- International Relations, Posthumanism, Humanitarian Intervention, Violence (Anthropology), Secularisms and Secularities, Drones, Targeted Killing, Ethics of War, and 22 moreCritical Security Studies, Animal Studies, Environmental Philosophy, Peace and Conflict Studies, Politics, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Peacekeeping, Hannah Arendt, Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief, Transformation, Michel de Certeau, Everyday life theory, Process Theory, Artificial Intelligence, Harm, International Ethics, Global Catastrophic Risks, Postcolonial Studies, Science and Technology Studies, Computer Networks, Databases, and Softwareedit
International intervention is not just about ‘saving’ human lives: it is also an attempt to secure humanity’s place in the universe. This book explores the Western secular beliefs that underpin contemporary practices of intervention –... more
International intervention is not just about ‘saving’ human lives: it is also an attempt to secure humanity’s place in the universe. This book explores the Western secular beliefs that underpin contemporary practices of intervention – most importantly, beliefs about life, death and the primacy of humanity. These beliefs shape a wide range of practices: the idea that human beings should intervene when human lives are at stake; analyses of violence and harm; practices of intervention and peace-building; and logics of killing and letting die. Ironically, however, the Western secular desire to ensure the meaningfulness of human life at all costs contributes to processes of dehumanization, undercutting the basic goals of intervention. To explore this paradox, International Intervention in a Secular Age engages with examples from around the world, and draws on interdisciplinary sources: anthropologies of secularity and IR, posthumanist political philosophy, ontology and the sociology of death. It offers new insight into perennial problems, such as the reluctance of intervenors to incur fatalities, and international inaction in the face of escalating violence. It also exposes new dilemmas, such as the dehumanizing effects of counting, analyzing and mapping violence, and the disenchanting effects of ‘transformative’ peace-building processes.
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Peace-building can be an act of violence. Conflict, on the other hand, may be a crucial means for resisting, constraining and preventing it. Violence occurs when the plural worlds occupied and created by conflicting groups are threatened,... more
Peace-building can be an act of violence. Conflict, on the other hand, may be a crucial means for resisting, constraining and preventing it. Violence occurs when the plural worlds occupied and created by conflicting groups are threatened, damaged or destroyed in ways which these groups cannot resist. 'Transformative' peace interventions may promote this kind of violence unintentionally, unleashing cycles of violence that ultimately compromise peace.
Lost in Transformation explores these themes, challenging the assumption that conflict causes violence, and arguing that conflict is a necessary element of non-violence. From this perspective, it reinterprets several phenomena that challenge the 'peace process' in Northern Ireland, including 'dissident' violence and conflictual forms of 'world-building', rioting and 'sectarian' activities. In exploring the case of Northern Ireland, it calls for a new approach to international interventions – one premised on 'plural world-building' rather than mainstream 'peace-building'.
Lost in Transformation explores these themes, challenging the assumption that conflict causes violence, and arguing that conflict is a necessary element of non-violence. From this perspective, it reinterprets several phenomena that challenge the 'peace process' in Northern Ireland, including 'dissident' violence and conflictual forms of 'world-building', rioting and 'sectarian' activities. In exploring the case of Northern Ireland, it calls for a new approach to international interventions – one premised on 'plural world-building' rather than mainstream 'peace-building'.
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Hybrid Forms of Peace provides cutting edge research and debates from a range of leading experts and emerging voices in critical peace and conflict studies. Drawing on case studies from sixteen countries, it examines the role of everyday... more
Hybrid Forms of Peace provides cutting edge research and debates from a range of leading experts and emerging voices in critical peace and conflict studies. Drawing on case studies from sixteen countries, it examines the role of everyday activities and hybridization in (re)shaping international peace-building on the ground. This book provides insights into the challenges – and opportunities – of building peace, and the role of localized forms of human agency in this. It is a must-read for scholars, students and practitioners of peace-building who wish to understand the 'on the ground' realities of peace-building in the contemporary era.
