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Although the authors of the literature reviewed agree that there are linkages between the environment and security, several have questioned the analogy between the logic of the mili- tary and that of the environmental security concept. Some warn against a 'securitization' of environmental problems because this represents a militarization of our thinking about the relationship between humanity and the environment. The traditional logic of security involves threats issued among states with specific wills captured by nationalism or ideology. These are often directed against and conceptualized in terms of 'The Other' (Waever, 1993, pp. 13-14). Securitization of the environment invites a state-centred thinking about security, with the ability to withdraw from or respond to environmental problems depending heavily on the character of the state in question. Politically unstable and/or economically poor or dependent states may have to choose between cheap and quick industrialization and environmental pro- tection. The two strategies may be mutually exclusive but equally important to satisfy the international community. Others have argued, on the contrary, that by including a non-military threat like the environment, the concept of environmental security represents a demilitarization of security thinking. The concept of environmental security acknowledges the need for a political leader- ship to ensure the security of its citizens above and beyond their military security. A wider concept of security may also increase the range of legitimate policy choices available (Ullman, 1983, p. 133). However, by securitizing environmental issues and making them part of high politics, the range of policy choices available is not increased but reduced. Securitization of the environ- ment describes a way of handling environmental issues where threats to the environment are seen as urgent and immediate, requiring a quick response at top political level (Buzan et al., 1995).' Indeed, for politicians to devote themselves to a given issue, it helps a great deal if this issue falls within the realm of high politics. This is the most important political contri- bution of the concept of environmental security - not its potential demilitarization of security thinking. Yet in the long run, desecuritization, or politicization, may be preferable to securitization. Politicization is 'a recognition of social-political responsibilities for changes in the quality of environmental conditions' which makes environmental issues part of the usual day-to-day political business (Buzan et al., 1995, p. 15). When environmental concerns become part of 'low politics' and lose their sense of political importance and urgency, they attract less public interest. Elections in Europe and in the USA in the 1990s show that the environment no longer triggers the same active public involvement as in the 1980s. Popular mobilization against environmental degradation seems to be at its peak in the case of potentially dangerous man-made environmental degradation, such as the French nuclear tests in French Polynesia. In the longer run, however, a positive mobilization basis of human aspirations, rather than fear, may be necessary if individual action is to be sustained (Deudney, 1990, p. 469). In any case, the degree of popular mobilization is likely to depend heavily on perceptions of its efficacy.

Græger 96 ( Nina, PhD in policy sci @ oslo U head of IR Norweigan Institute of International affairs, “environmental security?” vol 33 pg 111-12)

'securitization' of environmental problems because this represents a militarization of our thinking about the relationship between humanity and the environment The traditional logic of security involves threats issued among states with specific wills captured by nationalism or ideology These are often directed against and conceptualized in terms of 'The Other' Securitization of the environment invites a state-centred thinking about security, with the ability to withdraw from or respond to environmental problems depending heavily on the character of the state in question Politically unstable and/or economically poor or dependent states may have to choose between cheap and quick industrialization and environmental pro- tection by securitizing environmental issues and making them part of high politics, the range of policy choices available is not increased but reduced. Securitization of the environ- ment describes a way of handling environmental issues where threats to the environment are seen as urgent and immediate, requiring a quick response at top political level desecuritization, or politicization, may be preferable to securitization. the longer run, however, a positive mobilization basis of human aspirations, rather than fear, may be necessary if individual action is to be sustained In any case, the degree of popular mobilization is likely to depend heavily on perceptions of its efficacy.

Securing the environment otherizes states that cannot cope with unsustainable development causing violence leading to their impacts- also elevating environmental destruction destroys personal agency towards the problem killing any chance of solvency

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The classification of nature was a critical element in the rationalizing gaze of colonialism: the ‘othering’ of nature in science, art and society is ‘the ideological practice that enables us to plunder it’ (Katz and Kirby, 1991, p265). In her book Imperial Eyes, Mary Pratt (1992) discusses the significance for imperial consciousness of the work of the Swedish taxonomist Linnaeus during the 18th century. The Linnaean system of classifying organisms not only drew upon biological collections from colonial explorers; it also ‘epitomized the continental, transnational aspirations of European science’ (Pratt, 1992, p25). Arguably, northern European taxonomic science (of which Linnaeus was the most famous practitioner) – the naming and classifying of unknown organisms – ‘created a new kind of Eurocentred planetary consciousness’ (Pratt, 1992, p39). More critically, taxonomy both represented and brought into being a new understanding of the world, one that had profound implications for human relations with nature, and with each other. Natural history ‘asserted an urban, lettered, male authority over the whole of the planet; it elaborated a rationalizing, extractive, dissociative understanding which overlaid functional, experiential relations among people, plants and animal’ (Pratt, 1992, p38). The scientific definition of species locked them into colonial patterns of global exploitation. New knowledge was a catalyst to intellectual enquiry and speculation in the colonial metropole; but it also stimulated imperial ambition. For Joseph Banks, for example, ‘new wonders bespoke not only new knowledge, but also, perhaps primarily, new economic and spiritual opportunities’ (Miller, 1996, p3). Colonial scientific discourses about nature drew on pre-existing views of nature in the colonial periphery (Pratt, 1992; Grove, 1995), taking possession, institutionalizing and re-exporting them to the colonized world (Loomba, 1998). Colonialism promoted the naming and classification of both people and places, as well as nature, in each case with the aim of control. Landscapes were renamed, and these names were entrenched through mapping and the formal education system. Linda Tuhiwai Smith comments that ‘renaming the landscape was probably as powerful ideologically as changing the land’ (Smith, 1999, p51). Colonial states occupied human landscapes whose nature, names and boundaries were to them indistinct; but they conceptualized them as specific entities, with ethnicities ‘constructed in their imagination on the model of a bargain-basement nation state’ (Bayart, 1993, p51). To achieve these ‘specificentities’, the colonial state used science and bureaucratic power, including forced settlement (and resettlement), control of migratory movements, artificial fixing of ethnic identity through birth certificates and identity cards, and the restriction of indigenous people to demarcated reservations. As Bayart comments: ‘the precipitation of ethnic identities becomes incomprehensible if it is divorced from colonial rule’ (Bayart, 1993, p51). James Scott argues, in Seeing Like a State, that legibility and simplification were central to the work of bureaucracy in the modern state. In land tenure, language, legal discourse, urban design, population census and many other areas, ‘officials took exceptionally complex, illegible and local social practice … and created a standard grid whereby it could be centrally recorded and monitored’ (1998, p2). This social simplification was accompanied by similar views of nature. Simplification allowed ‘a high degree of schematic knowledge, control and manipulation’ (p11). Scott describes the rise of scientific forestry in Prussia and Saxony during the 18th century. This was developed and exported under colonial rule (for example, to India), and persisted in government forest policy in many countries through the 20th century (see, for example, Fairhead and Leach, 1998). The 20th century saw a steady expansion in scientific exploration of the living world. This took place under the wing of colonial administrations, and increasingly it served colonial purposes. Ecologists classified nature and charted its boundaries, providing categories for its effective exploitation. In this, colonial attitudes to nature strongly reflect the progressive idea of conservation as controlled or wise use, which developed in the US at the end of the 19th century under President Theodore Roosevelt and the administrator Gifford Pinchot (Hays, 1959). The pattern of scientific knowledge of nature being accumulated at the metropole so that its value could be assessed and amassed continued into the second half of the 20th century. Robin (1997) comments that the International Biological Programme was ‘the last great imperial exercise in ecology, with information from the periphery being sent to the metropolitan centre to be converted into “science”’ (p72). Science and conservationism developed hand-in-hand. Colonial conservation allowed resources to be appropriated, both for the use of private capital and as a source of revenue for the state itself. As Grove comments: ‘colonial states increasingly found conservation to their taste and economic advantage, particularly in ensuring sustainable timber and water supplies and in using the structure of forest protection to control their unruly and marginal subjects’ (1995, p15).

Adams 3(William, Professor of Conservation and Development at the University of Cambridge, UK, “Nature and the colonial mind” pg 17 of Decolonizing Nature Strategies for Conservation in a Post-colonial Era pg 24-25)

classification of nature was a critical element in the rationalizing gaze of colonialism the ‘othering’ of nature in science, art and society is ‘the ideological practice that enables us to plunder it’ for imperial consciousness of taxonomist Linnaeus during the 18th century assifying organisms not only drew upon biological collections from colonial explorers; it also ‘epitomized the continental, transnational aspirations of European science’ created a new kind of Eurocentred planetary consciousness’ taxonomy both represented and brought into being a new understanding of the world, one that had profound implications for human relations with nature, and with each other asserted male authority over the whole of the planet; it elaborated a rationalizing, extractive, dissociative understanding which overlaid functional, experiential relations among people, plants and animal’ The scientific definition of species locked them into colonial patterns of global exploitation. New knowledge was a catalyst to intellectual enquiry and speculation in the colonial metropole; but it also stimulated imperial ambition. taking possession, institutionalizing and re-exporting them to the colonized world Colonialism promoted the naming and classification of both people and places, as well as nature, in each case with the aim of control. renaming the landscape was probably as powerful ideologically as changing the land’ Colonial states occupied human landscapes whose nature, names and boundaries were to them indistinct; but they conceptualized them as specific entities, with ethnicities ‘constructed in their imagination on the model of a bargain-basement nation state’ To achieve these ‘specificentities’, the colonial state used science and bureaucratic power, including forced settlement of migratory movements, artificial fixing of ethnic identity through birth certificates and identity cards, and the restriction of indigenous people to demarcated reservations precipitation of ethnic identities becomes incomprehensible if it is divorced from colonial rule’ social simplification was accompanied by similar views of nature. Simplification allowed ‘a high degree of schematic knowledge, control and manipulation’ took place under the wing of colonial administrations, and increasingly it served colonial purposes Ecologists classified nature and charted its boundaries, providing categories for its effective exploitation. conservation allowed resources to be appropriated, both for the use of private capital and as a source of revenue for the state itself

Attempts by the nation state to control nature backfire and allows nature to be exploited

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The transformation of the state is impregnated with conflicts, negotiations and compromises between political groupings and is characterised by selfserving actions and trade-offs.13 In such a view, the decline of certain governmental interventions concerned with organising, dividing and classifying state space – interventions which are usually associated with the “welfare state” for example – indicates that a certain qualitatively recalibrated state power is being activated through political contest and trade-offs between political groupings. State spatiality, from this perspective, is understood ‘as the product of socio-economic struggles and transformations’.14 The emergence of ideas about a hollowing out of the state and its retreat (and filling in) prompted new studies which took the spatiality of the state as the primary concern.15 In particular, a “scalar” reading of the changing nature of statehood has become a widely used approach for state spatiality over the past decade or so. Scholars have suggested that the continuous re-composition of the (welfare) state via new forms of economic scrutiny and control should not be written off as erosion of the territorial state but rather as a temporally and spatially specific re-organisation of the state (apparatus) which manifests itself as a re-scaling of the state and state power.16 Scholars drawing mainly from historical materialism have inquired into the restructuration of the Keynesian welfare state, which first began to occur in the 1970s and continues today.17 The spatial transformation of the state is conceptualised as a gradual erosion of the Keynesian political practices which were geared around the national as the focal political scale. Spatial Keynesianism, which dominated the post–Second World War era, was epitomised by a distinct geopolitical calculation that was intertwined with the emergence of the “national” welfare societies in Europe. One of the key messages of the state re-scaling literature has been that, since the 1970s, the founding regulative practices of spatial Keynesianism have been gradually replaced by a Schumpeterian competition state spatiality, which is ultimately based on internationalisation of policy regimes and the associated transfer of certain functions and responsibilities of the “national-state” to other scales of governance ranging from supranational to local/regional.18 The importance of this view lies in its capacity to illuminate that the territorial formations of the state are not static or pre-given but rather are historically (re-)construed and characterised by both relative stability and periods of rapid change. In such a view, the spread of neoliberalism as the hegemonic ideology across global and national spaces has brought into existence new privatising regulatory arrangements, spatial projects as well as forms of governance conceived around major city-regions. This, in turn, has strengthened the role of “national champions” in state strategies and projects, which are increasingly predicated upon the politics of economic competitiveness rather than social equalisation.

Moisio & Paasi 13 [Sami & Asssi, Regional Development and Regional Policy- Department of Geography, University of Oulu, Finland, Regional Geography, Geopolitics, 18:2, 255-266, DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2012.738729]

The transformation of the state is impregnated with conflicts, negotiations and compromises between political groupings and is characterised by selfserving actions and trade-offs State spatiality, from this perspective, is understood ‘as the product of socio-economic struggles and transformations’ The emergence of ideas about a hollowing out of the state and its retreat (and filling in) prompted new studies which took the spatiality of the state as the primary concern In particular, a “scalar” reading of the changing nature of statehood has become a widely used approach for state spatiality over the past decade or so. the continuous re-composition of the (welfare) state via new forms of economic scrutiny and control should not be written off as erosion of the territorial state but rather as a temporally and spatially specific re-organisation of the state which manifests itself as a re-scaling of the state and state power The spatial transformation of the state is conceptualised as a gradual erosion of the Keynesian political practices which were geared around the national as the focal political scale. Spatial Keynesianism, which dominated the post–Second World War era, was epitomised by a distinct geopolitical calculation that was intertwined with the emergence of the “national” welfare societies in Europe the founding regulative practices of spatial Keynesianism have been gradually replaced by a Schumpeterian competition state spatiality, which is ultimately based on internationalisation of policy regimes and the associated transfer of certain functions and responsibilities of the “national-state” to other scales of governance ranging from supranational to local/regional. the territorial formations of the state are not static or pre-given but rather are historically (re-)construed and characterised the spread of neoliberalism as the hegemonic ideology across global and national spaces has brought into existence new privatising regulatory arrangements, spatial projects as well as forms of governance conceived around major city-regions

The affirmative completes the scalar transformation of the state from welfare provider into regional guardian.

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It is often argued that the basic distinction that characterises modernity is that the state can be conceptualised as a constellation of guardian practices (geopolitics, place) whereas cities can be considered as constellations of commercial practices (geo-economy, space of flows, capital accumulation).20 Even though this distinction occupies a central role in contemporary “globalising” discourses on economic growth (it has “policy relevance”, so to speak), it may well be that scholars should now re-think the analytical value of this distinction. The penetration of market practices and rationalities deep into the societal processes that constitute the state may potentially destabilise the relationship between the guardian and commercial practices. The recent policy practices and discourses which aimed at re-working the state/city relationship – at least across most of the OECD world – arguably demonstrate a peculiar fusing of geopolitics (guardian practices) and geo-economy (commercial practices). Accordingly, as the state increasingly works as an accumulation machine, the issue of “competitiveness” is being re-located to the core of “state security” and “national interest”. This fusing of the geopolitical and geo-economic further increases the significance of “globally oriented” city-regions with respect to governmental interventions and, indeed, may potentially “disembody” some city-regions from the statist space-economy. The power of this new regionalist discourse, according to which knowledgeintensive capitalism requires (and makes) particular types of city-regions as key economic units in the global economy, is that it fundamentally challenges the policy makers to re-imagine state spaces and deconstruct, rethink and transform “outdated” spatial formations.21 This discourse is often constituted and legitimated by employing somewhat fuzzy spatial terms – such as learning regions, clusters, regional/national innovation systems, or industrial districts – which have occupied a significant role in the new regionalist lexicon. Arguably, the mobility of this lexicon has had a tremendous constitutive role for policy discourses in different geographical contexts, which, e.g., regional planners and policy makers then effectively circulate. The new regionalist discourse on city-regions, of course, resonates with the arguments of some of the most prominent urbanists, who already decades ago suggested that the new geopolitical order will be based around such units.22 But rather than replacing the state, as Andrew Jonas hints in his article, the increasing strategic importance of city-regionalism, and the associated city-projects and regional policies which emanate from both above and below, may be understood as an expression of the contingent geopolitics of capitalism. As Jonas reminds the reader, there is a great diversity in the national forms of city-regionalism, and these forms should be carefully studied contextually in order to discern their impact on city/state relations. One of the central constituents of the neoliberal global geo-economy is that the power of the state to coordinate and generate economic growth has not only diminished but also has led to a particular denationalisation of the state and the increasing significance of international policy networks and regimes. This has been coupled with the rise of the discourse of state/national/regional competitiveness, which since the 1990s has characterised public policy making across the globe. In a way, paralleling military rivalry, competitiveness has become an instrument in the geopoliticalvocabulary of the state. In her article, Gillian Bristow studies the discourse of regional competitiveness and inquires into how it, together with the discourse of resilience, has operated in the recent regional policy making in the UK. She treats these discourses as instrumental constituents of neoliberal governance of the state. Bristow also discusses the possibility of shaking the foundations of the discourse of competitiveness through what she calls a critical regionalist perspective. As part of the ongoing attempts to foster the state’s international competitiveness, the spatiality of the state is constantly remade through stateorchestrated arrangements which tie different types of cities with broader state strategies. It is therefore crucial to continue investigating the projects and strategies that arise from cities, and how these position and construct cities with regard to different socio-spatial processes (such as innovation policies); i.e., how city-regional processes are impregnated with unique scalar practices and performances. The article by Anni Kangas analyses discussions prompted by the recent decision to expand the borders of the Russian capital Moscow. The article particularly focuses on the way in which the idea of Moscow as a potential “global city” functions within the discussions concerned with transforming Moscow so as to connect Russia to the global networks of investments, people and success. Kangas approaches the geopolitics of the global city as a circulating form of neoliberal governmentality. On the basis of her analysis of the Russian discussion, she outlines the ways in which neoliberalism becomes particularised in the context of “Big Moscow” as it gains backing from authoritarian forms of politics or historically rooted forms of cultural understanding.

