Description
This panel explores practices, systems and discourses of state coercion in and from the Global South and their impact on domestic and global (dis-)order.
Policing, prisons and counterinsurgency feature prominently in (international) politics scholarship. But theory- and policy-minded works are, often intentionally, centred on Eurocentric views of order, state coercion as tools to intentionally create or unintentionally endanger order, and the “West” as the main actor in the global diffusion of ideas and practices in policing and counterinsurgency.
Critical scholarship has illuminated how in the “West” policing and counterinsurgency forges political subjectivity, defines citizenship and marginality, and creates and preserves specific forms of social and political order. The papers in this panel build upon and seek to advance this promising research agenda beyond the “West”. Their focus on different country cases and methodologies provides scope for dialogue on several concerns that unite the papers: What role does the “South” play in producing knowledge on state coercion? How does order-making involve disorder-making? How do abolitionist practices produce alternative forms of order? Does state repression shape “subversive” actors’ agency?
The panel aims to offer fresh empirically grounded perspectives for debates on the social and political impact of policing and counterinsurgency worldwide.
