In the message below, directed to critical (?) geographers, I find worrying
ambiguities and omissions.
What "starts from the premise that Western security requires...the long-term
interagency occupation" of the non-West? Is it the "panel" of
not-so-critical geographers and other "freeworld academics"? In which case,
are we being invited to mirror the preoccupations of the occupying imperial
forces?
I note the worrying lack of agency and concern of the terms in such
formulations as
* "whole-of-government engagement is picking up on lessons", rather
than governments and dominant regimes;
* "the military is now assigned a new totalising role" rather than
"Dominant Western elites and NATO are determined to create a new militarised
quasi-civilian domination in the areas of new totalising (totalitarian?)
subordination
* "pacification and stabilisation campaigns" rather than
"destabilisation of elites and regimes not committed to subordination into
Western domination. Not "containment" but wholesale occupation.
* "genuinely civilian affairs" rather than affairs which in liberal
doctrine were treated as part of free non-state arrangements but are now
becoming integrated into a post-liberal practice and doctrine of 'whole of
governance' external domination.
I note the lack of interest in the anti-domination struggle of subordinated
populations (and disappearance of the Soviet regime) which has led to the
struggle for a new imperial re-subordination. There is no trace of
conceptual distance from the new doctrines of imperial power; no trace of
focal difference from anything that a mix of Davos/NATOpolitan elites would
want to have discussed while above all wanting to make sure was not
discussed.
When the proposal refers to the new practice, in the last line, by saying it
"incorporates long-term, inter-agency occupation by Western military
personal, development workers and governmental experts", it seems to me that
the proposal itself "incorporates long-term inter-agency occupation" of our
heads and our persons and of 'scholarly subjectivity' and research practice
by such forces of the reconquista.... As experts, we are being invited to
conceptual and practical complicity in the new order.... Project Camelot
rises again as a sub-branch of a military-CIA operation, no longer just at
the level of Latin America and worldwide....
I would love to be given evidence that I was completely wrong!
Best wishes
Tom
P.S. Click on www.kiafrica.org. for our 'voluntourism + study trip project'
in rural Uganda. ... We've just revised the Kanaama Interactive web-site,
the pictures, and the things you can choose to do..... Read the very
positive reports from our first year of visitors!....Did you know that maths
teaching in Ugandan schools is more advanced than in English ones? .....
This year, UK students and researchers are going on study trips, using our
Ugandan centre as a base for different individual and collective field
projects.... Might you be interested? Click on www.kiafrica.org.
P.P.S. For a free electronic copy of the most recent version of the BNIM
(the biographic-narrative interpretive method of research interviewing for
lived experience) Short Guide and Detailed Manual , just click on
[log in to unmask] Please indicate your institutional affiliation and the
purpose for which you might envisage using BNIM's open-narrative interviews,
and I'll send it straight away.
-----Original Message-----
From: A forum for critical and radical geographers
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jan Bachmann
Sent: 14 May 2009 09:39
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: CfP - ISA 2010, Panel on "Liberal interventionism and reflections
on the re-emergence of counterinsurgency"
Apologies for Cross-Posting
Call for Papers
International Studies Association Annual Conference
New Orleans, 17 - 20 February 2010
Organisers: Colleen Bell & Jan Bachmann (University of Bristol)
Panel Proposal on:
Liberal Interventionism and Reflections on the Re-emergence of
Counterinsurgency
The contemporary terrain of military interventionism has evolved to
incorporate and nuance the lessons of counterinsurgency, mirroring aspects
of the pacification and stabilization campaigns popularized in the era of
de-colonization struggles. Today, long-term whole-of-government engagement
is picking up on these lessons across crisis zones. Even in regions in the
global South where violent conflict is not necessarily present, the military
is now assigned a new totalising role in genuinely civilian affairs that go
beyond traditional counterinsurgency strategies. This panel investigates
this terrain of international security as emblematic of a renewed liberal
strategy of war by other means. It begins from the premise that Western
security requires not simply the cessation of violent hostilities, but the
social, political and economic transformation of whole populations. It
incorporates long-term, inter-agency occupation by Western military
personal, development workers and governmental experts.
Papers may reflect on:
* the different features of counterinsurgency such as campaigns of
"cultural
awareness", or "human terrain mappings",
* strategic alliances that have emerged such as whole-of-government,
3D and
their manifestations in civil-military cooperation as well as on the limits
of these new totalising assemblages of governance,
* the requirements for new actors involved; from the incorporation of
anthropologists to the culturally versatile combat-development expert,
* the designs of contingent or sub-sovereignty alongside
re-articulation of
a Western sovereign frontier that works principally through techniques of
containment,
* the rise of policing as a transnational, non-combat military
expansion and
possible (dis-) similiarities to previous ideas of police science (or
Policeywissenschaft)
Please send your abstracts by 28 May 2009 to Colleen Bell
([log in to unmask]) and Jan Bachmann ([log in to unmask])
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