Moisio & Paasi 13 [Sami & Asssi, Regional Development and Regional Policy- Department of Geography, University of Oulu, Finland, Regional Geography, Geopolitics, 18:2, 255-266, DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2012.738729]

the basic distinction that characterises modernity is that the state can be conceptualised as a constellation of guardian practices whereas cities can be considered as constellations of commercial practices Even though this distinction occupies a central role in contemporary “globalising” discourses on economic growth it may well be that scholars should now re-think the analytical value of this distinction. The penetration of market practices and rationalities deep into the societal processes that constitute the state may potentially destabilise the relationship between the guardian and commercial practices , as the state increasingly works as an accumulation machine, the issue of “competitiveness” is being re-located to the core of “state security” and “national interest”. This fusing of the geopolitical and geo-economic further increases the significance of “globally oriented” city-regions with respect to governmental interventions and, indeed, may potentially “disembody” some city-regions from the statist space-economy. this new regionalist discourse requires particular types of city-regions as key economic units in the global economy, is that it fundamentally challenges the policy makers to re-imagine state spaces and deconstruct, rethink and transform “outdated” spatial formations This discourse is often constituted and legitimated by employing somewhat fuzzy spatial terms which have occupied a significant role in the new regionalist lexicon the mobility of this lexicon has had a tremendous constitutive role for policy discourses in different geographical contexts But rather than replacing the state, as Andrew Jonas hints in his article, the increasing strategic importance of city-regionalism, and the associated city-projects and regional policies which emanate from both above and below, may be understood as an expression of the contingent geopolitics of capitalism. . One of the central constituents of the neoliberal global geo-economy is that the power of the state to coordinate and generate economic growth has not only diminished but also has led to a particular denationalisation of the state and the increasing significance of international policy networks and regimes This has been coupled with the rise of the discourse of state/national/regional competitiveness, which since the 1990s has characterised public policy making across the globe. In a way, paralleling military rivalry, competitiveness has become an instrument in the geopoliticalvocabulary of the state As part of the ongoing attempts to foster the state’s international competitiveness, the spatiality of the state is constantly remade through stateorchestrated arrangements which tie different types of cities with broader state strategies. It is therefore crucial to continue investigating the projects and strategies that arise from cities, and how these position and construct cities with regard to different socio-spatial processes how city-regional processes are impregnated with unique scalar practices and performances

Competitiveness rhetoric is the newest manifestation of border violence – cities become organized around regional wealth accumulation which creates new forms of spatial division

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2013

Roosevelt’s ‘good neighbour’ approach to Latin America – which, as will be seen in subsequent chapters, found echoes in the Alliance for Progress of 1961 and President Clinton’s view of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) of 1994 – gave priority to mutually beneficial relations between the northern and southern parts of the Americas in a context of free trade and political cooperation. Not only were the economic ties that bind being drawn closer between the north and south of the Americas, as reflected in trade and investment patterns, but also these ties were another part of the US ‘mission’ to export its way of life (O’Brien 1996: 251). The ‘good neighbour’ policy was a significant attempt to provide a sense of political, economic, moral and cultural leadership for the Americas. It aimed at outlining the guidance and direction that was deemed necessary for Inter-American relations in turbulent times. It highlighted the importance of persuasion, of mutual understanding, responsibilities and respect, of a joint project of progress and friendship across the Americas, through which all the peoples of the ‘American Family of Nations’ would benefit and prosper. It underscored the key role of free trade, a point which Roosevelt repeated in a speech to the Inter- American Conference in Buenos Aires in 1936. Free trade and commerce were also intimately linked to a Wilsonian stress on democracy. Further, in the ‘Good Neighbour’ address as well as in other speeches given in the 1930s, Roosevelt returned to the importance of the ‘spiritual solidarity’ and ‘spiritual unity’ of the Americas, which he saw as an integral part of faith in God, and faith and spirit were invoked as being crucial to the ‘Western Hemisphere’ and the ‘Western World’. Statements on trade and commerce, democracy, religion and a spirit of mutual obligation, respect and understanding formed the key components of the Rooseveltian perspective. His vision was also associated with a new style, the US President being presented as a ‘friendly uncle’ figure offering a ‘new deal’ for the Latin American nations. In general, Roosevelt’s intervention was an attempt to build a hegemonic discourse for the Americas, a way of bringing together the ‘family of American nations’ into a US-led project which expressed a multi-dimensional power. It was an attempt to nurture Latin American consent for the leadership role of the United States, and at the same time it was also a response to the development of Latin American nationalism and anti-imperialist sentiment. In practice, however, although ‘gunboat diplomacy’ faded from view, and concrete steps were taken to end the era of protectorates (as exemplified in the Cuban case with the abrogation of the Platt Amendment in 1934), dictatorships in countries such as the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua were still supported (Black 1988). As a consequence and by the end of the 1930s, with US support for the strengthening of the armed forces in Latin America, Latin American opinion became much more critical of the ‘good neighbour’ notion, so that at the end of the 1930s a populist Peruvian leader, Haya de la Torre, could refer to the Roosevelt Administration as ‘the good neighbor of tyrants’ (Rosenberg 1982: 227).

Slater, 2004 [David Slater, Emeritus Professor of Political Geography, & Associate Fellow of the Institute for the Study of the Americas at the University of London, Geopolitics and the Postcolonial: Rethinking North-South Relations, Blackwell Publishing Ltd]

Roosevelt’s ‘good neighbour’ approach to Latin America gave priority to mutually beneficial relations between the northern and southern parts of the Americas in a context of free trade and political cooperation. Not only were the economic ties that bind being drawn closer between the north and south of the Americas, these ties were another part of the US ‘mission’ to export its way of life The ‘good neighbour’ policy was a significant attempt to provide a sense of political, economic, moral and cultural leadership for the Americas. It aimed at outlining the guidance and direction that was deemed necessary for Inter-American relations It highlighted the importance of persuasion, of mutual understanding, responsibilities and respect, of a joint project of progress and friendship It underscored the key role of free trade Roosevelt returned to the importance of the ‘spiritual solidarity’ and ‘spiritual unity’ of the Americas, Statements on trade and commerce, democracy, religion and a spirit of mutual obligation, respect and understanding formed the key components of the Rooseveltian perspective. the US President being presented as a ‘friendly uncle’ figure offering a ‘new deal’ for the Latin American nations. Roosevelt’s intervention was an attempt to build a hegemonic discourse for the Americas, It was an attempt to nurture Latin American consent for the leadership role of the United States it was also a response to the development of Latin American nationalism and anti-imperialist sentiment. with US support for the strengthening of the armed forces in Latin America, Latin American opinion became much more critical of the ‘good neighbour’ notion a populist Peruvian leader, Haya de la Torre, could refer to the Roosevelt Administration as ‘the good neighbor of tyrants’

Their concern for Latin American relations is disingenuous – the affirmative uses political stability as a tool to mask economic interests in the region that further American intervention and imperialism.

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A little over a decade ago, Edward Said (1989: 214), in a commentary on¶ a particular current within anthropology, wrote that in so many of the¶ discussions of identity and difference, there is a striking absence of any¶ critical analysis of American imperial “intervention. For Said, the imperial¶ contest is a cultural fact of enormous political as well as interpretative¶ significance, since it is this specific historical encounter that acts as a¶ defining horizon for concepts of ‘identity’, ‘otherness’ and ‘difference’.¶ More generally, and until recently, the absence of accounts of ‘American One way of approaching this question is to refer to Hardt and Negri’s¶ recent and influential text on Empire. Hardt and Negri (2000: xiv–xv)¶ define Empire in relation to a notion of open, expanding frontiers, where¶ power is distributed in networks. Originating with the founders of¶ the United States, ‘the imperial idea has survived and matured throughout¶ the history of the United States constitution and has emerged now on¶ a global scale in its fully realized form’ (ibid.). For Hardt and Negri,¶ Empire has no limits, no territorial boundaries limit its reign, and as a¶ concept, Empire presents itself not as conquest but as an order that¶ suspends history, that is outside history or at the end of history. They¶ go on to argue that the fundamental principle of Empire is that its power¶ has no actual and localizable centre and is distributed through networks,¶ which does not mean that the US government and territory are no¶ different from any other – the US does occupy a privileged position,¶ but ‘as the powers and boundaries of nation-states decline, . . . differences¶ between national territories become increasingly relative’ (Hardt &¶ Negri 2000: 384).¶ An immediate difficulty with Hardt and Negri’s interpretation is their¶ idea that the new system of Empire has its roots in the US constitution,¶ which they see as being imperial rather than imperialist, as open and¶ inclusive, so that the policies of Theodore Roosevelt, with his ‘international¶ police power’ of 1904, represent an old-style European imperialism,¶ whereas Woodrow Wilson and his League of Nations foreshadows¶ today’s regime, in which the sovereignty of the nation dissolves in a¶ borderless world of Empire. It can be countered, as I shall indicate¶ below, that these two tendencies are not as distinct as Hardt and Negri¶ suppose, and that both form key components of US imperialism. It can be¶ argued that US imperialism has always followed a double movement of¶ erecting and policing boundaries, and of breaking down the borders of others both internally and externally so as to open up new spaces for¶ unfettered expansion.¶ I want to pursue their argument a little further on this question, since¶ the theme is central to this chapter and has implications for subsequent¶ chapters.¶ In Hardt and Negri’s chapter on US sovereignty and network power, it¶ is suggested that the US constitution is expressive of a democratically¶ expansive tendency which is not exclusive. When it expands, this new¶ sovereignty does not destroy the other powers it faces but opens itself to¶ them. Perhaps, it is argued, the essential feature of this new imperial¶ sovereignty is that ‘its space is always open’ (Hardt & Negri 2000: 167;¶ emphasis in original). But equally it is suggested that the utopia of open¶ spaces hides a brutal form of subordination of the Amerindian population.¶ The Native Americans were the ‘negative foundation’ of the US¶ constitution since their exclusion and elimination were essential for its¶ functioning and the facilitation of openness and colonizing expansion¶ (2000: 170). Native Americans could be excluded because the republic¶ did not need their labour, but with African Americans inclusion was¶ necessary since black labour was an essential support to the new United¶ States. African American slaves could be neither completely included nor¶ entirely excluded, and this was reflected in the constitution itself,¶ wherein the slave population counted in the determination of the number¶ of representatives for each state in the House of Representatives, but at a¶ ratio whereby one slave equalled three-fifths of a free person. For Hardt¶ and Negri, black slavery was both an exception to and a foundation of¶ the constitution, and such a contradiction posed a crisis for the new¶ notion of US sovereignty because it blocked the free circulation and¶ equality that animated its foundation.

Slater 4 [David, David Slater is a British geographer with a BA and PhD and currently Professor of Social and Political Geography at Loughborough University. “Geopolitics and¶ the Post-colonial” Page 31-32]

For Said, the imperial¶ contest is a cultural fact of enormous political as well as interpretative¶ significance, since it is this specific historical encounter that acts as a¶ defining horizon for concepts of ‘identity’, ‘otherness’ and ‘difference’. Hardt and Negri (2000: xiv–xv)¶ define Empire in relation to a notion of open, expanding frontiers, where¶ power is distributed in networks ).¶ An immediate difficulty with Hardt and Negri’s interpretation is their¶ idea that the new system of Empire has its roots in the US constitution,¶ which they see as being imperial rather than imperialist, as open and¶ inclusive, so that the policies of Theodore Roosevelt, with his ‘international¶ police power’ of 1904, represent an old-style European imperialism, It can be¶ argued that US imperialism has always followed a double movement of¶ erecting and policing boundaries, and of breaking down the borders of others both internally and externally so as to open up new spaces for¶ unfettered expansion. ). But equally it is suggested that the utopia of open¶ spaces hides a brutal form of subordination of the Amerindian population.¶ The Native Americans were the ‘negative foundation’ of the US¶ constitution since their exclusion and elimination were essential for its¶ functioning and the facilitation of openness and colonizing expansion¶ (2000: 170). Native Americans could be excluded because the republic¶ did not need their labour, but with African Americans inclusion was¶ necessary since black labour was an essential support to the new United¶ States.

Economic engagement is a form of imperial exploitation. The United States polices it’s own boundaries while it breaks down the borders of others both internally and externally so as to open up new spaces for unfettered expansion. These spaces hide a brutal form of subordination and exploitation.

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Kritiks

2013

Such extreme actions, however, are rare. Within more common conditions¶ of rupture, MSF usually practices a noisier variety of humanitarian diplomacy¶ of the Red Cross variety, intermingled with threats, denunciations, and protests.¶ At the same time, it operates as a technical agency, alongside other NGOs, to¶ administer a substitute for medical government amid what it identifies as political failure. Yet this action rests squarely on a central, categorical paradox: the¶ more successful MSF is at protecting existence in the name of a politics of rights¶ and dignity, the more this temporary response threatens to become a norm. Related lines of tension run through much of the movement. Even as MSF seeks¶ to maintain an anti-institutional ethos, it achieves the institutional recognition of¶ the Nobel Prize, a recognition that promises both to increase its influence and¶ impede its reinvention. Even as the organization seeks new forms of engagement¶ that might emphasize structural inequities (such as the Access campaign to lower¶ pharmaceutical costs for poor countries), it remains attached to the language of¶ urgency: for example, “Millions Die from Lack of Medicines” (crisis number four¶ on the poster described earlier). The group’s anti-utopian utopianism requires both¶ situational and categorical criteria of evaluation at different levels of engagement:¶ Team reports for each local context filter through an organizational structure with¶ global ambition. Universal techniques and expert guidelines mix with a legacy of¶ continual improvisation. An established oppositional ethos takes shape within a¶ definitional claim to humanitarian ethics. Therefore, in the face of continuing disaster, MSF responds with a defense of life that both recognizes and refuses politics.¶ It forcefully claims an independent right to speak out and act without regard to¶ considerations other than conscience, yet it never quite abandons neutrality in its¶ insistence that final responsibility for alleviating suffering lies elsewhere. At the¶ same time it maintains a critical frame of action that has undeniable political as¶ well as social, economic, and technical effects on both local and systemic scales.¶ Such is the dilemma of “doctors yes, borders no.”¶ When analyzed at a general level, the work of NGOs such as MSF and other¶ humanitarian groups certainly contributes to the greater contemporary world order,¶ forming part of an established apparatus for crisis response. Thus, Michael Hardt¶ and Antonio Negri (2000:36) can identify international NGOs as pacific weapons¶ of what they call “Empire.” More concretely, Maria Pandolfi (2002:1, 5, and see¶ 2000; see also Appadurai 1996:45–49) includes them in an expanding military-humanitarian field she terms “migrant sovereignties,” self-legitimized through a¶ “culture of emergency” exemplified by the massive intervention in Kosovo. At the¶ very least, surely Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson (2002) are correct in observing that humanitarian organizations performing statelike functions contribute to¶ a transnational variant of governmentality, one that complicates our conceptions¶ of national and international space. Nonetheless, MSF seeks to define itself in¶ contrast to emerging conventions, while also participating in a larger moral economy of evaluating politics through human life and suffering. It generally opposes¶ humanitarian operations by military forces or any standing “right of intervention”¶ (a principle memorably championed by one of its original founders-turned-politician, Bernard Kouchner, and implicit in the group’s initial formulation). And¶ it will occasionally withdraw from situations in which it believes external political¶ manipulation outstrips its ability to influence conditions of suffering. Yet its actions, however agonizingly debated and qualified from within, often blur together¶ with those of other aid actors when seen from the perspective of their intended¶ beneficiaries as a continuing stream of white all-terrain vehicles.¶ 25¶ General accounts of NGO governmentality, therefore, risk slipping an older¶ political vocabulary too quickly over contemporary forms. Although the doctors¶ who say “yes” to humanitarian action may find themselves replicating colonial¶ patterns and inadvertently contributing to successor global orders, their own expansion is ever conflicted and oppositional. MSF may contribute to a migrant mode¶ of sovereignty, administered through Toyota Land Cruisers, satellite phones, and¶ laptop computers, but we should not forget that this sovereignty is not only mobile¶ but it is also at the same time attenuated. MSF may have achieved a measure of¶ direct power over survival and a measure of indirect influence in bringing recognition to crisis situations. It may also reserve, like Schmitt’s sovereign, a measure of¶ final decision over life and death by determining what constitutes a legitimate exception, although this is reactive and largely in a medical vein. However, its actual¶ ability to govern—to care for a population—is limited both by external factors and¶ by internal will. Moreover, MSF is, as are most contemporary NGOs, an association composed of private citizens and, therefore, operates obliquely with regard¶ to classic legal categories of administration and sovereignty. As such it holds no¶ particular mandate to act (unlike the legally sanctioned ICRC), nor does it seek to¶ rule.¶ As the director of one MSF section observed to me: “Four people sitting in¶ Sudan surrounded by people with guns aren’t running things.” This facile political¶ analysis is nonetheless revealing when positioned alongside descriptions of global¶ empire, for it reminds us that power can extend into settings where a monopoly¶ of authority is rarely apparent.¶ 26¶ MSF acts on particular bodies and contributes¶ to a larger political regime of humanitarian values. However, between these two¶ levels, its actual command over events is ever precarious and unsure. What MSF¶ has achieved—now passionately, now reluctantly—is a temporary and restricted¶ form of modestly productive power that is uncertainly revealed in states of crisis.¶ This is what I mean by a “minimalist” biopolitics: the temporary administration¶ of survival within wider circumstances that do not favor it. In foregrounding such¶ aproject, and pursuing it within the attenuated sovereignty of an independent,¶ butself-limiting organization, MSF protests inadequate government and provides¶ a temporary alternative. Whether such a minimalist biopolitics can achieve the¶ deeper humanitarian goal of reestablishing human dignity, however, remains less¶ clear, other than publicly demonstrating an attachment to that ideal at the moment¶ of its abnegation. As Paul Rabinow (1999:109–110) notes with regard to French¶ concerns over their HIV blood scandal and genomic research, the bios that understands itself as a civilizing force has difficulty imagining a zoe that it could¶ not civilize or one whose alteration might change the very conditions of dignity.¶ In classic humanist reason, dignity is already defined and inherent to the human¶ person. And yet the direct pursuit of such dignity, in the form of a humanitarian¶ ideal undertaken by a medically oriented and historically French movement, may¶ reveal the limits of life in precisely these terms.

Redfield 5 [Peter, Ph.D. Anthropology at UC Berkeley, professor of Anthropology at UNC Chapel Hill, “Doctors, Borders, and Life in Crisis,” Cultural Anthropology 20(3)] ***MSF = Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders)

MSF operates as a technical agency, alongside other NGOs, to administer a substitute for medical government amid what it identifies as political failure this action rests squarely on a central, categorical paradox: the more successful MSF is at protecting existence in the name of a politics of rights and dignity, the more this temporary response threatens to become a norm Even as MSF seeks to maintain an anti-institutional ethos, it achieves the institutional recognition that promises both to increase its influence and impede its reinvention Even as the organization seeks new forms of engagement that might emphasize structural inequities it remains attached to the language of urgency anti-utopian utopianism requires each local context filter through an organizational structure with global ambition An established oppositional ethos takes shape within a definitional claim to humanitarian ethics in the face of continuing disaster, MSF responds with a defense of life that both recognizes and refuses politics yet it never quite abandons neutrality in its insistence that final responsibility for alleviating suffering lies elsewhere at a general level, the work of NGOs such as MSF and other humanitarian groups certainly contributes to the greater contemporary world order forming part of an established apparatus for crisis response. Hardt and Negri identify international NGOs as pacific weapons of “Empire.” Pandolfi includes them in an expanding military-humanitarian field she terms “migrant sovereignties,” self-legitimized through a “culture of emergency” exemplified by massive intervention humanitarian organizations performing statelike functions contribute to a transnational variant of governmentality, one that complicates our conceptions of national and international space General accounts of NGO governmentality risk slipping an older political vocabulary too quickly over contemporary forms. MSF may contribute to a migrant mode of sovereignty, administered through Toyota Land Cruisers, satellite phones, and laptop computers this sovereignty is not only mobile but it is also at the same time attenuated It may also reserve a measure of final decision over life and death by determining what constitutes a legitimate exception contemporary NGOs operates obliquely with regard to classic legal categories of administration and sovereignty power can extend into settings where a monopoly of authority is rarely apparent MSF acts on particular bodies and contributes to a larger political regime of humanitarian values. However, between these two levels, its actual command over events is ever precarious and unsure This is by a “minimalist” biopolitics: the temporary administration of survival within wider circumstances that do not favor it. In foregrounding such aproject, and pursuing it within the attenuated sovereignty of an independent, butself-limiting organization, MSF protests inadequate government and provides a temporary alternative the bios that understands itself as a civilizing force has difficulty imagining a zoe that it could not civilize or one whose alteration might change the very conditions of dignity the direct pursuit of such dignity, in the form of a humanitarian ideal may reveal the limits of life in precisely these terms

NGO HUMANITARIANISM is an too easily slips into prescripted regimes of control. Be skeptical of the affirmatives claims

Borders Kritik - UTNIF 2013.html5

Texas (UTNIF)

