Suchergebnisse

This article uses the example of the Mogadishu International Airport zone and takes a spatio-temporal lens to explore how (sovereign) power unfolds in international interventions that aim at building a sovereign state. I show that the Mogadishu International Airport zone emerges as an elastic frontier zone that contradicts the sovereign imaginary intervenors aim to project and undermines many of the taken-for-granted boundaries that states tend to produce. The Mogadishu International Airport and similar zones emphasize the centrality of logistics and circulation in interventions, but also point towards their temporal and liminal character. Modularity became the material answer to the demand to secure circulation while adapting to the rapid rhythm and short timeframes of statebuilding. Modular designs enable the constant adaptation of the intervention terrain, allow intervenors to deny their power and imprint and facilitate the commercialization of supply chains and intervention materials. Sovereign power that operates through such zones becomes modular itself. It is exercised as an adaptable, in parts exchangeable, and highly mobile form of power that operates through crises and emergencies. The spaces and materials created by modular forms of sovereign power remain elusive, but nonetheless stratify experiences of power and security.

AbstractDisplacement is urbanizing. Urban violence increasingly contributes to displacement while a growing number of displaced people across the globe seeks refuge in cities. This article builds on original research in four Somali cities to explore the link between violence, displacement and urbanization. It identifies and comparatively explores three types of urban settlements of displaced people: urban camps at cities' outskirts, inner‐city squatter settlements, and relocation areas. The focus of the analysis is on the political economy that underpins the establishment, maintenance and, at times, destruction of these settlements. The article shows that settlements of displaced people are embedded in varied practices of rent seeking which contribute to the commercialization of land and housing and lead to further land speculations. Urban reconstruction accelerates rent seeking and goes hand in hand with (mass‐scale) evictions of displaced people. The article also shows how land ownership is mobilized to retain political rights and citizenship. The findings outline the multiple ways urban land relations are intertwined with practices of sovereignty and citizenship, and attest to observations of a globally expanding rent economy. They also underscore the arbitrariness and violence imbricated in property relations.

Ulrich Schneckener, Christoph König und Sandra Wienand: Der lange Schatten der Miliz - Zur Persistenz von Gewalt in Kolumbien und Kurdistan-Irak. Frankfurt am Main u.a.: Campus Verlag 2018. 978-3-593-51003-3

Development promotes bureaucratization, and bureaucracies are based on knowledge and produce knowledge. Failures of development are therefore regularly attributed to a lack of knowledge. The article argues that the quest for knowledge is embedded in the managerial rationality of interventions. This rationality also structures the developmental knowledge field and thereby generates ignorance. The example of a state-building program in Somalia is used to empirically explore how the generation, administration, and transfer of knowledge was intertwined with ignorance. It shows what knowledge missed, obfuscated, ignored, or even hid and how knowledge and ignorance were arranged in the daily state-building practice. This approach sheds light on relations and mechanism of power exerted in development and helps to explain its effects. In Somalia, omission, silence, secrecy, and strategic and bureaucratic ignorance enabled the program to delineate the interventionist terrain as technical and to depoliticize state-building. They also helped to expand liberal modalities of government to "remote" and "unruly" Somali villages.

Development promotes bureaucratization, and bureaucracies are based on knowledge and produce knowledge. Failures of development are therefore regularly attributed to a lack of knowledge. The article argues that the quest for knowledge is embedded in the managerial rationality of interventions. This rationality also structures the developmental knowledge field and thereby generates ignorance. The example of a state-building program in Somalia is used to empirically explore how the generation, administration, and transfer of knowledge was intertwined with ignorance. It shows what knowledge missed, obfuscated, ignored, or even hid and how knowledge and ignorance were arranged in the daily state-building practice. This approach sheds light on relations and mechanism of power exerted in development and helps to explain its effects. In Somalia, omission, silence, secrecy, and strategic and bureaucratic ignorance enabled the program to delineate the interventionist terrain as technical and to depoliticize state-building. They also helped to expand liberal modalities of government to "remote" and "unruly" Somali villages.

"Plünderungen werden in der neueren Kriegsforschung als Beleg für eine Ökonomisierung und Entstaatlichung des Krieges herangezogen. Der Beitrag widmet sich der vergleichenden Untersuchung von Plünderungspraktiken in Somalia. Anhand von fünf Plünderungstypen wird gezeigt, dass Plünderungen sich nicht auf materielle Aspekte reduzieren lassen, sondern in die Praxis und politische Rhetorik des Krieges eingebettet werden. Sie sind außerdem in lokal geltenden Normen und Vorstellungswelten verwurzelt und sollten daher nicht allein als Ausdruck von politischem Chaos missverstanden, sondern als eigenständige soziale Phänomene untersucht werden." (Autorenreferat)

Der unabhängige Staat Somalia wurde 1960 aus dem Zusammenschluss der ehemals britischen und italienischen Kolonialgebiete gebildet. Somalia galt hinsichtlich der staatlichen Konsolidierung als einer der aussichtsreichsten Staaten Afrikas. Das demokratische Experiment wurde allerdings bereits 1969 durch einen Militärputsch beendet. Im Verlauf des seit 1988 geführten Bürgerkrieges ist der somalische Staat vollständig zusammengebrochen. Heute ist Somalia in territorial kaum eindeutig voneinander abgrenzbare Zonen aufgeteilt. Diese werden jeweils von einer, auf Clanbasis mobilisierten Gewaltfraktion bzw. ihren Fraktionsführern (‚warlords') kontrolliert. Die hohe Fraktionierungsdynamik der Milizen zeigt, dass den warlords eine Verfestigung ihrer Machtposition nicht gelingt. Seit Februar 2006 fordert außerdem eine Koalition islamischer Milizen die Herrschaft der warlords heraus. Im Gegensatz zu der instabilen und durch regelmäßige Gewaltanwendung gekennzeichneten politischen Lage hat sich die somalische Ökonomie deutlich erholt. Die ehemals staatlichen Produktions-, Handels- und Dienstleistungsaktivitäten wurden zunehmend von privaten Unternehmern übernommen. Damit hat der Krieg in Somalia eine radikale Strukturanpassung bewirkt. (GB)