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| ISBN-13: | 9781783487677 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Dutton Penguin Group USA |
| Publication date: | 05/18/2016 |
| Series: | SLEDGE |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 228 |
| File size: | 17 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Ruth Sanz Sabido is Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication at Canterbury Christ Church University.
Read an Excerpt
Sites of Protest
By Stuart Price, Ruth Sanz Sabido
Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd.
Copyright © 2016 Stuart Price and Ruth Sanz SabidoAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78348-767-7
CHAPTER 1
The 'Borderless State'
ISIS, Hierarchy and Trans-spatial Politics
Stuart Price
SPACE, RESOURCE AND POLITICS
The study of space as an idea encompasses references to (i) the material condition of the physical world (based on the methodical scrutiny of land, natural resources, oceans and the atmosphere), (ii) allusions to vacancy or emptiness (the absence of those physical characteristics, objects or elements associated with geographical enquiry), (iii) descriptions of temporal intervals (the time that elapses between events, conceived as a form of distance), and (iv) notions about the existence of 'immaterial', abstract or discursive space (when, for example, the Web is identified as a site of activity, or when intellectual or organisational 'space' is created and provides a locus or opportunity for the expression of opinion).
It is the first item on this list — space as a quantifiable and tangible quality — that is of immediate relevance to the present discussion. This notion of space is composed of a number of closely related concepts, including expanse (an unspecified but continuous or uninterrupted surface), area (the measurable extent of natural geographical features), distance (the space between landmarks or objects), dimension (the various modes of scalar interpretation that can be applied to space, objects and phenomena, in order to determine their breadth, mass, volume or length), and the category that lies at the heart of the current enquiry — location or place, in the sense of a specific position or material setting.
Once place is considered as an identifiable locale, then the practical uses of space by human groups must enter the equation, making it impossible to confine our study to an exploration of the globe and its dimensions, or the simple quantification of raw materials: this would ignore the influence of the physical environment on the life of its inhabitants and, by the same token, the impact that human groups have on their surroundings. So, while many of the boundaries that distinguish one collective from another obey the natural contours of the landscape, or are produced by the physical separation of continents, the formation over time of artificial borders and discrete territories helps transform geographical conditions into something resembling a coherent social order.
The addition of temporal calculation to that of distance or size confirms the suggestion that we should consider the appearance and development not only of 'natural' (e.g., geographical or meteorological) phenomena but also of human cultures and polities. The goal here is not to trace the historical evolution of society as such, but to examine the practical and ideational organisation of social collectives in the contemporary world, paying particular attention to the 'trans-spatial' propositions they generate (since all organised systems attempt to project their social and political values) and the public activities in which they engage.
While we are almost too familiar with the rhetorical stances adopted by our own political leadership, the posturing of 'alien' regimes is by comparison quite striking. This chapter compares, therefore, 'Western' practices with those of the body known as ISIS or Islamic State, as the latter attempts both to translate its precepts into a form of material reality and to promote itself on a global scale. In the arcane but apposite terms employed by Wood, 'the caliphate's supporters have toiled mightily to make their project knowable' (2015, 2, my emphasis), a task that is of course undertaken by all those institutions involved in the production and circulation of meaning.
STATE POWER AND 'TRANS-SPATIAL' THREATS
The formal, 'state-sponsored' relationship between human groups is particularly important for any study that tries to understand the political character of hierarchical institutions, since the (contested) management of resource and space within and beyond the borders of systemic capitalist democracies is intimately linked to the (inconsistent) categorisation of people and groups as particular types of political subject. In other words, the competition over assets depends on the human resources that can be brought to bear and, while these resources must be organised into manageable units, the actual composition of the groups concerned may change according to circumstance (see below). The first example used to illustrate this theme has already been divulged above: the struggle between a shifting alliance of states (composed, variously, of a coalition of Western powers and some of its erstwhile enemies) and an armed cross-border insurgency that aspires to a form of statehood (the ISIS 'caliphate').
The response of leading executive powers to the resurgence of a supposedly trans-spatial threat — the previous manifestation of which was used to supply the rationale for the first phase of the 'war on terror' — reveals much about the conduct of all effective political entities ('democratic' or otherwise). If the moral status assigned to (or claimed by) rival forms of authority is regarded as an essentially rhetorical exercise, designed to accompany the routine, practical exercise of power, then the activities of both states and their non-state adversaries would appear to be remarkably similar, and could be approached as a study in formal organisational behaviour.