Kritiks

2013

This section focuses on the manner in which borders may establish and shape¶ ¶ identity and draws on Balibar’s insight of the need to ‘overturn the false simplicity’ of the notion.39 To draw a border is to establish an identity, and to establish¶ an identity, is to draw a border.40 The very act of defining simplifies that which is¶ ¶ being defined, whilst also showing that borders and identities may be social constructs, not givens. Here identity in terms of the collective identity of a people of¶ a territory, and of those who negotiate the border in seeking to enter that territory, will be examined. Considering first collective identity, the border is the place at which the sovereign power assigns individuals to particular territories and stakes out its ‘ownership’¶ of its nationals.41 The border becomes the means by which individuals are categorized, the most fundamental category being that of the citizen and the inscription¶ ¶ of the individual into both the territorial space and the political institutions, and¶ ¶ ‘power structures’ of the state. Here Balibar adopts a ‘generalized concept’ of¶ ¶ ‘territory’ encompassing the territorial space delimited by the border, but also the¶ ¶ institutions governing and shaping the life of those within the space. He writes:¶ ¶ To ‘territorialize’ means to assign ‘identities’ for collective subjects within structures of¶ ¶ power, therefore to categorialize [sic] and individualize human beings (and the figure¶ ¶ of the ‘citizen’ with its statutory conditions of birth and place, its different sub-categories,¶ ¶ spheres of activity, processes of formation, is exactly a way of categorizing individuals).42¶ ¶ As explained by Balibar, this appropriation of the nation by the state is ‘internalized’ by the people such that the ‘external border’ becomes the ‘inner border’43 shaping communal identity. Balibar asserts that there is ‘a tendency for¶ ¶ collective identities to crystallize around the functions of imaginary protection¶ ¶ [borders] fill, a fetishism of their lines and their role in separating “pure identities”’.44 The external border creates internal unity and relativizes differences¶ ¶ between individuals and social groups within the territory by subordinating these¶ ¶ differences to the overarching distinction between ‘ourselves’ and ‘foreigners’. In¶ ¶ this way, the external frontier is seen as a ‘projection and protection of an¶ ¶ internal collective personality’.45 Balibar suggests that in democratic states, the¶ ¶ significance of the border is intensified as not only do the people ‘belong’ to the¶ ¶ state, but also the state to the people. A reciprocal pattern of the appropriation¶ ¶ of the state by the people and the people by the state occurs.46¶ ¶ In some cases, the unity of the people may be instituted by the notion of a ‘fictive ethnicity’. That is, a state’s populations are ‘represented . . . as if they formed¶ ¶ a natural community, possessing of itself an identity of origins, culture and interests which transcends individuals and social conditions’.47 Race is one of the¶ ¶ means by which this fictive ethnicity may be produced. When the ‘people’ as the¶ ¶ subject of political representation becomes blurred with the people as ‘ethnos’,¶ ¶ distinctions are drawn between ‘native’ and ‘foreign’ populations, with the latter¶ ¶ being ‘racially or culturally stigmatized’.48 On Balibar’s analysis, by producing the ‘fictive ethnicity’ around which nationalism is organized, racism maintains ‘a¶ ¶ necessary relation with nationalism’.49 Borders may therefore become the ‘point¶ ¶ at which “world views” . . . and thus also views of man [are] at stake’.50¶ ¶ The process of ‘territorialization’—of assigning identities for collective subjects—¶ ¶ is ‘always haunted . . . by the possibility that outsiders or “nomadic subjects” . . .¶ ¶ resist territorialization, remain located outside the normative “political space”’.51¶ ¶ Balibar here is speaking of ‘nomadic subjects’ in the broad sense of outsiders,¶ ¶ who are present within the territory, and yet as non-citizens, do not belong to¶ ¶ the ‘people’. They threaten the population’s self-understanding as a ‘unified’¶ ¶ people52 and the exclusive manner in which the state belongs to the citizens and¶ ¶ the citizens to the state described above. One response to this threat may be the¶ ¶ closure of the geographical border to the nomad. Whatever may be the reality of¶ ¶ the life experience of the Roma today, there remains a powerful stereotype of the¶ ¶ Roma as nomadic people. Roma have been recognized by the Parliamentary¶ ¶ Assembly of the Council of Europe as a ‘non-territorial’ European minority.53¶ ¶ Certain Romani groups have also voiced claims to non-territorial nationhood as¶ ¶ is evidenced by the ‘Declaration of a Nation’ at the July 2000 conference of the¶ ¶ International Romani Union.54 It is perhaps this stereotype of the nomadic¶ ¶ Roma, which informed the Government’s policy at Prague Airport, or at least¶ ¶ was present in the background to the policy.

Kesby 2006 [Kesby, Alison, University of Cambridge, "The Shifting and Multiple Border and International Law"]

To draw a border is to establish an identity, and to establish an identity, is to draw a border. Here identity in terms of the collective identity of a people of a territory, and of those who negotiate the border in seeking to enter that territory, will be examined. Considering first collective identity, the border is the place at which the sovereign power assigns individuals to particular territories and stakes out its ‘ownership’ of its nationals. Here Balibar adopts a ‘generalized concept’ of ‘territory’ encompassing the territorial space delimited by the border, but also the institutions governing and shaping the life of those within the space. He writes: To ‘territorialize’ means to assign ‘identities’ for collective subjects within structures of power, therefore to categorialize [sic] and individualize human beings As explained by Balibar, this appropriation of the nation by the state is ‘internalized’ by the people such that the ‘external border’ becomes the ‘inner border’43 shaping communal identity. In some cases, the unity of the people may be instituted by the notion of a ‘fictive ethnicity’. When the ‘people’ as the subject of political representation becomes blurred with the people as ‘ethnos’, distinctions are drawn between ‘native’ and ‘foreign’ populations, with the latter being ‘racially or culturally stigmatized’. Balibar’s analysis, by producing the ‘fictive ethnicity’ around which nationalism is organized, racism maintains ‘a necessary relation with nationalism’.49 Borders may therefore become the ‘point at which “world views” . . . and thus also views of man [are] at stake’. The process of ‘territorialization’—of assigning identities for collective subjects— is ‘always haunted . . . by the possibility that outsiders or “nomadic subjects” . . . resist territorialization, remain located outside the normative “political space”’.

International law draws the borders, and thus, the identities of the population of states. This collectivized categorization creates stigmatization and alienation of the "Other".

Borders Kritik - UTNIF 2013.html5

Texas (UTNIF)

Kritiks

2013

Forged on the anvil of modern European history and enshrined in modern international law, modern statehood and sovereignty are deemed the preserve of differentiated "nations" existing within exclusive and defined territories. While "the struggle to produce citizens out of recalcitrant people accounts for much of what passes for history in modern times,"298 the prototype of the "nation-state" combines a singular national identity with state sovereignty, understood as the territorial organization of unshared political authority. "The territoriality of the nation-state" seeks to "impose supreme epistemic control in creating the citizensubject out of the individual." 299 "Inventing boundaries" 00 and "imagining communities" 30 1 work together "to naturalize the fiction of citizenship."302 Modern international law underscores this schema. It extends recognition only to the national form, with acceptance attached to the ability to hold territory in tune with "Western patterns of political organization." 303 As a result, the "nation-state" is the dominant model of organized sovereignty today. This spatially bounded construct, one that frames both the geography of actualizing self-determination and the order of the resulting political unit, put in circulation a "territorialist epistemology."304 Postcolonial formations had to subscribe to this Eurocentric grammar of state-formation to secure eligibility in the inter-state legal order.305 This statist frame precludes imaginative flowerings of selfdetermination in tune with the interests and aspirations of diverse communities both within and beyond received colonial boundaries.

Mahmud 2010 (Tayyab, Professor of Law and Director, Center for Global Justice, Seattle University School of¶ Law, “Colonial Cartographies, Postcolonial Borders, and¶ Enduring Failures of International Law: The¶ Unending Wars Along the Afghanistan-Pakistan¶ Frontier,” 36 BROOK. J. INT'L L. 1)

Forged on the anvil of modern European history and enshrined in modern international law, modern statehood and sovereignty are deemed the preserve of differentiated "nations" existing within exclusive and defined territories. the "nation-state" combines a singular national identity with state sovereignty The territoriality of the nation-state" seeks to "impose supreme epistemic control in creating the citizensubject out of the individual Inventing boundaries and "imagining communities" work together "to naturalize the fiction of citizenship." Modern international law underscores this schema. It extends recognition only to the national form, with acceptance attached to the ability to hold territory in tune with "Western patterns of political organization." the "nation-state" is the dominant model of organized sovereignty today. Postcolonial formations had to subscribe to this Eurocentric grammar of state-formation to secure eligibility in the inter-state legal order. This statist frame precludes imaginative flowerings of selfdetermination in tune with the interests and aspirations of diverse communities both within and beyond received colonial boundaries.

International law’s authority ends at the borders of the nation-state. The reinforcement of international law upholds the modern nation-state and allows for the creation of the artificial citizen

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Texas (UTNIF)

Kritiks

2013

Of all the possible ways of beginning a discussion of contemporary political 5 possibilities and necessities, I have so far shaped my framing of the problem I 6 want to address so as to insist that modern political life is formally organized 7 in relation to the claims and capacities of the sovereign state and the system 8 of sovereign states: to both, though ambivalently, in ways that produce both 9 fundamental conflicts, in principle and in practice, and multiple negotiations, 10 reconciliations and accommodations of conflicting principles and practices. It 11 is not organized in relation to either the sovereign state or the system of 12 sovereign states. Or perhaps it is better to say that it is not organized in rela- 13 tion to either one or the other, except when modern political life is in some 14 kind of crisis, when it is subject to exceptional conditions. Or perhaps it is 15 even better to say that it is not organized in relation to either one or the other, 16 even when exceptional conditions prevail, given that exceptional conditions in 17 this case only affirm the rule that modern political life is formally organized 18 in relation to the claims of both the sovereign state and the system of sover- 19 eign states. Slight variations in formulation open up immense conceptual 20 arenas in this respect: arenas that are usually understood in relation to the 21 most extreme conditions of war and the most abstract questions about when 22 and where modern political life begins and ends, and thus to the way the 23 boundaries, borders and limits of political life are supposed to work. There 24 are doubtless many rhetorical advantages to be gained from posing simple 25 existential choices between the sovereign state and the system of states, as 26 there are in posing similar choices between individual and society, liberty and 27 equality, liberty and security, knowledge and power, democracy and author- 28 itarianism, or friend and enemy. Nevertheless, rhetorical advantage is an 29 uneasy criterion of analytical coherence. 30 There is also some degree of empirical plausibility in the familiar claim that 31 the modern system of states has only a weak and largely prescriptive expression in international law and enforcement capacity, and may thus be treated 1 as a minor factor in situations shaped by state power, especially when the 2 most powerful states really start throwing their weight around. Even so, 3 modern political life cannot be understood through the discursive isolation of 4 the state from the system of states, no matter how important or powerful any 5 particular state might be, how weak the claims of international law may be, or 6 how useful it might be to examine the modern system of states as an analy- 7 tically discrete structural formation. Any attempt to do so wilfully effaces the 8 contradictory character of modern politics and encourages silence about the 9 most difficult sites, moments and practices of antagonism that must be nego- 10 tiated, through resort to violence if necessary, and which must be engaged in 11 any attempt to understand conflicts of principle and claims to sovereign 12 authority. Weakness does not automatically translate into irrelevance. Greater 13 power does not always imply greater authority. Self-assertion is no guarantee 14 of political autonomy. Boundaries, borders and limits do not necessarily have 15 minor significance. It may well be the case that statist parochialism remains a 16 powerful political commitment, but it can never be an excusable scholarly 17 strategy.1 18 Similarly, as modern political subjects, we are subject to the claims of 19 necessity and possibility made by both the modern state and the modern 20 system of states; by both the national and the international, as we are now 21 able to say having learnt, through many ecstasies and many agonies, to con- 22 flate concepts of statist sovereignty with concepts of statist nationality. 23 Sometimes these claims are reasonably consistent. Lines are then drawn 24 loosely. Upbeat accounts of an enlightened internationalism prevail, precisely 25 on the assumption that we are enabled to be both national and international – 26 both different and yet similar, both citizen in particular and human in gen- 27 eral – within the modern sovereign state that is enabled by the modern system 28 of states. This is the stance advanced in the official rhetorics of states every- 29 where. Sometimes these claims are radically incompatible, in ways that have 30 produced enduring and still active sites of controversy and conflict. Lines are 31 then drawn sharply. Difficult decisions are taken. Exceptions are declared. 32 Violence is deemed legitimate and the hard men take over. Nevertheless, while 33 we may sometimes believe that the aspirations expressed as citizens of parti- 34 cular states are not so different from the aspirations expressed by the citizens 35 of most or even all other states – aspirations we might thus consider to be not 36 only international, but even a universal expression of a common humanity – 37 sometimes our commitments as citizens of particular states override our 38 commitments to anyone or anything else. 39 In times of war, especially, the claims of any particular state are liable to 40 trump any other claim, to justify the priority of the obligations of citizenship 41 over any obligations to some broader humanity, indeed to legitimize practices 42 of inhumanity (even if under the rubric of just war), to trample over claims 43 about freedom with claims about security, to privilege friend over enemy, and 44 to celebrate one’s own modern self both over all others and over all other 45 forms of subjectivity. Limits are acknowledged, even celebrated. Violence 1 erupts, and is deemed legitimate, necessary, the only possible option available 2 for the defence of that modern self that nevertheless claims to be part of a 3 broader humanity in whose name violence may become even more inhumane. 4 Hypocrisies sprout like weeds in spring. 5 In times of peace, also, the claims of any particular state to a right of self- 6 determination express the degree to which modern political life is predicated 7 on the possibility of freedoms for particular communities, particular peoples, 8 particular territorialized spaces, not on claims made on behalf of a politically 9 undifferentiated humanity. National chauvinism rules, in peace quite as much 10 as in war, although in peace claims about the compatibility of chauvinism 11 with some sort of humanity can find plausible rhetorical ground. Limits are 12 assumed, but scarcely acknowledged. Hypocrisies are cultivated, and bred 13 into alluring displays of virtue. Scholarly parochialism is thereby vindicated. 14 The political theorists can then endlessly cultivate their discourses of solip- 15 sism, and discuss principles of justice, rights or freedoms as if the singular 16 state expresses a singular universe of politics and no-one needs to think about 17 the systemic conditions under which a political theory can begin with claims 18 about political life in a singular state, especially a singular state that has a 19 hegemonic place in the structuring of a system of states. 20 Nevertheless, in practice as well as in principle, no state can survive without 21 the system of states that enables any particular state to exist, to be recognized 22 as existing, to claim sovereignty, to nurture nations, to foster parochial scho- 23 larly traditions, to privilege its own cultures, laws, interests and security over 24 almost any other claim. As modern political subjects, we are always subject to 25 the claims of both the modern sovereign state and the modern system of 26 states, to obligations understood in terms of a particular understanding of 27 citizenship and a particular understanding of humanity, but also as always 28 potentially subject to demands that one of these sources of obligation be pri- 29 vileged over the other. Despite endless assertions to the contrary, modern 30 political life is not orchestrated through a grand choice between claims to a 31 generalized humanity and particularized citizenships, but through a double 32 claim to both humanity and citizenship: a double claim that can hold sway 33 only up until certain limits are broached and a privileging of one over the 34 other becomes unavoidable: until responsibility is taken for drawing a line of 35 radical discrimination.

Walker 2009 [R.B.J., Walker is a professor in the department of Political Science at the University of Victoria and is the chief editor of the Journal of International Political Sociology, “After the Globe, Before the world”, pg. 60 – 62]

I want to address so as to insist that modern political life is formally organized in relation to the claims and capacities of the sovereign state and the system of sovereign states: to both, though ambivalently, in ways that produce both fundamental conflicts, It is not organized in relation to either the sovereign state or the system of sovereign states. Or perhaps it is even better to say that it is not organized in relation to either one or the other, even when exceptional conditions prevail, given that exceptional conditions in this case only affirm the rule that modern political life is formally organized in relation to the claims of both the sovereign state and the system of sover- eign states. Slight variations in formulation open up immense conceptual arenas in this respect: arenas that are usually understood in relation to the most extreme conditions of war and the most abstract questions about when and where modern political life begins and ends, and thus to the way the boundaries, borders and limits of political life are supposed to work. There is also some degree of empirical plausibility in the familiar claim that the modern system of states has only a weak and largely prescriptive expression in international law and enforcement capacity, and may thus be treated as a minor factor in situations shaped by state power, especially when the most powerful states really start throwing their weight around. Even so, modern political life cannot be understood through the discursive isolation of the state from the system of states, no matter how important or powerful any particular state might be, how weak the claims of international law may be, or how useful it might be to examine the modern system of states as an analy tically discrete structural formation. Any attempt to do so wilfully effaces the contradictory character of modern politics and encourages silence about the most difficult sites, moments and practices of antagonism that must be nego- tiated, through resort to violence if necessary, and which must be engaged in any attempt to understand conflicts of principle and claims to sovereign authority Weakness does not automatically translate into irrelevance. Greater power does not always imply greater authority. Boundaries, borders and limits do not necessarily have minor significance. It may well be the case that statist parochialism remains a powerful political commitment, but it can never be an excusable scholarly strategy. we are subject to the claims of necessity and possibility made by both the modern state and the modern system of states; by both the national and the international, as we are now able to say having learnt, through many ecstasies and many agonies, to con- flate concepts of statist sovereignty with concepts of statist nationality. Sometimes these claims are reasonably consistent. Lines are then drawn loosely Sometimes these claims are radically incompatible, in ways that have produced enduring and still active sites of controversy and conflict. Lines are then drawn sharply. Difficult decisions are taken. Exceptions are declared. Violence is deemed legitimate and the hard men take over. Nevertheless, while we may sometimes believe that the aspirations expressed as citizens of parti- cular states are not so different from the aspirations expressed by the citizens of most or even all other states – not only international, but even a universal expression of a common humanity – sometimes our commitments as citizens of particular states override our commitments to anyone or anything else. In times of war, especially, the claims of any particular state are liable to trump any other claim, to justify the priority of the obligations of citizenship over any obligations to some broader humanity, indeed to legitimize practices of inhumanity ), to trample over claims about freedom with claims about security, to privilege friend over enemy, and to celebrate one’s own modern self both over all others and over all other forms of subjectivity. Limits are acknowledged, even celebrated. Violence erupts, and is deemed legitimate, necessary, the only possible option available for the defence of that modern self that nevertheless claims to be part of a broader humanity in whose name violence may become even more inhumane. Hypocrisies sprout like weeds in spring. In times of peace, also, the claims of any particular state to a right of self- determination express the degree to which modern political life is predicated on the possibility of freedoms for particular communities, particular peoples, particular territorialized spaces, not on claims made on behalf of a politically undifferentiated humanity. National chauvinism rules, in peace quite as much as in war, . Limits are assumed, but scarcely acknowledged. Hypocrisies are cultivated, and bred into alluring displays of virtue. Scholarly parochialism is thereby vindicated. The political theorists can then endlessly cultivate their discourses of solip- sism, and discuss principles of justice, rights or freedoms as if the singular state expresses a singular universe of politics and no-one needs to think about the systemic conditions under which a political theory can begin with claims about political life in a singular state, especially a singular state that has a hegemonic place in the structuring of a system of states. Despite endless assertions to the contrary, modern political life is not orchestrated through a grand choice between claims to a generalized humanity and particularized citizenships, but through a double claim to both humanity and citizenship: a double claim that can hold sway only up until certain limits are broached and a privileging of one over the other becomes unavoidable: until responsibility is taken for drawing a line of radical discrimination.

