Louise Richardson What terrorists want: understanding terrorist threat,

Chapter 1 (What is Terrorism?)

The only universally accepted attribute of the term terrorism is that it is

negative.
Terrorism means deliberately and violently targeting civilians for political
purposes.
7 characteristics of the term terrorism:
o A terrorist act is politically inspired.
o Not terrorism if it doesnt involve violence or the threat of violence
o Point of terrorism is to communicate a message. Not violence for the
sake of violence but rather to convey a political message.
o The act and the victim usually have symbolic significance. Shock
value of the act is greatly enhanced by the power of the symbol that the
target represents. The point is for the psychological impact to be
greater than the actual physical act.
o Terrorism is the act of sub-state groups not states. This is not to argue
that states do not use terrorism as an instrument of foreign policy (e.g.
Iran, Iraq, Syria and Libya have sponsored terrorism abroad because
they did not want to incur the risk of overtly attacking more powerful
countries. Great powers have supported terrorist groups abroad as a
way of engaging in proxy warfare or covertly bringing about internal
change in difficult countries without openly displaying their strength.
o Victim of the violence and the audience the terrorists are trying to
reach are not the same. Point of the act is to use the victim as a means
of altering the behaviour of the larger audience, usually a government.
Victims chosen either at random or as representative of some larger
group.
o Deliberate targeting of civilians sets terrorism apart from other forms
of political violence, even the most proximate form - guerilla warfare.
Guerillas are an irregular army fighting the regular forces of the state. They
conduct themselves along military lines are generally have large numbers of
adherents, which permit then to launch quasi-military operations and their goal
is to defeat the enemy. HOWEVER, terrorists dont have any illusions about
their ability to inflict military defeat on the enemy.
Another perspective is that an action is terrorist only if it takes place in a
democratic state that permits peaceful forms of opposition.

Terrorism is the weapon of those who want to effect change, and to do so

quickly, but have lacked the numbers to either prevail in a democratic system
or to launch a viable military campaign.

Goal of terrorists either temporal (can be met within current socio-political

configuration, these goals could be won/lost without overthrowing the
fundamental balance of power) or transformational (by its nature not subject to
negotiation and its satisfaction would require the complete destruction of the
regional state system).
Other variable is the relationship of the movement to the community they
claim to represent. Isolated (easiest to defeat, most vulnerable to defections

and internal splits and ultimately have proven easiest to counter with
traditional security measures. Lacking financial support, they have often been
forced to engage in criminal activity to fund their operations and this in turn
exposes them to capture. E.g. left wing extremists November 17 in Greece or
GRAPO in Spain have only been able to inflict limited damage on their
enemies). Close ties (more dangerous. Broader communities share the
aspirations of the terrorist groups even if they dont always approve of their
means of achieving these objectives. A terrorist group can thrive in this kind
of complicit society. Broader population provides passive support. When
authorities come looking, these terrorists are absorbed into the community.
Community provides willing new recruits to the movement. Groups that have
a strong base of support within the community can last indefinitely (e.g. many
ethno nationalist groups).

Morality of terrorism. Terrorists claim:

o It is a last resort (ANC bombing campaign of 1980s)
o There was no other strategy available (may be the only option
available if one lacks support, wants immediate results and is prepared
to murder innocents)
o Terrorism works. E.g. IRA violence in Northern Ireland brought
attention to the denial of civil rights to Northern Irish Catholics.
o Collective guilt
o Moral equivalence
o Everybody does it.

Ways of Knowing: Competing Methodologies in Social and Political Studies

Chapter 1 Summary
Introduction Chapter 1
People can never seem to agree about the nature of reality and how to
understand it
Presuppositions, aggressive rhetoric, economic and legal muscle and authority
all play roles in securing scientific knowledge
Chapter aims to explain the root causes of the disagreements over knowledge
Introduces difft ways of knowing and how these affect the methods we
choose to study social science
Researchers have their own implicit understanding of the world and how it
should be studied underlying their research design/methods
- These underlying priors give researchers philosophical direction to answer
questions on a given project
- Guide them in answering ?s on the nature of truth, on certainty and
objectivity
Much of contemporary social science driven by a researchers familiarity w/
particular methods
- This often is done w/ little reflection on how a given method corresponds
to a researchers underlying methodology
Book focuses on how methods and methodologies relate to one another

Introduces 2 central methodological perpsectives: naturalism and

constructivism
- They are the main camps in the battle over reality in social science
research
Each perspective employs common methods in different ways
- Ex: Both naturalists and constructivists use comparisons, but differently
Both methodologies are allies in the fight against ignorance/sloppy thinking
Naturalists and constructivists share:
- An appreciation of honesty
- Attention to detail and empirical accuracy
- An embrace of reason and utility of rhetoric
- The need to address and minimize unwanted bias
- The desire to produce knowledge which can be reproduced by others who
follow in their footsteps

Methodological Foundations:
Scientists disagree on many fundamental issues
- How do we understand the nature of the world we study?
- Is there only one type of scientific knowledge?
- What is the overall objective of scientific study?
- How should we assess which methods, data and evidence are appropriate?
- How do we assess competing claims?
- How do we know who is right?
- How do we know?
Must answer these questions by first simplifying
- Do this by suggesting that most methodological work can be grouped
under 2 methodological rubrics
The most significant differences & major disagreements in social science can
be traced back to these methodological differences
Waltz: Students too concerned with methods and little concerned with the
logic of their use
Methods as tools, methodologies as well-equipped toolboxes
- Methods: Problem-specific techniques
- Different occupations provide specialization, while complementing one
another
Too many scientists rely on only one method
No technique or method of investigating is self-validating; its status a as a
research instrument is dependent on epistemological justifications
Ontology The study of being; asks What is the world really made of?
Epistemology The philosophical study of knowledge; asks What is
knowledge?
Methodology Refers to the ways in which we acquire knowledge; asks How
do we know?
- It is the study of which methods are appropriate to produce reliable
knowledge
Method research techniques
Methodology An investigation of the concepts, theories and basic principles
of reasoning on a subject

Marsh and Furlong Ones ontological and epistemological positions are

pretty much permanent
- Author disagrees they should be able to change depending on what
youre doing
Methods and methodologies should change in accordance w/ the ontological
and epistemological status of the question under study
Researchers should master several methods and methodologies and be able to
consciously choose b/t them
Social scientists need to understand that:
- There can be different types of knowledge
- That knowledge can be accessed in many different ways
- That knowledge is not always unrelated to interest
The methodological traditions covered are created here as ideal types

Naturalism:
This view first articulated in the natural sciences field
Assumes that there is a Real World independent of our experience of it
- Believes we can gain access to this World by thinking, observing, and
recording our experiences
- This process helps reveal patterns in nature that are often obscured by
complexities of life
Thus naturalism seeks to discover and explain patterns that are assumed to
exist in nature
Also known as positivism, empiricism and behavioralism
Rely on knowledge generated by sensual perception
- Observation, direct experience
Something is true when someone has seen it to be true
Also use logic and reason if backed by experience
Naturalisms approach embraces the following features:
- Observational and experiential statements can be tested empirically
according to a falsification principle and a correspondence theory of truth
- Possible to distinguish b/t value laden and factual statements
- Facts are, in principle, theoretically independent
- The scientific project should be aimed at the general (nomothetic) at the
expense of the particular (idiographic)
- Human knowledge is both singular and cumulative
Edward Wilsons Consilience: Believes all knowledge is intrinsically
unified/interlocked by a small number of natural laws
- He aims to unify all of the major branches of knowledge under the banner
of natural science
Constructivism:
Many patterns of interest to naturalists are seen as ephemeral and contingent
on human agency
Patterns of interest are a product of our own making
Everyone sees different things; what we see is determined by complicated mix
of social and contextual influences/presuppositions
Also known as interpretivism or Gadamers hermeneutics

Recognize that people are intelligent, reflective and willful, and that these
characteristics matter for how we understand the world
Our perceptions are channeled through the human mind in often elusive ways
If our investigation is opened up to perceptions of the world, we open the
possibility of multiple experiences
Individual and social characteristics can facilitate or obscure a given world
perception
Once a social law is known to humans, they exploit it in ways that can
undermine its law-like features
Human agency creates things that have a different ontological status than the
objects studied by natural scientists
- This gives rise to a class of facts that dont exist in the physical object
world:
Social facts (money, property rights or sovereignty) depend on human
agreement and require human institutions for their very existence
Tend to draw on more diverse sources and on different types of evidence
- Find utility in empathy, authority, myths, etc.
Overall objective of constructivist science is very different from naturalism
Constructivists try to understand action in circular and hermeneutic terms as a
meaningful item w/in a wider context of conventions and assumptions
Constructivists seek to capture and understand the meaning of a social action
for the agent performing it
Truth lies in the eyes of the observer and in the constellation of power and
force that supports the truth
Hold little hope in securing an absolute truth
Some qualities of constructivist research:
- The world includes social facts
- Observations and experience depend on the perspective of the investigator
- Observational statements can contain bias and can be understood in
different ways
- Even factual statements are value-laden
- Knowledge gained by idiographic study is embraced in its own right
- There is value in understanding, and there can be more than one way to
understand
Flyvbjergs book Making Social Science Matter: Values practical, applied
knowledge over general, nomothetic, knowledge
- He promotes phronetic social science in order to connect knowledge to
power and contribute to practical reason

Scientific realism:
They blend features of both naturalism and constructivism
It is a fully metaphysical position
A relatively new approach
Ontologically, it comes closest to naturalism
- Recognize a Real World independent of our experience
- Also realize that there are layers to the reality they study
How far does the Real World extend into our social experience?
Believe the best way to uncover truths is through scientific (naturalist)
approaches

Avoids references to universal laws and hypothetic-deductive approaches to

explanation
They question the neutrality of the scientist and their language
They focus on necessity and contingency rather than regularity
Focus on ways which causal processes could produce different results in
different contexts
Recognize that powers can and do exist unexercised appreciate the openended nature of human exchange
Good science should be driven by questions, not methods!
Realism is compatible w/ a relatively wide range of research methods
But it implies that the particular choices of method should depend on the
nature of the object of study and what one wants to learn from it
Great utility of tailoring our choice of methods to the problems that interest us
(rather than tailoring our problems to the methods we have learned)
Should be skeptical of universal narratives
Call is for methodological PLURALISM

Conclusion:
Naturalists have developed a clear hierarchy of methods
- The experimental method; has ability to control and order causal and
temporal relationships
- Statistical approaches
- Small-N comparative approaches
- Case studies, interviews and historical approaches (only use these when
faced w/ a paucity of data or relative comparisons)
For constructivists, the objective of social study is to interpret and understand,
NOT TO PREDICT
- Thus, they can draw from a much larger epistemological table
Constructivists have little faith in the naturalists hierarchy of methods
Constructivist hierarchy done in terms of the popularity of the given
approach/methods
- Discourse analysis, process tracing
- Use comparisons to develop associations
Questions about Chapter
This chapter aimed to explain the root causes of the disagreements over
knowledge claims in the social sciences by introducing different methodologies and
showing how these affect the methods we choose to study social science. Researchers
have their own implicit understanding of the world and how it should be studied
underlying their research design and methods. Much of contemporary social science
is driven by a researchers familiarity with particular methods. The problem is that
this often is done with little reflection on how a given method corresponds to a
researchers underlying methodology. Methodology involves an investigation of the
concepts, theories and basic principles of reasoning on a subject, while a method is a
research technique. Methods and methodologies should change in accordance with the
ontological and epistemological status of the question under study. Thus, researchers
should master several methods and methodologies and be able to consciously choose
between them. The book focuses on how methods and methodologies relate to one

another by exploring two central methodological perspectives: naturalism and

constructivism. Naturalism seeks to discover and explain patterns that are assumed to
exist in nature and mostly relies on knowledge generated by sensual perception.
Naturalists believe that observational and experiential statements can be tested
empirically according to a falsification principle, and think that the scientific project
should be aimed at the general (nomothetic) at the expense of the particular
(idiographic). Constructivists, on the other hand, believe patterns of interest are a
product of our own making. They believe that everyone sees different things; what we
see is determined by complicated mix of social and contextual influences and
presuppositions. Thus, constructivists tend to draw on more diverse sources and on
different types of evidence. Scientific realism is seen as a blend of both naturalism
and constructivism. They question the neutrality of the scientist and their language
and focus on necessity and contingency rather than regularity.
Questions:
1) Wouldnt changing our methodology depending on the issue in question
undermine the consistency of our research and possibly our credibility?
2) Does unifying all branches of knowledge under the natural science banner as
Edward Wilson suggests imply getting rid of all competition as far as
methodology is concerned? And wouldnt this in turn decrease the need for
researchers to back up their findings against those from other approaches?
3) Does scientific realism use only questions rather than exact methods?
Engendered Insecurities: Feminist Perspective on International Relations
There is little evidence that women have had much of a role in shaping FP in 20th
century. Women face more difficulties in positions having to do with international
politics. There is a widely held belief that foreign policy and military arenas arent
appropriate for women. Characteristics associated with masculinity are what we value
in those who we trust to conduct our FP and defend our country, such as strength,
power, autonomy, independence, and rationality. These gender-related difficulties
symptomatic of a deeper issue: the extent to which IR is a masculine field where
womens voices are considered inauthentic. The author seeks to examine how the
world of international politics is constructed by exploring the ways that we are taught
to think about international politics. The traditional Western academic discipline of IR
focuses on the high politics of war and Realpolitik, and by doing so privileges
issues that grow out of mens experiences. If womens experiences were included, the
field would have to be radically redefined. The marginalization of women in matters
relating to IR wont change unless we eliminate underlying gender hierarchies.
Contemporary feminist scholarship promotes the dual beliefs that gender plays an
important/essential role in constructing historical social inequalities, and that the
differences resulting from these constructs are unjustified. This is how our
understanding of gender signifies relationships of power. In Western culture: These
symbols are fixed binary oppositions that legitimize a set of unequal social
relationships by categorically asserting the meaning of masculine and feminine.
Realisms subject matter and methodology are orientated towards masculine-linked
characteristics. Most contemporary feminist perspectives are a reaction to traditional
liberal feminism. Feminists must remember to be sensitive to constructing a Westerncentered approach. Gender difference should be taken as a starting point, but NOT as
a given. We need to see how gender can be removed from IR.

1) Doesnt focusing only on women who have been marginalized only reinforce
those stereotypes?
2) Are there methodological approaches or methods that are more susceptible to
gender difference than others?
3) Do non-Western approaches suffer from the same fixed binary oppositions
that legitimize our understandings of the masculine and feminine?
Whats the use of IR?
This article discusses the controversies over the relation between the academic
discipline of IR and policy. IR consists of a set of Lakatosian Research Programs
ranging from the abstract to the policy-relevant. The purpose of doing international
relations is to influence people. IR is justified by the usefulness of what we have to
say. Influence is not just about advising policymakers. IR is practiced by a group of
people who need not do all the same thing and should not be. It is a proper function
for an academic to be an advisor but doesnt mean EVERYONE should. Academics
cant work at both the policy end and the theoretical end of the spectrum without a
limit. We need to aim for evidence-based IR, not prejudice-based. People will only
act on new ideas if what is suggested fits into the general presuppositions held by the
decision-maker anyway. Two broad influences on policymakers are selfishness and
orthodoxy. Policy requires some degree of prediction. We need to know when the
social world is vulnerable to some change in input & when it is so stable that nothing
much can alter it. We also need some agreement on how we see the social world.
Without intersubjective agreement, we cannot make meaningful social choices. Some
insight into other peoples view of the world is necessary! Even though positivism
deals w/ analysis, this doesnt mean that it isnt seeking CHANGE in the system! We
can only know what is and isnt possible by looking at what is the case and seeing
how it can be re-arranged.
1) Is there a compromise that can be made between theoretical and policy driven
research?
2) Should we just accept that if the social world is stable, we cant do anything to
change it?
3) Why do you think it is that highly specialized academics in the field of IR are
not called upon more for the expertise?
Whats the use of International Relations? By Michael Nicholson

Discusses the controversies over the relation b/t the academic discipline of IR
and policy
IR consists of a set of Lakatosian Research Programs ranging from the
abstract to the policy-relevant

Intro: varieties of influence

Purpose of doing IR: To influence people
Belief is that at some time a course of action will be taken or abandoned
because of our studies
The world will then look different hopefully better
IR is justified by the usefulness of what we have to say
- But most of what we say wont be useful until sometime in the future

Platitudinous: A trite or banal remark or statement, especially one expressed

as if it were original or significant
Influence is not just about advising policymakers
- It ranges from direct policy involvement to setting an agenda for a debate
that isnt even of current relevance
When we are offering policy advice, who do we advise?
IR is practiced by a group of people who need not do all the same thing and
should not be
- Yet this point is often widely ignored
At some stages, raising the issues is as crucial as providing the answers
Over-eagerness to introduce a theory that isnt yet applicable/isnt yet
perfected is not good
Keynes: One of the most successful cases of the academic policy adviser
Deciding whom to advise is determined by:
- Deciding on the most effective way of achieving our political goals
- Deciding which side in any dispute we favor more
Herman Schmid: Is conflict resolution always the best thing to do?

The research community:

Necessary to be engaged in policy
It is a proper function for an academic to be an advisor but doesnt mean
EVERYONE should
We can work on our area of study w/out suggesting that a different area is of
less importance to the discipline
Some Lakatosian Research Programs in IR compete more directly and involve
incompatible approaches
- Pluralists vs neorealists; though they are commensurable
Popperian trap: Assuming that the research worker is all things at once
Popper: All research workers combined the whole research community within
each individual who proposed hypotheses, tested and then falsified them
Reality is that its a community where competition is the central tool for the
discovery of truth
Some people are close, and some are very far away from policymaking
Cant work at both the policy end and the theoretical end of the spectrum
w/out a limit
Need to aim for evidence-based IR, not prejudice-based
Need more solid statistics to back up policy advice from academics
Specialists are necessary
Much research is redundant, but hard to tell this in advance
Arguments in professional journals are mostly works in process
- Most of it is irrelevant to the policy process
In due course, someone can relay final specialist findings to others
Technical arguments often the only way of making progress in some specialist
area
Need IR b/c there are things to find out about the social world that are not
immediately obvious
Research communities not always full of mutual goodwill

Problems of persuasion:
Need to have good/justifiable ideas and persuade others of their
truth/relevance
People will only act on new ideas if what is suggested fits into the general
presuppositions held by the decision-maker anyway
Two broad influences on policymakers:
- Selfishness
- Orthodoxy
Selfishness:
People dont want to lost power or wealth
Those who control vast resources will want to continue to do so
Game of Power: Distributing the benefits of power now, while retaining
power for the future
People slow to save the environment if they are profiting from the status quo
How do we speak truth to power?
- Can persuade them to adopt a longer-time perspective
- Provide profitable alternatives to the current activity
Have to persuade power to act against its self-interest!
- This is usually done by arranging countervailing power
All this hampered by fact that govts are becoming less able to do things
- Globalization, international markets lead govts to believe they cant do
much
- But governments need not be so powerless
Orthodoxy:
People often trapped w/in the orthodoxy of the time
Power doesnt want to listen to uncomfortable truths
Keynes tried to convince Churchill that returning to the Gold Standard, but his
heterodoxy and free-thinking reduced his influence
Keynes ideas were important in defining future orthodoxy in the 25 yrs after
WW2
We may be more influential than we think just that the terms of debate dont
get addressed for a while
Non-rational factors are important in persuasion, esp over issues of violence
Often we play to the psychological susceptibilities of the person in power
Implying one course of action is weak and the other strong is a good way
of pushing people
Opposition to nuclear weapons is seen as wimpish
The rational content of the persuasive act is only partial
What does the social world need to look like for policy to be possible?
Some necessary conditions

Assumption is that policy is possible

- Decisions CAN be made which actually DO make a difference to how the
world behaves
Three central issues:
- Policy requires some degree of prediction

We need to know when the social world is vulnerable to some change in

input & when it is so stable that nothing much can alter it
- Need some agreement on how we see the social world
Prediction is a topic of great embarrassment to social scientists
- Prediction: A confident assertion that one state of affairs leads to another
and will do so in the future
Interested in predictions that a certain trend will be increased or dampened by
some form of policy
HAVE to predict if one intends to carry out a rational policy
Choosing one course of action over another implies having expectations about
the consequences of the action
Without rationally-based expectations, we are just being irresponsible
Have to predict when we can change social policy
- We are often very bad at it
Shouldnt feel too guilty about not predicting events
Crucial to know when social systems are stable and resistant to change
- As opposed to when they are unstable and amenable to change
Need to know the direction in which any acts of policy will direct that change
Current state of ignorance leads to 2 conclusions:
1) We cant find it out, meaning IR is at best of modest policy use
2) OR, it is a suitable topic for research
Need systemic analysis involving some mathematics
Limited forms of prediction are possible
and if not, then we should stop policy advising
Requires some limited objectivity in ones observations of the social world
Without intersubjective agreement, we cannot make meaningful social choices
Some insight into other peoples view of the world is necessary!

Positivism:
Misunderstandings about positivism
Positivism never dominated the British IR community
Positivism is no more dominant than any other school
The cult of the tenured victim:
Hegemons are other people
All academics suffer from paranoia
Misunderstandings about positivism:
Many believe in social sciences that analysis and prescription should be
separate
Popper: Demarcation principle b/t scientific and other statements is useful
Conceptual distinction b/t analysis and prescription
Richardson: While knowledge is neutral, its applications are not
Moral dilemma for academics arises when publishing truths they believe to be
absolute can be taken up and used for evil purposes
Supposed positivist hegemony in IR meant that moral argument ceased
- This isnt true; moral argument was going on since WW2
- A great deal of it was about the moral problems of nuclear deterrence

The idea that there was no normative theory or that it was cast out to the
periphery is FALSE
Many were deeply moved by moral concerns but believed value-free science
could provide this
Even though positivism deals w/ analysis, this doesnt mean that it isnt
seeking CHANGE in the system!
Can only know what is and isnt possible by looking at what is the case and
seeing how it can be re-arranged

Chapter 3, Climate Change and the Politics of the Global Environment, Neil
Carter in Beeson, Bisley. Issues in 21st Century World Politics

Environment considered matter of low politics.

However since 1972 Stockholm United Nations Conference on the Human
Environment it has featured more prominently on international agenda.
Climate change has recently dominated global environmental politics.
Climate change diplomacy more important e.g. Kyoto Protocol led to a
split between the USA and EU. Formed part of the agenda at G8 summits
seems like climate change is part of high politics.

Climate change: what is the issue and why is it increasingly salient?

Human induced climate change is a problem and lack of action to curb
greenhouse gas emissions will have detrimental effects on the planet and
our current way of life.
Results of global warming: rising sea levels, melting glaciers, increased
desertification, destruction of coral reefs, extinction of hundreds of
species. Food shortages, flooding, reduced access to drinking water
many people becoming environmental refugees.
Since the industrial revolution, human activities have magnified the
greenhouse effect through the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation etc.
Why it has become more salient:
o Scientific message accepted by the elite, strengthened by
observable effects of climate change.
o Stern review (2007) showed the serious economic consequences of
climate change. Overall cost and risks of climate change (if the
world does not act) will be equivalent to losing 5% of world GDP
every year forever. This was immediately understandable to the
economic and political elites.
o Public concern about climate change has grown, more pressure on
governments to act.
o Efforts to negotiate a treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol (which
expires in 2012) are ongoing.
Climate change: a distinctive issue in world politics?
Complex issue because of:
o tragedy of the commons overexploitation of common
environmental resources despite knowledge of long-term harms.
Individual actors exploit commons to the maximum because they

o
o
o
o

gain full benefit from their actions. Rational individual actions

produce collectively irrational outcomes.
Consequences of climate change are asymmetrically distributed.
Some countries have contributed more to the process of global
warming, but other countries will suffer more. Developed countries
have generated more greenhouse gas emissions but the worst
effects land on the developing countries.
Climate change affects those countries with extensive low-lying
coastal areas. But developed nations such as The Netherlands are
better equipped to deal with this than poorer nations such as
Bangladesh.
Transboundary nature climate change threatens traditional concept
of state sovereignty. Needs to be addressed through joint efforts.
National sovereignty also means there is no global government to
force nations to conform.
However, could be argued that climate change has
reinforced the importance of the state because action to
prevent it involves cooperation between states.
Free rider problem - if one nation reduces their GHG emissions,
nothing to stop other nations from benefiting therefore hard to
persuade nations to cut emissions.
Need to involve non-state actors such as NGOs, businesses etc
because GHG are by-products of everyday social and economic
activities.
Uncertainty of scientific knowledge that surrounds climate change.
Traditional realism dismisses climate change as a security threat.
But there is a real worry of conflict between states over access to
water sources (especially in the Middle East)/ mass migration of
environmental refugees.
Alternative critical approach to security: we must address the root
causes of climate change rather than its symptoms.

Developing a climate change regime

UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change)
1992 Rio Earth Summit
o Main objective: to stabilize GHG concentrations at levels to
mitigate climate change
o Operating principles: precaution, co-operation, sustainability,
equity.
o common but differentiated responsibilities basis of equitable
burden sharing.
o Developed countries expected to take the lead and transfer
financial and technological resources to developing countries to
address the problem.
o No firm targets set. Developed countries given a voluntary goal
to return GHG emissions to 1990 levels.
Kyoto Protocol 1997
o Set legally binding targets for developed nations, which aimed at
an overall reduction in the basket of 6 main GHG emissions.

o Calculated by setting 1990 as an average year, lots of disagreement

about which year and which period in the year to choose, because
every country had different levels of emissions. Many countries
joined because they were promised the right to increase emissions
temporarily.
o Subsequent follow-up efforts to Kyoto didnt work
o In 2001 President Bush rejected the Kyoto Protocol. Led to a
crisis because USA is responsible for 20% of GHG emissions, and
Kyoto only enters force if ratified by 55 countries, who are
together responsible for 55% of GHG emissions of developed
Annex 1 countries.
o Entered force in 2005 after Russia and Japan persuaded to sign
binding agreement.
o Protocol represented practical application of common but
differentiated responsibilities principle
Recognition by developed countries that they are
responsible for largest share of historical and current GHG
emissions, the per capita emissions of developing nations
are far smaller, emissions in developing countries needed to
grow to meet essential social and development needs.
o Kyoto mechanisms:
1. An international emissions trading regime allowing
industrialized countries to buy and sell emission credits
among themselves.
2. A Joint Implementation procedure enabling
industrialized countries to implement projects that reduce
emissions or remove carbon in another Annex 1 country in
exchange for emission reducing credits. Reach target jointly
through collaborative efforts. Trade emissions if another
country has excess that they arent using. If you have
modern technology to reduce emissions, easier to reduce
emissions by putting these technologies to use in a country
which hasnt had them before.
o efficiency
o

cost
3. A Clean Development Mechanism permitting developed countries to
finance emissions reduction projects in developing countries and receive
credit for doing so.
Kyoto established institutional mechanisms for future negotiations and
regime strengthening.
Critics: even if overall Kyoto abatement target achieved, will only scratch
the surface of problem.
o Compromises made to secure Kyoto mean targets too timid.
o 2 key tensions: refusal of USA to ratify it and absence of
requirements for developing countries to reduce emissions,

particularly large rapidly industrializing countries such as China

and India.
Countries that rely on fossil fuels for export income e.g. Middle Eastern
oil-producing states and those with large energy resources e.g. USA have
been most resistant to cuts.
Recently, shift in climate change politics in USA as public mood became
more sympathetic to environmental issues (Hurricane Katrina identified
with climate change).
Europe: growing concerns about security of energy supplies, after huge
increases in gas and oil prices, and an increasing dependency on Russian
gas means there is a new focus on policies aimed at improving energy
efficiency and developing renewable energy sources.
Developing world will soon be the source of most emissions and this
should be brought under control.
Major developing countries such as India and China say they shouldnt
have any targets imposed on them while they remain so far behind the
developed world. Point out that their per capita emissions are far lower
than developed world.
o However China and India are climate conscious: China is
conscious of its dependency on coal fired electricity generation and
has introduced many initiatives to increase energy efficiency. India
has ambitious plans for a massive expansion of solar energy.