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A global extinction crisis may threaten the survival of most existing life forms. Influential discourses of ‘existential risk’ suggest that human extinction is a real possibility, while several decades of evidence from conservation... more
A global extinction crisis may threaten the survival of most existing life forms. Influential discourses of ‘existential risk’ suggest that human extinction is a real possibility, while several decades of evidence from conservation biology suggests that the Earth may be entering a ‘sixth mass extinction event’. These conditions threaten the possibilities of survival and security that are central to most branches of International Relations. However, this discipline lacks a framework for addressing (mass) extinction. From notions of ‘nuclear winter’ and ‘omnicide’ to contemporary discourses on catastrophe, International Relations thinking has treated extinction as a superlative of death. This is a profound category mistake: extinction needs to be understood not in the ontic terms of life and death, but rather in the ontological context of be(com)ing and negation. Drawing on the work of theorists of the ‘inhuman’ such as Quentin Meillassoux, Claire Colebrook, Ray Brassier, Jean-Francois Lyotard and Nigel Clark, this article provides a pathway for thinking beyond existing horizons of survival and imagines a profound transformation of International Relations. Specifically, it outlines a mode of cosmopolitics that responds to the element of the inhuman and the forces of extinction. Rather than capitulating to narratives of tragedy, this cosmopolitics would make it possible to think beyond the restrictions of existing norms of ‘humanity’ to embrace an ethics of gratitude and to welcome the possibility of new worlds, even in the face of finitude.
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Scientific and public discourses on the current mass extinction event tend to focus their attention on the decline of 'species' and 'biodiversity'. Drawing on insights from the humanities, this article contends that the processes of... more
Scientific and public discourses on the current mass extinction event tend
to focus their attention on the decline of 'species' and 'biodiversity'.
Drawing on insights from the humanities, this article contends that the
processes of extinction also produce a diverse range of subjects. Each of
these subjects, it argues, raises specific ethical challenges and creates
opportunities for cosmopolitical transformation. To explore this argument,
the article engages with several subjects of extinction: 'species' and
'biodiversity'; 'humanity'; 'unloved' subjects; and absent or non-relational
subjects. In each case, it examines how attention to these subjects can
highlight the exclusions and inequalities embedded in dominant discourses,
and to identify possibilities for plural ethico-political responses to mass
extinction.
to focus their attention on the decline of 'species' and 'biodiversity'.
Drawing on insights from the humanities, this article contends that the
processes of extinction also produce a diverse range of subjects. Each of
these subjects, it argues, raises specific ethical challenges and creates
opportunities for cosmopolitical transformation. To explore this argument,
the article engages with several subjects of extinction: 'species' and
'biodiversity'; 'humanity'; 'unloved' subjects; and absent or non-relational
subjects. In each case, it examines how attention to these subjects can
highlight the exclusions and inequalities embedded in dominant discourses,
and to identify possibilities for plural ethico-political responses to mass
extinction.
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Marine plastic has received significant attention as a spectacle of consumer waste and ecosystemic fragility, but there has been little discussion of its ethical implications. This essay argues that marine plastic poses a direct challenge... more
Marine plastic has received significant attention as a spectacle of consumer waste and ecosystemic fragility, but there has been little discussion of its ethical implications. This essay argues that marine plastic poses a direct challenge to the basic frameworks of global ethics. These frameworks are dominated by the image of the 'circle', an abstract boundary intended to separate 'humanity' from the rest of the universe and insulate it against harm. However, this article argues that marine plastic undermines the 'circle' in two ways. First, it embodies conditions of 'hyper-relationality', including entanglement and the properties of toxicity, that penetrate the boundaries of 'the circle'. Second, it exerts ‘forcefulness’ and ‘thingness’, but at scales that radically exceed the dominant spatio-temporal dimensions of ‘the circle’. By virtue of these features, marine plastic thoroughly penetrates the boundaries of ‘the circle’, making it impossible to expel harm beyond its boundaries. Although this essay focuses on marine plastic, its core argument can also be fruitfully applied to other phenomena that share similar material, scalar, spatio-temporal and relational features (for instance, atmospheric particulate, nuclear waste and nitrate pollution). The essay concludes by exploring the alternative ethical possibilities that marine plastic and similar phenomena prompt: in particular, a responsive ethos based on a sense of shared vulnerability and exposure.
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Harm does not happen to humans in isolation, but rather to worlds composed of diverse beings. This article asks how worlds and the conditions of worldliness should be framed as ‘subjects of security’. It explores three possible pathways:... more
Harm does not happen to humans in isolation, but rather to worlds composed of diverse beings. This article asks how worlds and the conditions of worldliness should be framed as ‘subjects of security’. It explores three possible pathways: rejecting anthropocentrism; expanding existing ethical categories; and adopting ‘new materialist’ ontology and ethics. Ultimately, it argues for a fusion of the key elements of each of these pathways. This offers the basis for a new concept of harm (‘mundicide’) specifically intended to reflect harms to worlds and the conditions of worldliness. The value of this concept is demonstrated in light of an empirical example: the ‘Rainforest Chernobyl’ case. The article concludes that a worldly approach is necessary in order to capture the full enormity of the harms confronted by international security.