International law is hypocritically used as a justification to enforce borders whih expand violence, nationalism, and discrimination of the other

Borders Kritik - UTNIF 2013.html5

Texas (UTNIF)

Kritiks

2013

To many commentators on borders, however, they are explicitly deemed as arbitrary, contingent, or even perverse. Most importantly, international borders are not just any old boundaries. To begin with, worldwide, it is hard to find a single international boundary that has not been inspired by the example and practices of an originally European statehood. Much of this was the direct result of the imposition and subsequent breakup of European empires outside of Europe into state-like units, even if, as in Latin America, there was rather more local inventiveness than there was at a later date in Asia and Africa. But it has also been more broadly the result of the spread of a model of territorial statehood, a state-centered political economy, and the association of democracy with territorial citizenship from Europe into the rest of the world. At one and the same time, both a political ideal and set of socio-political practices, the imagination of territorial statehood rests on imitation and diffusion of established political models that define what is and what is not possible in the world at any particular time and in any particular place. European (and, later, American) cultural hegemony has thus ‘written the script’ for the growth and consolidation of a global nation-state system. The model of statehood has had as its central geographical moment the imposition of sharp borders between one state unit (imagined as a nation-state, however implausible that usually may be) and its neighbors. Previously in world history, a wide range of types of polity co-existed without any one*empire, city-state, nomadic network, dynastic state, or religious polity*serving as the singular model of ‘best political practice’. It is only with the rise of Europe to global predominance that an idealized European territorial state became the global archetype. Part of the political tragedy of the contemporary Middle East and Africa, for example, lies in the attempted reconciliation of the EuroAmerican style territorial state of sharp borders with ethnic and religious identities distributed geographically in ways that do not lend themselves to it.36 Lurking behind bordering everywhere is the effect of that nationalism which has come along with the territorial nation-state: that being perpetually in question, national identity has to be constantly re-invented through the mobilization of national populations (or significant segments thereof). Borders, because they are at the edge of the national-state territory, provide the essential focus for this collective uncertainty.37 Even as defined strictly, therefore, but also by remaining in perpetual question, state borders provide the center of attention for more generalized elite, and sometimes popular, anxiety about what still remains to be achieved by the state for the nation.38 The everyday nationalism in which borders are implicated as central moments, then, is not a project that simply takes place at the border or simply between adjacent states.39 Indeed, it is only secondarily territorial in that its origins often lie in distant centers and in scattered Diasporas where elites and activists engage in the task of defining and defending what they understand as the nationstate’s borders, the better to imagine the shape or geo-body of their nation. Consider, for example, the histories of Irish nationalism and Zionism with their origins in scattered Diasporas. State borders are not, therefore, simply just another example of, albeit more clearly marked, boundaries. They are qualitatively different in their capacity to both redefine other boundaries and to override more locally-based distinctions.40 They also have a specific historical and geographical origin. If social boundaries are universal and transcendental, if varying in their incidence and precise significance, state borders, in the sense of definitive borderlines, certainly are not. They have not been around for time immemorial.41 Attempts to claim that bordering is historic in the sense of unequivocal and definite delimitation, or to take bordering as a given of state formation are, therefore, empirically problematic. What is evident has been the need to give borders a deep-seated historical genealogy even when this is a fictive exercise.42 There is, then, nothing at all ‘natural’*physically or socially*to borders. They are literally impositions on the world. This is not to say that borders are somehow simply metaphorical or textual, without materiality; lines on a map rather than a set of objects and practices in space.43 It is more that borders are never transcendental objects that systematically secure spaces in which identities and interests can go unquestioned. We may today also be living in a time when they will begin to lose their grip because they no longer match the emerging spatial ontology of a world increasingly transnational and globalized.44 In the first place, as impositions, borders frequently transgress rather than celebrate or enable cultural and political difference. For example, the US-Mexican border cuts through historic migration fields and flows of everyday life,45 perhaps around 40 million people have US-Mexico crossborder family relations;46 the Israel-Gaza border is a prison perimeter premised on collective punishment of a population for electing rocket-firing adherents to Hamas; and most borders in the Middle East and Africa make no national or cultural sense whatsoever (e.g. the Somalia-Ethiopia border with more than 4 million Somalis within Ethiopia or the Israel-Palestine border that is constantly in mutation as Israeli settlers encroach on what had been widely agreed was ‘Palestinian’ territory). But in every one of these cases, borders play a crucial role in focusing the aspirations of the groups on either side. The perpetual instability of the border is precisely what gives it such symbolic power in the mind’s eye of the nationalists who favor/challenge it.

Agnew 2008 (John, Agnew is currently Distinguished Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). From 1975 until 1995 he was a professor at Syracuse University in New York. Dr. Agnew teaches courses on political geography, the history of geography, European cities, and the Mediterranean World., “Borders on the mind: re-framing border thinking,” Ethics and Global Politics, pg 7-8, http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/geog/downloads/856/258.pdf)

To many commentators on borders they are explicitly deemed as arbitrary, contingent, or even perverse. international borders are not just any old boundaries. it is hard to find a single international boundary that has not been inspired by the example and practices of an originally European statehood. Much of this was the result of the breakup of European empires But it has also been more broadly the result of the spread of a model of territorial statehood, a state-centered political economy, and the association of democracy with territorial citizenship from Europe into the rest of the world. , the imagination of territorial statehood rests on imitation and diffusion of established political models that define what is and what is not possible in the world European (and, later, American) cultural hegemony has thus ‘written the script’ for the growth and consolidation of a global nation-state system. Previously in world history, a wide range of types of polity co-existed without any one*empire, city-state, nomadic network, dynastic state, or religious polity*serving as the singular model of ‘best political practice’. It is only with the rise of Europe to global predominance that an idealized European territorial state became the global archetype. Lurking behind bordering everywhere is the effect of that nationalism which has come along with the territorial nation-state: that being perpetually in question, national identity has to be constantly re-invented through the mobilization of national populations Borders, provide the essential focus for this collective uncertainty. State borders are not, therefore, simply just another example of, albeit more clearly marked, boundaries. They are qualitatively different in their capacity to both redefine other boundaries and to override more locally-based distinctions They have a specific historical and geographical origin. If social boundaries are universal and transcendental, if varying in their incidence and precise significance, state borders, in the sense of definitive borderlines, certainly are not. They have not been around for time immemorial Attempts to claim that bordering is historic or to take bordering as a given of state formation are, therefore, empirically problematic. What is evident has been the need to give borders a deep-seated historical genealogy even when this is a fictive exercise. There is nothing ‘natural’*physically or socially*to borders. They are literally impositions on the world. borders are never transcendental objects that systematically secure spaces in which identities and interests can go unquestioned. borders frequently transgress rather than celebrate or enable cultural and political difference. the US-Mexican border cuts through historic migration fields and flows of everyday life the Israel-Gaza border is a prison perimeter premised on collective punishment of a population for electing rocket-firing adherents to Hamas; and most borders in the Middle East and Africa make no national or cultural sense whatsoever (e.g. the Somalia-Ethiopia border with more than 4 million Somalis within Ethiopia The perpetual instability of the border is precisely what gives it such symbolic power in the mind’s eye of the nationalists who favor/challenge it.

The idea of the border is not a historic concept – rather, boundaries are a result of European influence in the global sphere. They are completely artificial constructions that are not necessarily effective. This is exemplified by borders such as the Somali-Ethiopia border, where millions of Somalis live in Ethiopia despite a boundary

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Many of the articles in this special section inquire into the new spatial/geopolitical formulations of the state which can be understood as bringing together transnational policy processes and place-bound political dynamics. The transnationalisation of state spaces, which is often understood as being associated with the spread of neoliberal political rationality, has challenged scholars to rethink the often taken-for-granted distinctions between the domestic and international or the geopolitical and the geoeconomic. Consider, for instance, the ongoing competitiveness indexing and country benchmarking which are prepared by international, specialised organisations and companies. They can be seen as practices of global governance which seek to govern the “behaviour” of states in the wider geopolitical and geo-economic landscape through a particular neoliberal rationality of government.23 The currently mushrooming research which brings together policy transfer, the formation of global governmentality and transnational policy processes and state spatial transformation has been particularly interested in the recent processes of market-oriented regulatory restructuring in different geographical contexts and across policy fields.24 The neoliberalisation of the state can be considered as referring to the ongoing efforts to “re-create” the state as a socio-economic-political institution with an enterprise form. In his article, Mikko Joronen delves through a set of philosophical texts by authors such as Michel Foucault and Martin Heidegger, and conceptualises the emergence of a sort of “violent” neoliberal geo-polity in which virtually all resources, whether these are “human” or “natural”, are increasingly set under the calculative techniques of the market as if the resources were inescapably exploitable objects. The increasingly complex geopolitical agency involved in the operation of transnational power within states merits scholarly reflection. The theme of transnationalisation is explicitly taken up in Jouni Häkli’s paper which develops a Bourdieu-inspired field conceptual perspective to study the “actually existing” transnational policy processes within which state spatial transformation occurs. Häkli’s methodological paper offers conceptual tools for those who are interested in going beyond the dichotomies of the transnational/local/national in an empirical investigation of changing state spaces. The recent governmental interventions which are predicated on neoliberal rationality associated with a particular type of political-economic knowledge may also be read as new modalities for producing the political. The neoliberal, or what Sami Moisio and Anssi Paasi suggest is better defined as the Porterian-Floridian political rationality, does not entail the replacement of the territorial state by the relational economic spaces but rather a qualitative re-composition of the two. The authors problematise the distinction between the geopolitical and geo-economic social against the development trajectories of the Finnish state space. Moisio and Paasi’s investigation of the changing state spaces in Finland highlights the process of unravelling the inherited spatial formations of the state and how they have been conditioned by place-specific political dynamics, and that the Finnish context also displays a peculiar immunity to neoliberal pressures. The Finnish case is also scrutinised by Toni Ahlqvist, who examines how the future of the state is increasingly imagined as a sort of corporation-polity, and how this geoeconomic vision is predicated upon a will to generate new entrepreneurial “state-citizens” – denoting an attempt to bring into existence new “useful” subjectivities for the operation of the state.

Moisio & Paasi 13 [Sami & Asssi, Regional Development and Regional Policy- Department of Geography, University of Oulu, Finland, Regional Geography, Geopolitics, 18:2, 255-266, DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2012.738729]

The transnationalisation of state spaces, which is often understood as being associated with the spread of neoliberal political rationality, has challenged scholars to rethink the often taken-for-granted distinctions between the domestic and international or the geopolitical and the geoeconomic the ongoing competitiveness indexing and country benchmarking are prepared by international, specialised organisations and companies. They can be seen as practices of global governance which seek to govern the “behaviour” of states in the wider geopolitical and geo-economic landscape through a particular neoliberal rationality of government The neoliberalisation of the state can be considered as referring to the ongoing efforts to “re-create” the state as a socio-economic-political institution with an enterprise form Joronen conceptualises the emergence of a sort of “violent” neoliberal geo-polity in which virtually all resources, whether these are “human” or “natural”, are increasingly set under the calculative techniques of the market as if the resources were inescapably exploitable objects The increasingly complex geopolitical agency involved in the operation of transnational power within states merits scholarly reflection. The recent governmental interventions which are predicated on neoliberal rationality associated with a particular type of political-economic knowledge may also be read as new modalities for producing the political. The neoliberal is better defined as the Porterian-Floridian political rationality, does not entail the replacement of the territorial state by the relational economic spaces but rather a qualitative re-composition of the two authors problematise the distinction between the geopolitical and geo-economic social against the development trajectories geoeconomic vision is predicated upon a will to generate new entrepreneurial “state-citizens” an attempt to bring into existence new “useful” subjectivities for the operation of the state.

State spaces and borders bring about the violent conceptualization of neoliberal policies

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Heidegger’s notion of massive and gigantic spread of enframing as a par- ticular ontological assembling of things apparently extends the discussion of neoliberalisation from the production of subjectivity to the question con- cerning the revealing of the real as such. Which role the state then has in proportion to the implementation of the logic of revealing intrinsic to the neoliberal governmentality? Foucault’s notion of governmentality evidently brings together two aspects of government: the government of everyday conducts of individuals and the government of the conducts of entire pop- ulations. Rather than a set of single doctrines and rules, governmentality denotes an entire ethos of government. Neoliberal form of governmentality, thus, does not indicate a government where some dominant force, such as the state, has a direct control over the individual conducts, but those con- ditions out of which certain practices become more rational to choose than others. Neoliberalisation favours rational choice and cost-benefit calculations not by forcing individuals to act in certain ways, but by creating condi- tions that encourage, reinforce and necessitate particular conducts as rational behaviour.39 Neoliberal governmentality has hence created an entirely new form of power, which is not based on the state’s sovereign power to control its population and territory, but on a use of more positive ways of regulating and rationalising individual conducts. Downloaded by [University of Chicago Library] at 18:46 27 July 2013 Conceptualising New Modes of State Governmentality 363 Accordingly, the process of neoliberalisation has not lead to the degra- dation of state power, but has taken place particularly through the reforms of state government. Although in a world of global flows the state has become inextricably tied to the changes that cannot be replied through the tradi- tional forms of state sovereignty, it is precisely the state that has become a locus between the neoliberal subjectification and the networks created by the global movements of capital. As Foucault claims,40 inasmuch as the neoliberal homo economicus refers to a mode of government that needs to be maintained through the institutions, administrative practices and the internalisation of market rationalities, also the (global) space of neoliberal markets, free of monopolies and interventions of the state, can only exist through the active government and legal support of the state. Neither glob- alisation of neoliberal markets nor the government of the everyday life of individuals erodes the state or turns it into what Thrift calls the ‘phan- tom state’ – a state based on communicative power of electronic networks and few selected glocalities, such as the world cities, driven by the money power.41 Neoliberalisation is rather in need of the state, not so much of the sovereign power of the state, but of the state institutions and practices de- politicising the population through the survival strategies, which encourage conducts where people are treated as ‘reserves of human capital’ essential for the survival of the state in the turmoil of global competition. The rationality of neoliberal governmentality consists of a new human anthropology and the support of the space of the competition, which both need to be maintained and kept viable at all levels of society through different techniques, practices, identities, and forms of visibility. The neoliberalisation of the state thus consists of a change in the way states increasingly justify their existence: through the protection of the space of the markets, by valuing the non-human entities as reserves of profits (either as a natural resource or by framing the ‘ecological’ through ‘economical’), and through the process of subjectification grounded on the human anthro- pology of homo economicus. Neoliberalisation of the state, then, denotes an increasing use of the strategies of government constituted through the particular mode of power: the strategic programming of individual conducts on a basis of economic rationality. This however, as Foucault warns us in Security, Territory, Population,42 does not mean that the sovereign and dis- ciplinary modes of power are now somehow eliminated from the world. We should not think that the disciplinary society has replaced the society of sovereignty, or that the disciplinary society is now being entirely elimi- nated by the rise of the society of governmental management, but instead to explore the complex ways of their “demonic combination”.43 The violence intrinsic to the neoliberal state, to its ways of economis- ing nature and the everyday life of individuals, is fundamentally based on the ontological enframing of human and non-human life through the actualisation of different (demonic) combinations of practices, materialities, Downloaded by [University of Chicago Library] at 18:46 27 July 2013 364 Mikko Joronen rationalities, power relations, and spatial formations. As Giorgio Agamben has argued, by being self-consciously Heideggerian, Foucault’s understand- ing of the historical regimes of power is grounded on a more original relation between the constituted (or actualised) forms of power and the constituting power of potentiality. While the constituting power works as a condition of possibility for the constituted modes of power to emerge, all histori- cal actualisations of power intrinsically depend on the suspension of the potentialities of constituting power, on their concealment.44 In this sense, constituting power has a similar ontological structure with Aristotle’s notion of potentiality: it maintains itself without ever fully passing into actuality, without being exhausted into actualisations.4

Joronen 2013, [Mikko, Department of Geography and Geology, Geography Section, University of Turku, Finland, “Conceptualising New Modes of State Governmentality: Power, Violence and the Ontological Mono-politics of Neoliberalism”, 3/21/13, 7/28/13]

governmentality denotes an entire ethos of government. Neoliberal form of governmentality, thus, does not indicate a government where some dominant force, such as the state, has a direct control over the individual conducts, but those con- ditions out of which certain practices become more rational to choose than others Neoliberalisation favours rational choice and cost-benefit calculations not by forcing individuals to act in certain ways, but by creating condi- tions that encourage, reinforce and necessitate particular conducts as rational behaviour Neoliberal governmentality has hence created an entirely new form of power, which is not based on the state’s sovereign power to control its population and territory, but on a use of more positive ways of regulating and rationalising individual conducts neoliberalisation has not lead to the degra- dation of state power, but has taken place particularly through the reforms of state government the state has become inextricably tied to the changes that cannot be replied through the tradi- tional forms of state sovereignty the state that has become a locus between the neoliberal subjectification and the networks created by the global movements of capital omo economicus refers to a mode of government that needs to be maintained through the the (global) space of neoliberal markets glob- alisation of neoliberal markets nor the government of the everyday life of individuals erodes neoliberalisation of the state thus consists of a change in the way states increasingly justify their existence: through the protection of the space of the markets, by valuing the non-human entities as reserves of profits and an increasing use of the strategies of government constituted through the particular mode of power: the strategic programming of individual conducts on a basis of economic rationality

Neoliberal governmentality forcibly creates conditions for the mono-ontological politics transnationally-the space of domination is no longer confined to the sovereign state-but extends to the locus of power created by neoliberal rationalism

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Applying geoeconomic arguments to free trade, Matthew Sparke describes the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as a marke- tised mode of governance.20 While NAFTA impacts borderland territoriality and influences political intervention and governance, geoeconomics analysis clarifies economic imperatives, ideas, and ideologies. Sparke suggests state actions supporting a broader neoliberal project are not solely about pol- icy changes and institutional reforms.21 In this case, geoeconomic ideologies involve the optimistic view that free market democracy provides a quick and easy path to social well-being and economic justice. Sparke believes this ideology creates false and unrealistic hopes. The dominance of neoliberal agendas also serves to discourage other options and weakens the likeli- hood of moving toward solutions that have a better track record of creating equitable and sustainable development.22 Although states often promote free trade, implementation of CAFTA appeared to weaken some Central American institutions. Economic liberalisation deemphasises the importance of the state as a provider of services or as a safety net in times of hardship. A further political consequence is the opening of domestic affairs to foreign control. While external intervention is not new in Central America, the difference under CAFTA is that foreign rights become permanent and have stronger legal backing. Enforcement mech- anisms that challenge state sovereignty have expanded, as demonstrated through processes in individual countries.

Finley-Brook 2012 [Finley-Brook, Mary, Department of Geography and the Environment, University of Richmond, VA, USA, "Geoeconomic Assumptions, Insecurity, and ‘Free’ Trade in Central America"]

While NAFTA impacts borderland territoriality and influences political intervention and governance, geoeconomics analysis clarifies economic imperatives, ideas, and ideologies. Sparke suggests state actions supporting a broader neoliberal project are not solely about pol- icy changes and institutional reforms.21 In this case, geoeconomic ideologies involve the optimistic view that free market democracy provides a quick and easy path to social well-being and economic justice. Sparke believes this ideology creates false and unrealistic hopes. The dominance of neoliberal agendas also serves to discourage other options and weakens the likeli- hood of moving toward solutions that have a better track record of creating equitable and sustainable development

The neoliberal agenda crowds our any non-market solutions and imposes the will of globalization on populations

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By securitized nationalism I am referring to the cultural–political forces that lead to the imagining, surveilling and policing of the nation–state in especially exclusionary but economically discerning ways. The increasingly market-mediated methods of such securitization often involve commercial risk management and ‘dataveillance’ strategies, but with securitized nationalism they are combined with long-standing nationalistic traditions of imagining the homeland, encoding bodies, and – in Campbell's (1998) terms – ‘writing security’ through identity-based exclusions of people deemed to be untrustworthy aliens. By free market transnationalism, by contrast, I am referring to distinctively incorporative economic imperatives that involve increasing transnational capitalist interdependencies and the associated entrenchment of transnational capitalist mobility rights through various forms of free market re-regulation. Such a regime of free market transnationalism may well be considered by many readers to be a rough synonym for neoliberalism. But here I am proposing a more conjunctural approach to theorising neoliberalism as a contextually contingent articulation of free market governmental practices with varied and often quite illiberal forms of social and political rule (see also Sparke, 2004a and Sparke, in press). This context contingent definition of neoliberalism should not be taken to imply that it is a form of rule that is all-inclusive or simply continuous with the long history and heterogeneity of capitalism itself. The ‘neo’ does mark something discrete and new historically, including, not least of all, the transnationalism of today's liberalized market regimes. While neoliberalism certainly represents a revival of classical nineteenth century free market liberalism, it is also clearly a new kind of capitalist liberalization that is distinct insofar as it has been imagined and implemented after and in opposition to the state-regulated national economies of the twentieth century. It is because such imagination and implementation have been worked out in different ways in different places that neoliberalism needs to be examined conjuncturally. The ‘Neoliberal Nexus’ referred to in the title of this paper is therefore meant to indicate this conjunctural approach as well as underlining how the Nexus program itself can be understood as an example of neoliberalization. A conjunctural approach, it needs underlining, does not foreclose the possibility of making more general claims about neoliberalism and its reterritorialization of social and political life. Thus while explaining the emergence and significance of the Nexus program as a context contingent response to the contradictory imperatives of national securitization and economic facilitation, the article still makes a claim that the program exemplifies broader changes to citizenship – most notably, new transnational mobility rights for some and new exclusions for others – under a combination of macroscale neoliberal governance and microscale neoliberal governmentality. In order to clarify this argument, I begin by explaining what I mean by neoliberal governance and governmentality and why border management can be viewed as a useful window on to the neoliberal remaking of citizenship. Subsequently, I will chart the contradictory story of the development of the NEXUS program and consider the ways in which it exemplifies both the inclusions and exclusions of neoliberal citizenship.