The future of climate change politics

Tradition realist concerns will bolster the importance of climate change.
o Growing concerns about energy security, global fluctuations in oil
prices and increasing dependence of Europe on Russian gas makes
the case for a country to shift to a low-carbon economy more
persuasive.
o Under Obama administration, climate change has risen to the top of
U.S national security set of priorities.
o Trade and economic issues will ensure climate politics remains
very important. E.g. EUs decision to include aviation emissions
within the Emissions Trading Scheme (opposed by USA)
International agenda turning to the challenge of adaptation, as damage
done becomes more evident. However adaptation is expensive and
unevenly distributed with developing countries being affected first.
Ongoing tensions between developed and developing countries likely to
intensify.
In a global recession, with large public expenditure cuts, it is difficult to
convince governments to come up with money and technology transfers
necessary to meet even the minimum requirements.
Developed world needs to show leadership but this looks unlikely. USA
emissions have grown, rather than reducing therefore questionable how far
the USA can act as a genuine leader. EU has established itself as the
international climate change leader by building new emissions and making
both emissions trading and CDM work.
Globalization of world politics John Vogler, Chapter 20

Vast inequalities between rich and poor in their use of the Earths resources
and their ecological footprint
Before globalization, environmental concerns:
o Pollution doesnt respect international boundaries and actions to
reduce it require cooperative effects
o Conservation of natural resources (e.g. attempt to regulate exploitation
of maritime resources such as International Whaling Commission
(IWC)).
Precautionary principle gaining increasing prominence. Where there is a
likelihood of environmental damage, banning an activity shouldnt require full
and definitive scientific proof.
Other norms of acceptable behaviour include prior informed consent and
polluter pays.
Disseminating scientific information on an international basis makes sense but
it needs funding from governments because, except in areas like
pharmaceutical research, the private sector has not incentive to do the work.
Global commons areas and resources not under sovereign jurisdiction, they
are not owned by anyone. E.g. high seas and deep ocean floor (beyond 200
miles exclusive economic zone) and Antarctica and outer space.
o Tragedy of the commons: the degradation of the global commons. E.g.
depletion of fish and whale stocks of the high seas, pollution of the
ocean environment, degradation of global atmosphere.
o When there is unrestricted access to a resource owned by no one there
will be an incentive for individuals to grab as much as they can and if
the resource is finite, there will come a time when it is ruined by overexploitation as the short term interests of individual users overwhelm
the longer-run collective interest in sustaining the resource.
o Difficult to govern the commons because physically and politically
impossible to enclose them and there is no central world government to
regulate their use.

IR theory and the environment

Liberal Institutionalist analysis of regime creation is the predominant IR
approach to global environmental change. Makes the assumption that the
problem to be solved is how to obtain global governance in a fragmented
system of sovereign states.
Marxism and Gramscian writers disagree: for them, the state system is part of
the problem rather than the solution, the proper object of study is the war in
which global capitalism reproduces relationships that are profoundly
damaging to the environment.
Global spread of neo-liberal policies accelerates the features of globalization
(consumerism, relocation of production to the south and the thoughtless
squandering of resources), which are driving the global ecological crisis.
Security (orthodox IR) environmental change increases internal conflict and
inter-state war. Desertification and degradation of other vital resources are
bound up with cycles of poverty, destitution and war in Africa. Climate
change leads to mass migration of populations across international boundaries,
acute scarcity of water and other resources.

The Environment Brown and Kutting, Issues in International Relations,

Chapter 11

The dominant neoliberal/liberal approach in global management

institutions is based on the assumption that the current standard of living
enjoyed by the richest 20% of people can be extended to encompass the
whole globe.
Neoliberal practice suggests that market ideology and the market as a
regulatory mechanism are the most efficient ways of dealing with social
(including environmental) problems.
Norths environmental problems associated with industrialization whereas
Souths associated with deforestation, desertification and polluted drinking
water.
Equity concerns the often-neglected connection between societal equity
and environmental quality. This lack of equity is an ongoing problem and
will undoubtedly intensify under our economic system (which dictates
how we organize and govern our resources, but also the way we allocate
responsibilities on environmental regulation. North enjoys a dominant
agenda setting position while the South is expected to accept and
implement international environmental standards).

Governing the global commons Mark Imber, Issues in International

Relations, Chapter 12

Name given to variety of remote and inaccessible territories and

earths complex ecological systems.
o The high seas
o The deep ocean floor
o Outer space
o Uninhabited continent of Antarctica
o The climate system
Geographical isolation and limits of human exploration meant these
areas were not were not subject to territorial claim. However since
1945, increasing scientific, economic, military and environmental
changes exposed dangers in relying on the res nullius principle (not
subject to law)
Governance of global commons addressed through:
o Multilateral diplomacy (international negotiations with 3 or
more countries) (4 of the 5 commons are governed by UN
treaties)
o Regional negotiations on the global commons (EUs standard
setting and legislation on air pollution, and regional creation of
carbon-trading market scheme)
o Gradual introduction of market forces and market pricing into
the protection of the commons. E.g. in Kyoto Protocol with the
creation of an emissions trading scheme. This scheme rewards
countries that comply and creates very real costs for countries
that dont.

Global commons are new territories in the sense that political rule and
sovereignty have historically been limited to habitable land and
maritime zones.
High level of political and legal protection has been sought for the
commons in response to their potential use as areas of military
confrontation and arms-racing (Cold War).
o E.g. outer space treaty bans placing nuclear weapons in outer
space and Seabed treaty bans putting nuclear weapons on the
seabed.
Incentive to manage global commons is that they have huge economic
potential, which increases pressure to ensure responsible and
sustainable management. If global commons are a common
commodity, then there is the argument than any economic benefits of
their development are also a common commodity. which can be used
to finance global development and environment protection.
Antarctica:
o Antarctic Treaty (1961)
o Aim to de-territorialize, de-militarize and promote scientific
research not commercial exploitation.
Outer Space
o Outer space treaty (1967)
o Both USA and USSR keen to manage cold war confrontation
and prevent escalation of hostilities into outer space.
Law of the Sea
o United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea
o Extended national sovereignty as a dominant principle than to
secure a measure of international administration for the oceans.
o More protracted and disputed negotiations (1970 1982)
because oceans have been explored and used.
Ozone Layer
o Vienna Convention (1985) and Montreal Protocol (1987),
superseded the res nullius status of the ozone layer with a
vigorous assertion of a common heritage of humankind
approach taking collective responsibility for the vital
environmental good.
Ecology, Environment and IR

A. Brown and Kutting (2008)

Problems of environmental degradation are transboundary in nature and therefore
need an international solution.
- National policy measures essentially cannot cope with international
environmental problems because of the source of pollution or the impact of
pollution may not be within a particular states jurisdiction.
International Environmetal Agreements (IEAs)

IEAs are international legal instruments adopted by a large number of states

and intergovernmental organizations. Purpose: preventing and managing
negative human impacts on natural resources
They cover a broad range of policy areas from biodiversity, regulating
human made greenhouse gas emission into the atmosphere and the control of
chemicals and hazardous wastes.
IEAs can take form of a single instrument or a series of interlinked documents
such as conventions, followed by protocols and amendments
o E.g. The Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) and the
Kyoto Protocol part of the same framework.
The implementation of IEAs:
o The IEAs adopt a series of constitutional measures: A Conference of
Parties (COP)
o The COP acts as decision makers on behalf of the policy
There is often a lack of connection between the political compromises that
shape an international agreement on the environmental and the ecological
demands of a particular environmental problem.
Non State Actors: not able to sign legal documents but they perform agenda
setting tasks; they influence meetings, provide information, act as a voice of
caution or reason.
o Agreements between non state actors are seen as equally influential as
state led arrangements (although they are not legally binding)

Consumption
-

The argument that excessive consumption leads to environmental degradation

dates bask to 1960/70s
1968: Club of Rome Produced a report titled Limits to Growth (1972)
o Its key message was that economic growth could not continue
indefinitely because of the limited availability of natural resources on
earth (especially oil as a finite resource)
The early environmental movement of 1970s questioned the ideology of
consumerism argued that the ideology of wanting more and more would lead
to ecological collapse of the planet.
o Rather there should be an ideological shift to considering what people
actually needed for a fulfilled life rather then what they wanted
o This movement coincided with the first oil crises and the First United
nations Conference for the Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972.
The Neoliberal economic order, like preceding economic orders, treats the
natural environment as if there was an unlimited supply of natural resources.
o Externalized by economists and taken for granted in economic
valuations.

Sustainable development:
- Environmental expression: how can further environmental degradation and
pollution be prevented?
- Policy integration: How can social, economic and environmental needs be
accommodated without being counter-productive.

Inter-Generational responsibility: How can future generations be ensured

similar (if not better) environmental standards
Equity: How can the poor of the present generation be provided with a decent
and fair quality of life?
Participation: How can stakeholders of civil society be active in the process?

Challenges to sustainability:
- Environmental degradation can be traced to excessive consumption of natural
resources.
- The current neoliberal economic climate accelerates this process
- Consumption also involves the use of natural resource sinks such as landfill
sites and ocean.
- Natural resources are not factored properly into economic calculations
- Uneven consumption patterns suggests a global inequity and a global
economy of waste
- Solutions are hampered by an inherent detachment/alienation between the
consumer and the product.
Equity
-

The environment is seen as a subject determined by cause-and-effect

relationships and its effect on the running of international affairs needs to be
understood and managed.
Many questions relating to the status of the environment and how it relates to
social status that are being raised in other academic disciplines.
Traditionally governments have monopolized the role of safeguarding natural
resources protecting their citizens from environmental harm.
o Nationally this happens through the rule of law
o Internationally it has been affected through the role of international
environmental agreements
However, under globalization there have been practical changes in the role of
governments:
o Neo liberalists: suggests that market ideology and the market as a
regulatory mechanism are the most efficient ways of dealing with
social problems (including environmental problems)
Environmental equity has a more anthropocentric focus then environmental
ethics.
o Its about control over and access to environmental resources as well as
even distribution of resources.
Close relationship between income and environmental quality. This
argument can be extended to the international and the global in that wealthier
states can increase their environmental quality by, for example, getting rid of
toxic waste.
Issues of Equity;
o There is a definite issue of environmental equity as not all citizens of
the world have access to the same environmental rights.
o Evolution of global division of labour and the equity dimensions
associated with this process: as some regions have clearly been

relegated to an agricultural role in the global economy whilst other

have the role of cheap labour supplier
Equity concerns are not limited to structural power it can be found in direct
power relations between North and South or between any social groupings.
Since 1970s researchers have sought to establish a casual link between
environmental resources and security problems.
o Firstly, it applies to cases of resource scarcity such as water shortage
and their impact on stability and security of a country or a region.
o Second, environmental security refers to effect that military/security
activities have on the national environment.
Case study on waste in global economics;
o Our global economic system has shifted the burden of waste from the
North to poorer parts of the world, i.e. developing nations in the South.
o Despite development of an IEA which looked promising at times, the
problem of waste will remain as long as there is an equity gap and as
long as there is an economic incentive to conduct environmental
dumping
Case study of climate change;
o The human made problem of greenhouse gas emissions can be
tracked back to early industrialization in the North.
o In order to tackle the problem there must be major concessions in
terms of economic output and redistribution.
Both cases have demonstrated that environmental policy intentions and
IEAs may exist on paper, but when it comes to proper action international
actors have failed to live up to expectations.

The environment issue highlights like no other the inherent limitations and
weaknesses of the current international political and economical system.
Imber, M. (2008)
Defining the global commons:
-

5 global commons:
o The high seas
o The deep ocean floor
o Outer space
o The uninhabited continent of Antarctica
o The climate system

The global commons is the collective name given to a variety of remote ad

inaccessible territories and to the earths complex ecological systems.
They are essential to human survival, but have remained almost completely
outside the jurisdiction of states.
The combination of extreme geographical isolation and previous limits of
human exploration meant that for centuries these territories were beyond the
reach of the international legal and political system they were not subject to
law.

Military and economic competition has created pressures to expropriate or

claim sovereignty over parts of the commons.
Tragedy of the commons: How can 192 territorial, sovereign states rise oto
the challenge of governing those parts of the planet beyond sovereign control?

Sovereignty, common heritage or privatization?

- Efforts to establish governance over territories have used three very different
approaches to defining title and rule over the commons
o First, attempts to extend existing sovereign boarders to include new
territories.
o Second, there emerged in the 1970s an interest in advancing the
principle of common heritage by placing the global commons under
the rule of all UN members.
o Third, market forces as an incentive for the preservation of the
environment.
Methods: Conventions, convention protocols and markets.
- Governance of the global commons is addressed through multilateral
diplomacy (international negotiations involving three or more countries).
- Four of the five global commons are governed by treaties that emerged from
the negotiations conducted within the universal membership of the UN.
o The Outer Space Treaty of 1967
o The Law of the Sea Convention (UNCLOS) of 1982
o The Vienna Convention on Substances Harmful to the Ozone Layer of
1985
o The Framework convention on Climate Change (FCCC) of 1992
- Other negotiations affecting the global commons may be purely regional.
- Trend in negotiations: market forces and market pricing into the protection of
the commons.
o E.g. incentives built into the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, including the
creation of an emission trading system wherein states that comply with
their Kyoto targets can sell on their unused carbon dioxide quotas, for
cash, to countries that are going to exceed their own targets
Characteristics of the Global Commons:
- They are in a sense new territories since political rule and sovereignty have
historically been limited to habitable land territory and maritime zones.
- Potentially military rivalry and conflict over access to and denial of access to
the commons.
- has produced several vitally important treaties
o Outer Apace Treaty: prohibits placing nuclear weapons in earth orbit
or on the moon or other planets.
o Seabed Treaty: prohibits placing nuclear weapons
o Partial Test Band Treaty: prohibits over-ground nuclear testing
- Ecological, environmental vulnerability of the Global commons
o International communities responsibility to protect them
o All states can impact negatively on the environment, but no single state
can fully protect the commons.
Antarctica

The Antarctica treaty 1961.

Represented a breakthrough the idea of managing one of the last uninhabited
and unexplored regions of the world on a non-competitive, peaceful and
scienceled basis.
Key Provisions:
o De-territorialize
o De-militarize
o Promote scientific research, not commercial exploitation

Outer Space
- The Outer Space Treaty 1967
- Shares key characteristics with the Antarctic Treaty.
- Both USA and USSR wanted to prevent escalation of hostilities into outer
space.
o Fear of nuclear weapons being placed in earth orbit, giving an
enormous and threatening advantage to the country able to achieve this
first.
The Law of the Sea
- The Law of the Sea Convention negotiations extended from 1970 to 1982
- Unlike the other treaties, UNCLOS encountered numerous problems
o Compared to the other global commons the oceans have been explored
and used, competitively and in some small part controlled by national
and international laws for centuries.
- Costal states have claimed, and tried to exercise sovereignty over their so
called territorial waters for many centuries
- Issues:
o The temptation for costal states of maximizing their claims and to
create new maritime boundary disputes.
o Scientific speculations on the possible recovery of significant
quantities of metals and minerals from the deep ocean floor.
o The existence of nodules of manganese, copper and other land-mines
metals.
- The coastal states not only wanted to enlarge their territorial waters, but also
to create an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ)
Allowing them to complete title and control over the fisheries and
sea-bed, whilst allowing traditional high-seas-style navigation rights
to other states on the surface
- Outcomes;
o Created the largest gains for coastal states with new rights to a 12-mile
territorial sea and 200-mile EEZ.
o The common heritage of mankind rules were limited to the seabed beyond
the 200 mile EEZ.
o The 200-mile EEZ has protected some fisheries whilst raising pressure on
high seas stocks, especially migratory fish stocks.
The Ozone Layer:
- The discovery that the ozone layer was under attack and losing its protective
qualities.

The chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) chemicals identified as the cause of the problem,

used in the Second World War.
The discovery that CFCs were eroding the ozone layer resulted in a rush to
negotiate a treaty to outlaw the manufacture and use of CFCs, and to halt further
damage.
The Vienna Convention of 1985 and the subsequent Montreal protocol of 1978
common heritage of humankind approach taking collective responsibility for the
vital environmental good.
The Montreal Protocol set a timeframe for the complete prohibition on the
manufacture and use of CFC.

Climate Change, FCCC, Kyoto and after:

- The FCCC sought to link two goals economic development and
environmental quality that had previously been considered separate or even
competing aims.
- FCCC was constructed as means to secure agreement from the major
developed states to a series of medium-range aspirations to limit carbon
dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions.
- The negotiations took place in a series of annual conferences the most well
known, held in Kyoto, 1997.
- Under Kyoto the reductions in emission by developed countries were spread
over different end-years from 2008-2012.
Future negotiations in the Global Commons:
- In the cases of Antarctica and Outer Space agreements have been reached that
created and extended the principles of the common heritage of mankind,
disarmament and environmental protection.
- The UNCLOS sea-bed mining revenue-sharing regime has not been
activarted , but in time it will and the legal regime in place will produce
revenues for the UN to promote sustainable development as well as profit for
the individual firms and countries that bear the cost and risk of exploration.
Encouraging the protection of the commons:
- Urgent issues
- High levels of threat
- Scientific consensus on solution
- Win-win outcomes possible for all
- Verification/compliance credible.
However, the reversal of the above factors may turn undermine the incentives of
states to achieve results:
-

Inability to articulate urgency of threat

Low-level threats
Scientific doubt/dispuse
Some win some lose result likely
Verification/compliance unlikely

Week 6
The Social Construction of International Society by Tim Dunne

Article discusses meta-theoretical debates in IR

Explores argument b/t two radically difft understandings of the social world:
objectivism and subjectivism
Manning, Wight, Bull and Watson: United in their belief that states, thru their
interaction, reflexively formed a society the very existence of that society
forms the identity of states
- Contemporary meta-theorists consistently underestimate the subjectivism
of these theories
E.H. Carrs political realism was powerful b/c it dismissed all hitherto IR
investigations as primitive
Modern British IR theory has never subscribed to positivism in fact, it
challenges it
Characterize the meta-theoretical status of British IR in terms of the work of
Wight, Bull, and Manning leaders of social constructivism

Intro: Metatheory Meets IR Theory:

3 important metatheoretical debates in IR:
1. The level of analysis problem
2. The agent-structure debate
3. Whether these are two incommensurable stories of the social world
Wendt: Social theories structure the questions we ask about the world and our
approaches to answering those questions
Realism and intl society tradition have incommensurable metatheoretical
positions
David Singer posed the levels of analysis problem
- Choice b/t the state vs systems level
- Singer: Systems-level explanation exaggerates the impact of the system
upon the state
- State focus exaggerates the degree of differentiation b/t states
- Problem is a trade-off b/t explanatory power and descriptive accuracy
In The Theory of International Politics, Waltz: All systems theories were
reductionist that defined the system in terms of the attributes of its units
For Waltz, systems level is an ontological necessity, not a conceptual choice
Need systems theory to show the sui generis domain of IR theory
But structure of the system must have causal power
- Must intervene b/t the intentions of agents and their outcomes
Hollis and Smith: Levels debate should have 3 layers: system and state, state
and bureaucracy and bureaucracy and individual
- Each layer understood in terms of degree to which outcomes/decisions are
determined by the agents or by the structure
- Irrelevant whether the actors are individuals, institutions or intl orgs
- Holism: The trumping of agents by structures the parts of the whole
behave as the whole requires
- Holism implies two claims:
1. A holistic approach is likely to suggest a methodological choice in
favor of a macro level of analysis

2. That this choice reflects an ontological assumption that behavior is

caused by structures
Wendt: Holism conflates two distinct problems: the levels of analysis problem
and the agent-structure problem
Wendt: Waltzs theory of agency (structure-agent) is a thoroughly
individualistic ontology
Hollis and Smith: Waltzs account of the structure of the states system is a
generative or causal one
Meaning of a causal relationship must be decided by considering how we
know what the world is like
Hollis and Smith: Theories of IR should be understood in the context of 2
distinct views of the social world
- Explaining and understanding
Explaining: Idea that naturalism scientific search for causal laws to explain
existence of regularities
- An outsider account b/c it tries to explain/predict social action on the
basis of an actors rationality and preferences
Understanding: Furnishes an account of what constitutes meaningful action
- The insider approach
Explaining & understanding create a MATRIX representing an individualist
and holist version of the outsider story, and an individualist and holist
version of the insider story
Objectivism & holism = structuralism/functionalism
- Structures as irreducible to the interactions of agents
- Social action maintains the survival of the system (functionalism), or is
propelled by the forces of history to act in accordance w/ a structural
imperative (historical materialism)
Objectivism & individualism = rational choice
- Agents are rational in that they have consistently ordered preferences
- Their choices match their expected utility
- The interests of the actors are exogenously given
Subjectivism & holism = Social constructivism
- Ontological presumption that humans are social beings
- Their subjectivity is reflexively formed by interaction
- Does not deny the existence of a material realm but does challenge the
assumption that it exists independently of our ideas and theories
- Reality is a social construct
- Agency: Human actions neither caused by social structures nor the result
of individual choices
- Focus on structures that are intersubjective rather than material
- Intersubjective practices: Rule-following, language games, creation of
institutions as collective ideas
- Epistemology = a matter of convention
- Knowledge never independent from the intellectual tradition w/in which it
is formed
Subjectivism & individualism = Phenomenology (constitutive)
- From the actors point of view, the social world is THEIR world
Constructivism has a longer history in IR

Constructivism in the International Society Tradition:

Onuf: IR has nothing other than an objectivist tradition
Wendt influenced by Wight and Bulls thinking
Wight, Wendt, Bull and Butterfield: Argue that the condition of anarchy is not
a barrier to the development of highly cooperative forms of behavior
- All explore non-rationalist theory of an intl system that doesnt take the
rules, IDs and interests of the units as given
Wendt: We need a systemic theory based on sociology
Holistic metaphor of states was mobilized by Wight, Bull, Manning and
Butterfield
- They also drew from an interpretive background social theory
Case for the subjectivism of the intl society tradition is made
Distinctions b/t the Bulls constructivism and Wendts constructivism
- Bulls helps us to think about the constraining nature of the intersubjective
structures that underpin intl society
- Wendt and Onuf have tendency to imply that social world can be
reconstituted simply by reconstructing our ID from w/in
(phenomenological perspective)
In new constructivist literature, there is a danger of obscuring the important
distinction b/t:
- The constraining nature of intersubjective practices and
- The enabling role of individual agents in constituting those practices
Rejection of Scientism:
EH Carr: Used sociology of knowledge to expose phony universalism of
idealists
He recognized that power grew out of ideology as well as from weaponry
Carr first to argue against adoption of a natural scientific objectivism
- In social world, no body of neutral facts to which one can appeal
- The observer and observed are part of the same single process
- Contrasted to later behavioralists who wanted to transcend value
judgments Carr argued that political science is also about how things
OUGHT to be
Most important influence on Carrs thinking: Karl Mannheim
- Carr draws on his sociology of knowledge: All knowledge is partial
(dubbed relationism by Mannheim)
- Carr mobilized realism to reveal the relative and pragmatic character of
thought itself
- Interwar idealists unable to provide absolute and disinterested standard for
the conduct of IR for these reasons!
1960s: Carr came to favor subjectivism
Bulls International Theory: The Case for a Classical Approach: Critical of
those who wanted a single explanatory methodology for both the natural and
social sciences
- Argued that there was no such thing as a value-free inquiry into IR
- Argued for an older tradition of interpretation in place of science
drawing from law, philosophy, and history
The Nature of International Society Constructivism

Carr recognized contingent nature of political and social reality

If reality is contingent, it can change
Carr: The nation state is not eternal
Carr rejected objectivist notion that IDs and interests are fixed
Key question for Carr: How far is power doing the work in reshaping IR?
Carr conceives of a world community with rules and norms that exists b/c
people talk and behave as if they were a world community
He personifies the states as if it were conscious moral actor
Carrs relationship to the unity of sciences debate is highly ambiguous
- B/c of his acceptance of a positivistic form of realism and a relativist
theory of knowledge
- One accepts what is, the other questions it
Carrs moral relativism prevented him from understanding that states might be
able to agree on certain constitutive rules to enable a relatively stable form of
coexistence
Bull attacked Carr for not recognizing the element of society in intl politics
Development of postwar IR after Carr: An attempt to understand intl society
and the practices which underpin it
Butterfield and Wight associated the society of states and the diplomatic
community
- Underscores the understanding of theory qua practice
- Explains how an org should eschew the search for general theory in favor
of an inductive approach to IR
How did the society of states come into being and through what practices has
it been constructed?
- Wight: Through the habitual intercourse of independent communities,
todays diplomatic system, intl law, the conscious maintenance of the
balance of power, an intl social consciousness is formed
- Through conscious deliberation, society is what states make of it
Charles Mannings The Nature of International Society: Proves that Britain
rejected realism in the 1950s and 1960s
- Manning personified the sovereign state it is an entity w/ meaning,
depends on intersubjective recognition by other states for its existence
- His interpretive use of games: States can be social agents participating in
games w/ conventions
- Intersubjective games can be just as powerful as systemic structures
Manning: Main purpose of IR education was to perform the social need of
providing worthy experts in foreign affairs
Crucial need to inculcate the capacity for JUDGMENT
Watson: Diplomacy wasnt created but was improvised and evolved
ambulando by practical operators, statesment, and envoys
Intersubjective rules the common awareness and common experience
which constitute the diplomatic dialogue act as a constraint upon the use of
force w/ in the intl community
Balance of power as the master institution of the society of states
Butterfield: Balance of power like an equilibrium of forces which maintains
the independence of states in the Euro states system
Butterfield: Intl order is not bestowed by nature

None of the British Committee members produced a great analysis of

sovereignty as an institution!
Intl lawyers formalized and encoded the principle of sovereignty and the rule
of non-intervention
Non-intervention as a constitutive rule: The society of states has no meaning
independently from that rule
W/out sovereignty and non-intervention there is NO society of states
Duality of theory and practice is central to an interpretative understanding of
intl society
The sovereign state = the constitutive community of intl society
The duality of international society as a political construct:
- The sovereign states obedience to the norms of the society of states both
reaffirms the ID of the sovereign state, AND
- Reconstitutes the structure of international society
Sovereignty, diplomacy, and balance of power require highly developed intl
social consciousness to operate
Constructivist attention to the language of identity and otherness

Metatheoretical Representations of Contemporary Intl Relations Theory

Interpretive understanding of cooperation in intl society constructivism
VERSUS rational choice assumptions of neoliberalism
Divergent understandings of holism in the systems theory of Waltz and the
social theory of Bull
American neoliberal institutionalist model:
- Leads to theories of cooperation that are interest based
- Task is to show how compliance w/ the rules is maintained by the requisite
proportion of incentives and sanctions
- Crucial element of rational actor model: Cooperation understood w/out
recourse to common beliefs or shared values
Intl society constructivism views cooperation as a constitutive part of what it
means to belong to a community
Hurrell: Intl regimes are intersubjective phenomena, need
hermeneutic/interpretivist methodology to understand it
Wendt: Constructivist approach to cooperation would emphasize
transformative nature of interests and ways in which states learn to adapt
those interests in terms of shared commitments to social norms
Contrasting responses of Waltz and Bull to the role that structures play in
shaping the outcomes/actions of states
- Waltz: Structure of system is anarchic; anarchy is a descriptive term; it
affects behavior thru socialization and competition among actors
- Bull: Absence of shared interest and understanding in his system; this
evolved into one where state conform to a range of constitutive practices
Types of Constructivism?
Wight and Bull: Have strong holistic and interpretive view of the social world
Hollis and Smith define the existence of intl society much differently than
Bull
Wight: Believed a common culture was necessary for the existence of intl
society

Bull and Wight: The social practices which make up the ID/difference in the
society of states are deeply embedded in the intl system
- They cannot be reconstructed thru self-reflection, as Wendt thinks
- Bull: Any attempt to reconstruct the rules of the game would risk
undermining the intersubjective consensus which enabled multiple IDs to
coexist
Wendt: Regards the internationalization of political authority as generally
progressive

Diplomatic Interventions: Conflict and Change in a Globalizing World (Fierke)

Chapters 1, 2, and 9
Preface:
Intervention: An act by states, usually involves coercion, that impacts the
territorial integrity or political independence of another state
- May be done for a variety of ends from humanitarian to political
Oppenheim: Intervention as dictatorial interference in the internal or
external affairs of a state
Hedley Bull: Intl lawyers traditionally viewed intervention as
dictatorial/coercive interference by an outside party in the jurisdiction of an
independent political community
Stanley Hoffman: Every act of a state constitutes an intervention!
All definitions share a focus on INTERFERENCE by one state in the affairs of
another
Any particular border crossing or interference is constituted by a range of
prior interventions
Diplomatic interventions: Involve some form of communication to
avoid/limit recourse to force or to realize it
Range of actors involved in cross-border communication related to war has
grown
- Intl organizations, NGOs, journalists, etc.
Purpose of the book is to unsettle the definition of intervention
Two consequences of unsettling this definition:
1. Shifts emphasis from what one state does to another to the larger context
of intl rules & practices w/in which more specific acts are given meaning
- This analysis focuses on background conditions that make forceful
intervention possible rather than an analysis of the use of force itself
- Recognizes that any act of interference is constituted or made possible by
a larger set of assumptions, rules and practices
2. Shifts attention from intervention as a specific type of act, with force, to
intervention as part of a human attempt to mold/limit the experience of
war
- Intervention as a form of agency that is larger than the decision to interfere
in the affairs of another state
Book explores tension b/t realist assumption that war is constant and
constructivist assumption that war is a social construct
- W/in this tension, the potential for conflict avoidance or transformation is
to be IDed

Each of the chapters explores this tension in relation to a specific type of

intervention
Chapter 1: Examines tensions b/t realism and constructivism concerning war
Chapter 2: Historical overview of the changing structures of warfare
- From medieval to Westphalian to era of globalization today
- War has always been constructed b/c it is given meaning and shape w/in
particular historical and cultural contexts, defined by difft organizational
and technological forms to difft ends
Chapter 9: Revisits various categories of intervention from a critical
perspective
- Sees that both the realist and constructivist ideas of war are social
constructions!
- Chapter highlights how the book ITSELF is a critical intervention
- Explores paradox that war occupies a place on a spectrum spanning from
social construction to deconstruction
- Examines role of international intervention in situating a particular war
along this spectrum

Chapter 1: Cause or Constitution?

