Suchergebnisse

"Governmentality and Biopolitics" published on by Oxford University Press.

What is the relationship between popular culture and the reliance on risk management as a framework for governance in the emerging security dispositif? Furthermore, how is one to understand the influence of culture and cultural forces in relation to the emerging biometric state and the alleged security imperatives therein? This article contends that the emerging security dispositif, and the associated imaginations and cultural performances that sustain and shape it, are vital to the production of what is referred to here as the `biometric state'. Motivated by an obsession with technologies of risk and practices of risk management, the biometric state is defined by the prevalence of virtual borders and reliance on biometric identifiers such as passports, trusted-traveller programmes and national ID cards, as well as the forms of social sorting that accompany these manoeuvres. Raising the marriage of convenience that connects two related dispositifs of security — geopolitics and biopolitics — the article considers the relationship between their referent objects: the state and everyday life, respectively. More specifically, popular culture integral to sustaining the emerging security dispositif forms the core of the analysis, as the article asserts the constitutive possibilities of popular culture.

International Relations scholarship posits that legitimacy, authority and violence are attributes of states. However, groups like Hizballah clearly challenge this framing of global politics through its continued ability to exercise violence in the regional arena. Surveying the different and sometimes conflicting interpretations of state-society relations in Lebanon, this book presents a lucid examination of the socio-political conditions that gave rise to the Lebanese movement Hizballah from 1982 until the present. Framing and analysing Hizballah through the perspective of the 'resistance society'; an articulation of identity politics that informs the violent and non-violent political strategies of the movement, Abboud and Muller demonstrate how Hizballah poses a challenge to the Lebanese state through its acquisition and exercise of private authority, and the implications this has for other Lebanese political actors. An essential insight into the complexities of the workings of Hizballah, this book broadens our understanding of how legitimacy, authority and violence can be acquired and exercised outside the structure of the sovereign nation-state. An invaluable resource for scholars working in the fields of Critical Comparative Politics and International Relations

Framing and analysing Hizballah through the perspective of the 'resistance society'; an articulation of identity politics that informs the violent and non-violent political strategies of the movement, Abboud and Muller demonstrate how Hizballah poses a challenge to the Lebanese state through its acquisition and exercise of private authority, and the implications this has for other Lebanese political actors. An essential insight into the complexities of the workings of Hizballah, this book broadens our understanding of how legitimacy, authority and violence can be acquired and exercised outside.

The UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), which was set up through UN Security Council Resolution 1757 to investigate, indict and prosecute those responsible for the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, is advancing a series of regional and global geopolitical interests. We focus on the structure of the tribunal and its exceptional nature within international law, examining the extent to which the STL's so-called unique features and the process through which it emerged expose its role in representing the interests of regional and global geopolitical actors, effectively internationalizing both the prosecution of the assassination and the issue of Hezbollah's disarmament within the discourse of the 'war on terror'. We also take up the question of Lebanese sovereignty and the extent to which the STL shifts between challenging and altogether disregarding this issue in a manner not unusual in the context of historical trends within international law justifying the colonial tendencies of great powers. We contextualize the STL within broader trajectories in international law, with specific reference to Carl Schmitt's 'challenge of imperial conquest and land acquisition', such as exceptionalism and the colonial genealogy of international law. We then discuss the extent to which the STL enunciates the geopolitical interests of powerful regional and global actors, unpacking the so-called unique features of the STL that reflect its exceptional character. Throughout our analysis, we argue that the STL and its manifestation of contemporary discourses of insecurity play a highly significant role in the international disregard for Lebanese sovereignty and the delegitimization of most domestic political actors, including Hezbollah.