Spark 6, Matthew B. Sparke-Department of Geography, University of Washington, “A neoliberal nexus: Economy, security and the biopolitics of citizenship on the border” Political Geography Volume 25, Issue 2, February 2006, Pages 151–180

. The increasingly market-mediated methods of such securitization often involve commercial risk management and ‘dataveillance’ strategies, but with securitized nationalism they are combined with long-standing nationalistic traditions of imagining the homeland, encoding bodies, ‘writing security’ through identity-based exclusions of people deemed to be untrustworthy aliens. Such a regime of free market transnationalism may well be considered by many readers to be a rough synonym for neoliberalism. The ‘neo’ does mark something discrete and new historically, including, not least of all, the transnationalism of today's liberalized market regimes. The ‘Neoliberal Nexus’ referred to in the title of this paper is therefore meant to indicate this conjunctural approach as well as underlining how the Nexus program itself can be understood as an example of neoliberalization. neoliberal governance and governmentality and why border management can be viewed as a useful window on to the neoliberal remaking of citizenship. the NEXUS program and consider the ways in which it exemplifies both the inclusions and exclusions of neoliberal citizenship.

Borders are artificial products of the expanding neoliberal order

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For Michael Dillon, infusing national security decision making with risk based evaluation represents a fundamental shift in political ontology, and therefore in security professionals’ concept of the human.20 Where liberal law and disciplinary regimes revolved around various notions of an individual, whole human (defined by labour, language, or signification), Dillon argues that risk-based power/knowledge regimes model the biopolitical governance as a transactional space. In this transactional space, neither the biological species being nor the moral individual is the primary object of security professionals’ intervention. Instead, risk modelling defines this transactional space in terms of networks, associations, and patterns between digitised pieces of information. Represented by credit card transactions, travel patterns, and criminal records, life in this transactional space unfolds through the circulation of goods, the connections between people and things, and the spontaneous emergence of disruptions. More a digital aggregate than an individual, a “person” exists only insofar as s/he is related to the circulation of goods and services. The connections and associations produced by this circulatory existence map, therefore, a terrain of continually shifting possibilities.21 Seeking to calculate and control risk, homeland security has become, Dillon argues, a science of contingency, through which security professionals deploy ever more sophisticated algorithms at a shifting terrain of possibilities. As security agencies link nationality, religion, language, and dress to risk profiles, people become threatening in and through their connections to suspicious places, people, and things. Weaving risk analysis into immigration and border enforcement, these risk-based modelling practices produce a political ontology of connection, circulation and contingency, and a subject that is more a risk-pooled cohort than a whole moral individual or liberal subject.1

Martin 12-Phd In Geography @ University of Oulu (LAUREN L. MARTIN, , 25 Apr 2012, ‘Catch and Remove’: Detention, Deterrence, and Discipline in US Noncitizen Family Detention Practice, Geopolitics, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2011.554463, Accessed: 7/28/13)

national security decision making with risk based evaluation represents a fundamental shift in political ontology Where liberal law and disciplinary regimes revolved around various notions of an individual, whole human Dillon argues that risk-based power/knowledge regimes model the biopolitical governance as a transactional space. In this transactional space, neither the biological species being nor the moral individual is the primary object of security professionals’ intervention. homeland security has become, Dillon argues, a science of contingency, through which security professionals deploy ever more sophisticated algorithms at a shifting terrain of possibilities. As security agencies link nationality, religion, language, and dress to risk profiles, people become threatening in and through their connections to suspicious places, people, and things

Risked based decision making allows for biopolitical control

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And ultimately, the military mentality behind the construction of the city colonized other dimensions of social and cultural life: "The defensive imagination, applied to securing the impregnability of the fortress, was translated into a mental habit of accounting and enclosing which eventually pervaded the approach to every human endeavor."35 The fabled enemy at the gates, who was far more figurable for those in the Renaissance than to contemporaries, is still motivating today's militarized cartography. Now topographical calculations produce the programming and direction finding for intercontinental missiles, rather than for designing cities as fortresses. The speed with which and directions from which destruction can be delivered have outmoded visible defenses. Indeed, time and the technology of remote vision have almost wholly displaced geographic extension in military significance. And, accordingly, defenses have been dematerialized: radar and other visioning technologies replace walls and other material defenses.36 Accompanying the dematerialization of defenses has been a change in the structure of decision making. With the displacement of traditional geographical inhibitions and the "dwindling of the last commodity: duration,"37 logistically oriented decision-making procedures, which depend on electronic information systems, displace political processes such as those described by Thucydides.38 Certainly logistical systems are not randomly deployed. They function as an adjunct to already-determined, often historically conceived, threats. For the contemporary United States, for example, there is a rough (although lately unstable) cartography of danger. The geopolitical world at any given moment is divided into friends and potential foes, and violence is expected more from some quarters than from others.

Shapiro 97 (Prof of PoliSci @ Hawaii, Violent Cartographers, pages 85-86)

the military mentality behind the construction of the city colonized other dimensions of social and cultural life: "The defensive imagination was translated into a mental habit of accounting and enclosing which eventually pervaded the approach to every human endeavor The fabled enemy at the gates is still motivating today's militarized cartography The speed with which and directions from which destruction can be delivered have outmoded visible defenses. time and the technology of remote vision have almost wholly displaced geographic extension in military significance radar and other visioning technologies replace walls and other material defenses With the displacement of traditional geographical inhibitions and the "dwindling of the last commodity: duration logistically oriented decision-making procedures, which depend on electronic information systems, displace political processes such as those described by Thucydides They function as an adjunct to already-determined, often historically conceived, threat For the contemporary United States there is a rough ) cartography of danger The geopolitical world at any given moment is divided into friends and potential foes, and violence is expected more from some quarters than from others.

Advancements in surveillance technology create threats based on historically conceived “Others”

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Taking my cue from Foucault's own work on the so-called biopolitical production of self-governing citizen-subjects in modern prisons, clinics, classrooms and so on, my suggestion in what follows is that we can usefully examine the context contingent transnationalization of civil citizenship – including how it is shaped by countervailing nationalistic forces – by focusing on the particular spaces of border management technologies. The jargon of biopolitics is useful in this respect because it points to what the recoding of citizenship through border discipline can tell us about the assumptions, attitudes, and abilities associated with the more general neoliberal refashioning of civil citizenship. Biopolitics for Foucault included both discourses about the self-governing subject and the actual production of self-governed life within particular modern spaces. Some of the governmentality literature that supposedly follows in his footsteps has not always addressed both these aspects of biopolitics. Nikolas Rose's depiction of ‘advanced liberalism’, for example, offers such an abstract discursive account of the self-government of the entrepreneurial subject that the nitty-gritty activities of biopolitical production under neoliberalism disappear from view. Partly this is because he associates neoliberalism more with ideology than government practices, and partly this appears to be because he wants to avoid an epochal account of historical transition from an age of liberalism to an age of neoliberalism. However, his disembodied account is also ironically indicative of a structuralism that he disavows. Thus, as Larner cautions, “without analyses of the ‘messy actualities’ of particular neoliberal projects, those working within this analytic run the risk of precisely the problem they wish to avoid – that of producing generalized accounts of historical epochs” (Larner, 2000: 14). Here, therefore, I want to explore the messy actualities of the development of the NEXUS lane as a way of examining in a more grounded way the convolutions, contradictions and countervailing forces surrounding the neoliberalization of citizenship in contemporary North America. In underlining the reterritorialization of the resulting civil citizenship and by therefore highlighting how the ‘new normal’ – as Bhandar (2004) calls it – of this neoliberalized citizenship is distinctively transnational in scope, I also want to point towards the parallel transnationalization of the new abnormal too. As a result, I complement and conclude this study by exploring how NAFTA region neoliberalization also entails new forms of exceptionalism: new exclusionary exceptions from citizenship that are based upon older raciological imaginations of nation, but which work through new techniques of expedited and transnationalized alienation that expel so-called ‘aliens’ as quickly as business travelers can now buy fast passage across the NAFTA region's internal borders.

Spark 6, Matthew B. Sparke-Department of Geography, University of Washington, “A neoliberal nexus: Economy, security and the biopolitics of citizenship on the border” Political Geography Volume 25, Issue 2, February 2006, Pages 151–180

we can usefully examine the context contingent transnationalization of civil citizenship – including how it is shaped by countervailing nationalistic forces – by focusing on the particular spaces of border management technologies. of biopolitics is useful in this respect because it points to what the recoding of citizenship through border discipline can tell us about the assumptions, attitudes, and abilities associated with the more general neoliberal refashioning of civil citizenship. In underlining the reterritorialization of the resulting civil citizenship and by therefore highlighting how the ‘new normal’ I complement and conclude this study by exploring how NAFTA region neoliberalization also entails new forms of exceptionalism: new exclusionary exceptions from citizenship that are based upon older raciological imaginations of nation, but which work through new techniques of expedited and transnationalized alienation that expel so-called ‘aliens’

Transnationalism is shaped by nationalistic forces that is inevitably forced with the backboned of bordering disciplne that shapes all its actions that causes exclusionary alienation

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In contrast to most migration research, critical political geography views the state, and the nation-state’s changing role in relation to transnational migration and ‘globalization’, through a very dif-ferent set of lenses (Ó Tuathail, 1996). This scholarship, inspired by variations of Foucauldian, Derridean, and feminist theories, has sought tomove beyond the ‘cult of the state’ (Perreault,2003). Whereas much classical work emphasizes states’ manifestations of centralized, sovereign power (Jessop, 1990), the growing body of criti-cal work highlights governmentality and the dis-persion of power (Mountz, 2004). For migration research, this analytical shift encourages greater attention not only to discursive productions of migrants’ bodies, national borders, and citizen-subjects, but also to the everyday mediations of exclusion/inclusion by actors involved in these circuits of migration and governance. Rather than imagining a world in which states stayed out of the way of international capital flows, much recent work has demonstrated the ways in which states continue to figure prominently, in many respects increasingly so, in determining the geographies of global migration. Both the ‘rolling back’ of many states’ social service provisions and the ‘rolling out’ of especially those state practices and regula-tions that promote corporate investment (Peck and Tickell, 2002) have come together to produce and inhibit particular kinds of migration. States pro-mote the transnational mobility of some groups of people while prohibiting or intensively regulating the border crossings of others.The practices of states with respect to both capital and labor have been far from ‘post-national’.Both sending and receiving states have tended overall to support the ‘transnational citizenship’of the globe-trotting managerial elite of major corpo-rations (Mitchell, 2004; Yeoh and Willis, 2004). Many sending and receiving states have aggres-sively also promoted the transnational migration of female domestic workers and nannies (HuangandYeoh,1996)and male low-wage contract labor-ers (Margold, 1995). The advantages of multiple citizenships are not extended to these low-wageworkers, and their marginalization within destina-tion labor markets persists as a result in part of their temporary workers status. At the same time, many states are increasingly prohibiting and regu-lating mobility across national borders, particularly in high-income destination countries and with ris-ing intensity in the post-9/11 global‘securitization’context (Nevins, 2002). Thus, as Massey (1994:149) has written: ‘Different social groups have distinct relationships to this anyway differentiated mobility: some people are more in charge of it than others; some initiate flows and movement, others don’t;some are more on the receiving-end of it than others; some are effectively imprisioned by it’. Whereas early work on transnationalism focused on the technologies and economic processes that made national financial markets global (Yeung,1998), transnational migration research has taken these dynamics as a backdrop for examining migrant communities (Yeoh and Willis, 2004).In addition, transnational migration research has focused on migrants and migrant social formations as productive of, rather than simply resulting from, the political constituencies that affect states(Hyndman, 2001). This research has asked how migrants cross, reaffirm, and rework the bor-ders marking state territorial sovereignty. Marston(2003: 634) suggests that ‘understanding the new state forms that are emerging under contemporary globalization requires not just an analysis of the state, but also an analysis of the ways in which, for instance, new identities are being constituted and regulated through and against these new state forms …’

Silvey et al. 2007 [Silvey, Rachel, PhD University of Washington, Olson, Elizabeth, University of Edinburgh, School of Geosciences, and Truleove, Yaffa, PhD Student, Department of Geography, University of Colorado, Denver, "Transnationalism and (Im)mobility: The Politics of Border Crossings"]

In contrast to most migration research, critical political geography views the state, and the nation-state’s changing role in relation to transnational migration and ‘globalization’, through a very dif-ferent set of lenses the growing body of criti-cal work highlights governmentality and the dis-persion of power For migration research, this analytical shift encourages greater attention not only to discursive productions of migrants’ bodies, national borders, and citizen-subjects, but also to the everyday mediations of exclusion/inclusion by actors involved in these circuits of migration and governance. Both the ‘rolling back’ of many states’ social service provisions and the ‘rolling out’ of especially those state practices and regula-tions that promote corporate investment have come together to produce and inhibit particular kinds of migration. States pro-mote the transnational mobility of some groups of people while prohibiting or intensively regulating the border crossings of others. Both sending and receiving states have tended overall to support the ‘transnational citizenship’of the globe-trotting managerial elite of major corpo-rations many states are increasingly prohibiting and regu-lating mobility across national borders, particularly in high-income destination countries and with ris-ing intensity in the post-9/11 global‘securitization’context Different social groups have distinct relationships to this anyway differentiated mobility: some people are more in charge of it than others; some initiate flows and movement, others don’t;some are more on the receiving-end of it than others; some are effectively imprisioned by it’ This research has asked how migrants cross, reaffirm, and rework the bor-ders marking state territorial sovereignty. suggests that ‘understanding the new state forms that are emerging under contemporary globalization requires not just an analysis of the state, but also an analysis of the ways in which, for instance, new identities are being constituted and regulated through and against these new state forms …’

Transnational movements prohibit the movement of migrant bodies across borders. Rather than increasing the fluidity of identity across borders, transnationalism exacerbates the difference between exclusion and inclusion.

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Does this mean, as some (e.g., Appadurai 1996: Part III) have claimed, that transnationalism “from above” and “from below” are ushering in a new period of weakened nationalism, a “postnational” global cultural economy? There are several reasons to doubt this claim. First, historically, states and nations seeking statehood have often kept the transnational connections of their overseas diasporas alive, as in the classical examples of the Jewish, Greek, and Armenian social formations (Tölölyan 1996). Second, and relatedly, contributors to this volume underline the continuing significance of nationalist projects and identities and their articulation with competing identities and projects, such as feminism, environmentalism and globalism in the formation of “transnational grassroots movements” (M.P. Smith 1994). These issues are thoughtfully explored in Sarah Mahler’s analysis of alternative modes of political mobilization of “deterritorialized” migrants as well as in André Drainville’s discussion of the implications of enduring national and local political identities in the new transnational political coalitions that have sprung up to resist the hegemonic ideology and austerity policies imposed “from above” by the global neo-liberal regime. Third, in the present period of mass migration many nationstates that have experienced substantial out-migration are entering into a process of actively promoting “transnational reincorporation” of migrants into their state-centered projects. Why is this so? As suggested above, global economic restructuring and the repositioning of states, especially less industrialized ones, in the world economy, have increased the economic dependency of these countries on foreign investment. Political elites and managerial strata in these societies have found that as emigration to advanced capitalist countries has increased, the monetary transfers provided by transmigrant investors have made crucial contributions to their national economies (Lessinger 1992), and family remittances have promoted social stability (Mahler 1996; M.P. Smith 1994). Thus, their growing dependence on transmigrants’ stable remittances has prompted sending states to try to incorporate their “nationals” abroad into both their national market and their national polity by a variety of measures including: naming “honorary ambassadors” from among transmigrant entrepreneurs in the hope that they will promote “national” interests vis-à-vis receiving countries; subsidizing transnational migrant “home-town” and “home-state” associations (Goldring, R. Smith, and Mahler, this volume); creating formal channels for communicating with these “constituencies” across national borders (Glick Schiller and Fouron, this volume; Guarnizo 1996); passing dual citizenship laws; and even, in the bizarre case of the state apparatus in El Salvador, providing free legal assistance to political refugees so that they may obtain asylum in the United States on the grounds that they have been persecuted by the state that is now paying their legal expenses (Mahler, this volume).

Smith and Guarnizo 98, Michael Peter Smith is a professor at the University of California. Luis Eduardo Guarnizo is a professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins. “The Locations of Transnationalism,” Transnationalism from Below, Comparative Urban and Community Research Volume 6

some claim transnationalism weakened nationalism several reasons to doubt this First historically, states kept the transnational connections of their overseas diasporas Second the continuing significance of nationalist articulation with competing identities and projects Third global economic restructuring have increased the economic dependency Political elites and managerial strata in these societies have found that as emigration to advanced capitalist countries has increased, the monetary transfers provided by transmigrant investors have made crucial contributions to their national economies

Don’t believe the hype – transnationalism is easily intergrated back into state cooridnates. 3 reasons

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Paradoxically, the expansion of transnational practices from above and from below has resulted in outbursts of entrenched, essentialist nationalism in both “sending” and “receiving” countries. In receiving nation-states, movements aimed at recuperating and reifying a mythical national identity are expanding as a way to eliminate the penetration of alien “others.” States of origin, on the other hand, are re-essentializing their national identity and extending it to their nationals abroad as a way to maintain their loyalty and flow of resources “back home.” By granting them dual citizenship, these states are encouraging transmigrants’ instrumental accomodation to “receiving” societies, while simultaneously inhibiting their cultural assimilation and thereby promoting the preservation of their own national culture.

Smith and Guarnizo 98, Michael Peter Smith is a professor at the University of California. Luis Eduardo Guarnizo is a professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins. “The Locations of Transnationalism,” Transnationalism from Below, Comparative Urban and Community Research Volume 6

, the expansion of transnational practices resulted in outbursts of entrenched, essentialist nationalism in both “sending” and “receiving” countries movements aimed at recuperating national identity are expanding as a way to eliminate the penetration of alien “others States of origin, are re-essentializing their national identity

Transnationalism backfires – Retrenches nationalism.

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As American studies scholars know well, none of the imputed attributes of the nation—the people, the language, the literature, the history, the culture, the environment—is the “pure” object that nationalisms take them to be. The notion of the transnational enables us to center certain kinds of historical events as the emphatically non-national but indisputably important processes that they are, including colonialism; the travels of the Enlightenment, [End Page 627] science, liberalism, socialism, major religions, such as Christianity and Islam; an international (sexed) division of labor; the production of migrants, slaves, coolies, and other strangers and unfree peoples as racialized minorities; resource extraction and environmental degradation, as well as the more contemporary productions of non-governmental organizations; human rights discourses; free trade agreements; refugee and migrant “crises”; and the production of national security states in a global “war on terror.” As much as it belongs to the worlds of free trade agreements and export processing zones, transnationalism belongs to genealogies of anti-imperial and decolonizing thought, ranging from anticolonial Marxism to subaltern studies to Third World feminism and feminisms of color. Transnationalism has been a diverse, contested, cross-disciplinary intellectual movement that in some of its manifestations has been bound together by a particular insight: in place of a long and deeply embedded modernist tradition of taking the nation as the framework within which one can study things (literatures, histories, and so forth), the nation itself has to be a question—not untrue and therefore trivial, but an ideology that changes over time, and whose precise elaboration at any point has profound effects on wars, economies, cultures, the movements of people, and relations of domination.