War = a reflection of the human condition
Stoessinger: War is learned behavior; thus we can unlearn it and select it out
entirely
Kellogg-Briand Pact post-WW1: Made aggressive war illegal
Realists: War is pervasive
- At best, its worst effects can be managed but NOT eliminated
Constructivism: War is a social artifact
- War difft than violence b/c of its dependence on socially recognized rules
Tension b/t essential quality of war and the social construction of it
Analysis of the causes of war versus the social constitution of war
Realist and Liberal Theory
Differ on the origins of war and the potential for its elimination
Realists: Explain world as it is
Grotius: Liberal, claimed that laws would guarantee peaceful interactions
among sovereign states that would benefit everyone
Kant: Republican govts, where ultimate consent rests w/ the people, would
lead to more peaceful intl relations
Liberals: Consists broadly of 2 strands, emphasizing:
1. The maximization of individual utility
2. The possibility of progress and the realization of human potential
- Emphasis on importance of free trade, democracy, intl law, collective
security
Liberals assume conflict/insecurity arises from misunderstanding
- Believe creation of intl institutions and rules to facilitate
communication/agreement can overcome these misunderstandings and
thus prevent war
Communication regarding the balance of power was one of the central
functions of diplomacy in the classical European system

Liberals focus on array of rules that over time have shaped many forms of
interaction at the intl level
Liberal claims that we are moving towards a world where war will be
eliminated are not equivalent to claims that war is socially constructed
A claim that war is socially constructed suggests that human nature is NOT
CONSTANT cannot generalize it as good or bad
What is the process by which war is constructed as a social artifact?

Positivist and constructivist methodology:

Positivism
- Assumes that objects exist independent of human interpretation and
knowledge
- Emphasis on observation and testing to justify knowledge claims
- Social world operates according to objective laws
- End is to ID causal generalizations
- These provide the building blocks of a theory against which further tests
can be conducted
- Purpose of hypothesis testing to gain a clearer picture of the reality of the
world
- Theory makes it possible to predict conditions under which certain
conditions will unfold & explain them when they do
- Thru testing, theory is discarded if it doesnt fit with the facts, or
strengthened
Broad acceptance that theories can never be proved true or verified
Hope is to improve the power to predict future cases or to explain after the fact
Danger: In setting out w/ set of assumptions, based in theory, the observer
excludes variables from the outset that may be important
Realist theory at the core of the effort to make IR into a science
Liberal theories also build on a scientific methodology
Constructivism
- Some want to make it into a specific theory to make causal generalizations
about the world
- Others claim that it is at worst entirely incompatible w/ attempts to ID
universal statements and causal patterns
- Believes the nature of being cannot be separated from ways of knowing
- The material world DOES exist independent of human society but has
been altered by human interaction w/ it
- Once a material object is shaped into a specific form, it has a place in a
particular social context where it has meaning in relation to other objects,
particular uses, and is part of a language/grammar
- These are somewhat rule governed b/c they rest on shared understandings
about the nature of the object & how it is used
- Humans also interact w/ EACH OTHER; form culturally/historically
specific practices and institutions that are rule governed
- Sovereign state a historically specific phenomenon
- Language, social being, and practice are intertwined
- There are no universal meanings for any one word or practice
- Ex: Creating a theory of marriage; cannot generalize, must look at how
related practices and IDs are given meaning across context

Causality and constitution

Causality and constitution are at the core of the difference b/t the two
methodological positions
Constructivist methodology: Questions the distinction b/t causality and
constitution
- Objects must become social artifacts before they can exist in a causal
relationship to other artifacts
Causal statement: Assumes 2 objects, one of which impacts on the other,
transforming it in some way
The constant nature of X and Y, or their identity, is the necessary condition for
a causal relationship
- Their IDs are assumed
David Singer: Originally posed the levels of analysis problem
- Problem: Whether to explain intl behavior in terms of units (states) or the
system of states/anarchy
- Other levels include bureaucracies or individuals
Explanations of causes of war @ the individual level:
- Personalities of leaders
- Misperceptions of leaders
- Human nature
Explanations of causes of war w/in states:
- Cultural or institutional factors
- Ex: liberal democratic peace theory argues democratic states less likely to
go to war w/ e/o
Waltz: Theories focusing on individuals/internal composition of states are
reductionist
- Argues that anarchy, the structure of the intl system, is the cause of war
- Distribution of power is the key determinant of behavior
- Through their interactions, states are socialized into a system to which
they have to conform to survive
- In this system, arming = the most rational course of action
- Fact that insecurity is driven by a system of conformity wipes out any
internal differences
- Systemic explanation: Isolates change in the dist. of power as the key
causal mechanism rather than an individual or state
Causal theories assume the antecedent condition to war to be constant
Inductive method: Scientist IDs patterns or correlations b/t variables from raw
facts
- Intent = to formulate theory
Deductive method: Scientist begins w/ a theory & based on this theory forms
hypotheses which can then be tested
- Intent = to test theory
Covering law = a general pattern
Question is whether one moves from the facts to the theory or from the theory
to the facts
Realists emphasize material factors
Liberals emphasize ideological or cultural factors as causal

Some have stayed w/in the positivist tradition but question the distinction
b/t an empirical reality and a normative one
The distinction b/t fact and value is @ the core of the scientific project
- But this is increasingly being challenged
- Welch: Leaders often motivated by normative concerns that lead to
behavior that may be inconsistent w/ material self-interest; JUSTICE often
an important reason for going to war
Does moving toward the causal power of normative concerns upset the
empirical-normative distinction? And threaten the entire edifice?

Constitution
End of Cold War = scholars skeptical of positivism
- IDs of the major players did not seem constant
- Existing theories couldnt explain the change like the end of the CW
Analysts looked for more constitutive models for understanding change
Constitutive approach: Emphasizes how IDs and outcomes are generated out
of interactions b/t difft actors
- Change may involve transformation of the units or their interaction
Actors always have a choice in social constructivism
- Wendts Alter and Ego
- Anarchy can generate difft logics; depends on the specific choices states
make vis a vis others
- If there is a choice, then ID is not fixed but changeable
Wendt criticized for assuming the centrality of the state
Intl actors dont start w/ clean slate like Alter and Ego; they are already
embedded in a context of meaning
- This constrains their room for maneuver
Logic of constitution: Assumes that an actors ID is shaped by historical
context
- An abductive logic: When actors, in engaging w/ the other, test or try
out difft logics in an attempt to figure out who the other is and respond to
them accordingly
Abductive logic of constitution rests on a 2-stage process:
- First stage: Tending toward an Other as if they are of one type, as a form
of testing the validity of the attribution
- If the Other responds in kind, the two begin to converge on a common
game
- If they respond on the basis of another typification, this is a falsification of
the original hypothesis & a realignment on a difft game
- In this process, it isnt the scientists who hypothesizes and tests theory, but
the actors
Causal analysis of why war broke out in former Yugoslavia:
- Point to the insecurity generated by the death of Tito
- Tito no longer around to mediate disputes b/t nationalities, so ancient tribal
hatreds created a spiral of insecurity
- Yet given high level of inter-marriage across these ID lines and habit of
living in peace for decades, many question this view
Constitutive analysis of why war broke out in former Yugoslavia
- Looked at how leaders like Slobodan Milosevic mobilized Serb fears

- How he magnified divisions b/t people, making war possible

- Post-CW context created potential for either conflict or cooperation
The subjects necessarily become the focus of analysis in a constitutive view
Attention is given to the practices that actors use to make meaning
Realist claims on the predominance of power & insecurity can act as
normative claims about who we are
Language of causality asks a why necessary question
- Ex: Why did X, US military and economic pressure, necessarily give rise
to Y, the end of the Cold War and the USSR?
- Ex: Why did X, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, necessarily give rise to the
Gulf War?
- Assumes X and Y exist in the empirical world as constant features which
may impact e/o in predictable ways
- X and Y are examples of a larger pattern
- It stands outside the world as a timeless entity to be observed
Language of constitution, by contrast, asks the how possible question
- How, given a logic of competitive arming that lasted decades, would it be
possible for Gorbachev to act as if the USA were a friend, or take
unilateral steps to disarm to try to transform the relationship?
- How, given that Yugoslavia was a multicultural society for decades, could
bloody war suddenly break out?
- Assumes human action cannot be determined
- Assumes actors exercise choice w/in a world shaped by widespread shared
understandings
- Any patterns are a function of social and intersubjective rules belonging to
particular types of context
- It engages with a world that is constantly being remade

Conclusion:
Realism, a theory, and constructivism, a methodology, are juxtaposed in
relation to the two claims on war (that it is pervasive vs that it is a social
artifact)
Central point of Chapter 2: War and diplomacy as social artifacts
Social artifacts: Rule-governed practices that have taken difft shapes and
forms in historically specific circumstances
Recognizing war as a social construction opens up a space for greater
reflexivity
Reflexivity: Being able to stand back from the world and to see how ones
actions are shaped and influenced by what is assumed about the world or by
past conditioning
This doesnt necessarily eliminate war but it increases space w/in which
actors can make choices rather than acting as if war is the only option
Diplomatic Interventions book by Fierke Chapter 2
Chapter 2: War and Diplomacy
Walzer: The social & historical conditions that modify war arent accidental
or external to war itself

War as determined by human nature versus war as a social artifact

Conflict, fighting, violence, intervention all concepts that can overlap w/ or be
used in conjunction w/ war
- War is a form of conflict, but conflict is not by definition war
- There can be non-violent conflict, like Gandhis India Campaign
War involves high degree of organization thru system of socially sanctioned
rules
- War traditionally declared formally b/t 2 states
- But in War on Terrorism or guerilla wars, at least one of the actors is NOT
a state less clear how the rules of war apply
Forceful intervention may be closely related to war
- Ex: Saddam Husseins invasion of Kuwait was an intervention that was an
act of war
- Intl community intervened to uphold intl principles of sovereignty and
non-intervention
- Intervention in this book looks @ many layers of human agency that have
shaped the experience of war or its transformation
- Forceful intervention is seen in and of itself as an act which is constituted
by a range of other interventions
Once war understood as a social artifact, the reality is subject to interventions
that alter its shape
Question is whether intervention is an act that alters the reality of war or is
part & parcel of the same social artifact
- In second case, war itself is no less a social construct than the various
efforts to limit or alter its course
- The two have emerged and developed in tandem
Diplomacy one of the oldest forms of intervention to limit recourse to war
- But it has also been its handmaiden
- Brian White: If world politics characterized by tension b/t conflict &
cooperation, diplomacy & war are its 2 defining institutions
- As populations have become main victims of war, w/ breakdown of
distinction b/t civilian & combatant, their stake in intl diplomacy has
increased
- Formal diplomacy b/t states now only 1 aspect of a system involving many
levels of intervention by multiple parties
- These parties not necessarily IDed by their allegiance to a state, but may
be from intl governmental orgs or NGOs
- Diplomacy traditionally defined by the estrangement and isolation of states
- May be a need to rethink the meaning of the concept and role of its
practice
Rest of chapters in this book devoted to analyzing difft types of intervention
Purpose of this chapter to look @ historical & contemporary distinctions of
carving political and social landscape defined by diplomacy and war

Diplomacy and war

Diplomacy = communication w/ neighbors and resolution of conflict by
negotiation & dialogue
Oldest diplomatic doc to be discovered: Letter dated around 2500 BC sent
from Elba to the kingdom of Hamazi

First evidence of a diplomatic system traces it to Greek city-states

- This system needed b/c of absence of any single city powerful enough to
impose empire on others
- It gave rise to an etiquette of dealing w/ one another as equals
Both early examples involve:
- Some working relationship b/t communities
- Use of emissaries
- Rules and protocols: Mutual recognition of equality, common language,
normative expectations about right/appropriate behavior
More specific form of diplomacy has emerged w/ the modern state system
- Involves the management of relations b/t states
- Need for diplomacy is a function of the absence of any kind of overarching
authority to adjudicate disputes b/t them
Modern diplomacy arose in the absence of empire
The Hapsburg and Ottoman Empires only disintegrated w/ WW1
The model of sovereignty only became universal w/ decolonization since
WW2
- The global spread of the interstate system has thus been gradual

From empire to states

Before state system, most of Europe part of unified Roman Empire
In 2nd century AD this crumbled b/c of internal corruption & paralysis and b/c
of barbarian invasions from the East
After its collapse, the Western portion was very fragmented and distributed
among several Germanic tribes
- Charlemagne became emperor of the Roman empire in 800 AD & tried to
reorganize it under his control
- After he died it came under attack again from Vikings and Magyars
- By 1000 AD there was nothing resembling state boundaries in Europe
- The memory of the greatness of the Roman Empire persisted
- The Catholic Church was the only institution providing any kind of
common ID or unity
Medieval society structured around a hierarchy of relations, with God at the
top
- St Augustine argued that God created princes to impose order on sinful
humans
- His ideas reinforced this social structure where monarchs, lords, vassals,
education and theorizing were all determined by religion
- The Pope was seen as Gods rep on earth so the monarch owed
submission and obedience to Rome
This was a feudal system in which the King gave land to local military leaders
in return for defending an area against his enemies
- Result: A system of private warfare b/t lords and vassals
- Sovereignty & thus authority was fragmented
- There were several overlapping centers of power
- The economy was localized
Changes around 1000 AD encouraged individualism over universalism and
created conditions for emergence of the state system

1) The Crusades: Knights fighting for Christianity went to Middle East to

recapture the Holy Land from Muslim infidels
- In process, they discovered Greek classics: Aristotle, Plato, and Sophocles
- They brought these back to monasteries in Europe
- This introduced more secular form of thought, including assumptions that
humans possess reason => secularization of Church doctrine
2) Trade networks to the rest of the world re-established after barbarian invasions
- Cities in Northern Italy increased trade w/ the East
- Tech innovations = creation of surplus products for sale on the market =
new merchant class
- Merchants wealthy from trade & finance -> est. source of wealth separate
from the church or nobility
- Cities in Northern Italy and on the crusaders path began to grow
- In late 15th century, Venice, Florence, Genoa, Naples, Milan all became
major cities & developed diplomatic system b/t them
3) A cultural revolution
- Growth of Italian city-states & creation of wealth -> Renaissance
- Flourishing of art, universities, and architecture in the 14th and 15th century
- Eroded Churchs monopoly on learning
- Contributed to a secularization of thought
- Rediscovery of Greek, Roman history & the classics gave rise to Humanist
scholars
- New Renaissance scholarship emphasized the individual, historical, selfconsciousness, etc.
4) The Reformation of the 16th century
- Contributed to individualism and a focus on the state
- It was a conflict b/t the Catholic church and new Protestant groups who
were redefining the nature of faith
- Before this, Catholic Church had monopoly on interpretation of the Bible,
written in Latin and only known by Church elite
- 1450 invention of the printing press = Bible could be printed in many
languages, increasing its circulation
- Also increased reading of other materials, political pamphlets
- Illusion of Christian unity was thus broken
5) Revolution in technology also transformed the possibilities of war
- Expanded trade networks = introduction of gunpowder from China
- New forms of military org like the cavalry and drill
- Soldiers could move in more synchronized pattern
- Thus became more costly and complex to wage war
- Only King had the taxes of the entire country at his disposal
- This encouraged new forms of bureaucracy to raise & collect taxes
- Kings power was thus increased at expense of the aristocracy
- King needed merchants and bankers for taxes and loans more
6) Inventions in navigation, mapmaking and the compass
- Made possible the building of more advanced ships
- Could travel to distant lands
- Focus on trade shifted from the trading networks of Italian city-states to
the Iberian monarchies and trading in ships
- Improvement in ships increased possibility of exploiting far-off lands

Conquests provided revenues to consolidate the state and finance more

conquest

The Westphalian system

By 16th century, clear that neither Catholicism nor Protestantism would prevail
Thirty Years War from 1618-1648 ended w/ Treaty of Westphalia
- 1648 associated w/ the beginning of the interstate system
- Treaty defined the nature of states, how they would interact, and thus est.
rules for the European state system
- King given power to decide religious affiliation of his lands
- Acceptance of sovereignty as a defining principle - @ time associated w/
the monarch
- Jean Bodin: Stressed need for unconditional obedience to supreme
authority
- As result, over 300 European states at the time would each have a single
source of authority
- Concept would later broaden to refer to decision-making bodies following
the American and French revolutions
Concept of sovereignty helped consolidate the absolute authority of the
monarch
- Increased perception of his/her legitimacy
- It est. the boundaries of a piece of land and clear authority over it
- It was also an essential mark of independence
- Sovereigns had right to enter into diplomatic relations
All states were to be formally equal
- No official hierarchy b/t them an acknowledgement of anarchy as the
structuring principle
Sovereignty gave rise to a new structure of relations
- Monarchs est. standing armies of which they were commander in chief
- Sovereigns closely bound by marriage ties, a central part of diplomacy
- Active diplomacy a way to limit conflicts
- War was less over religious issues than the glory of the monarch and the
expansion of their influence & wealth
Wealth and military power seen as reinforcing state power
- This gave rise to the mercantile state & growing emphasis on trade as a
source of conflict
- Wealth strengthened naval power, which was needed to protect trade,
which created more wealth
- Dutch and British East India Companies est. a monopoly on trade w/in
particular regions
- This translated into a monopoly for the state
Concept of sovereignty went hand in hand w/ a concept of balance of power
- Emphasis on balance emerged during 18th century Enlightenment
- Balance of power not part of Thirty Years War
- But as importance of religion faded, balance became means of stopping
any one power from dominating
- It thus preserved the system of sovereign states
- Emmerich de Vattel: Modern Europe as a kind of republic, of which the
members can unite to maintain order and liberty

When system originated in the 17th century, balance was a means to

preserve the sovereignty of individual states
- In the 18th century, emphasis shifted to long-term stability & equilibrium
b/t states
- Result was less emphasis on preserving the independence of smaller states,
more on preserving the balance b/t major powers
- Ex: Poland was divided up many times, w/ parts going to Russia, Austria
and Germany, all in the name of balance of power
The balance of power required flexibility
- Meant there could be NO permanent alliances
- Meant that ideology or religion couldnt play a role in alliance formation
- States also had to settle for less than total victory in war
- System led to rapid growth of diplomatic representation to keep e/o
informed of intentions & ready to conclude new alliances
- System rested on assumption that all should be ready to act to common
advantage if the balance was disturbed
Balance of power played out in other parts of the world too
- Earlier competition b/t trading companies -> increased colonization of
areas outside Europe
- Colonies were wanted for products they supplied: gold, silver, slaves,
spices
- Colonies sent products to mother country that were processed & sent back
as exports
- All trade w/ colonies regarded as a monopoly
- Colonies not allowed to develop manufacturing industries to compete
- English & Dutch came into conflict in America in the 17th century
- France & England fought over fur trade in the USA
- Increased wealth from colonies contributed to state power -> affected
balance of power
- Ex: France & Spain helping American colonies to expel Britain helped
upset the balance
The Westphalian system had tension at its heart
- System of communication needed b/c of the potential for conflict
- Rules underpinning shared interactions b/t states became institutionalized
to extent that they had not been before
- Monarchs had emissaries called diplomats communicate w/ other states
- Over time, involved constructing foreign ministries w/in states, and
foreign embassies w/ ambassadors in difft countries
- This expansion led over time to the professionalization of diplomacy and
the creation of an occupation
-

Nation and empire

Change & historical process marked the 19th century
- Shift away from state-building to nation-building
- This had consequences for the way war was defined & fought
- 2 revolutions marked the transition & shook the old European order
First was the political revolutions in US and France
- From these, a concept of popular sovereignty emerged
- This located authority in the institutions representing the people, not the
monarch

French Rev: War no longer focused on the glory of the king; it was the
business of citizens
- War in defense of the NATION was the basis for a call for arms
- Idea of a nation as a popular social formation based on shared culture and
language b/t groups emerged @ this time
- Napoleon mobilized masses for war w/ aim to propagate ideas of liberty,
equality, and fraternity thruout Europe
Second was industrial revolution in Britain
- Napoleonic wars strengthened this revolution
- Rapid advancement of technology
- New means of mass production -> rapid growth in size of business, new
products introduced for mass consumer market
- Construction of huge factories required many workers and caused
massive movement from country to city
- This led to rapid urbanization, urban squalor, and poor working conditions
- New wave of expansion abroad in search of markets for surplus goods and
raw materials
Imperialism was a search for the earths natural resources & markets
- Harbors, warehouses, plantations, railroads built in countries outside
Europe
- Production there was organized according to European needs
- The expansion was articulated in terms of historical progress
- Europeans there to bring their values, Christianity, education, wealth
- Greater wealth of Europeans was seen as proof of their superiority & right
to rule
- By 1914, European powers had annexed 9/10ths of Africa & a large part
of Asia
The political & industrial revolutions of this era expanded the involvement of
the masses
- Development of mass education, the extension of the vote, emergence of a
class of wage laborers, & armies of citizens
- Shift away from an emphasis on war as a means to expand the state fought
by armies loyal to the king, to war fought by & on behalf of the nation
- These developments coincided w/ the expansion of empire
Jean Jacques Rousseau: War is a SOCIAL ACTIVITY & a product of
civilization
- It is the citizen who becomes a soldier
- He argued that war was the job of a nations citizens
- Just war wasnt fought by pro soldiers in the pay of kings but by citizens
of a republic
- Rousseau was targeting Hobbes and Grotius argued their theories could
be used in the service of imperial powers
- Huge Grotius theory endorsed principles of private war, conquest, &
slavery
- In Principles du droit de la guerre, Rousseau argued that war arises from
unjust institutions
- Humans acted not by reason alone, but sentiments as well
- They are driven by the want to lay the basis for a just society
Republican virtues provided the basis for a call to mass mobilization
- The Napoleonic Wars were peoples wars

Conscription introduced in 1793

Largest military force ever to be found in Europe was est. after
Republicanism: Approach to war focused on freeing the masses from the
old oppressive order
Both liberalism & republicanism a reaction against the old royal order
- B/c that order opposed progress & repudiated the equal rights of man
- They came to be pitted against a more conservative concept of nation that
defended the old order
- Metternich: Est. the Congress of Vienna that codified the rules of
diplomacy, promise to concert together against any future threat to the
system
- The Congress was the basis for the Concert of Europe
- Concert managed post-war policies thru system of conferences b/t major
powers to preserve balance & preserve the Europe of the absolutist age of
sovereign monarchs
- This required stopping spread of revolution
- But in 1848, wave of revolutions spread thru Eastern Europe based on
ideals of self-determination & equality
The conservative tradition also rested on view of the nation as an hierarchical
and organic community
- Karl von Clauswitz: Napoleons victory over Prussia due to his ability to
mobilize the French nation for war
- Clauswitz: Had vision of spiritually unified nation based on the volk which
subordinated the individual to a nation led by a strong leader
- War was conducted in the name of the state, for the nation and for its glory
- He conceptualized war as a rational activity but involved mobilization of
emotions & sentiments to its service
- Clauswitzs strategy rested on 2 main theories of war:
1) Attrition or wearing down the enemy by imposing high casualty rate
- A defensive strategy relying in a high concentration of force
2) Theory of maneuver, involving surprise and pre-emption
- Required mobility and dispersion to create uncertainty & achieve speed
Many 19th century developments brought Clausewitzian version of modern
war closer to reality
- Dramatic advancement in tech the railway & telegraph
- Allowed for greater & faster mobilization of arms & mass production of
guns
- Growing importance of alliances
- WW1 heralded the breakdown of the balance of power and the experience
of total war

Total war
By end of 18th century war a highly organized activity based on many
distinctions
- State as the legitimate wielder of violence, the soldier the legitimate bearer
of arms
- Combatants were distinguished from non-combatants & criminals