For example, the countries that, taken together, constitute the 'West' use references to specific values in order to underpin and project a form of authority, but this technique is also employed by bodies like ISIS that are, we are told, diametrically opposed to the democratic system. Meanwhile, ISIS's theatrical demonstrations of its trans-spatial power can be observed not only in its execution videos but also through acts like the dramatised demolition of sand berms that marked the border between Syria and Iraq. While US Republican Senator John McCain called it 'an interesting symbolic gesture' (Masi 2014, my emphasis), its representational power depended to a large extent on the perception that ISIS had the material support to substantiate its activities, as it had seized American munitions, arms and vehicles from a demoralised Iraqi army. The bulldozing of these barriers (which appeared to separate equally featureless stretches of desert), together with the delight it afforded ISIS operatives, may have seemed comedic, but it was read by some Western analysts as a serious indication of the group's disregard for territorial integrity. This charge could of course be laid at the door of the 'coalition of the willing' that invaded Iraq in 2003, an event that led to the fragmentation of Saddam Hussein's regional power bloc and the emergence of the 'Islamist' factions that gave birth to the ISIS insurgency itself.
Among the various groups devoted to the destruction of any US-led coalition, ISIS is also notable for mimicking the less dramatic activity of established powers, engaging in the mundane but serious business of building a functioning state, complete with 'rules and regulations on everything from fishing and dress codes to the sale of counterfeit brands and university admission systems' (Malik 2015, 12). Cronin, a fairly early advocate of this perspective, noted that ISIS
holds territory in both Iraq and Syria, maintains extensive military capabilities, controls lines of communication, commands infrastructure, funds itself, and engages in sophisticated military operations ... it is a pseudo-state led by a conventional army (2015, my emphasis).
The creation and perpetuation of what might more accurately be called a 'proto-state' reflects the desire of powerful bodies both to dominate a specific geopolitical space and to order or direct the collective destiny of particular groups: these inseparable modes of activity are accompanied by the production of a rationale that can support the defence of existing territory and the extension of the principle of rule to other physical and ideological domains. My argument here is that both established and aspirant states attempt to establish, and perpetuate over time, an apparently contradictory form of social control — the hierarchical organisation of 'consensual' rule. Instead of attributing coercion and consent to, respectively, 'totalitarian' and 'free' societies, a more productive point of view would be to characterise the two conditions as modes of engagement that are fused together in the service of governance.
SOCIAL CONTROL AND INSTITUTIONAL POWER
Used in this context, social control does not mean the simple imposition of mastery over repressed subjects, although in periods of crisis this approach is equally attractive to state and to 'quasi-state' actors. Equally flawed is the notion that control is less evident in democratic systems because of the existence of competing groups and the fact that institutional life is characterised by a multiplicity of activities. This does not necessarily lead to the diffusion of power, or even the creation of meritocracies, because it depends on the structural reproduction of hierarchical influence across multiple sites of power. This approach, while it would acknowledge the proliferation of organisations and functions, would begin by examining the internal reproduction of organisational authority, in the belief that this capacity is exercised through the nexus of discipline and opportunity that is presented, to a greater or lesser extent, to all those who work within institutional structures.
Based on this observation, it is possible to argue — although the scale of the power exercised within dominant state systems and smaller groups might differ — that the day-to-day management of a wide variety of physical, symbolic and human resources creates similar problems for both established political systems and their insurgent enemies. All recognised authorities must, for example, be able to regulate the use of space, the dissemination of goods and the management of those human subjects (citizen-consumers or the inhabitants of specific territories) designated as the legitimate recipients of the (sometimes dubious) benefits on offer.
The practical focus here is thus on the relationship between the rationale offered for the existence of a particular social order, the allocation of those goods and benefits over which an individual state manages to exercise some control — bearing in mind that the state is a configuration of centres, effects and processes, and that most market transactions take place without requiring specific authorisation — and the 'attitude' adopted or displayed by various components of the state system (particularly evident when rival groups interact). In the Western state system, for instance, the discursive promotion of 'secure borders' is a way of promoting a 'national' consciousness, which of course sits alongside the claim of many governments to exert a moral influence that is felt beyond their own borders: whatever the theme, it is the link between the concrete production of such ideas, the use of spatial and material resource, and the classification of socioeconomic groups that reveals the true face of power.