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There is a growing global demand for Northern universities to provide fieldwork opportunities in ‘conflict zones’ to students in applied international relations (peace and conflict studies, post-conflict studies, human rights, development... more
There is a growing global demand for Northern universities to provide fieldwork opportunities in ‘conflict zones’ to students in applied international relations (peace and conflict studies, post-conflict studies, human rights, development and related fields). This demand is generated in macro-level or structural dynamics emerging from three sources: the hiring criteria of major international organizations, competition between universities for fee-paying students, and the social commodification of 'authentic' or ‘real’ life experiences by students. At the micro-level, these dynamics can manifest themselves in exploitative relations, two of which are explored here. First, substantial inequalities (or a ‘benefit gap’) may arise between student researchers and their research subjects. Second, student researchers may find themselves in extractive relations with their research subjects. These dynamics lead to a situation in which some of the world’s most vulnerable people are objectified as learning resources for students enrolled in (predominantly Northern) universities. This article problematizes the potentially exploitative dynamics of educational fieldwork in ‘conflict zones’, arguing that it is a problem of global politics, not just research ethics or pedagogy. It concludes with several recommendations for reducing the potential for exploitation in educational fieldwork.
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Paramilitary actors involved in peace processes are expected to contribute to two distinct forms of protection: national- level protection as ‘security’ ; and local-level security as ‘safety’. Examining the case of the Ulster Defence... more
Paramilitary actors involved in peace processes are expected to contribute to two distinct forms of protection: national- level protection as ‘security’ ; and local-level security as ‘safety’. Examining the case of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) in Northern Ireland, we explain how these two forms of protection have become inter-linked in the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement (GF/BA) and the related peace process. Instead of generating a virtuous cycle, this has created a dilemma between providing protection as ‘safety’ and as ‘security’. Drawing on interviews with key UDA-affiliated actors in 2009-10, against the backdrop of increasing ‘dissident Republican’ violence, we assess how they navigated this dilemma, and its potential effects on the unfolding political context, calling for greater attention to the relationship between different conceptions of protection in peace processes.
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Current discourses about the everyday in relation to international peace interventions focus on two main aspects. First, the perceived quality or qualities of everyday life tend to be attributed to ‘local’ organisations or actors and... more
Current discourses about the everyday in relation to international peace interventions focus on two main aspects. First, the perceived quality or qualities of everyday life tend to be attributed to ‘local’ organisations or actors and assessed positively. Second, the control of life (including bio-political control and governance) tends to be associated with ‘international’ actors and viewed negatively. This article challenges these key assumptions by contextualising them in social and political theories of the everyday and in two key examples: ‘affective’ peacebuilding in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and ‘threatworks’ in Northern Ireland. It also calls for an approach to the ‘everyday’ in international interventions which moves beyond local/international power dynamics and is attentive to the pluralities of power and practice that emerge in these settings.
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The dominant paradigm of liberal peacebuilding is often applied in developing states even where such processes of mobilization are practically implausible and intellectually or culturally alien. Inevitably, each peace intervention is... more
The dominant paradigm of liberal peacebuilding is often applied in developing states even where such processes of mobilization are practically implausible and intellectually or culturally alien. Inevitably, each peace intervention is contested, resisted, re-shaped/shaped and responded to—hybridized—by local actors and forms of agency that are unique to each setting. This article explores these processes in Northern Ireland, Kosovo, Bosnia, Mozambique, Namibia, and Liberia, in order to assess how far “subsistence peacebuilding” agency is able to affect the liberal peacebuilding framework
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Strategies of international peacebuilding depend on the creation of secure, manageable spaces that embody the norms of intervening actors. This article examines attempts by governmental and international donors to create pockets of... more
Strategies of international peacebuilding depend on the creation of secure, manageable spaces that embody the norms of intervening actors. This article examines attempts by governmental and international donors to create pockets of “peaceful space” in Belfast’s city center, and their effects on the surrounding neighborhoods of north Belfast. Using the technique of an ethnographic walk, we examine several key sites that reflect how the creation of “peaceful spaces” has also generated distinctive “outsides” shaped by interfaces, enclaves, and complex patterns of conflict. By reframing these spaces as a result rather than solely a precondition of peacebuilding activities, this article challenges the assumption that conflict degrades the spaces in the outside areas of “peaceful space” and that peacebuilding strategies ameliorate them. Instead, we argue that development and peacebuilding strategies have generated deterritorialized spaces whose status and ownership is indeterminate, in which the right of access and use is unclear, and in which the conditions created by constant and always incomplete transformation are used to justify intensive securitization and modes of control.