Internal territory of the state, characterized by peaceful civic politics,

distinguished from the external relations b/t states, characterized by violent
struggle
- Rise of capitalism -> further separation b/t private realm of economic
activity & the public activities of the state
Emergence of total war began to blur these distinctions
Total war: A war to which all resources and the whole pop are committed; a
war conducted w/out any scruples or limitations
Clauswitz regarded the Napoleonic wars as total
WW1 and WW2 blurred distinctions b/t public and private b/c of involvement
of society in prep for war
Economic targets became legit military targets
Indiscriminate aerial bombing of cities broke down distinction b/t combatant
& non
Genocide of Jews during WW2 made civilians an explicit target of the state
Development of nuclear weapons was a further, ultimate breakdown of
distinctions that had characterized an earlier era of war
Traditional diplomacy also broke down w/ WW1
- Many believed practices of secret diplomacy had caused the war by
creating misperception & misunderstanding
- Gave rise to a new diplomacy that revolved around several liberal ideas
1) Diplomacy should be more open to public scrutiny & control
- Need for greater constraints/accountability of a social elite
2) Idea that intl institutions could improve communication & minimize
misperceptions, and thus recourse to war
- Intl orgs like League and later UN emerged as actors in their own rights
- Nongovt actors, like private individuals and groups, began to play an
increasing role
After end of WW2, 2 superpowers emerged to fill power vacuum
- Cold War combined mix of old & new
- Brought a 40-year period of stasis
- Both USA and USSR built on revolutions, critical of secret practices of
balance of power
- They presented difft models of enlightenment & liberation
- This period saw unprecedented development of agencies for purpose of
collecting, collating, & evaluating intelligence
- Also saw use of propaganda and psychological warfare vis a vis the public
like never before
Development of nuclear weapons changed the logic of balance of power as
well as war-fighting
- Strategy of nuclear deterrence underpinned nuclear diplomacy
- Nuclear deterrence rested on mutually assured destruction: ability to
launch devastating second strike w/ nuclear weapons after absorbing an
attack
- Cold War involved steady escalation of this threat w/ revisions over time
to enhance the threats credibility
- By mid-80s many argued that increasing speed & destructiveness of
weapons made possible a first strike strategy: the probability of
accidental nuclear war

Cold War was potentially the most total of wars

- The main subjects were alliances rather than nation-states
- Nuclear war would have made no distinction b/t combatants & non
- Nuclear war would have made the world uninhabitable
- Some saw the fact that it did not as a victory for the strategy of nuclear
deterrence
- But war was not eliminated by nuclear deterrence
- While Europe may have been peaceful, war by proxy continued in other
parts of the world
In contrast to assumptions that it was better to arm than disarm, Reagan &
Gorbachev agreed to disarm
Eastern Europes nonviolent Velvet Revolutions which were allowed by the
leader of the Soviet bloc
- This change was a function of popular demand, not war or the balance of
power!
- Important role of independent citizens initiatives in constituting the
possibility of superpower disarmament challenges realist notions of
centrality of state and military power
End of Soviet Empire and German Democratic Republic defied ideas that
states would always act to max their interest in power
- Northern Ireland, South Africa, & Middle East also saw shift from
violence toward more peaceful options
- New hot wars involving ethnic cleansing broke out in Yugoslavia and
Rwanda
End of Cold War and bloc system -> accelerated globalization
- Opening up barriers to trade and communication across the world along w/
greater localization
- Regional integration was given a new impetus
- Increasing fragmentation too & the phenomenon of failed states in the
Third World
- Transnational & regional patterns of governance further developed
- Greater cooperation across state bounds and growth of NGOs
- Increased potential for intl bodies to intervene for humanitarian ends in
conflict areas
- Intervention came to be manifest in a variety of difft types of practice,
initiated by difft types of organization, confronted w/ difft types of
warfare, which required difft strategies for responding
As far as these interventions required diplomacy, it was a difft kind of
diplomacy than before
- Both old & new diplomacy after WW1 involved reps of states
communicating w/ e/o
- Post-CW, reps of states, often in context of multilateral institutions,
intervened in conflicts that often involved NON-STATE actors
- Diplomats often intervening on behalf of conflicts that may/may not have
been relevant to their own interests
Globalization = erosion of state sovereignty and growth of non-state actors
Now the chapter turns to exploring the difft forms of war and conflict that
have been the focus of intervention efforts

These forms of warfare arent NEW, but have come to occupy a more
prominent place in the intl realm
- Ex: Terrorism a feature of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict during CW; post9/11 it is now a defining feature of world politics
But the meaning given by the observers or the perpetrators of violence to acts
of violence is at stake
These new forms of warfare are unique b/c they focus on the relationship b/t
states and non-state actors

War and non-state actors

Several features of post-CW warfare distinguish it from the past
- Central role of ethnic conflict
- Use of nonviolent strategies
- Guerilla warfare
- Terrorism
Rather than distinct & separate categories, these 4 categories represent a
mosaic of meanings
Ethnic conflict firstly regards the ID of the unit in conflict revolves around
cultural differences
- These may relate to religion, language, or nationality
- It has acquired a connotation of brutal violence
- Mary Kaldor: Identity politics one of the defining features of the new
wars
- Nonviolence, guerilla warfare, & terrorism MAY be, but are not
necessarily used in ethnic conflict
- Ex: Gandhis nonviolent campaign to remove the British from India
involved ID politics, but isnt usually labeled as ethnic conflict
- Ex: Terrorism in Northern Ireland had ID politics involved b/c the conflict
involved identification w/ Ireland or the UK or w/ Catholic or Protestant
ID
- Both are examples from earlier eras, whereas Kaldor refers to the post-CW
period
- Kaldors main point: That ID was the defining feature of wars fought in
the Balkans and Rwanda, also a defining feature of the War on Terror
Ethnic conflict did not begin w/ the end of the Cold War
- Ethnic dimension of conflict was foregrounded w/ the demise of the CW
battle b/t capitalist & socialist ideology
But end of CW also brought the internalization of conflicts
- War in north of Ireland, before treated as a civil conflict w/in the UK,
became an area of intervention by the US
- Conflict in Yugoslavia replaced multiculturalism of Titos rule w/ violent
ethnic conflict b/t Croats, Serbs, and Muslims
- From beginning, intl community played central role in finding solution,
w/ US intervening w/ force
In principle, ethnic conflict may overlap w/ other 3 categories
- The other 3 are more strategic in nature
Further distinction is b/t violent and non-violent conflict
- Ex: Velvet Revolutions were nonviolent

Ex: Kosovar Albanians waged nonviolent campaign in Serbia during

1990s, est. political and educational institutions for Kosovar Albanians
after they had been stripped of most of their rights
- A nonviolent strategy is of those who, b/c of their military inferiority or
minority status, would be unable to win thru violent strategy
- It is a form of resistance that follows occupation by a foreign power or that
is used by communities who have experienced LT oppression
- Gene Sharp: Documented numerous successful cases of nonviolent
intervention against occupation
- Ex: Civil Rights Movement in US
Overriding principle of many nonviolent strategies as to be what you want to
become
- This concept of acting as if is most evident in nonviolent campaigns
- Actors refuse to cooperate w/ expectations of oppressors and have
attempted to transform the context by acting as if they were free
- Tendency of authorities to respond w/ violence raises questions to the
broader population about the moral legitimacy of the current order
- Nonviolent & dignified stance of the weak in response est. their
entitlement to the rights they claim
- Also serves to further dissolve the power of existing structures
Nonviolence tends not to be taken seriously
- Ex: Failure of intl community to engage much w/ Kosovo until the KLA
terrorists emerged
Two remaining categories rely on strategies of violence, but are distinguished
by the degree of legitimacy attached to its use
- Based on traditional rules of war, guerilla warfare & terrorism are
illegitimate
- B/c the rep acts of violence by non-state actors that blur the bounds b/t
combatants and non-combatants
- BUT since WW2, there has been increasing recognition of the right to
resist occupation by means of guerilla war
Surprise a main feature of guerilla war, ambush a classic tactic
- The guerilla undertakes the act w/out the identifying uniform
- Makes them indistinguishable from ordinary citizens
- Ex: French resistance fighters during WW2 disguised as peaceful peasants
- Problem is that in intl law, a citizen of a state that has surrendered
promises to stop fighting in exchange for a restoration of ordinary life &
benevolent quarantine
- Citizens in this case are not allowed to resist quarantine or occupation
- If they did resist, it was labeled as war treason that was punishable
- But the resistance fighters from WW2 didnt seem to fit this category
- Since been a growing acceptance that even after occupation, there may be
a moral right to defend a homeland/political community
- But this change creates tension: b/t the rules of war on occupation, and any
commitment by states to follow them, and the requirements of governing
in a situation where occupying authorities may be subject to attack at any
time
- Ex: Tension in Iraq following invasion of 2003 US and British soldiers
attacked by continuing resistance effort
Guerilla fighters challenge principle of distinction b/t soldier and civilian

By refusing to accept this distinction, they make it impossible for the

enemy to distinguish soldiers from civilians
- This increases the likelihood that the occupier will kill civilians
- Guerrilla war is peoples war
- It is war from below
- Often seen as a war of liberation
- The oppressor is not at war with an army but a nation
- Implicit message is that if the oppressor is to fight at all, they will have to
do so as barbarians
- Guerilla war depends on counterattacks to mobilize a large part of the
population
- The onus of indiscriminate warfare is placed on the opposing army
- In this way, guerrilla strategy resembles nonviolence b/c it places the
powers that be in a position of having to choose whether to use violence
against civilians
- Guerilla war differs however in the use of violent means
In some ways, terrorism relies on an opposing logic
- To destroy morale and undercut solidarity, RANDOMNESS is the central
feature of terrorist activity
- Much more indirect activity than the other 2 b/c it avoids engagement w/
an enemy army
- Instead it targets people, and primarily civilians, by chance
Bruce Thompson: the meaning of terrorism has changed over time
- First popularized during French Rev had more positive connotation
- Referred to a system for est. order in the transition following revolution
- Rather than antigovt activity by non-state actors, the French terrorism was
an instrument of governance est. by a new revolutionary state
- After industrial revolution, w/ emergence of universalist ideologies,
terrorism acquired its familiar connotations
- By 1930s, it was used more to describe the practices of mass repression
used by totalitarian states against their own citizens
- After WW2, terrorism regained its revolutionary connotation
- Primarily used in reference to violent revolts by nationalist/anti-colonialist
groups in Africa, Asia, & the Middle East
- In 1990s some began referring to it as a gray area phenomenon fluid
and variable nature of subnational conflict post-CW
- Came to denote threats to the stability of the nation-state by non-state
actors & non-govt processes/orgs
- Also used to describe violence where control shifted from legit govts to
half-political, half-criminal powers
Today, terrorism mostly associated w/ non-state actors
- It is often deliberate, systematic, and organized
- It represents a clear violation of the prohibition against killing innocent
civilians
- Ordinary citizens killed to deliver a message of fear
- Message is directed against entire classes or groups of peoples; can thus
rep the most extreme and brutal of intentions
- Can include the demand for unconditional surrender
- Tends to rule out any sort of compromise settlement

Conclusion
War distinguished from other forms of conflict or violence by its dependence
on organization & a system of rules
War may be fought b/t any range of identities
Diplomatic Interventions Fierke Book Chapter 9

David Campbell: Critique involves an intervention or series of interventions

in established modes of thought and action
- Purpose of this kind of intervention is to disturb settled practices &
explore alternatives that may have been foreclosed or suppressed
A critical ethos begins w/ a logic of enquiry
- This logic of enquiry is difft from more conventional approaches to IR in
so far as its focus is on:
Assumptions, their historical production, their social and political
effects, and the possibility of going beyond them
This concluding chapter wants to re-explore the categories of the book &
highlight the critical underpinning of the argument and its implications
Explores how the critical intervention developed here relates to other
traditions of critical theory in IR
Raises questions about the possibilities this intervention might open up for
rethinking practices of intervention and war

Revisiting the categories

Previous 8 chapters form 4 separate sections
First section: Explores significance of a constitutive analysis of intervention
and war as distinct from a causal one
- A constitutive analysis sees a changing constellation of IDs, practices, and
relationships situated in historical and cultural context
- Yet these are transformed by agents who have some choice, more or less
reflexively, as they act as if one set of assumptions or another prevails
Second section explored the evolution of shared understandings regarding the
conduct of war
- Various moral and legal frameworks are attempts to limit its worst effects
- Laws of war a codification of many Just War principles
- International humanitarian law: Attempts to ameliorate the conditions of
those most affected by war (soldiers, POWs, vulnerable civilians)
- Human rights law: Addresses questions of abuse by a govt of its own
citizens
- Each of these is a response to unusual levels & new forms of barbarism
Specific policies related to these rules cannot be separated from the moral and
legal backdrop
- Section 3 explores the application of these principles in relation to specific
military and economic interventions
- Central tension is b/t material or national interest and normative principle
3 things clarified by placing changing policies in historical context
1) Concept of national interest is no less dependent on the shared understanding
of sovereignty than many norms are dependent on more recent shared
understandings related to human rights

That they are often in conflict is more a function of the way these have
emerged historically in relation to e/o
- Human rights were tacked onto sovereignty rather than thinking thru the
relationship b/t the two concepts
2) The tension often manifests itself in the relationship b/t state and non-state
actors
- Both dependent on a spatial division b/t state and non-state, even while
these practices erode the sovereignty of the former
3) Historical changes in policy suggest the key issue is one of the unintended
consequences of political choices rather than an absence of choice
- Ex: The acceleration of arms trade during the CW & creation of a weapons
surplus set stage for present concerns about the proliferation of WMD and
subsequent policies relating to economic sanctions & pre-emption
Ludwig Wittgenstein: Language is like an ancient city
- The geography of the intl landscape is much the same: It juxtaposes the
old and new, sometimes in tension w/ e/o, yet each a by-product of
historical meaning & practice
There is no single foundational explanation for war
The world in which we act, is the point of departure for greater reflexivity, for
rethinking interventionary policies
Theory and practice
Robert Cox: Theory is always FOR someone and FOR some purpose
Problem-solving theory: Takes the world as it is & attempts to solve problems
w/in it
Critical theory: Exposes the power relationships that underpin what is as
well as theories that represent it
Work of Waltz has been the most consistent object of criticism by all critical
theorists
Waltz uses metaphor of a model plane to illustrate how theory works
- A model can be used in 2 main ways: To represent a theory or to picture
reality by simplifying it, thru omission or reduction of scale
- The model has explanatory power b/c it moves away from reality rather
than staying close to it
- SIMPLICITY is most important; capturing the object in a parsimonious
manner
Waltzs model is based on a mechanical view of the universe
- It assumes balance to be the natural state
- The model IDs states as the central feature of this system
- IDs the balance of power as the fundamental dynamic by which
equilibrium is maintained
- RE-establishing the balance is an automatic process for Waltz
- Model provides an explanation for the conformity of states to the
requirements of anarchy (for their lack of choice)
- This desire to explain comes from a desire to control, or at least to know if
control is possible
- From perspective of critical theory, that desire for control cannot be
separated out from politics

Theory of this kind actually reinforces particular interests and power

structures
- It may become a model of problem-solving on the part of historically
situated actors who want to reproduce existing the order, justifying their
policies based on realist principles
Critical theory reveals that this model supports particular interests, not least
those of powerful states
Those who benefit from the status quo seek to solve probs w/in its existing
parameters
Those outside this status quo, who seek change, ID the contradictions inherent
in their historical context
Critical theory of the Frankfurt School emphasizes emancipation
- In particular, emancipation from the instrumental rationality that has come
to govern human relations, a rationality that has a potential to dehumanize
- The theory/praxis relationship is @ the heart of Critical theory
- Richard Wyn Jones: Critical theory has failed to give a convincing account
of the relationship b/t theoretical activity & political practice
- This failure was the impetus for the renewal of the Critical theory project
by a second generation (Habermas involved)
- BUT the gap b/t theory & political struggles has still not been sufficiently
bridged
- Jones: Critical theory must reflect on what emancipation means in terms of
actual practices and institutions
- This means greater attention to how Critical theory can generate support
for or sustain an emancipatory politics as well as a politics that puts the
disadvantaged/voiceless/unrepped at the center of concern
Post-structuralists belong to larger category of critical theory
- Wary of Frankfurt Schools emphasis on emancipation fear it can in
itself be a totalizing discourse
- They focus on unsettling existing assumptions and categories, or critiquing
This book shifts away from on theory to the construction of an overview of
how existing practices have emerged over time
- How human actors have responded to the historical contexts of war they
found themselves in
- And how these responses have set the stage for new constellations of
practice
- It seeks greater clarity
- Rather than providing an interpretation, it is an attempt to stand outside
and present an overview of assumptions that have defined a world of
practice/interaction
- The hope is to open up space for more reflexivity and choice
The argument has emphasized war as a social construction
- This somewhat counterintuitive, in so far as war involves element of
Destruction; including deconstruction of more explicit social constructs
that make up civilization and culture
Word deconstruction is theoretically associated w/ post-structuralism
- In this theory, deconstruction is a critical act that involves dismantling
those social artifacts that have been imbued w/ power, which have been
taken for granted, and which privilege some @ the expense of others

This chapter explores relationship b/t deconstruction and construction as it

relates to war and intervention
- This relates to the tension b/t the search for universal consent by Critical
theorists, and post-structuralists who view this prospect as part of the
problem
- This involves 2 moves:
1) First builds on Ann Orfords deconstructive analysis of humanitarian
intervention to explore how dominant narratives limit available choices
in response to humanitarian conflict
2) Second, explores broader notion of choice as it relates to consent
- Draws on Elaine Scarrys The Body in Pain, an exploration of torture
and war

A world of our making

Central point of perspicuous representation is to show the constructedness
of contemporary intl politics and war
- These practices have evolved in a certain way, although they could have
evolved differently
Constructivist (deconstructivist too) analyses often criticized for focusing on
language to the exclusion of material reality
- This book has highlighted the extent to which material reality is a product
of categories defined by historically located actors
- These have then been passed on to future generations, who have
introduced further additions and modifications
Game theory & other binary models of decision-making revolve around 2
choices w/in a game where the rules are assumed
Question here is about the possibility to transform the field w/in which choices
are made
- Question of reconstruction the larger structure of rules or games w/in
which choices, & thus actions, are formed
- Game metaphor helps think about how choices are often constrained by
the underlying assumptions which constitute them
Politically, consent may be manifest on 2 levels:
1) Consent to a particular action
- Involves active consent to particular choices
2) Consent to the world w/in which choices are presented, which is the prior
condition for any specific choice
- It is @ this level that choices seem limited precisely b/c the world appears
as an objective reality, which constrains and circumscribes the possible
- A more passive consent where agents uphold and endorse the ethics
embodied in practices thru their daily participation in them
Challenge in regard to the second area of consent is to developing
distancing strategies
- These can help us look as strangers upon the world in which we act, and
thus approach it from a difft angle
- In this view, the single unchanging reality is replaced by an overview of a
socially constructed world
- This constructed world has, over time, formed in response to a series of
historically situated choices

-
-

A focus on the 2nd level necessary condition for an agency that goes
BEYOND the yes/no choice
Greater reflexivity would contribute to more deliberate acts of worldmaking and agency

The deconstruction of choice

Ann Orfords book Reading Humanitarian Intervention is an ex. of a narrative
deconstruction that reveals how choices are circumscribed
She makes for points relevant to this analysis:
1) She highlights the sense of powerlessness often engendered by media
images of humanitarian disaster
- Powerlessness arises from presentation of human suffering as a snapshot
- Camera records & isolates a moment of agony which is violently isolated
from the flow of time
- The photo sets up a relationship b/t the viewer and viewed, communicated
in a narrative that constitutes the meaning of humanitarian intervention
2) Narratives of humanitarian intervention often constitute the need to protect
people in failed states
- They rely on earlier colonial narratives about the benevolence of intl
governance over an uncivilized people who cant yet govern themselves
- Narratives of intervention focus on the ways that violence could be used
by good & righteous men to achieve the best for those against whom
that violence was directed
- Defense of military action by the intl community in the name of peace,
security, democracy & HRs -> increased willingness of citizens in
developed states to support militaristic solutions to intl conflicts
- This makes intervention marketable to US citizens
3) Images of widespread suffering and genocide often -> demands that intl
community do something
- Choice is presented in terms of either intervention or genocide (action or
inaction)
- Orford: Inactivity is NOT the alternative to intervention as intl
community is already very engaged in shaping the structure of
political/social/economic/cultural life in many states thru economic
institutions and others
- Cynthia Enloe: The construction of US military as a global police force
since post-CW means it is now more integrated into the social structure
than ever before
4) Emphasis on use of force to respond to humanitarian crises diverts
attention from fact that policies of intl institutions themselves/imperialism
have created conditions that gave rise to these crises!
- Intervention in name of humanitarianism as justification for continued
exploitation and controlling of resources and people
- Post-conflict reconstruction in Bosnia-Herzegovina and East Timor
replicates colonial practices from earlier eras
- East Timor ex: Policies of Australia & intl community supported the
Indonesian govt & the Indonesian military in repressing the East
Timorese but the ordering principles of the intl economy that supported
this were never questioned!

Orford: Narratives of humanitarian intervention construct a particular kind of

world made up of a benevolent intl community & a suffering Third World
- Liberal institutions of the intl community are presented as protectors of
contemporary victims rather than being implicated in their production
- Robert Cover: No laws exist apart from the narratives that locate them and
give them meaning

Deconstruction and construction

Orfords analysis reveals how narratives of humanitarian intervention restrict
choice to the use of force or no force, action or no action
Deconstruction involves exposing the larger global structure of rules and
practices as social constructs
Liberal practices that purportedly seek to protect and limit war are bound up in
its continuation
Another approach focuses more explicitly on the relationship b/t construction
and deconstruction in the practice of war or intervention
Scarrys analysis shifts to the role of intervention in constituting the
constructive & deconstructive elements of war
- Particularly as it relates to questions of consent
While war is a social artifact resting on shared rules, it also involves the
deconstruction of meaning & of civilization more generally
- In this respect, tension b/t construction and deconstruction are central to
the act itself
- This framework complicates the picture provided by Orford
War as a contest
Elaine Scarry: War as a contest that involves mutual injury & consent of
individuals in involved societies to give their bodies to this end
This aspect of mutual injury & pain written out of most historical, diplomatic,
or strategic accounts of war but is fundamental to its practice
Why war rather than another, less destructive form of contest?
- B/c war carries the means of its own enforcement b/c it leaves one side
out-injured and thus incapable of further struggle
Outcome leaves the victor with more agency to impose their own selfdescription over what happened and what will happen
- But, in most wars process of out-injurying doesnt totally debilitate the
loser; it is the loss of morale and a changing perception that arises from
this
- One side ends up perceiving the toll in human life as outweighing the
original ideal at stake
- Often wars end w/ a perceptual change that the equation b/t the level of
acceptable physical injury and the social construct, over which the battle is
waged, has shifted
Thus, always an as if function to the waging of war
- Both sides fighting over a construction that doesnt yet exist in material
form
- Ex: Image of an Ireland or Europe worth dying for is necessitated by the
absence or potential loss of this construction in fact
- Usually, w/ end of a war, a victor was able to realize their self-description

The injuring contest is thus about determining which of 2 existing social

constructs will be produced as an outcome
- There is no inherent relationship b/t the bodies of soldiers on either side &
the self-description of either side
- It is thru massive physical injury that the disembodied idea is embodied
Normally we affirm the existence of objects thru our direct experience of them
- In war, observer sees/touches the body of another, which is juxtaposed to
the disembodied idea, the issue over which the war is fought
- Having seen the reality of the first, he/she believes they have experienced
the reality of the second
- Otherwise unanchored and disembodied beliefs are thus reconnected w/
the force and power of the material world
- Reaffirmation of one sides self-description contributes to the
deconstruction of the competing construct
- What collides in war is each populations right to generate their own forms
of self-description
Post-CW interventions have not been for the purpose of enhancing the ability
of one side to realize their self-description @ the expense of the other
- Instead, theyve attempted to bring an end to the contest
- Either by creating an incentive to stop thru military intervention, or by
assisting the parties to re-describe the conflict such that a mutual
description of their past/future might be possible
- The question is the desirability or limits of these options
Contest of war rests on relationship b/t the collective injury suffered in war &
the reason for war
- Earlier interventions (Just War theory) sought to specify the rules of the
contest
- In response to growing destructiveness of war, humanitarian laws created
to shape how the injured should be treated
- At the core of the social constructions is the brute reality of material,
social, & human destruction
Mutual injury so central to war brings the experience down to the individual
level
- Scarry: The pain of torture closes the suffering individual off from the
civilized world
- Torture difft than war b/c it is a relationship b/t 2 individuals
- War is relationship b/t 2 communities involving mutual injury and the
consent of population
B/c majority of victims in contemporary wars are civilian, the distinction b/t
torture and war is potentially blurred
- Increasing emphasis on human security makes sense in context of wars
in failed states where civilians cannot or will not be protected by their
govts
- It reps an acknowledgment that the subjects of insecurity and injury are
primarily individuals rather than soldiers of the state
- Devolution of war towards individual civilian victims places contemporary
war closer to the deconstructive end of the spectrum & to Scarrys concept
of torture

Torture and deconstruction

Social artifacts are forms that allow for the extension of the self to the world in
service of particular functions
In inflicting extreme pain, torture brings about a contraction & collapse of
consciousness of the larger world
- It transforms the room into a closed space where all objects become
potential weapons
- In so far as pain is produced, it becomes an artifact in itself, where the
bodily condition becomes an attribute of the torturing regimes power
The social artifact and torture represent 2 radically difft models
- Of social creation, on one hand, and deconstruction of these creations, on
the other
- War occupies the same ground as torture in so far as it produces physical
distress and bodily injury, as distinct from the artifact that enhances
comfort
- War also involves contraction of consciousness b/c the minds of those
involved become filled w/ events associated w/ killing and dying
- It also separates the attributes of the hurt body from the body, projecting
them onto other constructs (like freedom, sovereignty, etc.)
But victim of torture doesnt consent to their treatment
- By contrast, war cant be executed w/out consent, w/out the authorization
of the population
- Consent, in this view, can involve explicit choice
War resides in the space b/t the deconstruction of civilization and its
construction
- Outside intervention may play role in determining its place along this
spectrum
- It can affect the degree of consent and participation
Scarry: Nuclear war qualitatively difft than conventional war b/c it eludes the
practice of consent
- Consent in this context is a structural impossibility
- At no point does the pop exercise any consent over their own participation
- Taxpayers not given a choice of whether their money goes to social
programs or the military
- Agreement to finance nuclear weapons is not necessarily a sanctioning of
war itself
- The duration of nuclear war would be so short that the continuous act of
consent that exists in conventional war would be impossible
Individuals or soldiers in a conventional war do not in a single act give or
withdraw their participation
- Consent is continuously renewed or may later be withdrawn as war
progresses
- Nuclear war more closely resembles torture b/c those experiencing the
injury havent consented to doing so and b/c the destruction of civilization
would be total
Military intervention in Iraq in 2003 is at the deconstructive end of the
spectrum
- Images of US soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners can be seen as a metaphor
for the war itself

Images of torture transformed the meaning of the war from one in defense
of HRs and democracy into a war against the Iraqis
- The explicit sexual humiliation of prisoners reinforced perception in the
Islamic world that the war was about the destruction of Islam rather than
the construction of democracy
The intervention in Iraq was also lacking in consent
- It went ahead w/out approval from the UNSC and divided NATO
- Those who did consent in Parliament or Congress thought war was based
on elimination of WMDs
- When no such weapons were found, the just cause became the removal of
a tyrant from power, but this was NOT the act for which consent was
granted!
- The invasion came to be seen by Iraqis not as a liberation but an
occupation
- The intervention & war that followed had neither the consent of the intl
community, the populations of the intervening states, nor the Iraqi people
Unequivocal moral rejection of war is more problematic than that of torture or
of slavery
- B/c war rests on a calculation of the ratio b/t consent to physical injury and
the fight for or surrender of belief
- Waging war requires that the physical loss be viewed as an acceptable
sacrifice
- Consent may be withdrawn as perception changes on this ratio
- Both nuclear weapons and aerial bombardment create a greater distance b/t
those deciding and executing war or intervention & those who suffer the
injury
- Terrorists also appropriate the right to engage in violence w/out consent of
a pop
- Proliferation of highly sophisticated weapons & the increasing role of
terrorism are potentially related
- Widespread proliferation of WMD a byproduct of the CW
- These weapons reflect the distancing of war from human participation in it
- They move toward the deconstructive end of the spectrum
- Interventions that move toward the constructive end place more human
practices of making meaning and construction of social artifacts at the core