Briggs et al. 8 (Laura Briggs, Gladys McCormick, J. T. Way, chair of the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department, Assistant Professor, History, Assistant Professor of Latin American History at Georgia State University , 2008, Transnationalism: A Category of Analysis, American Quarterly, Volume 60, Number 3, September 2008, pp. 625-648, Accessed: 7/31/13)

As American studies scholars know the imputed attributes of the nation the people, the language, the literature, the history, the culture, the environment is the “pure” object that nationalisms take them to be The notion of the transnational enables us to center certain kinds of historical events as the emphatically non-national but indisputably important processes that they are, including colonialism the travels of the Enlightenment international (sexed) division of labor the production of migrants, slaves, coolies, and other strangers and unfree peoples as racialized minorities; resource extraction and environmental degradation, as well as the more contemporary productions of non-governmental organizations; human rights discourses; free trade agreements; refugee and migrant “crises”; and the production of national security states in a global “war on terror As much as it belongs to the worlds of free trade agreements and export processing zones, transnationalism belongs to genealogies of anti-imperial and decolonizing thought, ranging from anticolonial Marxism to subaltern studies to Third World feminism and feminisms of color the nation itself has to be a question—not untrue and therefore trivial, but an ideology that changes over time, and whose precise elaboration at any point has profound effects on wars, economies, cultures, the movements of people, and relations of domination.

Transnationalism allows for notions of colonialism, division of sexed labor , environmental degradation, capitalism, and national security states

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In its opposition to labor and environmental injustices, the CJM’s member organizations have mobilized an estimated 20,000 workers (Cota 2002), and its staff has participated in twenty-seven transnational corporate campaigns. Yet, the CJM’s primary functions have been to mobilize workers into an international movement for labor rights, and to articulate diverse movement interests into a common framework of grievance and action. In this capacity, the CJM has had qualified successes brokering alliances between workers and activists of different nations, alliances that have provided modest but often substantive gains for workers such as environmental health protections. The CJM thus has had the potential to build a broadbased North American labor movement. However, the CJM suffers from persistent internal conflicts over resources, strategy, and identity. It also is subject to intensive and continual opposition by government and corporate organizations bent on defending the profitability of foreign investments and trade liberalization. These latter factors thus have limited the CJM’s coherence and power. In analyzing the CJM, this research began with two questions. How is transnational civil society constructed, and what are the possibilities and problems of doing so in the era of neoliberalism? Further, what lessons does the CJM teach us regarding the ability of North American labor movements to organize cross-border movements that offer some counterhegemonic force against an increasingly neoliberal world-system? In other words, how does transnational civil society succeed or fail? In what follows, the answers to these questions will support two arguments about the CJM and transnational civil society more generally. First, the CJM faces both great problems and possibilities for reforming neoliberal capital, thus demonstrating the highly paradoxical character of transnational civil societies. This paradox exists because transnational civil society, like its national predecessors, is both enabled and constrained by liberal capitalist expansion. On the one hand, economic and cultural globalizations have provided the conditions for cross-border alliances among workers’ movements. But on the other, the inequities of economic liberalization have resulted in divisions among workers within and between nations, creating fissures over identity politics, strategic initiatives, and organizational forms that fragment and weaken transnational civil society.

Bandy 4-(JOE BANDY, graduate student in sociology at the University of California , 2004, Paradoxes of Transnational Civil Societies under Neoliberalism: The Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras, Social Problems, Vol. 51, No. 3 (August 2004), pp. 410-431, Accessed:7/31/13)

CJM’s primary functions have been to mobilize workers into an international movement for labor rights However, the CJM suffers from persistent internal conflicts over resources, strategy, and identity. It also is subject to intensive and continual opposition by government and corporate organizations bent on defending the profitability of foreign investments and trade liberalization These latter factors thus have limited the CJM’s coherence and power. How is transnational civil society constructed, and what are the possibilities and problems of doing so in the era of neoliberalism Further, what lessons does the CJM teach us regarding the ability of North American labor movements to organize cross-border movements that offer some counterhegemonic force against an increasingly neoliberal world-system? , how does transnational civil society fail the CJM faces both great problems and possibilities for reforming neoliberal capital, thus demonstrating the highly paradoxical character of transnational civil societies This paradox exists because transnational civil society, like its national predecessors, is both enabled and constrained by liberal capitalist expansion. On the one hand, economic and cultural globalizations have provided the conditions for cross-border alliances among workers’ movements. But on the other, the inequities of economic liberalization have resulted in divisions among workers within and between nations, creating fissures over identity politics, strategic initiatives, and organizational forms that fragment and weaken transnational civil society.

Transnational movements such as the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras spurs transterrioriatial degradation leading to inequalities for workers, division of labor, and weakened society

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In sum, the CJM confirms that transnational civil societies in a globalizing world, not unlike their national predecessors, represent many paradoxes. They are both enabled and constrained by a globalizing neoliberal economy. The expansion of a liberal political economy and globalizing social forces allow workers and citizens to share ideas and build transnational publics. Yet, the power and reach of corporate actors and their state allies disrupt democratic development. Socio-economic deprivation enables labor movements of different nations to coalesce around common grievances, strategies, and targets. But deprivation also excites conflicts that limit civil societies’ strengths and transformative possibilities. Further, transnational civil societies show great capacities to align grievances and broker common movement cultures of opposition. However, cultural and organizational hierarchies, and external provocateurs, may excite lingering resentments and divisive animosities among workers of different identities. Thus, if the CJM is a generalizable example, transnational civil society faces tremendous difficulties in building a counter-hegemonic opposition to neoliberal globalization.

Bandy 4-(JOE BANDY, graduate student in sociology at the University of California , 2004, Paradoxes of Transnational Civil Societies under Neoliberalism: The Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras, Social Problems, Vol. 51, No. 3 (August 2004), pp. 410-431, Accessed:7/31/13)

In sum, the CJM confirms that transnational civil societies in a globalizing world, not unlike their national predecessors, represent many paradoxes They are both enabled and constrained by a globalizing neoliberal economy The expansion of a liberal political economy and globalizing social forces allow workers and citizens to share ideas and build transnational publics Yet, the power and reach of corporate actors and their state allies disrupt democratic development But deprivation also excites conflicts that limit civil societies’ strengths and transformative possibilities. Further, transnational civil societies show great capacities to align grievances and broker common movement cultures of opposition. However, cultural and organizational hierarchies, and external provocateurs, may excite lingering resentments and divisive animosities among workers of different identities. Thus, if the CJM is a generalizable example, transnational civil society faces tremendous difficulties in building a counter-hegemonic opposition to neoliberal globalization

Even if transnationalism could be expanded it would be so entrenched in the neoliberal political economy that it would just create further conflicts

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Dependency ideas must be understood as part of the "longue durée" of concepts of modernity in Latin America. Autonomous national development has been a central ideological theme of the modern world−system since the late eighteenth century. Dependentistas reproduced the illusion that rational organization and development can be achieved from the control of the nation−state. This contradicted the position that development and underdevelopment are the result of structural relations within the capitalist world−system. Although dependentistas defined capitalism as a global system beyond the nation−state, they still believed it was possible to delink or break with the world system at the nation− state level (Frank, 1970 : 11, 104, 150 ; Frank, 1969 : Chapter 25). This implied that a socialist revolutionary process at the national level could insulate the country from the global system. However, as we know today, it is impossible to transform a system that operates on a world−scale by privileging the control/administration of the nation−state (Wallerstein, 1992b). No "rational" control of the nation−state would alter the location of a country in the international division of labour. "Rational" planning and control of the nation−state contributes to the developmentalist illusion of eliminating the inequalities of the capitalist world−system from a nation−state level.

Grosfoguel, Associate Professor at the University of California at Berkeley, Ethnic Studies Department, in ‘8[Ramon, “DECOLONIZING POLITICAL ECONOMY AND POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES: Transmodernity, border thinking, and global coloniality, http://www.humandee.org/spip.php?page=imprimer&id_article=111]

Autonomous national development has been a central ideological theme of the modern world−system since the late eighteenth century the illusion that rational organization and development can be achieved from the control of the nation−state. This contradicted the position that development and underdevelopment are the result of structural relations within the capitalist world−system. Although dependentistas defined capitalism as a global system beyond the nation−state, they still believed it was possible to delink or break with the world system at the nation− state level socialist revolutionary process at the national level could insulate the country from the global system , it is impossible to transform a system that operates on a world−scale by privileging the control/administration of the nation−state No "rational" control of the nation−state would alter the location of a country in the international division of labour. "Rational" planning and control of the nation−state contributes to the developmentalist illusion of eliminating the inequalities of the capitalist world−system from a nation−state level.

Organizing at the level of the state leaves the global capital processin place leaving in place the global division of labor

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In effect what Corbin brings into focus in the spectacle of the shipwreck is one of the constituent aspects of Western modernity: the turning of the world into picture and representation. Even in the context of the most ‘ungovernable’ of disasters (such as the storm or the tsunami) nature is rendered into a picture that at once domesticates nature by enframing it and, simultaneously, guarantees, through this process of enframing, the position of the spectator who watches the drama unfold from the safety of the shore or, as discussed below, as the magisterial viewer of a ‘wall of screens’ (Natali 2006, 100–1). The Heideggerian concept of enframing is a term that not only signifies the ‘construction of a type of framework through which something is transmuted into an object of knowledge and thereby made intelligible, but . . . a term which underscores the process by which something is summoned, ordered, objectified and made “calculable in advance”’ (Perera and Pugliese 1998, 84, quoting Heidegger 2007, 21). 32 S. In an eloquent essay written shortly after the 2004 tsunami, Asma Abbas makes a critical point that is often lost in moments of emergency and crisis where the pressures to feel, respond and act can be overwhelming: How a disaster is ascertained, named, defined and assessed involves historically sanctioned processes of representation and translation . . . The question of suffering – how to experience it, accost it, and respond to it – has repeatedly proven that the concepts and categories of dominant philosophical, religious, political, economic, hence ethical, discourses are not passive mediators between our intellect and the world, but actively construct the way we sense it in the first place . . . Asking the question of how we sense and attend, and how our senses, access, and attention are themselves sculpted, may disarm us by forcing us to acknowledge our complicity in making, defining, and producing suffering, damage, and disasters in the way we do. (Abbas 2005) Processes of conceptualization, representation and translation are central to the question of suffering: ‘how to experience it, accost it, and respond to it’. How are suffering, damage and disaster produced and made visible across different sites, and how are they made to count, to matter? Trauma in its various significations – the banal, the aesthetic, the philosophical, the medicalized, the political, the pathologized – is an essential form of currency in the torturous dialogues that make, define and delineate the contours of disaster, damage and suffering. These are constitutively geopoliticized, as they are racialized and gendered, processes of exchange. In Sivagnanam Jeysankar’s poem above, trauma is the ‘talk of the town’ between the aid organizations, volunteers and media agencies – whether from Colombo or the global North – that flood the shattered east coast city of Batticaloa, like a ‘second tsunami’, and its inhabitants, the subjects of trauma, shunted endlessly between the camps they lived in last month or last year as refugees of the war and the new camps for tsunami survivors (Jeysankar 2005). Trauma is a medium that enables dialogue and exchange; it is eminently transactable, mobile and adaptable in its circulation between the refugee camp and the disaster victims’ camp; it ramifies, with uneven meanings and effects, across and between subjects, scenes, sites, practices and relations. What are the geopolitics of the tsunami as a globalized trauma-event? Or, more precisely, how does the biopolitics of trauma, as a set of institutionalized practices for managing and ordering the life and health of populations, play out across the necropolitical terrain of global inequality and in relation to those it locates as bare life? Trauma is a discourse of multiple significations and I do not mean to deny in posing this question that the naming and identification of trauma is of unquestionable importance for many who have suffered its effects, including those affected by the tsunami. What I pursue here are certain philosophical, historical, geopolitical coordinates that locate trauma, disaster and the tortuous dialogues across the various geographies and geoimaginaries in which the tsunami is located – elemental imaginaries of land and sea; geographies of distance and proximity, danger and disaster, aid and capital; of exception and bare life, terror and the sublime. The final section of the essay turns to how these torturous dialogues of trauma and geography, disaster and geopolitics, play out in Australian responses to its surrounding region. The discussion is grounded in responses to the tsunami in and around the town of Batticaloa in eastern Sri Lanka, a place that I have returned to at different stages of my life since childhood, and where I spent some weeks a short while after the tsunami. I begin, then, with some stories of this place, Batticaloa. ;

Perera 2010 (Suvendrini Perera, Department of Communication & Cultural Studies, Curtin University, Perth, Australia, Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies Vol. 24, No. 1 page 32-33)

Even in the context of the most ‘ungovernable’ of disasters (such as the storm or the tsunami) nature is rendered into a picture that at once domesticates nature by enframing it and, simultaneously, guarantees, through this process of enframing, the position of the spectator who watches the drama unfold from the safety of the shore or, as discussed below, as the magisterial viewer of a ‘wall of screens’ In an eloquent essay written shortly after the 2004 tsunami, Asma Abbas makes a critical point that is often lost in moments of emergency and crisis where the pressures to feel, respond and act can be overwhelming: How a disaster is ascertained, named, defined and assessed involves historically sanctioned processes of representation and translation . . Processes of conceptualization, representation and translation are central to the question of suffering: ‘how to experience it, accost it, and respond to it’. How are suffering, damage and disaster produced and made visible across different sites, and how are they made to count, to matter? Trauma in its various significations is an essential form of currency in the torturous dialogues that make, define and delineate the contours of disaster, damage and suffering. These are constitutively geopoliticized, as they are racialized and gendered, processes of exchange. In Sivagnanam Jeysankar’s poem trauma is the ‘talk of the town’ between the aid organizations, volunteers and media agencies like a ‘second tsunami’, and its inhabitants, the subjects of trauma, shunted endlessly between the camps they lived in last month or last year as refugees of the war and the new camps for tsunami survivors What are the geopolitics of the tsunami as a globalized trauma-event? Or, more precisely, how does the biopolitics of trauma, as a set of institutionalized practices for managing and ordering the life and health of populations, play out across the necropolitical terrain of global inequality and in relation to those it locates as bare life? Trauma is a discourse of multiple significations What I pursue here are certain philosophical, historical, geopolitical coordinates that locate trauma, disaster and the tortuous dialogues across the various geographies and geoimaginaries in which the tsunami is located

Representations of disasters create an spectator/victim dichotomy that results in the traumatized victims being subjugated to biopolitical control for their own protection

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My hosts that day did not engage in NGO-bashing, a common-enough activity in Lanka, and one with deep roots in nativist, chauvinist and fundamentalist discourses. Reluctance to tap into these destructive rhetorics restrains many critics of NGO culture. But a young Lankan-American volunteer, Nimmi Gowrinathan, puts into words in her blog the questions that many hesitated to pose in the first months after the tsunami: Walking through rows of tents what is striking is not the living conditions which seem to lie on the border of some human rights violation. Rather, it is the similarity between these camps and those that existed last February, and the February before . . . Large sums of money flow freely into post-tsunami Sri Lanka. These same funds which are the life blood of relief, reconstruction, and rehabilitation efforts are accessed to sustain arms build ups, military development, and continued violence. The Sri Lankan government may have been war weary in early 2002 when it conceded to a bilateral ceasefire, but it was also bankrupt . . . It had neither the funds to continue the armed combat, nor to reconstruct damaged areas and serve their constituencies . . . [Today] inflated state bank accounts with minimal regulations have permanently altered the incentive structure for the government to engage in and remain committed to a peaceful solution. (Gowrinathan 2005) The resumption of the war in 2007, renewed aggression on all sides, a new campaign of bombs in Batticaloa and elsewhere: what is the relationship between the resurgent war and the millions of humanitarian dollars that flowed in with the second tsunami? The effects of humanitarian aid and NGO intervention cannot be isolated from the processes of war. At a deeper level, in more complex ways, the one reinforces the other. As Patricia Lawrence suggested a couple of years before the tsunami, in Batticaloa the ‘language of order’ employed alike by ‘the military apparatus, in the peace process and in some discourses of international non-governmental organizations’ all collude in the ‘production of killable bodies’ (Lawrence 2003, 3). I read Lawrence’s comment as a reference to the underlying structure of the camp as a space where the right to save and the right to kill may be exercised alternately or in tandem, as operations of sovereign power over forms of bare life. Refugees who are first identified as oppressed and/or traumatized increasingly constitute contemporary forms of bare life (Agamben 1998; Malkki 1995). In recent years the naming of bodies as oppressed and/or traumatized has authorized and accompanied paired practices of violence and benevolence, as in the war on terror in Afghanistan (Perera 2002; Grewal 2003). Here I consider how the discursive formation of disaster, sometimes in conjunction with that of trauma, contributes to the production of bare life, and explore how the right to save and the right to kill are interrelated modalities through which sovereign power operates over bare life (Zizek 2002).

Perera 2010 (Suvendrini Perera, Department of Communication & Cultural Studies, Curtin University, Perth, Australia, Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies Vol. 24, No. 1 page 33-34)

Reluctance to tap into these destructive rhetorics restrains many critics of NGO culture. Walking through rows of tents what is striking is not the living conditions which seem to lie on the border of some human rights violation These funds are the life blood of relief, reconstruction, and rehabilitation efforts are accessed to sustain arms build ups, military development, and continued violence The effects of humanitarian aid and NGO intervention cannot be isolated from the processes of war. At a deeper level, in more complex ways, the one reinforces the other I read Lawrence’s comment as a reference to the underlying structure of the camp as a space where the right to save and the right to kill may be exercised alternately or in tandem, as operations of sovereign power over forms of bare life. Refugees who are first identified as oppressed and/or traumatized increasingly constitute contemporary forms of bare life ). In recent years the naming of bodies as oppressed and/or traumatized has authorized and accompanied paired practices of violence and benevolence, as in the war on terror in Afghanistan Here I consider how the discursive formation of disaster, sometimes in conjunction with that of trauma, contributes to the production of bare life, and explore how the right to save and the right to kill are interrelated modalities through which sovereign power operates over bare life

Disaster assistance mimics the process of war - from rhetorical conception to policy implementation

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In the Cuban case, the United States developed a strategy that provided an important backdrop for the future of geopolitical interventions in Central America and the Caribbean. The strategy rested on five interrelated objectives. The first of these, which was basic to the others, consisted in the establishment of informal protectorates which provided a political space for internal self-government. When it was deemed necessary, as in cases of internal revolts and acute political instability, military occupation by United States forces became an option, but never the assumption of formal sovereignty. In Cuba, for example, in the early part of the twentieth century, the United States intervened militarily in 1906–9, 1912 and 1917–22 to restore order and protect ‘American interests’, while controlling revolutionary activity (Williams 1980: 138–41). Second, through trade, treaties or financial arrangements, a series of strong economic ties was woven between the United States and the dependent country. These ties were also and importantly put into place through land purchases by North Americans, so that by 1905 13,000 US citizens had bought land in Cuba worth US$50 million, much of the land being used for sugar production, and by 1913 US investments in Cuba would total about $220 million – 18 per cent of US investments in the whole of Latin America (Thomas 2001: 365). Third, by means of investment and a variety of projects of improvement – the diffusion of progress – new forms of economic and social involvement were put into place, including improvements in health care, the reform of public education and a modernizing programme of public works. This included in the Cuban example the transfer of over 1,000 Cuban teachers to Harvard for training in US teaching methods, together with the establishment by Protestant evangelists of almost 90 schools between 1898 and 1901. Fourth, there was a reterritorialization of administrative power, including the introduction of an American version of local selfgovernment, and the central problem here, as one commentator noted for the Cuban case, lay ‘in the attempt to engraft the Anglo-Saxon principle of local self-government on an Iberian system to which it was wholly foreign’ (quoted in Healy 1963: 184). Finally, through the disbandment or re-organization of particular national institutions, such as those that had been developed by the Cuban independence movement – the Liberation Army, the provisional government and the Cuban Revolutionary Party, originally founded by Jose´ Martı´ – and the initiation of processes of cultural penetration and subordination, attempts were made to Americanize the ‘subject peoples’. This attempted ‘Americanization’ of subordinated peoples went together with a protracted series of interventions, especially evident in Central America and the Caribbean. Between 1898 and 1934 the United States launched more than 30 military interventions in Latin America, and the vast majority of these interventions took place in the Caribbean basin. Most US interventions displayed a consistent pattern. Military forces would arrive and depose indigenous rulers, often with a minimum of force, install a hand-picked provisional government, supervise national elections, and then depart, mission accomplished (Smith 2000: 51–2). Apart from the three cases of the Philippines (a colony), Puerto Rico (an ‘unincorporated territory’) and Cuba (a semi-protectorate until 1934), which were specific in the sense of being acquired in the wake of the Spanish-American War, and which exhibited different mechanisms of US geopolitical power, interventions in countries to the south of the United States clearly related to Roosevelt’s invocation of an ‘international police power’, popularly known as the wielding of a ‘big stick’. The Roosevelt Corollary of 1904, as it became known, provided an instructive example of the close association between governing visions and the geopolitics of intervention. Roosevelt’s invocation of an ‘international police power’ was linked to his negative view of the ‘weak and chaotic people south of us’, who would, if need be, have to be policed in the interests of ‘order and civilization’ (quoted in Niess 1990: 76). The Roosevelt Corollary was itself linked to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which provided the initial codification of emerging US power and the first phase of containment, limited to the Americas (Slater 1999b). But there were other governing visions which emerged in the period before the Second World War which were also highly significant.