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Post-Cold War peacebuilding is increasingly conflated with the smooth functioning of a range of processes associated with democracy, governance, development and securitisation. However, critiques of these approaches tend to focus on their... more
Post-Cold War peacebuilding is increasingly conflated with the smooth functioning of a range of processes associated with democracy, governance, development and securitisation. However, critiques of these approaches tend to focus on their liberal-democratic norms and to ignore their underlying processual logics. This article problematises two facets of process with regard to peacebuilding: its postulation as a basis for peace grounded in everyday human activity and its construction of violence as anti-process. Its goal is to present the critique of process as a means for understanding the complex relationship between international and local actors in the context of peacebuilding, thus enriching the ‘liberal peace’ debate. Drawing on normative political theory, including that of Arendt and Deleuze and Guattari, the article demonstrates how the problems raised by these two issues can help to explain a range of concerns associated with contemporary peacebuilding and provide starting points for imagining forms of peace that are not so reliant upon processual logics or opposed to those acts which disrupt them, which may in fact be attempts to realise radically different versions of peace. In so doing, it extends and enriches the perspectives offered by existing ‘liberal peace’ critiques
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Conflict transformation, and the ‘liberalizing peace’ paradigm of which it is a part, applies a specific ethos of transformation to the project of peacebuilding. This ethos reshapes conflict and the ways in which it is manifested. An... more
Conflict transformation, and the ‘liberalizing peace’ paradigm of which it is a part, applies a specific ethos of transformation to the project of peacebuilding. This ethos reshapes conflict and the ways in which it is manifested. An ethico-phenomenological approach is used here to examine the phenomenon of ‘conflict-in-transformation’ (as opposed to ‘peace’) that this creates. To this end, the ethical critiques of Charles Taylor, the literature on ‘emancipatory’ forms of peacebuilding and the European Union's Programmes for Peace and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland are examined. This analysis is applied to phenomena of conflict-in-transformation in post-1998 Northern Ireland. In examining this case, the article highlights how an ethico-phenomenological approach can help to identify the (new) forms of conflict engendered by the liberalizing peace paradigm, with a view to transcending these through the development of new directions in theory and practice.
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The European Union’s Programmes for Peace and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland (PEACE I, II and III, 1994–2011) are assumed to be unique, unprecedented interventions designed for the specific context of the Troubles. Yet they are part... more
The European Union’s Programmes for Peace and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland (PEACE I, II and III, 1994–2011) are assumed to be unique, unprecedented interventions designed for the specific context of the Troubles. Yet they are part of a much broader and historically deeper trend: the European liberal(ising) peace project, which emerged from World War I and World War II and evolved as part of the (post‐) Cold War reconstruction framework. The first, in the 1960s, took place through programmes and rhetoric of Prime Minister Terence O’Neill, who fused the Brooke government’s ambitious post‐partition state‐building plans with the liberal polity‐building project, both normatively and structurally. The PEACE programmes, this article argues, constituted the second attempt to extend this version of peace‐as‐polity‐building into Northern Ireland, albeit in a much more overt, intentional and comprehensive manner.
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This chapter explores how plural posthumanist perspectives challenge conceptions of ethics and security, and trouble the boundaries between them.
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This chapter explores the connections between gender, sex and global extinction, including eco-feminist and posthumanist perspectives.
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Editorial on space mining published in the Globe and Mail, 29 March 2016.
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In this short video, Dr. Audra Mitchell (University of York, Department of Politics) discusses her new research project on 'posthuman security' and explores two examples: the role of drones and animals in contemporary warfare. Ideas to... more
In this short video, Dr. Audra Mitchell (University of York, Department of Politics) discusses her new research project on 'posthuman security' and explores two examples: the role of drones and animals in contemporary warfare.
Ideas to Go: food for thought - in bite-sized pieces.
Ideas to Go: food for thought - in bite-sized pieces.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE-4wy8vsiQ Nicky Campbell presents a pre-recorded edition of the programme from Manor CoE School in York asking just one question - should Britain become a secular state? Among those taking part are... more
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE-4wy8vsiQ
Nicky Campbell presents a pre-recorded edition of the programme from Manor CoE School in York asking just one question - should Britain become a secular state? Among those taking part are philosopher AC Grayling, former Bishop of Rochester Rt Rev Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, Prof the Baroness Afshar from York University, Symon Hill from Ekkelsia, Rabbi Jonathan Romain from Maidenhead Synagogue, Naomi Philips from Labour Humanists, writer and academic Myriam Francois Cerrah, Gita Sahgal from Centre for Secular Space, Pastor Mark Mullins from Strangers' Rest Mission and Dr Audra Mitchell from York University."