Intervention and social construction

The intl community as a whole is moving toward practices of intervention
that emphasize the positive social construction of meaning over the more
destructive
Mark Duffield: Change in intl policy in mid-1990s arising from convergence
of development & security discourses
- The change is one of policy rather than in the nature of the conflict
- Reason for this change of policy is the conclusion that underdevelopment
is dangerous and is a source of conflict
- This liberal governance model internalizes the causes of conflict &
political instability
- Conflict is the result of undeveloped and dysfunctional, war-torn societies

Solution to underdevelopment found in the transformation of individual

societies rather than the global system
- Policy of intl orgs has thus shifted from an emphasis on humanitarian
assistance and aid to the process of reconstructing post-conflict societies
along liberal lines
- This has created array of UN agencies, donor govts, NGOs, and military
establishments involved in working together to bring about change in
societies
- This process rests on argument that development is impossible w/out
stability & that security is not sustainable w/out development!
Duffield: The nature of power and authority have changed radically
- This new power is expressed in the globalized structures of liberal peace
- Inclusion in global structures means buying into the norms that underpin
these structures
- Intent is to replace the contest of mutual injury w/ the positive construction
of meaning built on the consent and participation of affected populations
However, the new imperialism distinguished from earlier practices of
Western intervention by the attempt to transform entire societies
- What has changed is the degree to which the interrelationships are
institutionalized as well as the degree of participation and cooperation by
those exploited
With the consolidation of liberal governance, soft power has become just as
important as hard power
- Soft power relies on: diplomatic resources, persuasion, the capacity to
provide info, & the creative use of selective military tools rather than
coercive force
- Joseph Nye: Soft power is getting others to want what you want
- Soft power rests more explicitly on consent than hard power
- Present efforts seek to integrate societies into the global liberal order, w/
inclusion & exclusion defined in terms of compliance w/ the norms of that
order
Some see re-problematization of underdevelopment as dangerous as part of a
moral re-arming on the part of the West
- It locates the cause of conflict in the Third World and helps legitimate
outside involvement
- It is part of a process of global homogenization that is a site of power
- A set of power relations, built on hierarchy b/t the West and the rest, is
imposed
- The process of self-description by societies involved in conflict is replaced
by a re-description based on Western norms
Meaningful dialogue requires real inclusiveness
Conflicts often revolve around fundamental questions of culture, which
universal modes of intervention cannot address if they silence the voices of
those involved
Potential problem w/ the liberal governance model as a way of making
meaning is that it involves the reconstruction and thus deconstruction of
societies
May be inevitable that any act of intervention will combine idealism w/
powerful interests

Approached reflexively , talk is a form of life that exists at the civilizing and
constructive end of the spectrum
- It is an essential part of building a global culture and not merely
transferring a Western one
- It is essential part of a culture where democratic debate determines
outcomes rather than force
- It is at the heart of more deliberate acts of world-making
Michael Moore in Bowling for Columbine argued that Canada is less violent
than the US b/c they have a difft culture of dealing w/ conflict thru
negotiation rather than force
Language a necessary condition for est. the rules of war
Critical theorists see dialogue as a path toward est. universal consent
Effective dialogue assumes listening as well as talk
Listening must be made a part of the liberal governance model
The hierarchies of power must be the object of intervention

The choice
Torture is a one-way relationship b/t the torturer and tortured
- Where victims voice becomes a vehicle of self-betrayal
Dialogue is the opposite of torture
- Consent and participation key
Traditional warfare located mid-way on the spectrum, sharing both positive
and negative attributes
The two ends are distinguished by the extent to which language and choice
have meaning and the extent to which agents are empowered to make their
social world
The choice is b/t civilization (the possibility of language, agency, and choice)
and the violence of the state of nature
Omer Bartov: The brute reality of the two World Wars and the Holocaust went
hand in hand w/ the search for ideal solutions that were part of the modern
quest to make and unmake humanity
- Origins of the Holocaust cannot be grasped w/out understanding the
origins of Europes first attempts to draw lessons from the butchery of
WW1
- Experience of total war gave rise to idealist and utopian visions of
transcending the brute reality
- This distinction of real and ideal contributes to the construction of intl
politics
The book emphasizes 2 difft approaches to reality:
1) Reality as something out there to which humans merely respond
2) Choices made in historically specific circumstances contribute to the
making and re-making of the world around us
- From this perspective, the real/ideal distinction is part of the problem!
. Week 7 STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE AND GLOBAL POVERTY How useful is
Galtung's conceptualisation of violence and peace for International
Relations? Cultural and structural violence - the relationship between the
two. Systemic inequality implications for long term sustainable peace.

Cultural Violence- Johan Galtung:

Cultural Violence- the symbolic sphere of our existence exemplified by cultural
aspects (religion art etc) that can be used to justify violence.
Entire cultures are not violence; aspects of cultures are violent. However, a set of
aspects of culture which span across the culture warrant the use of the term violent
cultures
Peace culture- opp of cultural violence. This is problematic because institutionalizing
peace makes it mandatory and imposing a culture is direct violence.
Cultural violence makes direct violence feel right murder on behalf of ones country
Typology of Direct and Structural Violence:
Violence is avoidable insults to human needs, threats of violence are violence.
What are basic needs? And what negates them? What are their megaversions?
Direct Violence
Survival needs
Death
Holocaust
Well-being needs
Misery
Silent
Holocaust
Identity needs
Alienation
Spiritual Death
Freedom needs
Repression
Gulag/KZ
Rest of nature
Environmental damage
Ecocide
(Ecological)
All five needs together define peace. All five megaversions define omnicide.
(Associated with Hitler Stalin Reagan and Japanese militarism) War is only one form
of violence, therefore war should be seen as more than just the opposite of war.
Blockades- direct intentional slow violence, to some it is opp cost of immediate
killing. Making casual chain longer, so actor not responsible. Solution Gandhian
boycott- refusal to buy goods with the collecting of funds for merchants.
Alienation- internalization of culture- away from 1 culture, as part of another culture.
Second-class citizen
Repression- freedom from vs freedom to. Detention locking people in, explusion
shunning people out.
Direct violence is avoidable indirect violence is unavoidable.
Structural Violence
Survival Needs
Exploitation A
Well-being needs
Exploitation B
Identity Needs
Penetration Segmentation
Freedom Needs
Marginalization
There is an unequal exchange, underdogs may actually die (Exploitation A) or they
may be deprive Exploitation B. Penetration implanting view of topdog to underdog,
and segmenting the underdog to give him/her a specific view. Marginalization
keeping the underdog outside, fragmentation keeping the underdog away from each
other. Use gender argument. (women higher life expectancy v/s higher mortality
rates)
Violence against nature: sustainable another form of cultural violence.

Relating the three types of violence:

casual flow from cultural via structural to direct can be identified.
then comes eruptions, use of direct violence to get out of the cage of structural
violence (Weber)
blue collar crime (underdog get out of structure)
white collar crime (topdog trying to impose structure)
Violence breeds violence; it is needs deprivation; consequence direct violence.
Sanitation of language is cultural violence.
Social acts for maintenance and cultural violence for their justification to generalize
materialist theory. Is Cultural violence (CV) genetically transmitted? No Unlike sex
and food, the level of aggressiveness varies.
Militarization- process militarism- ideology. Structure +Cultural violence in
militarism is not spoken about, this taboo needs to be broken.
Examples of Cultural Violence:
Religion:
Das Heilige- God exists in all religions, god exists at a higher ground. Manichaeismsharp dichotomies between good and evil.
This dichotomy leads to a double dichotomy as God chooses his preferred ones,
thereby leading to God versus Satan; Chosen ones (by God) Unchosen ones( by God,
chosen by Satan)
The upper classes referred to themselves as being closer to God; clergy they
possessed insight in how to communicate with God. Aristocracy if they were
successful were chosen by God. The poor were chosen only in the after life.
Contemporary example: Exploitation B by material deprivation of inhabitants of the
west bank as they are not the chosen ones. Palestinians born as underdogs, second
class citizens. There is an even distribution of exploitation unlike exploitation A direct
killing which usually affects children.
How cultural violence embedded in this century.
Ideology:
successor to religion. There is still dichotomy; nationalism with state as Gods
successor. Exalting the value of the self and debasing the value of the other.
People then prey to Exploitation A and B.
Extermination of the other becomes a duty vermin (Jews); class-enemy(Stalin)
mad-dog (Reagan describing Qadahfi).
There is cultural violence even in terms of US cultural violence, as the US has served
as the battle ground internally and externally as it influences other cultures.
Nationalism- in the idea of the chosen people is justified through ideology; in postwar
Japan in an attempt to reduce cultural violence the right of belligerence of the
Japanese state wont be recognized even though the victors still had that right intact.
Many see the state as having the ultimate statement (ultimo ratio regis) it was
ordained to create the military but also as successor to God; therefore the right of
control of life also lies within the state.
Democracy- vox populi, vox dei (voice of people is the voice of God); killing is now
done in the name of the nation.
The priority of choice over life in abortion is another form of cultural violence as it
makes the fetus an it.

This ideology of a nation-state combined with chosen people is a recipe for disaster
(Israel (Yahweh); Iran (Allah); South Africa (dutch
God); the US (Judeo-Christian Yahweh God) are examples.
Language:
Languages with an Italian base make women invisible by using the male gender for
the entire species.
Subtle aspects- space and time rigidities imposed by Indo-European languages- strong
inferences and opinions on the logical structure and the resulting logical explanation.
Art:
The understanding of Europe as the negation of the non-European environment
carries us much; oriental despotism. Especially the Arab semicircle.
Empirical Science:
neoclassical economic doctrine; system prescribed by its own doctrine there empirical
realities will be true. Comparative advantage- specialization of labour+capital=
vertical division of labour for everyone. Therefore, structural violence everywhere.
Immediate gains for those who own land therefore there is a structurally intolerable
status quo.
Formal Science:
T- theorem and its negation. Both cant be valid. However there is no 3rd possibility
(law of excluded middle). Black and white thinking about math.
Cosmology:
The cosmology concept is designed to harbor that substratum about what is natural
and normal. At this level the whole occidental culturl starts to appear violen.
Gandhi and Cultural Violence:
Alternatives to direct and structural violence:
two axioms: unity of life and unity of means; no life can be used as a means to the end.
If the end if livelihood then the means has to be life enhancing.
Sacredness of all life (vegetarianism) enhancing all life not just human life. Instead of
creating a dichotomy everything is given equal importance culturally; thought speech
and action are at the same level of priority (as with the Buddhist wheel versus the
Christian pyramid (faith vs deeds).
Conclusion.(Finalmente):
Violence can start at any corner in the direct-structural and cultural violence triangle
and it can be transmitted to other corners. The inclusion of cultural violence broadens
the scope for peace studies considerably. If culture is relevant to vilence and peace
only the dogmatic will exclude it from consideration.
the science of human culture has a difference as some civilizations are seens as higher
and others as lower civilizations.
An Anthropology of Structural Violence Paul Farmer:
How structural violence comes to feature in anthropological work; there is

institutionalized violence. Structural violence is violence exrted systematicallyindirectly by everyone who belongs to certain social order; therefore there it is harder
to pinpoint the effects of praise or blame on individual actors. There is research on the
weapons of the weak and resistance to dominant social order. Suffering is muted or
elided altogether.
Creating Deserts, Erasing History:
1) They created history and called it peace Tacitu; erasing history because the victors
always write history.
2) arguing that xyz didnt happen is neither a peruasive nor an effective tool, however
biologically people tend to forget.
3) Those who look only to the past miss webs of living power that enmesh witnessed
misery.
4) Those who look to the present only will miss the inbuilt structures of violence.
5) media fixes : Islam made it to it The lash of cultures inevitable.
Modern Haiti:
1) Mintz Haiti is a sort of living lab for the study of affliction, no matter how it is
defined
2) The French had to be paid a debt for losing the worlds most profitable slave
colony.
3) There was a reparation of 150 million franc in reparations to slave owners.
4) the response by the US and other white dominant states was to isolate haiti
(Alienation)
5) Neoliberalism is promoted by the victors of struggles mentioned above.
6)Haiti has abundant reasons to be wary of neoliberalism as they are living grounds
for understanding inequality.
7) grassroot development, foreign aid and microcredit wont benefit these people as
the poorest have no scope of occupation.
8) There is a collapse of public sector healthcare in Haiti as Haiti desperately required
foreign aid. There are 1.2 doctors, 1.3 nurses and 0.04 dentist per 10,000 Haitians.
40% of the popn is without basic access to healthcare.
9) Haiti hasnt received loans, since the 2000 elections the US have claimed that thee
wasnt a proper counting system which lead the Inter-American Bank to without
already approved loans to healthcare. Therefore healthcare was frozen, however there
was a similar freezing of funding to Pakistan when Musharaff took over the country
via a military coup, but 9/11 change that around. Haiti has also had to pay for
commission for loans it has not received.
10) Haiti proverb: hunger is misery, a full belly means trouble.
11) The Worlds poor are the chief victims of structural violence the poor are not
only more likely to suffer they are less likely to have their suffering noticed.

Structural Violence as a Human Rights Violation:

1) increasing importance of structural violence in International human rights arenas.
2) Responses to: severe global inequality and disparity between the rights accorded to
all human beings.
3) human rights violations: Tiananmen Square/Guantanamo but structural violations:

starving children, diseased bodies, poverty.

4) Cant point the blame to anyone specific.
Structuralism:
1)structures and institutions focus on structures and institutions as central to their
analysis.
2) Domestic, internationally, politically, economically, coalitions, socially via sexism
and racism.
3) individuals and states do not make rational choices.
4) How do institutions constrain the choices made by states?
5) how do these combined with domestic institutions constrain individual rights?
Structural Violence:
1) 1st aspect of structural violence: avoidable.
2) Personal/ direct violence- Burmese military junta
3) Structural: built into the structure, no person directly harming another person
4) structural violence helps explain the distribution of such suffering; consequence of
human agency.
5) The power to decide the distribution of resources is unevenly distributed.
6) Additional layers of inequality build themselves up upon the fundamental
inequality above
7) this unequal distribution constrains agency.
8) This research can be conducted by the examination of the poor.
Poverty as structural violence:
1) What structures have unequal distributions to create the global inequality of the
rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.
2) 1/5th live on below $1 a day; richest 1% own 40% of global assets
3) Dependency theory explains this through core-periphery argument. GATT
enhances this inequality, the US, EU, Japan and Canada make GATT decisions. Other
organizations contribute eg. IMF.
4) How poverty constitutes structural violence: Pogge not that the poor are worse
off tan they might be but that governments are depriving them of basic rights
5) For people to reach that $1 mark, it only costs 0.16% of GNI of High income
countries. It is feasible to wipe out hunger.
6) poverty creates conditions where the actual ability to meet ones fundamental
needs are obstructed.
7) What makes poverty a violation of human rights? Sen conceives poverty as nonfulfilment of rights where adequate command over economic resources are involved.
Poverty as a Structural violation of Human Rights:
1) conversion of primary goods into the ability for a person to promote his/her ends.
2) freedom from hunger diseases illiteracy is lost when impoverished.
3) Galtungs definition of structural violence is applicable to the discourse of human
rights. The actual ability to meet needs and the possible of potential ability in the
human rights context consists of a gap between actual or de facto rights and potential
or de jure rights.
4) Poverty consists of a systematic or structural denial of basic freedoms. Chain effect,
denial of one freedom leads to denial of more freedoms.
5) inequalities between collectivities along social axis, sometimes based on race.

African women more likely to die from AIDS or starvation.

6) The geographical and social location is essential to determining whether a person is
more or less likely to be affected by structural violence.
Structural violations and the human rights discourse:
1) draw away attention from human rights violations to structural causes of human
rights violations in texts concerning the new international economic order.
2) An expanded notion of human rights not only in creating a stronger mechanism to
enforce social and economic rights.
3) violations: governments, discrimination, state failure to fulfill minimum
requirement of rights.
4) Goal 8 of the Millennium Development Goals encourages countries to provide
foreign assistance. a global partnership for development.
5) Unlike social rights, the right to development is a process to protect and promote
human rights. For Sengupta the right to development is a vector that consists o each
of the human rights and its value is also dependent upon economic growth. The right
to development to Sengupta is a vector that consists of each of the human rights.
Alternative Conceptions:
1) human rights violation alternative: individuals that are responsible rather than the
structures that produce violations.
2) Principal-Agent problem (Mitchell) strategic logic of mass killings (Valentino)
This is a realist view whereby small elites make decisions.
3) Valentino: ultimately structural factors help determine which regimes are at greater
risk for mass killing Mitchell also agrees.
4) Desperate poverty and diseased populations have not been included in the realist
approach.
5) Culturalist: cultural relativism; culture is simply a factor to explain how individual
agency is constrained by shared values and norms. But then the problem that there is
no universal human rights. There is a convergence between culturalism, cultural
violence and human rights violations.
6) Structuralist: Structures provide the grounds for violence.
Conclusion:
Farmer human rights can and should be declared universal but the risk of having
ones rights violated is not universal There are systematic and structural causes that
place some populations at a greater risk.
Uneven distributions of power.
Clear emphasis on social and economic rights in human rights.
How to attribute responsibility to widespread responsibility to disease remains unclear.
Women as arms-bearer: Gendered caste violence and the Indian state:
Case study:
Introduction:
1)violence against Dalit men and women in Bihar, U.P, A.P. and Tamil Nadu.
2) When it comes to fulfillment of basic needs, physical security and conditions of
living people trust no other agency than the state.
2) People taking recourse to extra-judicial violence as protection: Dalit female
militancy in Bihar

3) Challenge the position held by the upper-caste.

State led post-independence legislation and land reforms:
1) colonial subjects into citizens: Nehru implemented 5 year plans.
2) Protective discrimination for socially backward clans : SC and STs.
3) Nehruvian model of development was supposed to trickle down to lower classes.
However this proved more interventionist than developmentalist; therefore people
couldnt exercise their democratic rights guaranteed to them under the constitution.
by trying to abolish the zamindari system and improve the conditions for the SCs and
STs. Political freedom could only be granted through economic freedoms. The
cultivators became land owners. The Dalits were left out of the countrys economic
success and were suppressed through alienation from the governmental structure and
the state began to lose legitimacy and people importantly lost faith in the ability of the
state to provide for their rights. The Dalit woman took up violence in order to
compensate for what the state promised them.

Week 8: LABOUR IN THE WORLD ECONOMY

Why is migration criminalised and made illegal by developed countries? Why are
EU Member States and the US working so hard to prevent and obstruct labour
migration from developing economies? In what ways are migrant remittances
important to a developing economy and should the government tax them? Identify the
costs and benefits of economic migration for a developing economy.
If migrants were a nation they would be the 5th most populous nation in the world.
What is Migration?
Migration refers to a wide variety of circumstances, motives and experiences
having different effects upon individuals, states and the international community.
Migration is also a form of globalization, it has evolved historically: (McNeill)
A social: elite and mass migration
A geographical distinction: Central - Periphery.
Types of Migration:
Immigration (Receiving state)- Migration in order to take up permanent residence in
their destinations.
Circular Migration: Migrants cyclically shift backwards and forwards between
receiving and origin state.
Temporary Migration: A move made for a short period of time (disputed period) with

the intention of returning to the place of usual residence.

Chain Migration: Whereby a migrant links up with social networks and promotes the
concentration of migrant communities
Internal Migration: movement from rural to urban areas or from one area of the
country to another

All modes lead to home: Assessing the state of the remittance art by Emanuel
Yujuico:
Remittances are now important because of:
1) their sheer size; remittance flows to developing countries $251 billion.
2) helping several developing countries meet their BOP
3) having accounted for a larger nominal flow to countries than Official development
aid.
4) representing a predictable and steady source of LDC inflows at a global aggregate
level.
5) no future outflows unlike debt securities which pay interest.
6) Increases in inflows to receivers when there are adverse effects like weather
distrubances.
7) low remittance costs will give more to the receiver, greater development. CSR.
8) Higher skilled labourers tend to send fewer remittances back home as they tend to
settle in country of destination. Countries, which send a larger number of low-skilled
workers, tend to receive more remittances per capita.
9) Economic factors cannot solely drive down remittance costs.
10) technical superiority doesnt guarantee lower cost options will supersede more
expensive ones.
11) Marketing is important in the mode of remittance adopted, apart from price and
technology of sending remittances, promotion channels are important. For a user, the
receiver must receive the maximum possible sent by the sender.
12) Concerns about money laundering: 9/11
Characteristics of remittance innovation:
1) Two types of costs: specific fees on intervals (0-100,100-500 etc.); conversion to
local currency (FX costs)
2) Door-to-door delivery increases costs.
3) geographical accessibility: first mile- senders, last mile- beneficiaries.
4) Beneficiaries maybe unbanked(no bank account) or underbanked(limited access to
financial resources)
5) Remittances technology allows money to be gift or need based: PayPal has a
request money feature.
6) Being able to transact at banks assumes literacy and numeracy.
7) 20% of remittances to India-internet based. India highest number of highly skilled
expatriates origin country.
8) triability- ease with using new technology and observability- observe others using

remittance technology.
9) Remittances usually piggybank on existing ICTs.
Communication Channels:
Mass media communication is more effective in creating knowledge about an
innovation, inter-personal communication is more effective in persuading people to
use it.
Time:
Time based: knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation and confirmation
a)Knowledge: socioeconomic background, communication behavior and personality
of senders and receivers.
b) persuasion: +or- attitude towards innovation. Characteristics of innovation:
advantage, compatibility, complexity et.
c) decision: accept or reject a remittance innovation (traibility and observability)
d) implementation: using technology
e) confirmation: validation of adoption of technology
Social system:
1) Involves both senders and beneficiaries.
2) Interplay of family relations determine how many recipients or times remittances is
sent.
3) Three types of decision: decision independent of others; consensus b/w senders and
beneficiaries; authority decisions
A comparison of remittance modes:
4 Ps of Marketing: price, product place promotion
Informal remittance systems:
1) under the radar of international monitoring:
a) bringing cash back home.
b) legality (black or gray markets); IRS fail to meet domestic compliance or aret
recorded in BOP
c) value transfer instead of money transfer- hundi, hawala.
d) no paper trail in these transactional; though they are legitimate their informal
unrecorded means are questioned to funding money laundering and terrorist finance.
e) hundi illegal in India cause of politicians illegally laundering money.
f) IRS is useful as large population of receivers are unbanked. (80% in Phiilippines).
Also, speedier, less costly, anonymous and cultural compatibility.
Money transfer operators (MTOS)
1) led by Western Union and Money Gram.
2) Use economies of scale.
3) they are more geographically accessible than competitors
4) near monopoly status- higher fees. (WTO)
Bank based remittances:
1) financial deepening: provision to larger popn of people to provide access to credits.
2) constrained by limited availability of bank branches.
3)ICICI India offer free transfers abroad if there is a minuimum balance.
4) There is cross-selling(complementary financial services) and up-selling(providing

more sophisticated financial services);

card based remittances:
1) largest corridor: USA-Latin America
2) three models: cash to card, cards that access same account, pre-paid card.
Cellular phone remittances:
1) worldwide acceptance of phones.
2) lower cost of texts has made it popular in developing countries.
3)difficulties in using phones are politico-economic. (popular in Zambia/South
Africa)
Internet based remittances:
1) PayPal- receive money feature; beneficiaries need to access money.
Towards improving dynamics:
1) All in all disclosure of fees and exchange rates: greater transparency.
holding seminars to keep people more informed.
2) Standardization of regulatory measures for remittance platforms: after 9/11, Know
your customer requirements.
3) Considering the place of remittances: lowering costs maximizes the developmental
potential of remittance.
4) designing technologies for seafarers: have been left out of policy.

Turning the tide? Why development will not stop migration? Hein de Haas
Introduction:
1) West- problem needs control; burden to state, perceived as a burden to the state;
cultural threat.
2) Irregular immigration and human trafficking becoming increasing important to
social groups- publicially accepting need to stem these flows.
3) Tension b/w US-Mexico; EU neighbours.
4) EU link aid to countries where migrants are coming from.
5) South-North migration unforeseen persistence; militarization of border patrols not
decreased migration (Rio Grande, Strait of Gibraltar)
6) Mexico & Morocco countries of transition.
7) Failure of solutions have led to smart solutions: promoting growth and
development in poor countries. fight its root causes President EC.(European
Comission)
8) African Union head says walls and prisons wont solve problems; called to open
markets.
9) Receiving countries boost development and investment by returning migrants.
10) Aid will reduce migration relies on two assumptions: migration is bad; however
migration is a universal feature of humanity. Secondly, development will reduce
migration, this is based on inaccurate anaylsis (aid given to the poorest of the poor not
migrant origin countries).
Deflating the migration boom:

1) Actual magnitude of migration not unprecedent.

2) Alarmist terms used by the West.
3) 2.5-3% of the worlds population have lived outside their origin country for a year
or more. Increase the 1990s.
4) Reversal of commonplace flows- North-north(Europe-America) South South
(Indian Chinese to British Dutch and French colonies) North South) Europe to
colonies) the south North migration is uncommon.
5) Increased communication and technology allows individuals to adopt transnational
identities (Chinatown everywhere?)
6) Several NIC have labour importers (Dubai)
7)permanent settlement of large non-elite groups who dont share culture.
The failure of restrictionism:
1) curb unwanted migration since 1970s, has an effect on legitimate arrivals. Forcing
permanent migration instead of circular migration.
increasing financial and human costs and risks of migration.
2) following 73 oil crisis NW European countries implemented restrictive
immigration policies.
Encourage guest workers to return: departure bonuses &mother tongue teaching.
3) This stuimulated permanent settlement due to lack of opportunities in home
countries.
4) This led to now or never migration
6) Mexican migration, lower probability of return migration, thereby transforming
circular movements into a settled population of families.
7) 95% of illegal Mexican immigrants can get into the country with the help of
external sources.
8) Tighter border controls makes returning illegal immigrant numbers drop, 50%in
80s to 25% today.
9) Intensified border checks has led immigrant to find other means of crossing the
border.
10) US strategy through prevention through deterrence, smuggling fees increase,
these immigrants cant afford to pay fees and are faced with the human costs of
repression, larger number of migrants die each year even while trying to enter the US.
11) There is a persistent demand for migrant labour.
12) low-skilled labour is not always unwanted, cheap labour is lower coss and less
rights
Smart solutions to migration?
1)inability to manage has led to development aid as a solution.
2) trade liberalization with developing countries boost development.
3) if you dont help the third world then you will have these poor people in our
society or
4) EU linked migration and development policies through integration of migration.
5)Explaining that developing countries are blooming with prospects.
6) Malian government is assisting unauthorized Malians return to Mali. Return
potential as a developmental factor.
7) Relative assumption that migration and development are negatively and linearly
correlated processes and hence each others substitutes .

