Call For Papers
AAG 2017 Boston (April 5-8, 2017)
Session title: Spaces of War Power/Police Power: Intersections, Thresholds, Modes, and Contestation
Organizers: Ben Butler, Killian McCormack and Leah Montange (University of Toronto)
This paper session aims to analyze and explore the versatility of modes of war power and police power, and the spaces and sites at the intersections and thresholds between war and police. Although the intersection between police and war power is not entirely novel, it is increasingly apparent today in the militarization of police forces and the extension of logics of war to domestic security practices, as well as in the combination of police and war tactics in peacekeeping and stability operations of militaries (Bachmann et al, 2014; Neocleous, 2014). At the same time, the boundary between inside and outside the nation-state has become troubled with the instability of traditional divisions between home and battlefield, murky divisions between war and “military operations other than war” (MOOTW), the rise of counterinsurgency (COIN), and in the militarization of police forces and militarization of borders (Anais, 2011; Bell, 2011; Coleman, 2007; Graham, 2011; Loyd, 2011; Nevins, 2002). However, while tracing diagrams of power in the interstices of these domains is important, it is crucial to identify these as sites of resistance as well. As Robin DG Kelley (2016) has observed, the war to colonize is also the war to decolonize.
We welcome papers that trace these themes in a wide variety of contexts, and that are provoked by questions such as: What are the continuities and discontinuities amongst war power, police power, and border militarization? In what ways are war power, police power and border militarization relationally constituted through resistance, struggle, and contestation? How do the intersections between police and war power challenge conventional understandings of the parameters of war and warfare?
We are especially interested in exploring these questions in relation to:
-A variety of violences, struggles, wars, and conflicts ranging from counter-terrorism operations to the war on drugs to border militarization and border control
-Transnational agreements and arrangements for foreign security assistance, border enforcement, and police training
-The circulation and exchange of technologies, material objects, and practices across military, police, and border control agencies
-War and police power in contemporary peacekeeping, stability, and counterinsurgency operations, as well as in domestic operations including counter-protest, immigration raids, and broken windows policing.
-Processes of racialization, gendering, and corporealization that occur through war power and police power
-Material sites and objects of war power and police power as nexuses of power and resistance
-Counter-hegemonic cultural production, protest, or everyday practice in relation to war and police power.
Please submit abstracts of no more than 250 words to Ben Butler (benjamin.butler@mail.utoronto.ca), Killian McCormack (k.mccormack@mail.utoronto.ca) and Leah Montange (leah.montange@mail.utoronto.ca) by October 14, 2016.
Bibliography
Anais, S. (2011) “Ethical interventions: Non-lethal weapons and the governance of insecurity.” Security Dialogue, 42(6), 537–552.
Bachmann, J., Bell, C. and Holmqvist, C. (2014) War, Police and Assemblages of Intervention. New York: Routledge.
Bell, C. (2011) Civilianizing warfare: ways of war and peace in modern counterinsurgency. Journal of International Relations and Development,14(3), 309–332.
Coleman, M. (2007) “Immigration Geopolitics Beyond the Mexico–US Border.” Antipode 39 (1), 54–76.
Graham, S. (2011). Cities under siege: the new military urbanism. New York: Verso.
Kelley, R.D.G. (2016) “Mike Brown’s Body: A Meditation on War, Race & Democracy.” Lecture on April 11, 2016 for the Hall Center for the Humanities’ 2015-2016 Humanities Lecture Series. Retrieved from: www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP8FP8qjKgc
Loyd, J. M. (2011) “Peace is Our Only Shelter”: Questioning Domesticities of Militarization and White Privilege. Antipode, 43(3), 845–873.
Neocleous, M. (2014) War power, police power. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Nevins, J. (2002) Operation Gatekeeper : The Rise of The “illegal Alien” and the Making of the U.S.-Mexico Boundary. New York: Routledge.