Description
This paper offers a broader analysis of the ways in which racial-colonial ideas and dynamics of property and possession shape international order. Addressing a certain elision in International Relations (IR) theory concerning the role of property in global dynamics of power and security, it contends that looking at the longstanding and pervasive links between property and the body can further IR's understandings of sovereignty, land, and race. The paper's central claim is that our contemporary international order has been foundationally built upon and centred around racialised practices, imaginaries, and regimes of property-making, ownership, and (dis)possession. First, the article argues that racial-colonial ideas and practices of property and (dis)possession against racialised bodies were central to the emergence and maintenance of the sovereign state. In doing so, it reframes sovereignty as the continuous materialisation of a violent and bodily relationship of possession. Second, it argues that property plays a central role in the production, remaking, and policing of global colour lines. Revealing a persistent link between race, property, and subjectivity, it contends that violent regimes of (dis)possession and ownership have been and continue to be central tools in producing and maintaining racial divisions and, thereby, regulating international order. The paper substantiates these arguments through empirical examinations of key contemporary security practices - from border regimes and counterterrorism to dynamics of settler occupation.