Development aid & co-development:

1) scope and duration seem too limited for effects
2) $100 per person/year for 20-30 years for economic incentives to be eliminated.
3) coherence between migration and development policies.
4) poverty reduction important policy- migrants not from impoverished nations.
5) Support of autocratic regimes is hidden as aid; making refugees more inclined to
leave than stay
Temporary Stay:
temporary migration is seen as the solution to this problem. Reconcile the interests
of labourers.
1) sending and receiving countries would benefit from the return of migrants (winwin)
2) however migrants tend to permanently settle instead of staying put.
3) this disallows the possibility of the high potential of migration and the economic
pull factors to be credited.
Trade as an alternative to aid?
1) Trade with Maghreb countries, through freer routs and FDI.
2) similar problem: protectionist policies of the destination country. (diverting the
effects of migration than solving them)
3) Self protection: 49% of EU total budget on agricultural subsidies versus 1% on
developmental aid.
More development less migration?
1) development instead of migration: linearly decreasing emigration.
2) Paradoxically, development initially makes more people aware of the opportunities
that lie abroad and provide them with these opportunities.
3) Migrants arent most of the time fleeing from misery but actually from the better
opportunities abroad.
4) inability to turn the tide.
5) Migration hump theory:
growth following trade, FDI, aid is likely to lead to more migration in the shortmedium run. NAFTAs impacts in 1994, migration to the US was 25% more than in
the 80s. The end of the curve can either be a flattened out plateau of permanent
migration or a decrease in migration, but because of the possibility of either are
equally likely.
Conclusion:
1) Assumption migratsolutions ion can be managed is optimistic.
2) migration movements have been hard to control.
3) trade aid and return migration are no short-cut; protectionism works in the opposite
direction against development.
4) Receiving countries have not shown serious commitment.
5) Absolute poverty doesnt breed migration, relative lack of opportunities does.
6) Migration looks like it will remain a feature intrinsic in the human world even in
suppressed by the global powers.

Week 9: DEMOCRACY AND DEMOCRATIZATION

What is democracy and democratization? Identify common conceptions and common
misunderstanding about those terms. Which democratization processes facilitate the
construction of peaceful domestic and international relations?
Democracy: A History John Dunn
1) Democracy began as an improvised remedy for very local Greek difficult two and
half thousand years ago, faded away for 2 thousand years.
2) Came back as the American independence for the American republic amid the
struggles of the French revolution, followed by an overwhelming triumph since 1945.
Democracy solution
3): why in a multilingual world should there be a single way to express a legitimate
basis for government? Though uncontested there is no alternative to the cosmopolitan
legacy. More than just vocabulary, it is also the history of political thought and the
history of political organization? Why does it have this victory?
4)Athens gave democracy a name, and political conditions to achieve it. It took a
French revolution two thousand more years to make it a badge of honour. Democracy
is both a form of government and a political value
The end of the transition paradigm: Thomas Carothers
Trends in seven different regions:
1) fall of right wing authoritarian regimes in S Europe 70s
2) replacement of military dictatorships with civilian govts-Latin America-70-80s
3)decline of authoritarian rule in E and S Asia- end 80s
4)collapse of communist regimes- 80s
5) breakup of Soviet Union into 15 states 1991
6) decline of one party regimes in sub-Saharan Africa- 90s
7) weak but liberalizing trend in America
Simultaneous movement away from dictatorial rule toward a more liberal and often
more democratic government.
Third Wave of Democracy Huntington.
received by enthusiasm by the US government referred to the worldwide democratic
revolution
Needed a new analytical framework, as the third wave spread to E.Europe, the
transition paradigm created.
However, transition is not always to democracy and democracies come about without
the democracy transitional model.
Transitional Paradigm has outlived its life.
Core Assumptions:
5 core assumptions:
1) Umbrella for other rules; any state moving away from dictatorial rule can be
considered a country in transition toward democracy.
USAID describes the DRC as a country in transition to a democratic, free market
society
2) Transition happens in a set of stages. 1st, opening a period of democratic ferment

and liberalization. 2nd Breakthrough; collapse of regime. 3rd consolidation; institutions

and society are democratized.
Democracy activitis admit that countries dont move steadily, can move backwards
and forwards and stagnate but all these forms are assumed to be democratic. Yet
deviations as defined as part of the path itself.
3) The importance of elections. Elections=democracy. Expectations of what genuine
elections do is high, as they broaden and deepen political participation.
4) Regardless of any other feature, structure, culture, economical, institutions a
country in transition will become a democracy. no precondition to become a
democracy
5) Democratic transitions are making the third wave countries coherent functioning
states- redesign of state institutions, parliamentary and judicial reform.
Into the Gray Zone:
1) Record of experience. Efforts to record the third wave are sometimes rejected as
premature. Democracy is not built in a day.
2) However of the nearly 100 countries considered as transnational fewer than 20 are
en route to becoming successful. Most in Central Europe- Poland, Hungary, Czech
Republic, Estonia.
3) Third wave countries not achieved well functioning democracies. In some
countries, there were brief moments of transition however authoritarian regimes
triumphed over them: Togo Uzbekistan.
4) Most states are in the gray zone: not under dictatorships and have regular elections
and opposition parties in government however there is a poor representation of their
citizens right, elections of uncertain legitimacy and poor institutional performance.
5) There are attempts to define democracies with labels: semi-democracy, formal
democracy; pseudo democracy etc. so that these countries in transition fit the
transitional paradigm.
6)By describing these countries as democracies whose evolution devalue the
paradigm is silly.
7) Two broad political syndromes: not rigidly delineated political system types but
patterns:
a)feckless pluralism: have freedom, elections, alternation of power between different
groups. But there are elites and they are corrupt self-interested and dishonest. Politics
is stale. Economic performance is often poor.
Latin America: Nicaragua, Ecuador, Panama, Honduras.
Post-Commi: Moldova, Bosnia, Albania, Ukraine.
Asia: Nepal
The political elite are cut off from the citizens
b)dominant power politics: some political opposition and contestation, basic
institutional forms. But one political grouping-individual, family, party, movement
that controls the country and there is little scope for change.
Criteria
Line between ruling party
and state
States assets:police
Judiciary
Elections

Feckless Pluralism
Clear

Dominant Power Politics

Blurry

Independent
Independent
Free

Under party control

Biased
Dubious

Citizen enthusiasm
Opposition Party
State Poor Performing
Stability
State of equilbrium

Non-existent
Possibility of ruling
Disorganized unstable
nature of state
Stable
Dysfunctional equilibrium,
moving back and forth of
parties

Non-existent
Outsiders
Bureaucracy large scale
corruption
Stable
Static- ruling party
constant

Dominant Power politics exist in :

Sub-Saharan Africa: Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Tanzania.
Post-commi: Armenia Georgia, Azerbaijan.
Middle East: Egypt, Iran, Yemen.
Scare outside these regions: in Asia Malaysia and Cambodia. Latin America:
Paraguay.
Dominant power systems vary in degree of freedom;
Countries can and do move between and out of them to liberal democracies.
The Crash of Assumptions:
1) political trajectories of countries examined falsify the transition paradigm.
2) democracy is the end of political movement is false; countries have hardly
democratized while some have democratic features. These should be understood as
alternative directions not point towards democracy. Such as the Congo example: other
countries were also assumed to be moving towards democracy: Moldova, Zambia,
Cambodia, Guinea.
3) the label transition is unhelpful, but democracies do not progress in sages. Some
democratization like Taiwan, s Korea and Mexico didnt go through breakthrough
followed by democratic elections.
4) Assuming that elections=democracy is wrong because even when there are free
elections there is a lack of political interest. The gulf between the political elites and
citizens remains wide. (Nepal, free elections but the public dissatisfied)
5) preconditions for democracy banished, structural conditions that affect states have
worked back in. (relative economic wealth has aided this is Central Europe, East
Asia)
Analysts have tried to add variables of economic wealth and institutional legacies and
social classes but this has not worked.
6) state building is a larger issue, states do not come automatically built with
democracies. Approximately 20 countries have to build national state institutions
which didnt exist. Building a state from scratch, the core interests of the powerholders needed to be aligned with the transitional path.
Letting Go:
Discard the transition paradigm. No longer appropriate to assume:
1) countries in transition are not en route to democracy
2) that countries in transition follow a three stage model.
3) regular elections will enhance political interest among civilians.
4) External factors do not influence a countrys change for democratization

5) state-building a secondary challenge to democratization

This doesnt mean that free elections arent worth supporting or that democracy
shouldnt be promoted but that assumptions should be altered so that:
1) between authoritarianism and democracy is where most countries in the developing
and post-commi world lie.
2) There should be realistic expectations about political patterns within these
countries
3) Aid shouldnt be given according to the level of democratic progress but how
political movement is changing; Georgias 1991 evolution was seen as a democratic
transition and now Georgia is seen as a state about to fail.
4) The checklist for aid must be amended, where aid is needed is not where this
checklist is being fulfilled.
5) Specific political patterns within states they intervene.
6) For states with feckless pluralism: importance on how to improve variety and
quality of political actors and how to make citizens part of the political system. (much
more attention is needed for the latter)
7) in Dominant power systems: democracy promoters should devote attention to
helping grow alternative centers of power.
8) Moving from aid for democracy building and those linked to social and economic
building.
9) The transition model was a product of a certain time, and that time has passed.
Democracy supporters should find new frameworks.
What Political Institutions does Large-scale democracy require? ROBERT A
DAHL
1)institutions for a democratic country.
2) democracy as a goal or idea and and actuality that is a partial achievement of the
goal.
How can we know?
1) History of countries that have changed? Examine governments that are usually
democratic? Specific country or group of country to see what would make a
democracy?
All three approaches converge into what makes a democracy:
Large-scale democracy require:
Elected officials
Free fair and frequent elections
freedom of expression
Alternative sources of information
Associational autonomy
Inclusive citizenship
The political institutions in perspective:
1) Do not come all at once, last two come last.
2) Universal suffrage was denied in both democratic and republican governments.
3) in older democracies a pattern emerges: electing higher lawmaking official, then
rights of citizens, political matter and exchange information. The right to form
associations with explicit political goals comes later. (factions were viewed as

dangerous), what were once factions became parties, sovereign governs itself for itself.
Universal suffrage did not include women, women gained sufferage in 1920 in NZ
and Aussieland however some first world countries, Belgium etc women could only
work after WWII.
4) Resurgence of Athenian democracy.
The factor of size:
1) democratic country: Why country? All factors for democracy not necessary for
smaller bodies
2) Committees do not always require factions
Are political institutions of polyarchal democracy (six functions of democracy make it
polyarchal) necessary for a country? If so why?

Why and when does democracy require elected representatives?

1) how can citizens participate effectively when the number of citizens become too
many? How do so many citizens control the agenda of the government?
2) Evaluating possible outcomes for this problem:
elect top official and hold them more or less accountable for actions and dismissing
them in future elections.
3) The above common place assumption till fairly recently a requirement for
democracy.
Why does democracy require free fair elections?
1) equal opp to vote and all votes are equal
2) if citizens have to hold control of agenda then elections must be frequent, voting

someone in for 20 years gives them control?

3) how best to implement these kinds of elections is not obvious?
Secret ballot recently replaced show of hands. Is Proprtional representation better than
non-transferrable votes.
4)how frequent should elections be?
annual elections too short, over 5 years too long. In order to find a balance between
the control for representative and keeping control in peoples hands.
Why does democracy require free expression?
In order to allow all citizens to participate in political life, freedom of expression is
required.
to also obtain an enlightened understanding of government actions requires freedom
of expression.
without it they would lose the ability to influence the agenda.
Why does democracy require the availability of alternative and independent sources
of information?
in order to influence agenda and ensure that there isnt a monopoly over the news
delivered to individuals.
Structural Violence as a Human Rights Violation
Abstract
Structural violence defines violence as the avoidable disparity b/t the potential
ability to fulfill basic needs and their actual fulfillment
The theory locates the unequal share of power to decide over distribution of
resources as the pivotal causal factor of these avoidable structural inequalities
Need to recognize that structural causes are responsible for constrained agency
Essay uses Thomas Pogge and Amartya Sens work on poverty to substantiate
the claim that when agency is constrained to the extent that fundamental
human rights cannot be attained, structural violence becomes a structural
violation of human rights
Emphasis on the need for special protection of social and economic rights that
have been long marginalized in favor of political or civil rights
The right to development directly addresses concerns raised by the structural
violence theory
- This right recognizes how the unequal dist. of power in global financial
institutions and trade regimes results in global inequality
- Therefore insists on international assistance and cooperation to remedy
this glaring injustice
Uses Audrey Chapmans violation approach as a possible alternative to the
current monitoring mechanism for social and economic rights
- However, this approach falls short in holding the intl community
responsible for rights violations
Introduction
Idea of structural violence of human rights a response to 2 aspects of our
world today:
1) Severe global inequality

2) A huge disparity b/t the rights accorded to all human beings thru the intl
human rights regime and the massive and continual violation of those
rights
With human rights violations, one can easily isolate the violators
Structural violence looks at inequality thru social, economic, and political
factors
Applying theory of structural violence to the human rights discourse
illuminates the often neglected category of social and economic rights
The right to development = a single right that fully integrates both sets of
rights, civil and political as well as social, economic and cultural rights
The paper considers alternatives to the structural violence approach by looking
at realist and culturalist models of human rights violations

Structuralism
Structuralist view of the world: Structures and institutions are central to
analysis
Landman: Structuralism focuses on the holistic aspects of society
Structures manifest themselves in a variety of forms at both the domestic and
intl levels
Politically and economically, structures include:
- Class and class conditions
- Institutions including: Business orgs, political parties and global
institutions like the UN, WTO, and the GATT
Social structures include sexism and racism, as well as class-based structures
Asserts that individuals and institutions do NOT make decisions solely on the
basis of rational choice
- Individuals are embedded in relational structures that affect their IDs,
interests, and interactions
The extent to which these structures constrain agency is highly contested
To what extent to intl institutions constrain the choices made by states?
How do these structures, coupled with domestic institutions, constrain
individual choices?
And how does constraint of these individual choices constitute a violation of
human rights?
Structural Violence
Johan Galtung concerns were first and foremost related to peace research
Important aspect of his definition of structural violence is that it is avoidable
- When the potential is higher than the actual it is by definition avoidable
and when it is avoidable, then violence is present
Under this definition, injustices incurred by the oppressive Burmese military
junta and the violence suffered by women in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in
the US both constitute violence
Galtung constructs typology of violence based on 3 categories: personal,
structural, and cultural
For Galtung, Burmese military junta = personal or direct violence where the
actors and objects of violence are readily identifiable
He asserts that unlike direct violence, structural violence is indirect b/c there
may not be any single actor who directly harms another; rather, the violence is

built INTO the structure and shows up as unequal power and subsequently as
unequal life chances
The question is: Why do African American women suffer greater risk of
HIV/AIDS than Caucasian women? Why is it harder for them to access
medical care or treatment?
- These questions at the heart of structural violations of human rights
- Racial inequality = an institutionalized social structure that lowers the
level of actual fulfillment of ones fundamental needs below the potential
- Here, potential is defined by the availability and access that other
American citizens enjoy
- Thus, racial inequality is an example of structural violence
- Inequality itself is constitutive in the definition of avoidability and
potential:
- Inequality betrays the fact that an unrealized fundamental human need is
avoidable, and;
- Inequality establishes a certain level of what constitutes the potential by
comparing it to what others can achieve
Structural violence exposes a clear logic behind the systematic nature of how
violence is distributed
- Problem is that the power to decide over the distribution of resources is
unevenly distributed
- Structural violence has exploitation as the centerpiece: topdogs get much
more out of the structure than the underdogs
- Structural violence originates in the unequal distribution of power among
actors
- And can further trace its origins to human agency
Farmer connects the historically established structures as constraints on
individual agency
Structural violence theory aims to give a nuanced structuralist analysis of the
relationship b/t structures and agency
When agency is constrained to the extent that fundamental human rights
cannot be attained, structural violence = a violation of human rights
Essay examines the structural causes of severe global poverty and the impacts
of poverty on agency
Farmer: The worlds poor are the chief victims of structural violence
- They are the least likely to have their suffering NOTICED
Human rights violations in this case are the result of power differentials as
exercised thru global economic and social structures

Poverty as structural violence

Severe or absolute poverty according to World Bank: People w/ incomes of <
$1 a day
Thomas Pogge: Nearly 1/5 of all humans alive today, 1,175 million, live
below $1/day
2006 UN-WIDER: Richest 1% of adults alone owned 40% of global assets in
2000, and the richest 10% of adults accounted for 85% of the world total
- Average wealth in USA in 2000 = $144,000 per person
- Average wealth in Japan in 2000 = $181,000 per person
- India had per capita assets of $1,100

90% of the total world wealth is concentrated in North America, Europe,

and high-income Asia-Pacific countries
Dependency theorists: World divided b/t core industrialized countries and
periphery developing countries
- GATT a specific structure that allocates advantages to core countries
unfairly
- Ngaire Woods: Under GATT, inequality of power w/ the Quad (US,
Japan, EU, Canada) who shaped most decisions resulted in trading rules
that had very uneven impact on countries, magnifying inequalities among
members
Thomas Pogge in World Poverty and Human Rights: Analyzes intl borrowing
privilege and intl resource privilege
- These regulations imposed by wealthy societies and corrupt elites in poor
countries contribute to the persistence of severe poverty
Jeffrey Sachs: Disproportionate vulnerability of Third World countries in intl
institutions like the IMF
- G7 countries constitute 14% of world pop yet have 56% of IMFs Exec
Board votes
- Rest of world called upon to support G7 declarations, not to meet for joint
problem-solving
GATT, IMF and other institutions are examples of the historically given and
economically driven processes & forces of structural violence
- Historically given b/c they are reproducing historically established
balances of power
- Economically driven b/c the rich use these structures to get richer
World where political power is held in the hands of a few the central
inequality that gives rise to structural violence
Pogge: Developed countries have advantage in bargaining power and expertise
- Dont consider the interests of the global poor
- So affluent countries make concessions to e/o, but never to the weak
UN Development Program 1999 report: OECD countries w/ 19% of the global
pop have 71% of global trade, 58% of foreign direct investment and 91% of
all Internet users
- Recent wave of mergers and acquisitions concentrated industrial power in
mega-corps at risk of eroding competition
- By 1998 top 10 companies in pesticides controlled 85% of a $31 bil
global market
- Top 10 in telecommunications controlled 86% of a $262 bil market
Aggregate b/t the amount needed for under the $1/day poverty line to reach
that line is 0.16% of the gross national incomes of the high-income economies
- Thus for the first time in history it is feasible economically to wipe out
hunger and preventable diseases worldwide w/out real inconvenience to
anyone
815 million are undernourished
1.1 billion lack access to safe water
Over 880 million lack access to basic health services
Around 1/3 of all human deaths are due to poverty-related causes that are
easily preventable

Severe poverty causes massive underfulfillment of social and economic

human rights
- Ex: Right to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being of
oneself and ones family, including food, clothing, housing and medical
care
Amartya Sen: Conceives of poverty not solely based on income, but as a nonfulfillment of basic human rights where inadequate command over economic
resources are involved

Poverty as a structural violation of human rights

Sen: Need to take account of the personal characteristics of the individual that
govern the conversion of primary goods into the persons ability to promote
her ends
- Ex: Person with disabilities may require more/different set of primary
goods to have the same capabilities as an able-bodied person
- Poverty is the failure of basic capabilities to reach certain minimally
acceptable levels
- Basic capabilities: Basic freedoms like the freedom to avoid hunger,
disease, illiteracy
- Sen: Opposite of poverty is the full realization of ones agency
- Need to remove unfreedoms that constrain peoples agency
The disparity b/t actual ability to meet needs and the possible or potential
ability, in HRs context, consists of a gap b/t actual or de facto rights and
potential or de jure rights
- De jure rights: Fundamental human rights that are enshrined in human
rights law
- When de facto rights fall short of de jure rights, structural violence is
present
In making transition from violence to human rights violations: Recognition
that structural causes are responsible for constrained agency
It is the effect of structure on agency that results in the gap b/t de jure and de
facto rights
Denial of one freedom amplifies/multiplies the denial of other freedoms
The limited access that the poor have to basic economic resources can affect
the degree to which they enjoy their civil and political rights
Poverty does not necessarily imply the primacy of economic factors in the
causation of poverty
- Ex: When discrimination based on race, gender, or another ground denies
a person access to health-care resources, the resulting ill health is a case of
capability failure that should count as poverty b/c the lack of access to
resources has played a role
Race is clearly a social axis along which inequalities have been
institutionalized
Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois: Since social structures have institutionalized
structural violence, social structures therein render that violence invisible
- Structural violence part of the routine grounds of everyday life
The social location of the individual is crucial to determining how the
individuals agency is constrained

Structural violations and the human rights discourse

Focus on structures in the context of the intl human rights regime didnt gain
salience until the post-Cold War era when UN began to admit non-Western,
poor states
- This introduced new emphasis on economic rights into debate
- 1974: Texts on New International Economic Order drew attention to
structural causes of HR violations in global economic inequality
New Intl Economic Order Movement laid ground for move from injustice
and inequality to a human rights violation
Increasing focus on economic and social rights, aka second generation rights
Legal nature of intl HR regime further marginalizes social & economic rights
- B/c they are difficult to monitor and render justiciable
- Only recently were frameworks constructed to ID economic/social rights
violators
- Developments: Instituting minimum core values, benchmarks and
indicators, issuing general comments that advocate a legal obligation for
intl cooperation and assistance
- BUT their effectiveness is questionable
Audrey Chapman: Advocates separating the progressive realization
requirement from the monitoring process
- She suggests adopting violations approach for monitoring w/ review
process for evaluating compliance w/ the Covenant on Economic, Social
and Cultural Rights
- Believes this will give greater protection to and promotion of human rights
- This deconstructs notions of a false dichotomy b/t social and economic
rights as positive obligations and civil and political rights as negative in
nature
- Additional layers of structural violence can be understood as reading
negative duties into social and economic rights
Introduction of the tripartite typology of duties aka the respect, protect and
fulfill approach to rights
- Reinforces notion of interdependence b/t and among all rights
- Reveals the violations of rights that were previously hard to ID
- Respect: requires negative obligation
- Protect: requires duty-holders to prevent a right from being infringed
- Fulfill: includes duty to provide resources when individuals have no other
way
- Chapmans approach to violations roughly follows these categoriesL
1) Violations resulting from actions and policies on the part of govts
2) Violations related to patterns of discrimination
3) Violations related to a states failure to fulfill the minimum core
obligations of enumerated rights
Chapmans violations approach focuses on the state and its legal obligations as
a party to an intl legal doc
- This focus on state responsibility also central to the Maastricht Guidelines
on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights: acts by non-state entities as well
as intl orgs fall w/in the parameters of the states responsibility to protect
rights
BUT responsibility extends BEYOND state borders

-
-

Covenants Article 2.1 recognizes need for intl cooperation and assistance
Formulation of the right to development further engages the responsibility
of the intl community
Galtung: Human rights declarations often personal more than structural
- Human rights as usually conceived of are compatible w/ paternalism
whereby power-holders distribute anything but ultimate power over the
distribution
- In this way, equalization w/out any change in the power structure is
obtained
- He made this observation in 1969 in Violence, Peace, Peace Research
before the formulation of the right to development
- In 1986 the Declaration on the Right to Development addresses what
Galtung called a deficiency: It imposes a duty on developed nations to
address global inequality
- Arjun Sengupta: Noted the integral nature of intl cooperation to this right;
but agrees that resource transfer isnt enough
Goal 8 of the Millennium Development Goals of 2000:
- Operationalizes this right and insists that developed states provide intl
assistance
- Calls for tariff and quota-free access for their exports, enhanced debt relief,
cancellation of official bilateral debt, more generous development
assistance!
- Right to development does not make a claim to a minimum core
requirement; this right is a process that expands the capabilities or freedom
of individuals
Sengupta: Right to development a vector that consists of each of the human
rights
- Its value is also dependent on economic growth
- The value of the vector rests on the increase in enjoyment of the other
without the deterioration of any of these rights
Maastricht Guidelines attribute violations of HRs committed by non-state
actors and intl orgs to states
- But it is unclear how the right to development attributes responsibility
- No legal practices to hold non-state actors responsible if they violate a HR
thru their practices
- Chapmans violations approach only works for state parties to the
Covenant

Alternative Conceptions
Ones that focus on individuals whoa re responsible rather than the structures
- Neil Mitchells principle-agent model
- Bejamin Valentinos strategic logic of mass killings theory
- Both take a realist perspective of the world
- Small groups of elites make rational decisions to conduct atrocities
- They do concede the importance of structural causes to HRs violations
- But the types of violations studied in this paper are INVISIBLE using this
individual rational approach!
Also culturalist explanations

-
-
-

One end of the culturalist view: Culture is a factor to explain how

individual agency is constrained by shared values and norms
At other extreme: Existence of cultural differences precludes even the
notion of HRs violations
There are no universal human rights; rights are culture-specific and
culturally determined!