Slater, 2004 [David Slater, Emeritus Professor of Political Geography, & Associate Fellow of the Institute for the Study of the Americas at the University of London, Geopolitics and the Postcolonial: Rethinking North-South Relations, Blackwell Publishing Ltd]

In the Cuban case, the United States developed a strategy that provided an important backdrop for the future of geopolitical interventions The strategy rested on five interrelated objectives. The first of these, consisted in the establishment of informal protectorates which provided a political space for internal self-government. . In Cuba, for example, in the early part of the twentieth century, the United States intervened militarily to restore order and protect ‘American interests’, while controlling revolutionary activity through trade, treaties or financial arrangements, a series of strong economic ties was woven between the United States and the dependent country. by 1905 13,000 US citizens had bought land in Cuba worth US$50 million, much of the land being used for sugar production, and by 1913 US investments in Cuba would total about $220 million by means of investment and a variety of projects of improvement – the diffusion of progress – new forms of economic and social involvement were put into place there was a reterritorialization of administrative power, including the introduction of an American version of local selfgovernment the central problem here lay ‘in the attempt to engraft the Anglo-Saxon principle of local self-government on an Iberian system to which it was wholly foreign’ through the disbandment or re-organization of particular national institutions, attempts were made to Americanize the ‘subject peoples’. went together with a protracted series of interventions, Between 1898 and 1934 the United States launched more than 30 military interventions in Latin America, and the vast majority of these interventions took place in the Caribbean basin. Military forces would arrive and depose indigenous rulers install a hand-picked provisional government, supervise national elections, and then depart, interventions in countries to the south of the United States clearly related to Roosevelt’s invocation of an ‘international police power’, wielding of a ‘big stick’. Roosevelt’s invocation of an ‘international police power’ was linked to his negative view of the ‘weak and chaotic people south of us’, who would, have to be policed in the interests of ‘order and civilization’

Do not be fooled by their claims of progressivism, the affirmative’s policies towards Cuba serve as the velvet glove for the iron first of United States intervention – the restructuring of internal Cuban affairs has historically justified the expansion of American geopolitical influence in the region.

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Kritiks

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The process of U.S. hegemony in North American economies is not unique or unrelated to the larger workings of international order and world economy. The changing tenor of Canadian, U.S., and Mexican geopolitical rhetoric, couched in free trade and securitization, is related to the bigger project of condoning and supporting U.S. hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. It is also closely related to the larger project of globalization in which the U.S. has been a driving force during the 20th and 21st centuries (Agnew 2005). Over the past decade, the U.S. has focused closely on defining regional parameters for U.S. hegemonic influence or extraterritorial control within North America, meaning that the shape of geo-economic and geopolitical regionalization in North America and its “neighbors” (the Caribbean and Central America for example) is directly related to U.S. responses to globalization issues. Indeed, there is a large literature suggesting that hegemony is central to U.S. imperialist claims to intervention at global, hemispheric, and continental levels (Slater 2004; Agnew 2003, 2005). While originally the desire for such hegemony was couched in Cold War terms regarding the right of the U.S. to intervene in Western Hemisphere affairs in general, and the need for its neighbors to support the benevolent superpower in its bid for hemispheric security as communism was “contained,” today such grand strategies are less obviously stated. Rather than the nakedly aggressive military and economic agendas that characterized Cold War or later “Reaganomics” rhetoric, U.S. hegemony is now promoted as a civilizing mission in support of democracy, human rights, and continental (as well as global) free trade. In this sense it is not unlike the EU mission in Eastern Europe and beyond, although the EU and U.S. differ in terms of the methods they employ. In both North America and the Caribbean, Cuba has figured prominently as a marker for changing bilateral and multilateral relations with the U.S., as well as for new geopolitical discourses concerning the changing role of the U.S. in New World and global orders. For example, there has been policy convergence in the sense that increasingly hegemonic and U.S.-based attitudes towards Cuba are currently being adopted by Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). Friendly relations have been disrupted if diplomatic ties are not. But there has also been policy divergence in others, as holding out against Helms-Burton and other U.S. prescriptions for regime change in Cuba have also become normative for America’s neighboring countries. The underlying coherence, or consistent rationale for this apparent contradiction is given by the fact that in all cases the resulting convergence and divergence in policies and diplomatic relations, or compliance and resistance to U.S. insistence of economic embargo and political shunning, are consciously framed to in reference to a U.S. geopolitical rhetoric. Cuba as a field of contest, or a contested arena for U.S. intervention, and therefore contested legitimacy of U.S. hegemonic claims. Thus the real theme is the contours of resistance or support to U.S. policy in North America and the success or failure in the universalization of U.S. Cuban policy (Agnew 2005; Slater 2004; Nicol 2002b) rather than actual events in Cuba. Even as the U.S. position on Cuba (made concrete in the Helms Burton Act) continues to reinforce the strong and impermeable physical and political border the U.S. shares with Cuba, this border is not a “hold-over” from the Cold War. It is a dynamic and ongoing construction, embargo, political, and societal “shunning” on several fronts—requiring policies which construct new kinds of “walls” with neighboring countries as well as with Cuba itself. In this sense, NAFTA is critical to this process, although as Agnew (2003) suggests, more generally, the criterion for this ideological borderline are structural and historical, going back to the very nature of the state system itself. This means that in even terms of its relationship to Cuba, the apparent continuity in Cuban-American relations since the turn of the 20st century to the Post Cold War period is actually quite deceptive. Significant shifts have taken place, particularly with respect to how Cuba policy has become a political marker for compliance with U.S. strategic and economic interests among North American states, and how Cuba has itself adapted to the neoliberalization of U.S. foreign policy in terms of its own regional relationship within the Caribbean. Both of these are significant outcomes. In the case of subordinating Cuba, however, the U.S. has tackled a complex problem in that conformity to geopolitical rhetoric is now required at a continental level. This complex relationship—U.S. hegemony and North American complicity or resistance— has served to define the edges or borders of American hegemony in North America during the 21st century. Bearing this in mind, if we look at foreign policies as important functional foundations for the construction of boundaries for a 21st century U.S. political space, then it is impossible to support the idea that economic integration can proceed without significant structural change in the foreign policies of North America countries at all levels of engagement. The situation in North America suggests that clear convergences have occurred in the area of foreign policy, and that these shifts are situated in geopolitical events that have postdated the imposition of the NAFTA. Indeed, Canada, Mexico, the U.S., Caribbean countries, and Cuba have been engaged in a complex and often reactive foreign policy-making process for a number of years. While U.S.-Cuba relations remain conspicuous in much Western Hemisphere discussion and foreign policy-making analysis, Canadians, Mexicans, and Caribbean nations outside of Cuba have understood the relationship to Cuba in very different ways than their American neighbors. This has meant that Canada-Cuba relations have become part of a broader discussion about Canada-U.S.-Cuba relations, or even Western Hemisphere relations towards Cuba and the Caribbean, which continue to challenge the hegemonic perspectives of U.S. foreign policy towards Cuba. The virulent rhetoric concerning Cuba which defines much of the U.S. political position is not about Cuba per se, but about the logics of the leadership role which the U.S. has defined for itself in the Western Hemisphere, since World War II, particularly in North America and the countries immediately touching its geographical borders.

Nicol, 2011 [Heather Nicol, Associate Professor in the Department of Geography, Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, “U.S. Hegemony in the 21st century: Cuba's Place in the regionalizing geopolitics of North America and Caribbean Countries” Journal of Borderlands Studies, 23:1, 31-52, DOI: 10.1080/08865655.2008.9695687]

The process of U.S. hegemony in North American economies is not unique or unrelated to the larger workings of international order and world economy. The changing tenor of geopolitical rhetoric, couched in free trade and securitization, is related to the bigger project of condoning and supporting U.S. hegemony It is also closely related to the larger project of globalization in which the U.S. has been a driving force the U.S. has focused closely on defining regional parameters for U.S. hegemonic influence or extraterritorial control within North America, meaning that the shape of geo-economic and geopolitical regionalization in North America and its “neighbors” is directly related to U.S. responses to globalization issues. hegemony is central to U.S. imperialist claims to intervention at global, hemispheric, and continental levels today such grand strategies are less obviously stated. Rather than the nakedly aggressive military and economic agendas U.S. hegemony is now promoted as a civilizing mission in support of democracy, human rights, and continental (as well as global) free trade. Cuba has figured prominently as a marker for changing bilateral and multilateral relations with the U.S., as well as for new geopolitical discourses concerning the changing role of the U.S. in New World Friendly relations have been disrupted if diplomatic ties are not. But there has also been policy divergence in others in all cases the resulting convergence and divergence in policies and diplomatic relations, or compliance and resistance to U.S. insistence of economic embargo and political shunning, are consciously framed to in reference to a U.S. geopolitical rhetoric. Cuba as a field of contest, or a contested arena for U.S. intervention, and therefore contested legitimacy of U.S. hegemonic claims. Thus the real theme is the contours of resistance or support to U.S. policy in North America and the success or failure in the universalization of U.S. Cuban policy rather than actual events in Cuba. this border is not a “hold-over” from the Cold War. It is a dynamic and ongoing construction, embargo, political, and societal “shunning” on several fronts requiring policies which construct new kinds of “walls” the criterion for this ideological borderline are structural and historical, going back to the very nature of the state system itself. the apparent continuity in Cuban-American relations since the turn of the 20st century to the Post Cold War period is actually quite deceptive. Significant shifts have taken place with respect to how Cuba policy has become a political marker for compliance with U.S. strategic and economic interests conformity to geopolitical rhetoric is now required at a continental level. This complex relationship—U.S. hegemony and North American complicity has served to define the edges or borders of American hegemony in North America during the 21st century. it is impossible to support the idea that economic integration can proceed without significant structural change in the foreign policies at all levels of engagement. clear convergences have occurred in the area of foreign policy While U.S.-Cuba relations remain conspicuous nations outside of Cuba have understood the relationship to Cuba in very different ways than their American neighbors. Canada-Cuba relations have become part of a broader discussion about Canada-U.S.-Cuba relations which continue to challenge the hegemonic perspectives of U.S. foreign policy towards Cuba. The virulent rhetoric concerning Cuba which defines much of the U.S. political position is not about Cuba per se, but about the logics of the leadership role which the U.S. has defined for itself , particularly in North America and the countries immediately touching its geographical borders.

{**In Cuba Terror and Policy 1NC**}You should be skeptical of their engagement with Cuba – expanding American geopolitical influence in the region only serves to further the goals of US hegemony and the securitization of borders.

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To clarify the difference between colonialism and imperialism, we can follow Carl Schmitt in distinguishing between the acquisition of territory and the authoritative political ordering of space. The latter refers to the creation of what Schmitt called a Nomos or global division of spheres of influence (Grofiraiume", large spaces") within which states extend the tentacles of their power beyond their political boundaries. As Schmitt noted with respect to the Monroe Doctrine, which declared that the United States would prohibit any other foreign power from intervening in the Western Hemisphere, "every true empire around the world has claimed such a sphere of spatial sovereignty beyond its borders." In the 19th century, the United States was making a bid only to become a regional hegemon, not yet a global one. The 1939 Declaration of Panama then "forbade warring states from undertaking hostile acts within a specified security zone"-waters adjacent to the American continent-and thus effectively "extended Grof3raumth inking over the free sea." The containment doctrine after World War II subsequently "established the boundaries of...[the] informal [U.S.] empire" (Harvey 2003:40). American empire, especially since 1945, has been oriented toward a total "domination of sea and air" in the interest of the free movement of capital, commodities, and people and the stabilization of conditions within the Nomos, and not toward claims to new territory (Schmitt [1950] 2003a:281-83, 355; also Chase 2002:1-9). The existence of a dense web of U.S. military installations in more than 140 countries around the globe does not gainsay this argument because these bases are usually located within the sovereign territory of other states or carve out a small space of exception within an unpopulated foreign geobody (e.g., Guantainamo Bay in Cuba, which is itself a remnant of America's colonial acquisitions from the Spanish-American war).36 Some of the nonmilitary control mechanisms used by the United States include setting conditions for loans or investments, denying trade with the United States, granting or withholding diplomatic recognition, freezing foreign assets, training foreign police and military forces, running media campaigns, and denying recognition to the new barbarians, the nonindividualistic "Asiatic societies" and "tribal cultures of Africa" (Habermas), the morally burdened, disorderly, nonliberal, and nondecent peoples (Rawls), while tolerantly offering them the chance to regain their inherent status as equals.37

STENIMETZ 05 (George Steinmetz, Professor of Sociology at University of Michigan, December 2005, Return to Empire: The New U.S. Imperialism in Comparative Historical Perspective, Sociological Theory, Sociological Theory, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Dec., 2005), pp. 339-367, Accessed:7/30/13 )

acquisition of territory and the authoritative political ordering of space or global division of spheres of influence within which states extend the tentacles of their power beyond their political boundaries with respect to the Monroe Doctrine hich declared that the United States would prohibit any other foreign power from intervening in the Western Hemispher every true empire around the world has claimed such a sphere of spatial sovereignty beyond its borders. The containment doctrine after World War II subsequently "established the boundaries of...[the] informal [U.S.] empire American empire oriented toward a total "domination of sea and air" in the interest of the free movement of capital, commodities, and people and the stabilization of conditions within claims to new territory The existence of a dense web of U.S. military installations in more than 140 countries around the globe does not gainsay this argument because these bases are usually located within the sovereign territory of other states or carve out a small space of exception within an unpopulated foreign geobody Cuba, which is itself a remnant of America's colonial acquisitions Some of the nonmilitary control mechanisms used by the United States include setting conditions for loans or investments, denying trade with the United States, granting or withholding diplomatic recognition, freezing foreign assets, training foreign police and military forces, running media campaigns, and denying recognition

The plan is not distinct from historic efforts to contain and control the space of cuba – conditions and recognition are two sides of the same imperial coin

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The end of the Cold War reinforced the strength of the anti-Castro lobby in the U.S. With the Soviet Union removed as a major security threat, the Cuban American lobby group could focus U.S. attention more easily on what had before been “little more than a sideshow in the larger geopolitical considerations of U.S. foreign policy” (Randall 2002, 80). Anti-Castro lobby groups attempted to organize a variety of political, economic, and social interventions on the island, and more recently succeeded in raising support for economic isolation or embargo of the island in the shape of the Helms Burton Act of 1996. The Helms Burton Act tied private property rights to the achievement of democratic rights, linking the agenda of Cuban Americans (return of property after the Cuban Revolution) to the achievement of democratic rights for Cubans remaining on the island. American policy makers confess to using this as a means to “squeeze the noose” on Castro by setting up barriers to the flow of American dollars to the island (Nicol 1998, 2002). By each of these means what had previously been a Cold War based geopolitical tension between the U.S. and Cuba, has become transformed into a new, economic based U.S. foreign policy toward Cuba. Indeed, “[i]nstead of moving toward normalization...under Democratic president Clinton and a Republican-dominated Congress, [the U.S. government has] hardened its stance on Cuba, toughening existing legislation that dealt with the bilateral relationship and introducing new law designed not only to contain the involvement of other nationals” (Randall 2002, 79). This reassertion of a hard-line in the Post Cold War era was supported on many levels, including political debate that highlighted American’s vision of Cuba as a “dreary communist outpost,” or an island of victims looming larger than life by virtue of its potential nuclear threat, its socialist politics, and its lack of fundamental human rights (Nicol 1998, 2002). To the U.S., Castro’s Cuba lacked legitimacy, and as such, was portrayed in terms that were highly pejorative and not necessarily accurate (Nicol 2002b). Indeed, Daniel Fisk (2002), who as one of Jesse Helms’s staff worked on the drafting language of the Helms Burton Act, suggests that there is the added element of changing political constituency and struggle within U.S. politics that is significant to geopolitical rhetoric emanating from Washington on the issue of Cuba. American foreign policy towards Cuba, its geopolitical position and discourse, are also intimately tied to the more general landscape of partisan politics and American ideological discourses. Fisk asserts that the Cuban Democracy Act, passed in 1992, and the subsequent Helms-Burton Act of 1996 marked the ascendancy of the pro-embargo coalition in Congress in the 1990s. It “motivated established political actors to focus on what was for them a new issue: Cuba. In addition, the duality upon which both acts were premised—support for the Cuban people and pressure on the Clinton government—contained a contradiction which could be influenced by U.S. relations with other communist societies” (Fisk 2002, 97). In effect, the latter provided “codification of emerging U.S. power” through strategies of containment and isolation (Slater 2004, 44-45). The Helms Burton Act itself met with opposition in the U.S., and the Act might well have met an untimely death if the Bush administration had followed the example of the Clinton Government in continuously exempting provisions which most directly influenced those who engaged in business or owned property in Cuba—the specific group who most strongly opposed the Act because of economic opportunities lost in what was rapidly becoming one of the newest and most significant tourism destinations in the Caribbean during the 1990s. But U.S. policy towards Cuba has not changed in this respect since the Bush administration took office. This means that, overall, the story of U.S. foreign policy towards Cuba remains one of a history of the attempted “Americanization” of a subordinated peoples, a part of a larger centuries-long historical process which reflects what Slater suggests was a protracted series of interventions, especially evident in Central America and the Caribbean (Slater 2004). True, in the late 1990s a new U.S. geopolitical rhetoric towards Cuba emerged which employed a less aggressive language than previously—stressing “democratic transition” and assuring Cubans of their right to chose a new post-Castro leadership in the days since Castro’s illness and “temporary” relinquishment of power (Department of State 2004; Friedman 2005). As if to give substance to the claim of an apparent “new dialogue of increasing openness towards Cuba,” in a 2003 statement from the State Department, the new rhetoric of democracy was evoked. The State Department asserted that “U.S. policy toward Cuba is intended to encourage a rapid, peaceful transition to a democratic government characterized by open markets and respect for human rights. The policy seeks to encourage change in Cuba so that it joins the democratic hemisphere, becoming a good neighbor to other nations in the region.” It suggested that President Bush’s so-called new “Initiative for a New Cuba” (outlined in a May 20, 2002 speech) unveiled a project which will “reward even incremental moves by Cuba toward greater political and economic openness with improved relations with the U.S. and removal of some of the punitive elements of the policy. It also proposes a number of humanitarian measures” (U.S. State Department 2003). Yet in commenting upon the apparent new democracy agenda in U.S.-Cuba foreign relations, Friedman (2005) suggests that nothing has really changed. Indeed “promotion of democracy” may indeed represent “a seamless continuation of a policy which has sought to maintain U.S. and capitalist hegemony in the world.” As such, the concept of building “civil society” and “democratic participation,” as used to authorize U.S. actions towards Cuba are linked, and are reflective of larger geopolitical forces oriented towards free markets and globalization (Friedman 2005). Indeed, while it is common for U.S. policy-makers to suggest that Cuba will become “democratic,” it is equally clear that the cause for democracy within Cuba itself requires American “championship.” Such discourses are reminiscent of U.S. geopolitical discourse towards international arena like Iraq and Afghanistan, but are now seldom heard in context of political territories and targets within the Western Hemisphere in the 21st century. What this means in terms of the bigger picture is that current U.S. treatment of Cuba remains consistent with its position as a hegemon. It reflects a post-colonial, post-Cold War global domination project disguised in the language of market-oriented processes and democratic/human rights projects consistent with a late 20th century U.S. globalization agendas (Agnew 2003, 2005; Slater 2004). Yet the roots of this project go back to 19th century notions of the frontier, “manifest destiny” and self-determination in a conflicted, yet highly successful, blend of ideology and praxis. Indeed, according to Fisk (2002), the issue of U.S. geopolitical perspectives and foreign policies towards Cuba cannot be understood unless in context of the ideological politics of a more globalized U.S. foreign policy agenda.