Nicky Campbell presents a pre-recorded edition of the programme from Manor CoE School in York asking just one question - should Britain become a secular state? Among those taking part are philosopher AC Grayling, former Bishop of Rochester Rt Rev Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, Prof the Baroness Afshar from York University, Symon Hill from Ekkelsia, Rabbi Jonathan Romain from Maidenhead Synagogue, Naomi Philips from Labour Humanists, writer and academic Myriam Francois Cerrah, Gita Sahgal from Centre for Secular Space, Pastor Mark Mullins from Strangers' Rest Mission and Dr Audra Mitchell from York University."
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A review of the book 'Resilient Life' by Brad Evans and Julian Reid, published in Antipode, August 2014.
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Research Interests: International Relations, Multiculturalism, International Law, Human Rights, International organizations, and 16 moreConflict, Security, Nationalism, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), Diplomacy, Peacekeeping, Cyprus, Ethnicity, Minority Rights, Civil Society, Peace, Peacebuilding, Freedom, Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief, Stabilization and Reconstruction, and Post Conflict Issues
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As fears about the possible extinction of humans permeate public imaginaries, ambitious new projects of space colonization are emerging, largely within the private sector. They claim to offer opportunities not only to ensure the survival... more
As fears about the possible extinction of humans permeate public imaginaries, ambitious new projects of space colonization are emerging, largely within the private sector. They claim to offer opportunities not only to ensure the survival of humans, but also to escape the conditions of
scarcity imposed by the ‘Earth-bound’ life. Indeed, space entrepreneurs promote their projects in large part by magnifying resentment of these conditions and of the inability of humans totally to control them. Crucially, the colonization of space is treated as an alternative that would enable the
seemingly endless expansion of human life without generating any victims. Indeed, in discourses of space entrepreneurship, the concept of ‘colonization’ is used in positive terms, effacing its history of violence, oppression and exclusion. This article critiques the claims of would-be space colonizers and their logics of expansion. Building on the work of Hannah Arendt and Achille Mbembe, it highlights the continuities of these
logics with legacies of earthly colonialism. Then, drawing on the
posthumanist ethical frameworks of William Connolly and Nigel Clark, it presents an alternative ethos rooted in the concept of worldliness that can help to resist and critique the dichotomous claims of would-be space colonizers.
scarcity imposed by the ‘Earth-bound’ life. Indeed, space entrepreneurs promote their projects in large part by magnifying resentment of these conditions and of the inability of humans totally to control them. Crucially, the colonization of space is treated as an alternative that would enable the
seemingly endless expansion of human life without generating any victims. Indeed, in discourses of space entrepreneurship, the concept of ‘colonization’ is used in positive terms, effacing its history of violence, oppression and exclusion. This article critiques the claims of would-be space colonizers and their logics of expansion. Building on the work of Hannah Arendt and Achille Mbembe, it highlights the continuities of these
logics with legacies of earthly colonialism. Then, drawing on the
posthumanist ethical frameworks of William Connolly and Nigel Clark, it presents an alternative ethos rooted in the concept of worldliness that can help to resist and critique the dichotomous claims of would-be space colonizers.
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This paper explores how the problem of mass extinction challenges conceptions of human agency - in particular the idea that humans can intervene in earthly events in order to ensure security. Drawing on the work of Karen Barad, it argues... more
This paper explores how the problem of mass extinction challenges conceptions of human agency - in particular the idea that humans can intervene in earthly events in order to ensure security. Drawing on the work of Karen Barad, it argues that, instead of intra-vention, Anthropocene action is a matter of intervention. That is, it is entwined with other agentic forces (geological, biological, etc) that preclude linear, instrumental action. The paper explores the implications of this argument for ethics, responses to mass extinction and the future of security.
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... 2 Agency and the Everyday Activist Alison MS Watson 3 Post-Conflict Justice and ... in Cyprus Constantinos Adamides and Costas M. Constantinou Liberal Peacebuilding's Representation of ... in North Belfast with Michel... more
... 2 Agency and the Everyday Activist Alison MS Watson 3 Post-Conflict Justice and ... in Cyprus Constantinos Adamides and Costas M. Constantinou Liberal Peacebuilding's Representation of ... in North Belfast with Michel de Certeau: Strategies of Peace building, Everyday Tactics ...