim violence in the... more Before a crowd of thousands of Poso residents in late 2009, roughly three years after Christian-Muslim violence in the region had ended, Poso district head Piet Inkiriwang extolled the virtues of investment. ‘If investors come to Poso, we will all shower in money,’ he told the crowd. ‘You’ll have bucketloads.’ These buckets of money were to come from new jobs and compensation payments for land that investors would need.

Economic development is essential to rebuild Poso. But investment does not automatically lead to recovery. All over Indonesia, district heads compete to bring in new investment to their regions. Too often, a pattern of development results in which the government and large companies collude to maximise profits or for personal gain. Meanwhile, communities often have little choice but to accept unfavourable deals in the face of intimidation or to satisfy pressing short-term economic needs.

A major test-case for the benefits of investment in Poso has been the massive Sulewana hydroelectricity project. Agreed to in 2005, the project is a $650 million investment by former vice president Jusuf Kalla’s Bukaka group. Three hydropower stations on the upper reaches of the Poso River will generate around 700 megawatts when complete, making it one of the largest hydroelectricity schemes in Indonesia.

The project has polarised public opinion. On the one hand, it has brought new money and jobs to populations near the project and raised hopes that the electricity crisis in Central Sulawesi will be alleviated. At the same time, those living near transmission lines are concerned about the plant’s long-term impact on health or about how they will earn a living after selling their land to the project. Others doubt the plant will help meet local energy needs, citing plans to transmit much of the electricity generated to industrial customers in South and Southeast Sulawesi.

One location where opposition to the project has come to a head is Peura, a majority-Christian fishing and farming village on the eastern shores of Lake Poso. The controversy in Peura concerns the location of transmission towers for high-voltage overhead power lines. Initially, the community believed that the twenty-one towers to be constructed in Peura would run along mountain ridges, avoiding residential settlements. But it turned out that the company planned to site two of the towers in densely populated areas. Problems in the village began as community members strove to have their concerns over these two towers heard by the company, the district government and the local parliament.

Self-Containment: Achieving Peace In Anarchic Settings

by Petros Sekeris

In anarchic settings, the potential rivals are dragged in an arms race that can degenerate in an open war out of... more In anarchic settings, the potential rivals are dragged in an arms race that can degenerate in an open war out of mutual suspicion. We propose a novel commitment strategy for contestants to avoid both arming and fighting. We allow the players to decentralize the two core decisions that determine whether peace or war ensues. While in centralized countries the decision makers are unable to credibly communicate to their foe their willingness not to arm and not to attack, where the two decisions are dissociated there exists scope for not arming with certainty, and hence overcoming the commitment problem that makes war otherwise inevitable. This mechanism complements existing theories on the Democratic Peace.

Armed in Northeast India: Special Powers, Act or No Act

by Uddipana Goswami

The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act 1958 (AFSPA) forms the core of the Indian Government’s relationship with the... more The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act 1958 (AFSPA) forms the core of the Indian Government’s relationship with the Northeast region. Fifty years after its inception violence in the region is increasing rather than decreasing. While the AFSPA is central to the ways the state relates to citizens in the region and has been a major catalyst for increasing violence, this paper will not treat the AFSPA as the sole instance of the Indian state’s skewed security regime in the Northeast region, but will instead argue that the act is only a symptom of a larger malaise characterised by alienation, militarisation, and a dangerous counter-insurgency strategy. The fallout has been not merely a brutalisation of the security forces, but a legitimisation of violence. A vicious cycle has been set in motion punctuated by three main dynamics: violence giving birth to more violence, brutalisation eroding ideologies, and state-sanctioned terror engendering a disregard for peaceful alternatives. It is argued that unless the Indian state bases its approach to the region on a proper understanding of the nationalistic aspirations and indigenous and ethnic identities of the people there, this cycle cannot be stopped.

Visual Representations of IDF Women Soldiers

by Chava Brownfield-Stein

Seguridad, conflictos y reconversión militar: América Latina después de la guerra fría

by José Antonio Sanahuja

con Marián Hens, Nueva Sociedad nº 138, junio-agosto, 1995, Caracas, ISSN 0251-3552, pp. 48-69

Son tres los factores que básicamente inciden en la redefinición de la función militar en el área latinoamericana: los... more Son tres los factores que básicamente inciden en la redefinición de la función militar en el área latinoamericana: los cambios en el escenario estratégico global; los procesos de consolidación democrática y la nueva relación entre civiles y militares; y los cambios en la política de EE.UU. hacia la región. Las fuerzas armadas expanden sus funciones a nuevos campos y surge un «neonacionalismo» que torna difícil la desmilitarización. Un debate nacional y regional sobre seguridad y el rol de las fuerzas armadas debería contribuir a una mejor articulación política e institucional del sector.

FROM THE BATTLE OF DANDANAQAN TO THE BATTLE OF RAY: THE EFFECTS OF SELJUKS IN THE MIDDLE EAST, 1040-1194

by İsa Burak GONCA

"draft only"

This paper focuses on effects of Seljuks in the Middle East from the Battle of Dandanaqan which was fought in 1040... more This paper focuses on effects of Seljuks in the Middle East from the Battle of Dandanaqan which was fought in 1040 between the army of the Seljuks and the Ghaznavid Empire and to the Battle of Rey which was between Seljuks and Khwarezm Shahs in 1194. It reviews effects of the occupation of Khorasan after the Battle of Dandanaqan in 1040 and Seljuk expansion to the Middle East through the exploratory and interpretive analyses of regional rivalry between Seljuks and the other states in the Middle East such as Abbasids and Fathimids. Firstly, the paper presents a brief historical account of events. Then, it focuses on the questions of why Seljuks expand and move to the Middle East and what were the effects of Seljuks in the region between 1040 and 1194.  Then there will be the analyses of the role of the Seljuks in the Crusades, the relations between Seljuks and other states in the region and the effects of Seljuks on the other states in the Middle East. Finally, it concludes by the narrative of how a non-Arab state became a Middle Eastern power first, then how she became influential in the region.

Martial Law and Military Power in the Construction of the South African State

by Jonathan Hyslop

Men, militaries and civilian societies in interaction.

by Jarna Soilevuo Grønnerød

Published in Norma, Nordic Journal for Masculinity Studies 3(2): 85-98.
Co-authored: Tallberg, Teemu & Valenius, Johanna with Ahlbäck, Anders; Kivimäki, Ville & Soilevuo Grønnerød, Jarna

War

by Antoine Bousquet

Book chapter for Edwin Amenta, Kate Nash, & Alan Scott (eds.), New Blackwell Companion to Political Sociology (forthcoming)

The study of war as an object of social theory has in recent decades finally begun to receive the attention that such... more The study of war as an object of social theory has in recent decades finally begun to receive the attention that such an enduring and multi-faceted phenomenon merits. Indeed, the history of armed conflict is closely connected to the emergence of the modern world, the rise of the nation-state and the development of industrial capitalism, as the work of prominent historical sociologists has now shown. The ways in which societies fight and organise military force can thus shed invaluable light on their wider social and cultural dynamics, revealing the workings of some of their most intimate mechanisms of social power and the roles played by discipline, rationalisation and technoscience. Further analytical challenges await those scholars seeking to grapple with the ongoing transformations of war in a globalising world, from the changing relations of military institutions to civil society in the developed world to the occurrence of “new wars” and the resurgence of non-state actors contesting the state’s monopoly on violence.

Queer Eyes on What Prize? Ending Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT)

by Therese Quinn

Co-authored with Erica Meiners. Op Ed published in Windy City Times (2009, February 25).