An Anthropology of Structural Violence by Paul Farmer

Essay is based on over a decade of research in rural Haiti

Draws on work of Sidney Mintz who links the interpretive project of modern
anthropology to a historical understanding of the large-scale social and
economic structures in which affliction is embedded
Emergence and persistence of AIDS and TB epidemics in Haiti is rooted in the
effects of European expansion in the New World and in the slavery and racism
w/ which it was associated
- Need to understand how these inequalities are embodied as differential
risk for infection and, for those already infected, adverse outcomes like
death
Part of interpretive task is to link such an anthropology to epidemiology and to
an understanding of differential access to new diagnostic and therapeutic tools
Most hospitals in central Haiti empty b/c no one can pay for such care
One hospital where medicines and lab studies are free is full
For first time in 2 centuries, democratic elections are planned and could end in
a historic precedent whereby a democratically-elected president lives to see
his power passed on to another
- President Rene Preval would be the first president in Haitian history to
serve out his mandate
Most causes of Haitian tragedies are seen as local
Most are focused on the ethnographically visible what is there in front of us
culturally
Author served as medical director of a clinic in Haiti
Anite, woman with tumor consuming her breast, went to voodoo priest
- He told her that the three lumps she dreamt of each had significance: they
represented the three mysteries and to be cured she had to travel to a
clinic where the doctors understood both natural and supernatural illness
TB and aids lay claim to almost 15,000 lives worldwide
Asks how the concept of structural violence might come to figure in work in
anthropology and other disciplines seeking to understand modern social life
Structural violence dates back to 1969 to Johan Galtung
Latin American liberation theologians used the term to describe sinful social
structures w/ poverty and steep grades of social inequality
Structural violence is violence exerted systematically, meaning indirectly, by
everyone who belongs to a certain social order
Oppression the result of consciousness in many ways
James Scott: The weapons of the weak used to fight back against such
infernal machinery
Degree to which agency is restrained is correlated inversely with the ability to
resist marginalization and other forms of opporession

Need an honest account of who wins, who loses, and the weapons used
The materiality of the social: Social life in general and structural violence in
particular cant be understood w/out a deeply materialist approach to whatever
comes to light
- Any social project requires construction materials, while the building
process itself is inevitably social and thus cultural
- The adverse outcomes associated with structural violence death, injury,
illness, subjugation, stigmatization, etc. come to have their final
common pathway in the material
- Structural violence is embodied as adverse events in this case, those
events include epidemic disease, violations of HRs, and genocide
Alfred Kroeber: Underlined anthropology as a biological and social science
Erosion of social awareness most evident in the social sciences
- The integration of history, political economy, and biology remains lacking
in contemporary anthropology and sociology
Need to look at how the erasure of history and of biology comes to hobble an
honest assessment of social life

Creating Deserts, Erasing History

Erasure or distortion of history part of the process of desocialization necessary
for the emergence of structural violence
Haiti serves as most painful example of this erasure and why it matters
John Le Carre: After 9/11, he observed that suggesting there is a historical
context for recent atrocities is by implication to make excuses for them
Crude revisionism is neither persuasive nor effective tool w/in the corridors of
power
Erasure of history is subtle and incremental
Forgetting is also a natural, biological process
Imbalances of power cannot be erased w/out distortion of meaning
Need a historically deep and geographically broad analysis
Johannes Fabian: Denial of coevalness remains a major problem in
anthropology
Need to see how inequality is structured and legitimated over time
The richer our knowledge of the material, the more competing hypotheses we
will derive from it
2 vignettes from the 1780s give an example of linked, coeval processes:
- First concerns French cuisine and fashion:
The luxury of which was sustained by Haiti, to name one place (where
2/3rds of Europes tropical produce came from). The city of Bordeux
became highly profitable thru the triangular trade of slaves, sugar and rum.
- Second on French enslavement of Africans:
Klein: Approx. half the slaves who crossed the Atlantic at the time were
bound for Saint-Domingue (Haiti).
Revolution ending in 1803 made Haiti Latin Americas first independent
republic
- A fully socialized cultural history of fashion and cuisine in France would
benefit from cross-referencing a Haitian memoir from 1814, in which
former slave Pompee Vastey recounts the horrors and atrocities taken out
against slaves in Haiti

Modern Haiti: Resocializing History and Biology

Erasures had not so much taken place within Haiti
In Haiti, the past was present in proverbs, the language spoken, in popular
Haitian readings of its present-day misfortune
In Haiti, structural violence continues in the lives and deaths of those living in
poverty
Mintz: Haiti has long been a human laboratory for the study of affliction in
many forms
Eduardo Galeano in 1973: Wages required by law and actual wages were
drastically different in reality, $0.05 to $0.15 a day
Can explore the ways in which West Africans were moved to Haiti
Former colony of Haiti forced to repay a debt to the French supposedly
incurred by the loss of the worlds most profitable slave colony
The post-independence history of Haiti summarized:
- 1791: Haitian revolution began
- After 1803 Battle of Vertieres, Haiti was declared an independent nation
- More than half of the islands population died in the war
- Land was still fertile, so new republics leadership sought to revive the
economy by restoring the plantations w/out returning to overt slavery
- But no one would buy crops from Haiti, besides US and Europeans, who
were supporting a French-led embargo on Haiti
- Beginning in 1825: To obtain diplomatic recognition, Haiti had to pay
France 150 million Francs
- 1825: US blocked Haitis invitation to the Western Hemisphere Panama
Conference
- US refused to recognize Haitian independence until 1862
- US increasingly present as a trading partner and policeman in Haiti led
to 1915 naval occupation in Haiti which lasted 20 years!
- Woodrow Wilson claimed the occupation was due to a need to control
customs houses
- Since 1915, US has been dominant force in Haitian politics
- 1916: Modern Haitian army created by an act of the US Congress
- From 1934-1990: No Haitian administration has ever risen to power w/out
US blessings
- 1957: Duvalier military regime, was a leading recipient of US largesse
- No major political discontinuities until 1990, meaning that the template of
a slave colony continued to shape life in Haiti
Ancient framework of too much and too little = world systems theory
- It ethnographically embeds evidence w/in historically given social and
economic structures that shape life on the edge of life and death
- These structures are transnational
Neoliberal economics: Prevailing constellation of ideas about trade and
development and governance internalized by many affluent market societies
- This ideology is indebted to and helps replicate inequalities of power
- Has little to say about the social and economic inequalities that distort
REAL economies
Disaffection is associated w/ set of ideas not too different than those expressed
by Pierre Bourdieu:

Scientific rationalism is the expression and justification of a Western

arrogance
Meetings in Durban, South Africa
Concept of microcredit has developed a cottage industry
- But how does microcredit function in a failing economy?
- The poorest are those least likely to profit from credit in the odd event it is
extended to them
Collapse of the public health sector and the overwhelming of the hospital
where the author is medical director
Intl community proposed a $500 million aid package to Haiti in 1994
Western hemispheres poorest country is also its largest post-slavery country,
Cuba in second
- Yet both of these republics are under an aid embargo!
- Haitians and Cubans see the continuity b/t this and previous embargoes
Since Haitian elections of 2000: US govt has blocked already approved loans
from the Inter-American Development Bank for Haiti
- And direct aid from the US now bypasses the formal national structures
and goes solely to NGOs
US justification is that May 2000 legislative election votes werent counted
correctly
- Birns and McCarthy: Haitians liken US embargo now to its embargo
imposed on Haiti after the 1804 revolution
Yet the post-Duvalier military got generous US aid
Any US reservations about Pakistans military govt were forgotten as of 9/11
In July 1998, the Haitian govt and the Inter-American Development Bank
signed a $22.5-million loan for phase 1 of a project to decentralize/reorganize
the healthcare system
- There are 1.2 doctors, 1.3 nurses, and 0.04 dentists per 10,000 Haitians
- 40% of the pop is w/out access to any form of primary healthcare
- The project was to target 80% of the pop for access to primary healthcare
thru construction of low-cost clinics and local health dispensaries, training
community health agents, and purchasing medical equipment
- Most thought the projects targets for infant mortality, juvenile mortality,
general mortality and the birth rate were feasible
- IDB then demanded that Haiti pay back millions in debt to the US and on
credit commissions and interest on undisbursed funds
- The IDB charged Haiti commission fees on a loan it had never even
received!
- The health loan still has not been disbursed and thus the embargo on intl
aid to Haiti continues
Bourdieu used the term habitus as a structured and structuring principle
- Structural violence is structured and it is structuring it constricts the
agency of its victims
- It determines the way in which resources are allocated and experienced
- Socialization for scarcity is informed by a complex web of events and
processes stretching far back in time and across continents

Creating Mirages: Erasing Biology

History and its erasure often embodied as bad health outcomes

Structural violence more likely to wither bodies slowly

Social structures that perpetuate AIDS and TB need to be examined
TB called the white plague, widely believed to have risen with the industrial
revolution and then faded
Ott: TB is not resurgent to those who have fought it all their lives
1/3rd of the worlds pop is infected by TB
Many terms used in late-20th century Haiti came right out of slave plantations
In the Central Plateau: TB seen as sent by sorcery by the majority of those
inflicted in 1980s
- After TB treatment program put in place, people increasingly saw TB as
an infectious airborne disease and treatable
AIDS as an epidemic of signification
During 80s, many in US believed that HIV had come to the US from Haiti
AIDS said to proliferate in Haiti b/c of voodoo practices
But AIDS in Haiti had nothing to do w/ voodoo or Africa
AIDS also had an adverse effect on Haiti: tourism industry collapsed in
mid=80s, and on Haitians living in North America and Europe
HIV did not come to Haiti from Africa
Most of those first diagnosed had histories of sexual contact with North
Americans
- Physician Jean Guerin: 17% of his patients reported a history of sexual
contact w/ North Americans
- It came out that sexual tourism was a critical first step in the
introduction of HIV to Haiti
- The Haitian AIDS epidemic is a subepidemic of the one already existing in
the US
After withdrawal of troops in 1934, US influence in Haiti grew rather than
waned
Haiti became the 9th largest assembler of US goods in the world, bought
almost all its imports from the US
The five countries with the highest ties to the US were the five countries with
the highest HIV prevalence
AIDS in Haiti has a lot to do with the pursuit of trade and tourism in a dirtpoor country
Haiti now the most HIV-infected country in the Americas
HIV is as material as any other microbe
- Its impact is profound both biologically and socially
- This virus has a profound impact on kinship structure
Money and political will are what is missing to combat these diseases
The projected cost of getting therapy for AIDS to those who need it is
estimated at less than the monies allocated in a single day for rescuing the US
airlines industry
But supporting hegemonies have already decreed AIDS an unmanageable
problem
US Dept of Treasury rep: Africans have a different concept of time and
would therefore be unable to take their medications on schedule
Head of US Agency for Intl Development IDed a lack of wristwatches as the
primary stumbling block

The primary problem is a matter of political will

Others point to fear of acquisition of resistance to antiretroviral medications
The distribution of AIDS and TB is historically given and economically driven
Racism and related sentiments disregard or hatred of the poor underlie the
current lack of resolve to address these and other problems
Structural violence now comes with symbolic props far more powerful the
discounting of any divergent voice as unrealistic or utopian, the end of the
socialist experiment in its homelands, increasing centralized command over
finance capital, etc.

Comments:
Philippe Bourgois and Nancy Scheper-Hughes
We need a carnal ethnography
Propose conceptualizing violence as operating on a continuum from direct
physical assault to symbolic violence and routinized everyday violence,
including chronic structural violence
Violence goes beyond physicality to include assaults on self-respect and
personhood
Social and cultural dimensions of violence give it its force and meaning
One can represent the inscription of the past in 2 distinct ways:
1) It refers to the social condition of individuals or groups and the sort of
interactions it underlies
2) It refers to the historical experience, whether singular or collective, and the
narratives thru which it can be reached
Inequality is the language of the social condition
Resentment is the keyword for historical experience
Hartogs idea of presentism we need to resist it and account for lived
reality
Nguyen and Peschard: In modern society, inequality becomes embodied
biologically
Ethnography a key research strategy for connected policy and everyday life
Franz Fanon: Treating individual patients must go hand in hand with treating
the socio-economic/cultural-political contexts the societies in which
people live
Stanley Diamond: The anthropological consciousness grew from a sense of
alienation from the direction in which modern society was growing
Erasure of social memory is not desocialization but is the exact sort of
socialization that serves consumer capitalism
Reply by Farmer
To meet the latest demands of the IDB, Haiti has had to pay ever-expanding
arrears
- July 2003: Haiti sent to DC nearly 90% of its foreign reserves to pay these
arrears; but the aid still never came
Need to develop an anthropology of affliction that can move from the local to
the large-scale
Women as Arm-Bearers: Gendered Caste-Violence and the Indian State by Suruchi
Thapar-Bjorkert

Introduction
Increased caste violence against Dalit men and women in Indian states like
Bihar, Uttar-Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil-Nadu
In India, the state is an everyday presence in the lives of poor & vulnerable;
like lower-caste, Dalit, and tribal women
For historical reasons, state still looms large in the perception of millions of
people
People trust the state above all else to fulfill their basic needs, physical
security, and conditions of dignified living
When state doesnt respond adequately, these social groups are made more
vulnerable & their social and political relationships break down
- One consequence of this breakdown: People taking recourse to extra-legal
violence as self-protection
Explores rise in Dalit female militancy in rural Bihar, Northern India
Dalit peoples excluded from material structures of economic development &
political processes of governance
Lack of law & order and protection from the state
Led to situation where Dalit women take up arms to protect their violation
with violence
- Dalit women have made a framework of resistance to upper castes and
new middle castes, foregrounding their ID as Dalits
- They resist/retaliate as Dalits and challenge the privileged position and
power that the upper castes uphold thru caste violence
- In aligning w/ armed Dalit women, they expose the vulnerability and
helplessness of their own men in protecting them from sexual and physical
violation
State-led Post-independence Legislation and Land Reforms
1947: Congress Party takes over, expected to turn colonial subjects into
citizens
March 1950: The National Planning Commission established by first Prime
Minister
- Assigned the task of drawing up and implementing 5 year plans
- Aim of plans: Execute planned industrialization and material
redistribution in the industrial and agricultural sectors of the economy
- Thus, post-colonial state promised to improve the economic conditions of
the poor and work on social justice
In assuming role of protector and provider, the state reflected the ideals of
Keynesian welfarism and socialism of the Soviet model
Chandoke: Belief that state is central to the lives of its people the outcome of 2
factors:
1) The global political environment
2) The historical particularities of the Indian freedom movement
Post-colonial state created conditions in 2 ways to ensure equalitarian
society:
1) Made provision for the protective discrimination for socially vulnerable
groups

The Indian Constitution reserved seats in legislature, education, and govt

posts for those of lower castes
2) Formed progressive legislation to remove structural barriers of caste,
class, ethnicity and gender
- Anti-Untouchability Act of 1955: (Protection of Civil Rights by 1979)
- 1989: the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of
Atrocities Act) was executed
- Thru these, state promised a leveling of the playing field for its citizens
But nature of the state couldnt fulfill the political, social and economic
aspirations of its people
Aim of Nehruvian model of development: To bring economic prosperity that
would trickle down and alleviate social inequalities
- But by 1960s the model became more interventionist than
developmentalist
- It increased economic disparities, concentrated power in hands of
politicians, industrial and agrarian bourgeoisie
- The Protection of Civil Rights and Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes
Act couldnt prevent escalation in violence or discriminatory practices
Post-independence land legislation led to the appropriation of material and
political power by the upper Backward Castes
Changes in the agrarian economy place the Darits in an ambivalent position
vis a vis the ruling landed elites and the Backward upper castes

Land Reforms and the Rise of Backward Castes

British administration created 2 tenurial structures in rural areas:
- Zamindari: One or more layers of proprietary rights existed b/t the actual
tiller of land and the colonial state
- Roytwari: No such layer existed
- The intermediary int eh zamindari areas like Bihar, Bengal and Uttar
Pradesh were rent receiving, avoided physical labor and exploited peasants
- Ownership of land concentrated in the hands of a few zamindars; most
peasants either landless or owned very little land
Post-independence, abolition of intermediaries, tenancy reforms and fixing
ceiling on agricultural land were important land reform measures
- These were adopted to initiate structural change in rural areas
- Ex: Zamindari abolition and the bhoodan movement
- In caste terms, biggest losers in Northern India were: Rajput Thakurs and
some Bania and Kayastha landlords
Reforms led to rise in medium-sized owner-cultivators from the upper strata of
backward castes
- In the states of Rajasthan and Haryana, these were the Jats Yadavs,
Kurmis, Koiris,
- In Bihar, the main beneficiaries were the Yadavs and Kurmis, who turned
from cultivating castes into landowning castes
- These middle peasant groups who held more land than all others came to
be known as bullock capitalists/independent agricultural
producers/backward castes
Rudolph and Rudolph: By 1970s bullock capitalists owned more land than
other agrarian classes: the landless, small holders and large holders

This, along w/ constitutional protection given by Indian govts to backward

castes and the right to vote for all, meant backward castes could realize their
power
- Slowly, backward castes emerged as politically and economically affluent
Prabhat Patnaik: The Congress Partys land reforms succeeded in eliminating
large zamindars but did not give the land to the tiller
In rural areas, the developmental agenda of the state was thus subverted by
neo-rich backward caste peasantry
Landless Dalit laborers or those w/ small plots of land could not benefit from
the land reforms
Newly prosperous groups blocked attempts at reform designed to reach those
at lower caste or group levels
Also, the upper castes who lost some of their land to the backward castes due
to reforms dont want any further distribution of land, particularly to Dalits
Ineffectiveness of Bihar state govt in translating and implementing rural
development policies also didnt help
- Ex: Bihar Land Ceiling Act Fixed the ceiling area of land at 15 acres per
family, BUT has not been enforced!
- Ex: Govt legislation states that common land, Gair Mazarua, was to be
distributed to Scheduled Castes yet it is still in control of landowners in
Bihar!
Newly prosperous groups build social networks amongst themselves to
exclude others
- Social ties and community networks give belonging to some at the expense
of the exclusion of others
Upper backward castes have politically mobilized, asked for more
democratic participation in Indian politics
In rural Bihar, loss of land/economic capital = loss of a specific class status
and cultural ideological supremacy
- Class differences obliterated b/c of emergence of neo-rich peasantry
- As this happens, upper castes are losing their economic clout
- Upper backward castes challenge the ideological supremacy of the upper
castes who emulated their rituals as a tool to control the Dalits
- Upper castes often band together to exploit the Dalits
Changes initiated by the govt must be understood in conjunction w/ the
changes & transitions in the political economy of rural Bihar
Dalit upward mobility threatens both the upper and upper backward castes:
this leads to cycles of violence and counter-violence
Prakash Louis: Heart of the problem is that Dalits no longer ACCEPT the
existing feudal social system, and the upper castes cannot tolerate this
defiance

Transitions in Political Economy of Labor

Gopal Guru: The Dalits pursuit of modernity saw them as accessing the
language of rights to freedom, equality, dignity and self-respect and reject the
language of obligation that confines them to negative rights
- Negative rights: Fight over flesh and food left over from the upper castes
Dalits refuse to perform these stigmatized tasks or give in to the economic
exploitation of their labor

This breaks the nurtured dependencies in an exploitative hierarchical

political economy of labor
- Upper castes left with no labor to carry out their untouchable jobs
- This leads to recriminations
Human rights activists: Define dalit ID in terms of human rights
The vetbigari system is challenged by the change from traditional bonded
labor to wage labor
- Vetbigari system based on exploitative physical and mental labor
Dalit resistance for fair wages and a fixed/regulated notion of time creates
tensions and conflicts b/t landowning Thakurs/Rajputs and the Dalits
- Also provides a reason for violent action by landowning-castes against
Dalits
The landowners would rather pay the Dalits in produce from their land to
protect from market fluctuations in the price of their produce
- This is also a more convenient way to pay the Dalits so they dont have to
sell their land-produce in order to pay with cash
- Also enables landowners to maintain an exploitative tradition of payment
in kind a cash economy would enable Dalits to elevate their economic
status
Maintaining surplus and profitability depends on: intimidation, threats and
violence by upper castes & upwardly mobile castes
- Ex: 1997 Belchi massacre in rural Bihar where Kurmi landlord burnt
Dalits alive
While upper castes have land, they cannot access Dalit laborers to cultivate
that land!
- In some North Indian villages, the Jats work as laborers on land held by
Dalits
Ironically, caste pollution thru touch or presence is discounted when it is a
matter of extraction of labor!
Dalits making inroads in education and politics
- This upward mobility enables them to negotiate themselves OUT of
economic bondage
Dalits have excelled in education, have reps in Congress party => have
acquired more bargaining power for themselves
Dipankar Gupta: Modernization has caused a great deal of opposition and
resentment from the entrenched powerful castes
In coastal districts: The severity of assaults by upper castes on 2 untouchable
castes, the Malas and Madigas, is explained b/c of their better education
- This education has been achieved thru entry to govt jobs b/c of
reservations and burgeoning assertive identity
In Tsundur, Dalits have moved far ahead of landowning classes in education
and most work outside Tsundur
Thus the absolute power of the upper castes seems to be weakening
Though access to political power for Dalits has improved, atrocities against
them continue in Northern India

Caste Wars
Limbs cut off, eyes gorged out, or forced witnessing of gang rapes of women
of their households all violence Darits have been subjected to

In 2000: 25,455 instances of violence against Dalits in the whole of India

Institutionalization in a social system brings w/ it both punishment and
reward
- Reward: Survival in the social fabric can only be maintained thru nontransgression of established norms
Dalits using an upper caste well not only about material resources but about
challenging the ideological hegemony and higher social status of the upper
castes
- Violence is justified by the claim that Dalits have no legitimacy over the
resources
Causes for armed violence are very complex
- The violence is NOT irrational
- Districts in Bihar that have seen ongoing violence: Jehanabad, Aurangabad,
Bhojpur, Nawadah, Samastipur and Gaya
- Most shocking: The Laxmanpur Bathe and Shankarbigha massacre in 1997
and 1999

Organizing for Violence against Dalits

Bihar has seen the formation of 2 types of armed bands
1) Lathaiths: A group of musclemen employed by the landlords
- Chief task is to ensure that taxes and rents are paid regularly, keep tenants
and peasants in their place
2) Dominant caste senas or private caste militias: Refers to an army or
caste-based private gangs which are reactionary and counterrevolutionary
- They are a non-party socio-political formation
- Chief weapons are creating a climate of fear and engaging in violence
- Govt of India officially banned the Ranveer Sena; was founded by
Dharichan Chaudhury in 1995 and targets women deliberately
- Sena cadres operate mostly underground while leaders only come to the
town when a massacre is to be planned/executed
Ranveer Sena supported by the upper backward castes like Yadavs, Kurmis,
and Koeris
- 1998: In Lok Sabha election campaign, a Koeri candidate demanded the
lifting of the ban imposed on Ranveer Sena
Ranveer Mahila Sangh: The womens version of the Ranveer Sena
- Women trained to use arms for self-defense
- Also engaged in welfare activities in their villages
- Ex: 1989-1990, upper caste women took part in anti-Mandal agitationsto
remove reservations for backward castes and Dalits
- During 1990s: Upper middle class and upper caste women of the Hindu
Right participated in actual attacks against Muslims
In these contexts, the struggle against gendered inequalities is mediated by
other inequalities such as caste, religion and class
- Thus, some womens empowerment comes at the disempowerment of
others
Dalit Retaliation and Counter-Violence
In rural Bihar, violence and counter-violence part of the same process

Counter-violence comes from Naxalite, leftist communist organizations

- Communist Party of India-Marxist-Leninist CPI-ML has taken up the
cause of the Dalits
- Unlike other states in Northern India, the consolidation of Dalits in Bihar
has taken place behind the Communist Party of India Liberation
(Liberation)
Dalit women are trained to retaliate and defend themselves, as well as to fight
and use arms
Naxalite movement: Began in the village of Mushahri in 1967
- Supported most of the retaliatory counter violence against Ranveer Sena
Internal divisions are b/t the Marxist Coordination Center and the CPI-ML
(Peoples War), both of which boycott participation in parliamentary
elections; and b/t the MCC and CPI-ML (Liberation) which participated in
electoral politics
Ranveer Sena formed a political front called Ranvir Kisan Maha Sangh and
contests elections
CPI-ML (Peoples War) believes in organizing a struggle against the
combatants and supporters of the Sena and not killing innocent upper caste
men/women
- It sees its struggle as a class struggle, not just a caste struggle
- See it as a struggle against oppressive socio-economic relations
- Has participants by large numbers of agricultural laborers and peasants of
every caste and religion
The MCC argue that any supporter of Sena should be killed and a reign of
counter-terror established for every killing
- May 1987: Extremists from the MCC massacred upper caste landlords
from the Bhumihar community
- March 1999: MCC slashed throats of 34 upper caste Bhumihars in Senari
village
The CPI-ML (Liberation) argues that Dalits should be armed for self-defense
b/c the state admin and police have failed to protect them
- Views Ranveer Sena as a private army of landlords patronized by state
ruling parties
- Believes its struggle would be incomplete w/out challenging the ruling
parties electorally

Dalit Women as Arms Bearers

In some villages, Dalit women are the chief arms bearers
Widows of Shankarbhigha and Narainpur massacres of 1999 openly asked the
govt for arms combating Ranveer Sena
Army of the backward castes is the Dalit Sena army and it has a womens
wing
- The undergo basic rifle training
- Started training women since 1994; since, there has been a marked drop in
atrocities towards women
- Approx. 8000 women in 500 villages in Bihar have been given arms
training
The activities of Dalit Sena are backed by the Dalit Samaj Party, the political
wing of the Dalit Sena

The party strongly supports womens arms training

Access and Participation in Violence

Dalit women arm themselves for economic survival
- Dalits have limited access to economic resources such as land and water
- The agricultural sector is the only economically gainful occupation for
them to ensure survival
- The ritual status of castes shared an interdependent relationship w/
control over resources/economic capital (land/water/cattle/crops)
- Most conflicts b/t upper and lower castes are over access to material
resources
- In Mandadam in Guntur district in 1989: The conflict has been various
fishing communities w/ traditional rights over fishing in tanks and canals
VERSUS govt-designated contractors who buy that right
- 78% of all female workers are in agriculture
- Womens absorption in the non-agricultural sector is low
- Thus access to property = much more immediate route to economic
success
- Also, women and girls often the only members of a household left after
violence
- Also, some Dalit men get sanitation or other bad jobs in cities after getting
an education; thus women need to defend themselves when left behind
Caste conflicts often negotiated on the sexualized body of the Dalit women
- So women have taken responsibility for their own protection
- Economic dominance closely associated w/ issues of access to lower
caste/Dalit womens sexuality
- Perceptions of Dalit womens sexuality are associated w/ the way they
positions themselves in relation to the public and private sphers
- Unlike upper caste women, Dalit women are not confined to the
domestic/private domain
The economic and sexual labor of lower caste women is made available for
the consumption of upper castes
- Dalit women assist upper caste women in some domestic work
- Lower caste women participate in the polluting tasks like the men folk
for the upper castes
- Blurring of public/private gendered boundaries makes Dalit women more
vulnerable to rape, sexual harassment and threat of public violence
- Upper caste men often interpret Dalit women accessing the public domain
as a reflection of lower caste mens failure to control the sexuality of their
women
Social control and hegemonic masculinity of upper caste men is asserted and
maintained thru defilement and appropriation of lower caste womens
sexuality
- 1994 case of Bhukli Devi paraded naked thru streets for stealing 4 potatoes,
then raped and killed
- The 1927 Mahad Satyagraha led by Dr. Ramji Amdebkar was to address
both caste and gender oppression of the Dalits
Dalit women w/ arms break thru geographically demarcated spaces usually
restricted from them

Landlords beginning to be scared to deny Dalit women from getting water

from their wells
Threat of action ensured a Dalit village got its share of a govt handout of
grain
Women retook 150 acres of communal land they say landlords had taken in
collusion w/ local authorities
Dalit men are particularly vulnerable, exploited and subject to gendered
powerlessness
Documentary Bandit Queen exposes the subservience of lower caste and
Dalit men
Women can inhabit different subject-positions in specific contexts of violence:
- As victims of upper caste violence
- As perpetrators of violence against higher castes
- As witnesses to atrocities
Need to conceptualize ways in which women can be active agents of violence
Judy El Bushra: Womens involvement in violence as a component of agency
Women arming themselves also leads to reconsideration of essentialist
approaches
- Challenge to maternalist claims to peace
- Nancy Hughes: Women use moral claims of motherhood to justify war as
they have to support peace
- If it is integral to womens ethic to care, they arm themselves to fulfill that
ethic of care
- Maternal instincts have not led upper caste women in Bihar to empathize
with dalit women (as mothers) or even protest against the violent atrocities
of their own men against dalit women
Danger of oppositional logic in which women are natural pacifists and men
are natural aggressors
- Fails to account for how caste or ethno-religious conflicts can render some
men more vulnerable than others
- Ex: When Andrha Pradesh was paraded naked thru the streets, the men of
her caste turned their heads; thus, the structure of caste relations castrates
the men thru the expropriation of his women
Dynamics of context-specific violence exposes the complexity of working
with the concept of patriarchy
- Meanings of masculinity shift in a dalit household in Bihar
- The domestic patriarchal hegemony of a dalit man is subsumed under the
power of the landlord
- Feudal lord/upper caste man serves as a common patriarch to both the dalit
man and the woman
- Thus, during periods of conflict and violence, womens resistance of
private patriarchy shifts towards its fight vs. a public patriarchy along
with the men since the public patriarch exploits men and women equally

State, Caste and Violence: Redress and Response

The states ineffectiveness renders it an unwitting partner to oppression
Project to promote community development and local governance @ grass
roots level has failed

Establishment of democratic informal governance structures has been

unsuccessful
Bihar the only state in India where elections to panchayats have not been
held for the last 20 years
- This denies villages the right to elect reps to the 3-tiered panchayati raj:
1) The gram panchayat (elected village council)
2) Panchayat samiti (block council)
3) Zila parishad (district council)
- 1/3rd of the panchayats seats were reserved for women with reservations
also for SCs and STs
Politicians and policemen are major perpetrators of injustices
- Criminalization of politics
- Often agents of state machinery collude in using state apparatuses
against victims of violence
- Ex: 1992 gang rape and trial of Bhanwari Bai in Jaipur; she was trained by
the govt to act as an agent of change for the govts Womens
Development Program
- All 5 men who raped her were acquitted; judicial system refused to believe
that it had happened
- The judge expressed caste, gender, and class biases
As caste wars escalated and upper caste rulers were replaced by backward
caste leaders, caste entered into the legit domain of mainstream politics
Some backward castes form alliances with Ranveer Sena
Casteist bias in police operations: Police dont interrogate those belonging to
the Sena, stopped murderers in Shankarbhiga massacre from being shot
The National democratic Alliance forms the new govt in Bihar
2 issues at the forefront of the political agenda:
1) Dominant castes the main constituency of NDA, so they will assert their
opinions in relation to economic and social empowerment
2) Bharatiya Janata Party, an alliance partner in the new govt, is known for
manipulating religion for political purposes

