Description
This paper conceptualizes the contemporary global war on drugs as a sovereign apparatus structured by two interlocking logics: narcopunitiveness and necrostratification. Narocopunitiveness refers to the performative dimension of punitive drug governance, encompassing paramilitary raids, public executions, and capital sentences that dramatize state authority through spectacle. Necrostratification captures the calibrated hierarchies of violence and protection that structure drug control regimes—ranging from death worlds and punitive limbos to hyper-surveilled populations and elite zones of immunity. Together, these logics constitute a dual-face framework of narcotic governance that illuminates how state power is exercised through both spectacular violence and stratified toleration of life and death.
Drawing on illustrative examples from diverse political geographies—including militarized campaigns in Southeast Asia, carceral regimes in Latin America, and surveillance-heavy approaches in North America and Europe—this theoretical reflection maps how narcopunitiveness and necrostratification operate across contexts while adapting to distinct political orders. In so doing, the paper challenges prevailing theories of sovereignty, exception, and social citizenship that tend to analyze punitive power in isolation from global architectures of control. By foregrounding the interdependence of spectacle and stratification in narcotic governance, the analysis demonstrates how drug wars not only discipline populations but also reorder hierarchies of value, rendering some lives disposable while others remain insulated from punitive reach.
The paper concludes by reflecting on the normative and political stakes of this framework. It suggests that recognizing narcopunitiveness and necrostratification as constitutive logics of global drug governance opens new pathways for transnational critique and resistance. These include reasserting due process, advancing human rights-centered harm reduction, and building solidarities across borders to dismantle punitive hierarchies that perpetuate inequality and undermine human dignity.