I suggested above that control cannot be achieved through the straightforward imposition of repressive 'order', even in supposedly totalitarian regimes. This is not because these systems are secretly inclined to be democratic but because (in common with formal democracies) they must at the very least create opportunities for those ambitious subordinates who wish to 'buy into' the regime: cultures of fear are, for instance, perfectly capable of generating specific rewards for their adherents, which is clearly evident in the internal dissemination of favours within ISIS (this tendency can be identified in less dramatic form in most competitive work environments). Besides the group's stripped-down version of Islamic teaching (easy to assimilate and reproduce), there was one other major attraction that made it difficult for its opponents to counter — adventure. In Cronin's view, ISIS offers 'short-term, primitive gratification ... a desire for power, agency, and instant results [that] also pervades American culture' (2015).
Opposed, therefore, to those approaches that fail to examine the commonalities between opposing ideological centres, this chapter contends that (i) social and economic regulation, on whatever scale, involves the appropriation and circulation of both material assets and 'abstract' values, (ii) that the perpetuation of socioeconomic divisions is drawn from and in turn contributes to the composition of social identities, and (iii) that this form of control must operate through groups and individuals that are able to command enough power to achieve the goals that their own model of social necessity drives them to attain. A model of necessity will vary to some extent from group to group, and ultimately depends on a wider discursive and social structure, but is generated in the main for organisational purposes, and should not be confused with Harvey's more general 'conceptual apparatus' (2005, 5), a more widespread social narrative that is meant to appeal to (and help regulate) whole societies.
A model of social necessity operates over and above the formal regulations and precepts circulated by established institutions, since these bear only a tangential relationship to the 'core purpose', or social goal, of the groups concerned. A 'headline' devotion to a particular value may serve to reinforce the external image of a public or private body, but the interior life of an organisation is driven by dynamic conflicts among competing interest groups. Although it is possible to distinguish between the 'interior' (usually very basic) convictions of a ruling alliance, or cabal, and the official, externalised explanations it offers for its actions (bearing in mind that there is an essential interdependence between 'belief and expression), the true objective of an organisation can be discovered not in the rhetoric of good intentions, but through close scrutiny of the actions it carries out. This applies as much to corporate bodies as it does to political cliques.
In order to function, therefore, influential groups — in this case, rival political/military entities — depend on an internal hierarchical order that is distinct from the everyday 'lifeworld' activity of the clientele they claim to serve, based on a number of preconditions that must exist before even the most basic tasks can be carried out. These include (i) an executive authority composed of a dominant, 'cross-party' (or extra-economic) cabal that shares certain fundamental socioeconomic (or quasi-religious) tenets and that has (in theory) the power to resolve disputes between competing factions or interest groups; (ii) the production of a flexible rationale used to justify the command (over time) of resources, people and space; and (iii) the nomination of individuals, institutions or groups that have the right to counter any physical or ideological assaults mounted against the established powers.
The actual uses to which this structure might be put could vary, from progressive social engineering, to the creation of policies designed to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few or even to the top-down organisation of terrorist cells. However, the central purpose of executive power remains the same: to accrue useful intelligence on human subjects so that it can be used to further the social aims of the dominant group, goals that — no matter how 'dispassionately' they are applied — are designed to ensure the survival and aggrandisement of the leading echelon and, depending on the severity of the challenge, its dependent subordinates.
The suspicion that public service might not always come high on the agenda of the powerful is reinforced by the fact that, while complex forms of authority (public and private), seem to depend on the endless collection of copious amounts of information about distances, volumes, qualities and individual citizens, this is not the prelude to the equal dissemination of essential benefits. Of course, few political analysts would expect either contemporary states or their insurgent enemies to pursue the completely equitable or dispassionate distribution of goods and rewards, but it appears that a large number of political systems, together with a host of non-state actors, actively perpetuate social and economic discrimination (either as a principle or as a by-product of their 'regulatory' activity). It is not, of course, always a single initiative that necessarily leads to some particular harm, but the 'coincidence' of executive power in one field, with the production of an effect in another: the structural production of negative, cumulative outcomes is referred to in Heroux's analysis of US law enforcement, where he notes that 'the growth of [targeted] policing initiatives' against Americans in the lowest income brackets went hand in glove 'with some of the largest cuts in social programmes that the country had ever seen', amounting, in the opinions of some, to 'a permanent War on the Poor' (Heroux 2011, 131).
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Sites of Protest by Stuart Price, Ruth Sanz Sabido. Copyright © 2016 Stuart Price and Ruth Sanz Sabido. Excerpted by permission of Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd..
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