John Galtung, Cultural Violence from Journal of Peace Research

Introduces concept of cultural violence

- A follow up to the authors intro to structural violence 20 years prior
Cultural violence = any aspect of a culture that can be used to legitimize
violence in its direct or structural form
- This symbolic violence does not kill or main like direct violence or the
violence built into the structure; it is used to LEGITIMIZE either or both
- Ex: Theory of Herrenvolk, or a superior race
Using a violence triangle and a violence strata image, the relations b/t direct,
indirect and cultural violence are explored
Divides culture into religion and ideology, art and language, and empirical and
formal science when giving examples of cultural violence
Theory of cultural violence related to 2 basic points in Gandhism:
- The doctrines of unity of life and of unity of means and ends
Including culture as a major focus of peace studies is seen as a possible
contribution to the as yet non-existent discipline of culturology

Definition
Culture = the symbolic sphere of our existence
- Ex: Stars, crosses and crescents; flags, anthems and military parades; the
ubiquitous portrait of the Leader; inflammatory speeches and posters are
all aspects of culture
Cultures could be imagined and encountered with not only 1 but a set of
aspects so violent, extensive and diverse, spanning all cultural domains, that
one may need to talk about not just cases of cultural violence but violent
cultures
- For this, a systematic research process is needed this article is part of that
process
Opposite of cultural violence would be cultural peace
- Aspects of a culture that serve to justify and legitimize direct peace and
structural peace
- If many and diverse aspects of the kind are found in a culture, we may call
it a peace culture
Major task of peace research is the never-ending search for a peace culture
- Problematic b/c of the temptation to institutionalize that culture, making it
obligatory w/ the hope of internalizing it everywhere
- And that would already be direct violence, imposing a culture
Violence studies are about 2 problems: the use of violence and the
legitimation of the use of violence
- The psychological mechanism would be internalization
Study of cultural violence highlights the way in which the act of direct
violence and the fact of structural violence are legitimized and thus rendered
acceptable in society
One way cultural violence works:
- By changing the moral color of an act from red/wrong to green/right or at
least to yellow/acceptable
- Ex: Murder on behalf of the country as right, on behalf of oneself wrong
Another way cultural violence works:
- Making reality opaque, so that we dont see the violent act or fact, or at
least not as violent
- Ex: Abortus provocatus
- This is more easily done with some forms of violence than with others
A Typology of Direct and Structural Violence
Violence = avoidable insults to basic human needs, and more generally to life
- It lowers the real level of need satisfaction below what is potentially
possible
- Threats of violence are also violence
Four classes of basic needs:
- Survival needs (negation: death, mortality)
- Well-being needs (negation: misery, morbidity)
- Identity, meaning needs (negation: alienation)
- Freedom needs (negation: repression)
Combining these four classes of basic needs with the distinction b/t direct and
structural violence gives a typology of 8 types of violence with some subtypes

- Easily IDed for direct violence but more complex for structural violence
The typology is anthropo-centric; a column for Nature could be added
- A need would be ecological balance; if this isnt satisfied, the result is
ecological degradation, breakdown, imbalance
- Eco-balance corresponds to survival + well-being + freedom + identity for
human; if not satisfied, the result is human degradation
- Violence defined as insults would focus on biota in terms of ecology
Direct violence affects the four basic needs in the following ways:
- Survival needs: Killing (extermination, holocaust, genocide)
- Well-being needs: Maiming, siege, sanctions, misery (silent holocaust)
- ID needs: Desocialization (spiritual death), resocialization, secondary
citizen
- Freedom needs: Repression, detention, expulsion
- The world has experienced ALL of these things over the last 50 years
alone!!
Structural violence affects the four basic needs in the following ways:
- Survival needs: Exploitation A
- Well-being needs: Exploitation B
- ID needs: Penetration, segmentation
- Freedom needs: Marginalization, fragmentation
Killing and maiming constitute casualties, used in assessing the magnitude
of a war
- But war only one particular form of orchestrated violence
- Very narrow to see peace as the opposite of war
Included under maiming is the insult to human needs brought about by
siege/blockade and sanctions
- This is slow and intentional killing thru malnutrition and lack of medical
attention
- Making causal chain longer means actor can avoid facing the violence
directly
- Even gives the victim a chance to submit means loss of freedom and
identity instead of life and limbs
- Ex: The Gandhian type of economic boycott combined refusal to buy
British textiles w/ the collecting of funds for the merchants, in order not to
confuse the issue by threatening their livelihood
Category of alienation defined in terms of socialization: the internalization
of a culture
- Double aspect: To be socialized away from ones own culture and to be
resocialized into another culture
- They often come together in the form of second class citizenship:
subjected group forced to express dominant culture and not its own
- Any socialization of a child is forced & gives the child no choice
- Conclusion: Non-violent socialization is to give the child a choice, e.g. by
offering him/her more than 1 cultural idiom
Category of repression has double definition: the freedom from and
freedom to of the Intl Bill of Human Rights
- 2 categories have been added explicitly b/c of their significance as
concomitants of other types of violence: detention and expulsion

Need image of a violent structure and a discourse in order to ID the aspects of

structural violence and see how they relate to the needs categories
Archetypal violent structure: Has exploitation as a center-piece
- The top-dogs get much more (in terms of needs) out of the interaction in
the structure than others, the underdogs
- There is unequal exchange
- Exploitation A: The underdogs are so disadvantaged that they die from
it
- Exploitation B: The underdogs are left in a permanent state of unwanted
misery, usually including malnutrition and illness
- The way people die differs: In 3rd World, from diarrhea and immunity
deficiencies; in developing countries from cardio-vascular diseases and
malignant tumors
- All of this happens w/in complex structures and @ the end of long, highly
ramified causal chains and cycles
Next four terms are parts of exploitation or reinforcing components in the
structure
- Function by impeding consciousness formation and mobilization: 2
conditions for effective struggle against exploitation
- Penetration + segmentation will impede consciousness formation
- Marginalization + fragmentation will impede mobilization
- These four should also be seen as structural violence in their own right
particularly as a variation on the theme of structurally built-in repression
- All operate in gender contexts
- Exploitation and repression go hand in hand as violence but are NOT
identical
Violence against nature
- Direct violence: Slashing, burning, etc. as in war
- Structural violence: Unintended the pollution and depletion associated
w/ modern industry, leading to dying forests, ozone holes, global warming,
etc.
- Structural violence = a transformation of nature thru industrial activity +
world-encompassing commercialization
- World-encompassing commercialization makes the consequences nonvisible to the perpetrators
- These 2 structures are legitimized by economic growth
- Sustainable economic growth as another form of cultural violence

Relating Three Types of Violence

Direct and structural violence are used as super-types: cultural violence can
be added as another of these
In violence triangle: Cultural violence as the legitimizer of both direct and
structural violence (they are the feet of the triangle)
Standing the triangle on its direct violence head = structural and cultural
sources of direct violence
All 6 positions (3 pointing downward, 3 pointing upward) of the triangle all
invoke different stories
Basic difference in the time relation of the 3 concepts of violence
- Direct violence = an event

-
-

Structural violence = a process

Cultural violence = an invariant, a permanence given the slow
transformations of basic culture
This leads to a violence strata image of the phenomenology of violence
- @ bottom is the steady flow of cultural violence thru time: a substratum
thru which the other 2 get their power
- Next stratum: Structural violence & its patterns of exploitation are
building up/wearing out/or torn down
- Top stratum: Direct violence
Generally, causal flow from cultural via structural violence can be IDed
Culture leads us into seeing exploitation/repression as normal and natural, or
into NOT seeing them!
- Then come efforts to use direct violence to get out of the structural iron
cage & counter-violence to keep the cage intact
- Ex: Regular criminal activity by the underdog to get out, redistribute
wealth, get revenge, (blue collar crime) or remain/become a top-dog
(white collar crime)
When direct & structural violence create needs-deficits => trauma
- Trauma to a group = collective trauma => collective subconscious, raw
material for major historical processes and events
- Assumption: Violence breeds violence
- Violence is needs-deprivation; needs-deprivation is serious; one reaction
is direct violence
- Another reaction is apathy and withdrawal in society; top-dogs prefer this
reaction
- Major form of cultural violence indulged in by ruling elites: Blaming the
victim of structural violence who throws the first stone, calling them
aggressive
Triangle may be better image b/c links and flows go in all 6 directions and
cycles connecting all 3 may start at ANY point
- Ex: Africans captured, forced across Atlantic to work as slaves, many
killed in direct violence; this sediments into structural violence over years,
then cultural violence in reproducing racist ideas follows
- Ex: Structural violence thru social differentiation & unequal exchange;
cultural violence justifies this; social acts maintain this (Marxism)
- Ex of start w/ direct AND structural violence: Nordic Vikings killing,
cheating, attacking Russians => formed idea that Russians are
wild/primitive => idea that they would attack back someday
Could be a deeper stratum of human nature
- With genetically transmitted dispositions or predispositions for aggression
(direct violence) and domination (structural violence)
- BUT, biological determinism ignores the high level of variation in
aggression and domination w/in people; depends on context, including
structural and cultural conditions
Militarization = a process; militarism = the ideology accompanying that
process
Need to ID structural and cultural aspects that tend to reproduce the readiness
for military action, production and deployment

Ex: Mobbing of young boys at school, primogeniture, unemployment &

exploitation in general; use of military production and employment to
stimulate economic growth/distribution; heavily nationalized, racist and
sexist ideologies, etc.
Yet structure and culture not usually included in arms control studies!
Need to break this taboo

Examples of Cultural Violence

IDing different cultural elements to show how it can, empirically or
potentially, be used to legitimize direct or structural violence
Religion
All religions have something sacred god
Basic distinction b/t transcendental God outside us and an immanent god
inside us (maybe also inside all life)
Judaism: God as a male deity residing outside planet Earth
- Transcendentalism as a metaphor from which many consequences follow
W/ God outside us, it is likely that some people will be seen as closer to God
than others, even as higher
In general occidental tradition: Sharp dichotomies b/t good and evil = need an
evil Satan corresponding to the good God for reasons for symmetry
Assumption that God chooses those most in His image (meaning those who
are good)
- This gives double dichotomy w/ God, the Chosen Ones (by God), the
Unchosen Ones (by God, chosen by Satan), and Satan
- Heaven and Hell can be reproduced on Earth as a foretaste or indication of
the afterlife
- Social class as the finger of God, misery/luxury as preparations for
Hell/Heaven
An immanent concept of god as residing inside us would make any such
dichotomy an act against god
W/ a transcendental God, however, this all becomes meaningful
Table II of the Chosen and the Unchosen:
- God Chooses: Human species, men, His People (found as early as
Genesis)
- God Chooses: Whites, Upper Classes (found as scattered references to
slaves)
- The upper classes traditionally include: the clergy, the aristocracy, and
capitalists
- God Chooses: True Believers (typical of the New Testament)
- Left to Satan: Animals, plants, nature; women; the others; colored people;
lower classes; heretics and pagans
- With the consequences of : Specicism, ecocide; sexism, witch-burning;
nationalism, imperialism; racism, colonialism; 'classism, exploitation;
meritism, inquisition
Contemporary example: The policies of Israel with regard to the Palestinians
- The Chosen People have a Promised Land
- They translate chosenness into cultural violence, into all 8 types of direct
and structural violence

Killing, maiming, material deprivation by denying West Bank inhabitants

what is needed for livelihood; desocialization w/in the theocratic state of
Israel w/ second-class citizenship to non-Jews; detention, individual
expulsion, etc.; & exploitation B
The 4 structural concomitants of exploitation are well-developed:
Palestinians made to see themselves as born inferiors; giving them small
segments of economic activity; keeping them outside Jewish society; never
treated Palestinians as one people
The violence is more evenly distributed over the 8 types

Ideology
Political ideologies as successors to religion
Successors to God in the form of the modern state
Basic idea of sharp, value-loaded dichotomies remains intact
Chosen and Unchosen replaced by Self and Other
Archetype: nationalism
Gradient inflates, exalts the value of the Self; deflates, even debases, the value
of Other
Structural violence then starts operating
- People become debased by being exploited, and they are exploited b/c they
are seen as debased & dehumanized
When Other is converted into an it, deprived of humanhood, direct violence
can take over
- This is then blamed on the victim, reinforced by the category of the
dangerous it, the vermin or bacteria; the class enemy; the mad dog
etc.
- Extermination becomes a psychologically possible duty
Certain nations are seen as modern/carriers of civilization and the historical
process more than others
Certain tenets of belief in modernization, development, and progress are seen
as apodictic; not to believe in them reflects badly on the non-believer, not on
the belief
All of these ideas are still strong in Western culture
Assumptions based on ascribed distinctions, gender, race and nation already
given at birth are hard to maintain in an achievement-oriented society
- But in a meritocracy, denying power and privilege to those on top is to
deny merit itself
The ideology of nationalism should be seen in conjunction with the ideology
of the state, statism
Origins of the states right of belligerence
- Feudal: State as an organization needed by the Prince to exact enough
taxes to pay for armies and navies; state est. to maintain the military, NOT
vice versa
- Religious: State as the successor to God, inheriting the right to destroy life
(execution) and control the creation of life in some cases
Nationalism + statism = the ugly ideology of the nation-state
- Killing in war done in the name of the nation
- The priority for choice rather than life in abortion another form of cultural
violence based on denial of fetal life as human

- But pro-lifers not really rooted in a sense of sacredness of the fetus

Ideology of the nation-state + theologically based Chosen People complex =
disastrous
- Ex: Israel, Iran, Japan, South Africa, the US, Nazi Germany, the Soviets
under Gorbachev, France

Language
Languages w/ a Latin base (Italian, French, Spanish, modern English) make
women invisible by using the same word for the male gender as for the entire
human species
- Not the case with Germanic languages like German and Norwegian
Movement for non-sexist writing an example of deliberate cultural
transformation away from cultural violence
Space and time rigidities imposed by Indo-European languages
- Corresponding w/ a rigidity in the logistical structure w/ strong emphasis
on the possibility of arriving at valid inferences ; tendency to distinguish
linguistically b/t essence and apparition, leaving room for the immortality
of the essence and the destruction of what is apparition
- This is deep culture and the lower levels of the violence triangle stratum
Art

Europe understands itself as the negation of the non-European environment

- At transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern Period, that
environment was the Ottoman Empire, encompassing nearly everywhere
except Russia
From this developed the metaphor of oriental despotism to come to grips w/
this environment
- Callousness and arbitrariness seen as typical of this despotism
- Ex: Muslims not constrained by Christian monogamy
19th century France: School of painting representing oriental despotism in a
setting of sex/violence rose
- Ex: Henri Regnaults Execution Without Process and Eugene
Delacroixs The Death of Sardanapal
- Ex: Hegel saw oriental despotism or oriental mode of production as
negative, homogenous, and stagnant
Russia also came to be seen in terms of oriental despotism

Empirical Science
Ex of cultural violence: Neoclassical economic doctrine
- Studies the system prescribed by its own doctrines; finds its self-fulfilling
prophecies confirmed
- Trade theory: Based on comparative advantages by Ricardo;
consequences of this doctrine in the form of todays vertical division of
labor in the world are visible as structural violence
Doctrine of comparative advantage as a justification for a rough division of
the world in terms of the degree of processing which countries impart to their
exports
- This is roughly proportionate to the amount of challenge countries receive
in the production process

THUS, the theory sentences countries to stay where the production-factor

profile has landed them, for geographical and historical reasons
- Not easy to improve this when there are gains to be made by not changing
the status quo, for those who own raw materials and commodities
Law of comparative advantage is cultural violence

Formal Science
Mathematics as a formal game with one basic rule:
- That a theorem T and its negation T cannot both be valid
- Bivalent logic draws strict line b/t valid and invalid
This means that math disciplines us into a particular mode of thought
compatible with black-white thinking and polarization in personal, social, and
world spaces
The either-or character of mathematical thought is dangerous
Cosmology
Return to the problem of the transition from cultural violence to violent
culture
Can explore the substratum of the culture for its deep culture(s)
- Looking at the cultural genetic code that generates cultural elements and
reproduces itself thru them
Cosmology concept: Designed to harbor that substratum of deeper
assumptions about reality that defines what is normal and natural
- It is at this level that occidental culture shows so many of its violent
features that the whole culture starts looking violent
Examples:
- Strong center-periphery gradients
- The urgency precluding the slow, patient building of structural and direct
peace
- Atomistic, dichotomous thought with deductive chains counteracting the
unity-of-life
- Tendency to individualize and rank humans, breaking up the unity-of-man
The whole culture possesses a great potential for cultural violence that can
justify the unjustifiable
Gandhi and Cultural Violence
Two axioms summarize Gandhism:
1) Unity-of-life
2) Unity of means and ends
The first follows from the second if it is assumed that no life can be used as a
means to an end
Unity is understood in terms of closeness, against separation
- All forms of life should enjoy closeness, shouldnt be kept apart by SelfOther gradients
Unity-of-means-and-ends
- Brings together mental elements, such as acts, and facts brought about by
acts, close together
- They shouldnt be kept separate by long causal chains that drive wedges in
social time

- The means must be good in themselves

Conclusion drawn by Gandhi from these 2 axioms:
- Respect for the sacredness of all life
- Acceptance of the precept take care of the means and the ends will take
care of themselves
- Unity-of-means-and-ends leads to a doctrine of synchrony
Archetype: the Buddhist wheel where elements of thought, speech, and action
tend to be at the same level of priority
Peace research has much to learn, to take, and to receive

Alex de Waal, Reflection on the Difficulties of Defining Darfurs Crisis as

Genocide, Harvard Human Rights Journal

Darfurs crisis witnessed a first: the US government formally declared that an

event was genocide while it was in progress. Before, Sudan activists and
senior UN officials had labeled the Darfur killings as ethnic cleansing and
made comparisons with Rwanda from a decade earlier.
Ethnic character of the killings and other acts of violence in Sudan are beyond
dispute, however what is ambiguous is the intent. There is no demonstrated
intent to eliminate physically an entire ethnic group and no attempt to wholly
eliminate the identity of a group. The real aim has be to subjugate the groups
in the context of the military and the political threat they pose through the
suspected support of an insurgency.
Danger of using the word genocide is that it brand the perpetrators as wholly
evil and then it is difficult to make the case for political compromise with
them
Without the label of genocide it is unlikely that the Darfur movement would
have gained such vigor and mass support. However it has expanded the
boundaries of what has usually been recognized as genocide.

Andrew Linklater, Citizenship Humanity and Cosmopolitan Harm Conventions,

International Political Science Review

Rousseau argued that higher levels of violence and human misery resulted
from the transition from the state of nature to civil society.
Kant believed human beings could reduce harm over centuries of progress in
which they come to see themselves as dual citizens: as members of their
respective states and participants in a wider community of humankind.
Radical cosmopolitan approach: world government is the only solution to the
problem of harm.
Neo-liberal and neo-Grotian positions: most states respect international moral
and legal conventions that pace constraints on the use of force. The debate
between these approaches is an argument about how far cosmopolitan harm
conventions can be developed in a world of states
Realists and their critics reach different conclusions about the prospects for
such conventions in world politics, but they also understand harm in different
ways and disagree about the forms of harm that deserve most attentions.

Critics of humanitarian war have argued that intervention may cause more
harm than good, especially when the intervening states are major powers with
an established history of selective intervention to punish non-compliant
regimes.
All societies have harm conventions but what makes a harm convention
cosmopolitan is the fact that it does not privilege the interest of insiders over
outsiders.
o Related is the moral conviction that noncombatants should be spared
unnecessary injury in war because they themselves do no harm and
POWs are entitled to lead as decent a life as possible during their
confinement. In these cases, cosmopolitanism does not mean the
absence of national attachments or suggest that loyalty to the whole of
humankind should come before duties to particular communities. All
it requires is friendship towards the rest of the human race.
CHCs are rooted in the idea that differences between insiders and outsiders
are not always relevant reasons for treating outsiders less well that insiders.
CHCs are necessary when societies come into contact with each other and
cannot always predict how their behaviour will cause harm. E.g. relations
between colonial and aboriginal Australia are a reminder that globalization or
the greater interconnectedness of humankind creates new opportunities for
transnational harm.
War has been the main impetus behind the development of CHCs over last
200 years and is also one of the main threats to its survival.

Nuclear Proliferation:
Why do States build nuclear Weapons?
Scott Sagan
Why do states build nuclear weapons?
This unexamined question exists because US policy makers and IR scholars belive
states will seek to develop nuclear weapons when they face a significant military
threat to their security that cannot be met through alternative means; if they do not
face such threats they willingly remain non-nuclear states.
Sagan challenges conventional wisdom on proliferation.
Three models to answer:
1) Security model: national security against foreign threats, esp nuke threats.
2) domestic politics model: parochial domestic and bureaucratic interests that will be
enhanced domestically.
3) the norms model: normative symbol of states modernity and identity.
Nuclear proliferation will be a critical problem in international security for a
foreseeable future.
Member states can remove themselves from NPT under supreme national interest

57 states are conducting nuclear research or building reactors. 37 countries have been
estimated to have sufficient capability to test nuclear weapons on a crash basis. 0
NPT encourages this addition of states to the NS list because it only encourages that
inspection of these states are permitted. This recognizes that rogue states (Libya, N
Korea etc) should not possess nuclear capabilities. However, this doesnt ensure that
states that have the potential to become nuclear remain non-nuclear. Difference
between political demand and threat of nuclear weapons and the supply of nuclear
weapons spreading uncontrollably. (one of the requisites of deterrence that it doesnt
spread)
Any demand-side non proliferation strategy versus a supply side strategy will be
inherently contradictory. Traditional realist view of securitization needs for nuclear
weapons.
Theories provide non-empirically backed research and contradictory results, therefore
a multifold of possible outcomes.
The Security Model:
Anarchy- self-help system to protect sovereignty and security.
Destructive power of nukes leads states unarmed to need nukes.
Two outcomes: strong states internally balance and produce nukes, weak states ally
with weak states as extended deterrence. (the credibility of extended deterrence is
challenged).
Proliferation begets proliferation George Shultz
strategic chain reaction:
After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet Union was greatly threatened. Stalin
provide the bomb- it will remove a great danger from us
London+Paris built it as a response to the Soviet Union and the reduction in the US
extended deterrence.
China because of the US threat at the end of the Korean war then the Soviet threat
following 1960s.
India did because of China, India unambiguously had nuclear capacity and research
but didnt test it in order to refrain neighbours from following suit. Testing made
Pakistan follow suit.
Explain Nuclear Restraint:
Why a state would give up having nuclear weapons?
External threat change or reevaluated.
South Africa was threatened between mid 1970s early 1980s and the removal of
these threats by the late 1980s led to denuclearization of South Africa. Its strategy
was to scare the Soviet Union that it feared would attack it, and blackmail the US into
intervening in the event that the Soviet Union attack South Africa. BY 1989, the
external threat was disbanded with the fall of the Soviet Union, a cease-fire with
Angola (previously filled with Cuban forces) and a tripartite agreement granted
independence to Namibia in 1988.
Argentina and Brazil refused to join the Latin America nuclear free weapons zone
(NFWZ) and began active programs in the 1980s but when the recognized that both
neighbours hadnt gone to war since 1828 it was of no use to be nuclear armed.
Ukraine Kazaksthan and Belarus gave up their arsenals because of close ties with
Russia and US extended deterrence.

Policy Implications:
Us backing is crucial otherwise states perceiving threats need to arm themselves.
Confidence building measures or negative security assurances that nuclear states will
not use their weapons against non-nuclear states.
NPT poses as a solution to the collective action problem. Each state would prefer to
be the only nuclear power however due to the chain reaction that isnt possible. The
treaty enables states to be certain that neighbours will exercise restraint or at least
inform other states if they plan to break away from the treat.
According to Realists, US nonproliferation policy only slows down doesnt contain
the spread of nukes. Efforts to slow down the spread are large but countered by the
lack of reliability of US extended deterrence in a multipolar world. Stratetigic
incentives for neigbbours to follow suit.
Problems of this model?
realist history depends on: 1) statements by key decision makers who will say that
they are serving national interest. 2)correlation in time b/w threats and nuclear
weapon adoption. Thereby scholars find nuclear weapon adoption and move
backwards in history to find a threat that must have caused the decision. Similarly,
the decision not to have nuclear weapons must be due to changes in the
international system. This is a very narrow view of how governments make decisions.
Domestic Politics Model:
Domestic actors encouraging or discouraging, serves narrow bureaucratic interests of
individual actors within a state. (Principal Agent Problem)/
3 important actors:
1) states nuclear energy establishment (government and civilian officials)
2)Military (usually airforce and navy)
3) Politicians.
When these actors form coalitions they can create a nuclear weapons programme.
There is no domestic political theory that states the conditions in which nukes are
created. Its based on literature within the US and Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Actors encouraged the perception of foreign threat and actively lobbied for defense
spending. Ideas developed in a lab, then made national security issues. favourable to
the military and then demonstrated to be effective to gain political support.
Realists argue that these domestic interests are marginal against national security
issues. Regardless of numbers states build weapons as a response to adversaries.
Domestic politics: weapons are not inevitable solutions to security problems but are a
solution looking for a problem to attach themselves to. Threats are manipulated by
bureaucratic actors to be perceived as threats.
India puzzle:
Indias nuclear weapons experience fits most aptly into the DP model.
No official consensus that nuclear deterrence to counter Chinas nuclear weapons.
According to realist logic, if threat was enormous a crash weapons program would
have been initiated which didnt occur. Leaders would have appealed for extended
deterrence from the Soviet Union or US. This would have conflicted with the nonaligned status of India at the time and publicly questioned whether such guarentees
were credible.
Battle fought between the elite in India:
Shastry: excessive costs

Homi Bhabba head of the atomic energy commission lobbied for the development by
calculating different costs.
Sarabhai, shastrys successor cancelled the program all together. Gandhi reversed this,
Gandhi approved of plans withan elite circle and didnt tell the military till 10 days
before the planned May18th explosion.
1) This pattern suggests that security was of secondary importance.
2) Canada revoking their extended deterrence and the unprepared response by India
shows that this decision was made in haste.
3) Domestic support for the Gandhi government had fallen to a low, armed with
nuclear weapons the government gained support.
South Africa:
South Africa was internal restraint rather than changes within the domestic system.
President De Klerk decided to abandon the nuclear reactors before the Cold war was
over. There was also a surprising burning of documents for the IAEAs inspection of
the country.
Policy Implications:
Domestic focused Non-proliferation, international financial institutions demand that
there are cuts in military expenditure.
US support of research etc.
The impact of NS on non-NS is important in this model, as non-NS decide to arm
themselves depending on proliferators.
Norms Model:
Shapes states identity; norms about what is acceptable in the international system.
Actors have interests but these interests are shaped by the role that they have to play
as social actors. (loss making national airlines example).
Similar global phenomena, anti-colonialism, abolition of slave trade and piracy in the
sea.
Political ideas not only spread by norm but also by coercion and force.
the transition from the 60s where it was a privilege to be in the nuclear club,
however now it is deemed necessary to join the NPT treaty.
French Grandeur:
according to Security theory: French built nukes to the threat of the soviet union in the
50s. The US extended deterrence wasnt guaranteed.
as the curtain had drawn on colonialism, states had t find prestige through other
sources.Michel Martin
only with the atomic armament can our defense and foreign policy be independent
which we prize over everything else. - De Gaulle to Eisenhower.
Ukraine similarly contrast with the need to adopt the NPT as a fair player in the
global system.
Conclusions:
Security model though inadequate would respond to criticism that it can be
empirically back by China US soviet Israel and Pakistan and the rogue states.
But different historical models are better at explaining specific cases.
U.S. policy makers should theoretically not produce containment models (test the

ends) but find similar causation models with similar outcomes.