States of Violence: Geopolitics, Law, Technology

International Review of Sociology Revue Internationale de Sociologie, 2021

This article addresses the relevance of Israeli soldier narrations in which they bear witness to human agency under conflict and adversity to call for the end of the occupation of the Palestinian territories. The soldiers, members of the NGO Breaking the Silence, speak up about the occupation, showing the conflicting experiences of military and civilian life in a society that normalises the denial of military human rights violations. By asking Israeli society to listen to their stories, the soldiers’ accounts show how the historic military power in the Occupied Palestine Territories (OPT) has evolved into a naturalisation of violence that generates a radical configuration of intractability, which has transformed the perception and meaning of violence. By framing the soldiers’ accounts in the space fragmentation and securitisation practices, the article argues how the asymmetrical use of force is exerted to manage and control the lives of the Palestinian population. The speech act addresses the ethics of doing something to make a difference in the conflict and the wish to renew social bonds, redefine pride and shame and return a sense of honour, loyalty and self-respect

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

PESA Agora, 2024

The first pro-Palestine demonstration called after the latest counterattack by a host of Palestinian forces on October 7, endorsed by Students for Justice in Palestine, the ANSWER Coalition and others, put matters very plainly: "This is what it means to Free Palestine: not just slogans and rallies but armed confrontation with the oppressors." Of course, the colonisers do not want to hear such realities and hypocritically condemn them as ‘violent’ and ‘terrorist.’ In Indianapolis, we had to keep our coalition together in the face of the fear-mongering by both Democrat and Republican politicians. Unfortunately, many on the academic ‘left’ – already predisposed to conciliatory readjustments – continue echoing the same talking points as the State Department. Henry Giroux, for example, contends that ‘The reach of violence and death in Israel by Hamas is shocking in its depravity and has been well-publicised in the mainstream media and in other cultural apparatuses.’ For a ‘critical’ scholar, it should instinctively raise questions when one finds truth in the pro-Zionist media and cultural outlets and remains merely satisfied with noting the ‘one-sidedness’ of such coverage. Giroux goes further still, calling us to do more than ‘exclusively condemn Hamas’s atrocious violence as a violation of human rights’ and to hold Israel’s apparently asymmetrical violence to equal condemnation. ‘Refusing to hold all sides in this war to the standards of international law is a violation of human dignity, justice and democratic principles,’ Giroux proclaims.

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.

We argue that the spatialization of violence in the counterterrorism operations of the War on Terror provides insight for understanding how these operations are legitimized and how they pose a challenge to an international order centered on state sovereignty. Against the background of a discussion of the key markers of statehood and recent normative challenges to state sovereignty, we interpret how discourses about “ungoverned spaces” influence the creation of spaces of violence in counterterrorism operations of the War on Terror. We then offer a conceptualization of these new spaces of violence, comparing “ungoverned spaces” discourse with the logic and justification of recent drone strikes. Finally, we interrogate how the existence of these different spatializations of violence fulfill legitimatory purposes in the War on Terror and what this means for the future of the international order.

2010

International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy

The collection of articles in this special issue highlights the benefits of interdisciplinarity for understanding the complexities of state violence. The authors include legal and political scholars, criminologists, historians, social workers, sociologists, anthropologists and literary theorists, who, by adapting their disciplinary lenses and international perspectives have provided a fulsome understanding of modes of state violence, its effects on citizens and communities, and ways in which civil society and state instrumentalities may aim to prevent, respond to and seek redress and remedies for the injuries inflicted by the state in this threshold year of 2020.

Journal of Power, 2009

This article analyzes the architectural and administrative transformation of some military checkpoints inside the Occupied Territories into ‘terminals.’ The new ‘terminals’ have been presented as replacing the military checkpoints operating as ‘state of exception’ with a ‘normalized’ legal order and ‘modernized’ forms of power. As this article reveals, however, the Israeli authorities’ claim of normalization and modernization is false and misleading. Instead I argue that the reinvention of the ‘terminals’ has not been accompanied by a real transformation of the legal order or the forms of power and is, consequently, only an attempt to circumvent the criticism that the ‘state of exception’ often faces. The ‘terminals’ thus represent a case where the oppression and exclusion that characterize the ‘state of exception’ continue to exist, without having to face the question of legitimacy.

Progress in Human Geography, 2021

This report focuses on the diverse and multiple manifestations of political, state, and counter-state violence. Many of the examinations of political violence in this report highlight the continued need for disparate methodological and analytic lenses towards robust understandings of political violence across scales. Displacements and mobilities associated with flight from conflict are discussed in relation to the institutionalization of harm, trauma and containment through various state and supranational mechanisms of control. These mobilities include border crossings and associated violence against vulnerable populations seeking refuge. This is buttressed by discursive binary logics, such as us/them categorizations, which remain endemic to both structural and physical violence and foundational to right wing populism, jingoism, and other forms of political extremism. This report concludes by arguing the peace is not the opposite of war but rather its temporal substitute and partner...

In Lieu of an Introduction-A Bridge Over Troubled Waters-Many an independence movement in the post-colonial world has unleashed extremely brutal forms of violence, especially against the peasantry and the minorities. Such violence, which has bewildered some to the extent that it was treated as if statecraft in the Global South has never included orchestrated acts of violence before independence, cannot be explained by vague references to 'culture.' Nor could it be counted as an expression of greed and self-interest of newly rising classes or ethno-religious communities alone. Instead, orchestrated violence perpetrated by the state when it is no longer in the hands of the colonial or imperial powers must be seen in the light of issues that have fomented rebellion and uprisings in the first place. Often, incumbent regimes of the post-colonial era possess a questionable monopoly of power while as yet lacking sufficient legitimacy in the aftermath of the collapse or takeover of the former, colonial or imperial order. Moreover, post-imperial and post-colonial humanscapes of nationhood have a highly problematic relationship with liberation wars conducted under the banner of a united 'nation.' The term itself begs question in the midst of a canopy of peoples with different loyalties and a relatively dubious conception of citizenship as a form of belonging. This is due to the fact that colonial and imperial histories do not bestow upon the colonized or the dominated 'subjects' a sense of pride and joy in relation to their forced allegiance to the state. In that sense, independence has nothing much to offer to those who are not in a position to declare it in the name of the nation and who have to the means to resort to violence in order to control its results. That precondition translates into military-bureaucratic classes, aristocratic elements, westernized bourgeoisie and the elite, and such other conglomerations, who extend the promise of Eden on earth to the suffering masses in return for supporting or taking part in the revolutionary turnover. And yet, however coherent their objectives may appear, and however ideologically sound their methods may be, post-colonial statehood nonetheless reflect a serious societal malaise that needs to be addressed with regard to 'casting out' those who do not befit the grid. That constitutes the essential link between nation building, forced migration and dismemberment. It also is one of the clear points of continuation between colonial/ imperial and post-colonial forms of statecraft. The object of this article is to raise questions concerning this lineage/linkage between forced migration and statehood in post-colonial and post-imperial societies. The main argument is premised on the historical specificity of such societies with a qualifier