Nicol 2008 [Heather N., Associate Professor in the Department of Geography, Trent University, “U.S. Hegemony in the 21st¶ century: Cuba's Place in the¶ regionalizing geopolitics of¶ North America and Caribbean¶ Countries,” Journal of Borderlands Studies, Vol 23 Issue 1, 2008]

what had been geopolitical tension between the U.S. and Cuba, has become into a new, economic based U.S. foreign policy toward Cuba. . American foreign policy towards Cuba, its geopolitical position and discourse, are also intimately tied to the more general landscape of partisan politics and American ideological discourses U.S. foreign policy towards Cuba remains one of a history of the attempted “Americanization” of a subordinated peoples, U.S. geopolitical rhetoric towards Cuba emerged which employed a less aggressive language than previously—stressing “democratic transition It also proposes a number of humanitarian measures “promotion of democracy indeed represent “a seamless continuation of a policy which has sought to maintain U.S. and capitalist hegemony in the world.” As such, the concept of building “civil society” and “democratic participation,” as used to authorize U.S. actions towards Cuba are linked, and are reflective of larger geopolitical forces oriented towards free markets and globalization Such discourses are reminiscent of U.S. geopolitical discourse towards international arena like Iraq and Afghanistan U S. treatment of Cuba remains consistent with its position as a hegemon. It reflects a post-colonial global domination project disguised in the language of market-oriented processes and democratic/human rights projects consistent with a late 20th century U.S. globalization agendas ), the issue of U.S. geopolitical perspectives and foreign policies towards Cuba cannot be understood unless in context of the ideological politics of a more globalized U.S. foreign policy agenda.

US policy towards Cuba such as humanitarian aid is rooted in American geopolitical ideologies which serve post-colonial US hegemonic interests

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The second topological relation of the island discernible within island studies is that it is ¶ typically held in opposition to a continent, a relation which is usually materialized as a ¶ particular mainland. In a sense, islands and continents are each other’s ‘other’ (GibsonGraham, 1998; Said, 1978). On the surface, this relationship is characterized by a difference in ¶ size: islands are small, continents are very large. However, attempting to distinguish islands ¶ from continents/mainlands in terms of absolute size of land area or population, for example, ¶ works against a relational understanding. Indeed it seems most islands invariably embrace ¶ other islands within their spatial ambits: smaller islands off their coasts; larger islands ¶ (mainlands?) to which they belong; and internal islands (of interest, conflict or other ¶ assemblages, for instance) that may exist should their boundedness be fractured (Baldacchino, ¶ 2002; Stratford, 2006). Rather, the scalar relationship between island and continent points ¶ towards relative differences and representations whereby islands are seen as necessarily ¶ smaller than continents. Indeed, islands—and their constituent residents and dynamics—are ¶ routinely perceived and expected to be vulnerable, fragile, dependent and problematic on the ¶ basis of a categorical difference that is assumed to exist between continents/mainlands and ¶ islands, and which privileges the larger land mass¶ 2¶ . The binary between continent and island is ¶ “structured by hierarchies of value, as much as size: presence/absence, ¶ sufficiency/insufficiency, positivity/negativity, completeness/lack” (Gibson-Graham, 1998: 2). ¶ Such a mix of categorical and relative evaluations positions islands as both microcosms of ¶ continents/mainlands as well as quintessentially different or particularized others.

Stratford et al. 11 [Elaine, Ph.D. Philosophy, Professor, Geography and International Studies at UTasmania; Godfrey Baldacchino, Ph.D. Sociology/Anthropology, Professor, Island Studies Program, U of Prince Edward Island; Elizabeth McMahon, Ph.D. Literature, Associate Professor, School of English, Media, and Performing Arts at U of New South Wales; Carol Farbotko, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, U of Wollongong; Andrew Harwood, Research Fellow, School of Geography and Environmental Studies at UTasmania, “Envisioning the Archipelago,” Island Studies Journal 6(2)]

the island is typically held in opposition to a continent, a relation which is usually materialized as a ¶ particular mainland islands and continents are each other’s ‘other’ On the surface, this relationship is characterized by a difference in ¶ size attempting to distinguish islands ¶ from continents/mainlands in terms of absolute size of land area or population works against a relational understanding most islands invariably embrace other islands within their spatial ambits: smaller islands off their coasts; larger islands and internal islands (of interest, conflict or other ¶ assemblages the scalar relationship between island and continent points ¶ towards relative differences and representations whereby islands are seen as necessarily ¶ smaller than continents islands—and their constituent residents and dynamics—are ¶ routinely perceived and expected to be vulnerable, fragile, dependent and problematic on the ¶ basis of a categorical difference that is assumed to exist which privileges the larger land mass binary between continent and island is ¶ “structured by hierarchies of value, as much as size: presence/absence, ¶ sufficiency/insufficiency, positivity/negativity, completeness/lack

The 1AC ignores the interconnectedness of islands – this relational framing necessitates a dynamic where the mainland dominates the island

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2013

A third topological relation is much less commonly deployed than the previous two; it ¶ foregrounds interactions between and among islands themselves. A complex and manifold ¶ lineage of real and imaginary places may be mobilized in any given instantiation of ‘island’. ¶ Yet, for various reasons—historical, geographical, political and economic—multiplicities of ¶ islands have gravitated towards some putative ‘unity’. Alternatively, an archipelagic feature of ¶ islands is exemplified in Benítez-Rojo’s (1996: 1) idea of “the repeating island”: ¶ [blockquote] In recent decades we have begun to see a clearer outline to the profile of a group of ¶ American nations whose colonial experiences and languages have been different, ¶ but which share certain undeniable features. I mean the countries usually called ¶ “Caribbean” or “of the Caribbean basin”. This designation might serve a foreign ¶ purpose—the great powers’ need to recodify the world’s territory better to know, ¶ to dominate it—as well as a local one, self-referential, directed toward fixing the ¶ furtive image of collective Being(emphasis added). [end blockquote]¶ Moreover, this Being is: ¶ [blockquote]… a discontinuous conjunction (of what?): unstable condensations, turbulences, ¶ whirlpools, clumps of bubbles, frayed seaweed, sunken galleons, crashing ¶ breakers, flying fish, seagull squawks, downpours, nighttime phosphorescences, ¶ eddies and pools, uncertain voyages of signification; in short, a field of observation ¶ quite in tune with the objectives of Chaos … Chaos looks toward everything that ¶ repeats, reproduces, grows, decays, unfolds, flows, spins, vibrates, seethes … ¶ Chaos provides a space in which the pure sciences connect with the social ¶ sciences, and both of them connect with art and the cultural tradition (BenítezRojo, 1996: 2-3; parentheses in original). [end blockquote]¶ For Benítez-Rojo, analysis of repeating, decaying, unfolding, changing islands proceeds ¶ “under the influence of this attitude” (ibid.: 3). Such a “clear outline” (ibid.: 1) remains largely ¶ under-utilized to date, and is worth further and more penetrating attention. At first glance, it is ¶ a liberating rubric of repetition that avoids categorization, one effect of which simplifies and ¶ stereotypes in order to numb and subjugate (Said, 1978). Yet there is something about the ¶ privileging of ‘repetition’ that is troubling: repetition can mean duplication, or cloning; and yet ¶ no two islands are ever alike.

Stratford et al. 11 [Elaine, Ph.D. Philosophy, Professor, Geography and International Studies at UTasmania; Godfrey Baldacchino, Ph.D. Sociology/Anthropology, Professor, Island Studies Program, U of Prince Edward Island; Elizabeth McMahon, Ph.D. Literature, Associate Professor, School of English, Media, and Performing Arts at U of New South Wales; Carol Farbotko, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, U of Wollongong; Andrew Harwood, Research Fellow, School of Geography and Environmental Studies at UTasmania, “Envisioning the Archipelago,” Island Studies Journal 6(2)]

A third topological relation foregrounds interactions between and among islands themselves A complex and manifold ¶ lineage of real and imaginary places may be mobilized in any given instantiation of ‘island’ for various reasons political and economic multiplicities of ¶ islands have gravitated towards some putative ‘unity’. we have begun to see a clearer outline of a group of American nations whose colonial experiences and languages have been different but which share certain undeniable features the countries usually called ¶ “Caribbean” This designation might serve a foreign ¶ purpose the great powers’ need to recodify the world’s territory better to know, ¶ to dominate it as well as a local one directed toward fixing the ¶ furtive image of collective Being this Being is a discontinuous conjunction of frayed seaweed, sunken galleons, crashing ¶ breakers, flying fish, seagull squawks, downpours, nighttime phosphorescences there is something about the ¶ privileging of ‘repetition’ that is troubling: repetition can mean duplication, or cloning; and yet ¶ no two islands are ever alike

Homogenizing islands saps island identities and enables domination by great powers

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The case of the indefinite detention of suspected terrorists by the United States on Cuban territory, and the legal arguments deployed for and against their release, are fascinating for thinking about the contemporary relationship between state borders, territory and law. One dimension of this relationship in the context of Guantánamo is obviously the way in which the United States government has relied upon, and attempts to maintain, the principle that limits in law and territory are coterminous (in other words, the idea that a state cannot be held legally responsible for actions that take place on another state's territory). Such a view, reinforced by military capability, has allowed for the treatment of detainees in Cuba in ways that would otherwise be considered unlawful within the traditional territorial borders of the United States. Indeed, it is because of the seemingly (p.32) anomalous nature of the naval base, with its own complicated colonial history, that detainees held indefinitely there do not have the same recourse to domestic and international law that either Cuban or American citizens enjoy. Another interesting dimension of the Guantánamo case, however, is precisely the way in which the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has sought to erode the grounds of the United States' position by mobilising international legal opinion that the relationship between law and territory makes no difference to states' obligations under human rights treaties and humanitarian law. The notion that a state is obliged to uphold international standards of human wellbeing only in relation to those within its own territory is challenged by the United Nations ruling. Rather, the argument put forward by the United Nations is that if states exert control over subjects beyond their territorial borders then, irrespective of the location of those subjects, a given state is still responsible for them under international law. The situation of detainees in Guantánamo Bay is therefore interesting because it indicates that the limits of territory are not necessarily coextensive with limits in law in contemporary political life. Indeed, the case points to a disaggregation between juridical space on the one hand and the space of the sovereign territorially delimited state on the other. Such a disjuncture, which may also apply to the United Kingdom and European Union cases as ‘offshore’ bordering becomes an integral part of homeland security, challenges dominant assumptions about the nature and location of authority in global politics as reflected in the norm of ‘territorial integrity’ enshrined in the United Nations Charter.

Vaughn-Williams 9 ( Nick, IR MA @ university of Warwick IR PhD @ Aberystwyth, “Border Politics: The Limits of Sovereign Power” pg32-33)

The case of the indefinite detention of suspected terrorists by the United States on Cuban territory, United States government has relied upon, and attempts to maintain, the principle that limits in law and territory are coterminous (in other words, the idea that a state cannot be held legally responsible for actions that take place on another state's territory Such a view, reinforced by military capability, has allowed for the treatment of detainees in Cuba in ways that would otherwise be considered unlawful within the traditional territorial borders of the United States. detainees held indefinitely do not have the same recourse to domestic and international law t a state is obliged to uphold international standards of human wellbeing only in relation to those within its own territory The situation of detainees in Guantánamo Bay is therefore interesting because it indicates that the limits of territory are not necessarily coextensive with limits in law in contemporary political life. offshore’ bordering becomes an integral part of homeland security, challenges dominant assumptions about the nature and location of authority in global politics as reflected in the norm of ‘territorial integrity’

The aff’s conception of borders justifies the continued existence of Guantanamo

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The diverse, complex and contradictory ways in which Mexico, its culture, and its peoples have been imagined, portrayed, glorified or vilified by the people of the U.S. have a long history. They began with the conflicts between the two colonizing powers, Spain and England. And they continued as the young United States expanded into territories occupied by the Indians and possessed first by Spain and later Mexico. In the process, a cultural and physical space known as the Border emerged in the nineteenth century. Ultimately, it resulted in both a physical and a psychological distancing during and because of the U.S. nineteenth-century expansion and its conquest of what is now the U.S. Southwest. For political, cultural and psychological purposes this movement of displacement rendered the region's former owners, the Mexican as 'other,'that is, the construction of a different identity seen as dissonant to monolithic Western discourses of power.1 The dynamics of "othering" finally becomes self-serving for it affirms an on going process of, in this case, Anglo identity. Constituted as cultural contestants, the Mexican became everything the Anglo was not. In their studies of Anglo attitudes towards Mexicans Carey McWilliams and Arnoldo de Leon2 present the U.S. expansionist project as an acquisition of territory justified by the mission Anglos assumed as civilizers of the hinterlands with a need to control all that was barbaric-sexuality, vice, nature, and people of color. The initial constructions were racist: that 1see Edward Said, Orienta/ism (New York: Vintage Random House, 1978)Tzetan Todorov, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other (New York: Harper & Row,1982); ; Michel de Certeau, Heterologies: Discourse on the Other (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986); Michael Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses (New York: Routledge, 1993). 2 Carey McWilliams, North from Mexico (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott,1949). Arnoldo de Leon, They called them greasers is, essential characteristics of personality, intelligence and morals were attributed to physical appearances. Mexicans were perceived in light of their differences from Anglos. Americans carried to the Southwest values constructed by the founding fathers, of English descent, male, white and Protestant-self-reliance, a puritanical morality, the erasure of the past, and a work ethic. They saw Mexicans as racially impure, descended of the Spaniards, who were contaminated by Moorish blood, and the "blood thirsty" Aztecs. " 'They are of mongrel blood, the Aztec predominating,' asserted Gilbert D. Kingsbury, writing about the Mexicans of Brownsville in the early 1860s".3 Positioned in relation to their differences to Anglos, Mexicans appeared to be dependent, resigned, complacent, not committed to improvement or progress, but rather to fun and frolic. For these expansionists "to have accepted other than 'white supremacy and civilization" , says de Leon, "was to submit to Mexican domination and to admit that Americans were willing to become like Mexicans. The prospect of being dominated by such untamed, uncivil, and disorderly creatures made a contest for racial hegemony almost inevitable." 4 Descriptions of Mexicans through the nineteenth century, some inoffensive, most virulent, are all grounded on the trope of difference, a rhetorical construct founded on paradigms of dissimilarity. The border was the line established both to delineate and inscribe that difference. Where the line is de-limited, the 'other' begins. The boundary was sacred, not to be transgressed. Yet, paradoxically, bridges and crossing passages were created as legitimate spaces where separation is established, precisely because the frontier, as de Certeau says, is created by contacts where "the points of differentiation between two bodies are also their common points.''5 In the case of the United States-Mexico border, the "contact zone" has become a "combat zone" where crossings and/or transgressions are the rule, rather than the 3 de Leon, 15. 4 de Leon, 13. 5 Michel de Certeau, "Spatial Stories" The Practice of Everyday Life exception.6 Constructions, concrete and imaginary, are established distancing the 'other' at least symbolically, and in this case, south of that de-limitation. The inhabitants of the United States continue to wrestle with that "alien territory." "South of the Borderism" is what I have called borrowing from Edward Said, the way that the United States and its peoples have come to terms with Mexico as they continuously invent an 'other' image, and defend and define their own. In their writings, and in contrast with the way Anglos constructed or invented themselves (stereotypically as morally superior, hard working, thrifty), the Mexican could in the best of cases be mysterious, romantic, fun-loving, laid back, colorfully primitive or alternatively conniving, highly sexualized, disorderly, lazy,violent, and uncivilized. 7 Hollywood appropriated all of the images, from 'the greaser' and the violent bandits, to the Latin lover and the Mexican spitfire. 8 As soon as a boundary is established, the other side becomes desirable, the threshold to cross into the unknown, the yet unexplored landscape where 'the self' is discovered and the 'other' is invented. The trope of difference becomes the figure most utilized by travellers and novelists writing about their adventures "south of the border" This trope, established from the initial moment of encounter and still prevalent today, opposes U.S. 'civilization' to Mexican 'barbarism'. It seems, however, an encounter of images where language, as a code of communication, is never or seldom mentioned, stressing and acknowledging that writers cannot (or choose not to) cross one of the main borders: the spoken code. Anthropologically we could say that such literature remains etic, and not emic, that is, the perspective is established as outside and above the culture. Paradoxically, and because of that positioning, the attraction to a regenerative vitality conceived as present within 'Barbarism' continues to seduce the traveller to the point of demarcation, both physically and psychologically, where the 'other' is found. The adventure can be positive or negative. Many times it becomes a place appropriated as material to feed the imagination back home, perceived as devoid of adventure. For Paul Theroux, the crossing resembled a descent into hell. Looking south, across the river, I realize that I was looking toward another continent, another country, another world, ...T he frontier was actual: people did things differently there ... No people, but cars and trucks were evidence of them. Beyond that, past the Mexican city of Nuevo Laredo, was a black slope-the featureless, night-haunted republics of Latin America .... Laredo required the viciousness of its sister city to keep its own churches full. Laredo had the airport and the churches; Nuevo Laredo, the brothels and basket factories. Each nationality had seemed to gravitate to its own level of competence. The frontier was more than an example of cozy hypocrisy; it demonstrated all one needed to know about the morality of the Americas, the relationship between the puritanical efficiency north of the border and the bumbling and passionate disorder-the anarchy of sex and hunger-south of it. 1 0 He doesn't stop there;Theroux's racism is rampant: Mexicans are naturally corrupt, lawless, unhygienic, a brutal and beaten people who "cruelly beat their animals." Laredo becomes a microcosm of all the United States; Nuevo Laredo not just of Mexico, but of Latin America. Mary Pratt sees Theroux's writing as exemplifying "a discourse of negation, domination, devaluation and fear that remain in the late 20th century, a powerful ideological constituent of the West's consciousness of the people and places it strives to hold in subjugation:•11 In both writings, Greene's and Theroux's, a distancing occurs, either by idealization or denigration.

Klahn 8, professor at the University of California Chicano/Latino Research Center, 2008 [Norma, “The Border: Imagined, Invented or from the Geopolitics of Literature to Nothingness”, Working Paper No.5 Chicano/Latino Research Center, clrc.soe.ucsc.edu/sites/clrcweb/files/sites/default/files/.../05_Klahn.pdf]

The ways in which Mexico, its culture, and its peoples have been vilified by the people of the U.S. have a long history. They began with , Spain and England. And they continued as the young United States expanded into territories occupied by the Indians and possessed first by Spain and later Mexico. In the process, a cultural and physical space known as the Border emerged in the nineteenth century. Ultimately, it resulted in both a physical and a psychological distancing during and because of the U.S. nineteenth-century expansion and its conquest of what is now the U.S. Southwest. For political, cultural and psychological purposes this movement of displacement rendered the Mexican as 'other , the construction of a different identity seen as dissonant to monolithic Western discourses of power.1 The dynamics of "othering" finally becomes self-serving for it affirms an on going process of , Anglo identity the Mexican became everything the Anglo was not. the U.S. expansionist project as an acquisition of territory justified by the mission Anglos assumed as civilizers of the hinterlands with a need to control all The initial constructions were racist essential characteristics of personality, intelligence and morals were attributed to physical appearances. Mexicans were perceived in light of their differences from Anglos. They saw Mexicans as racially impure, , and "blood thirsty" mongrel For these expansionists "to have accepted other than 'white supremacy and civilization" was to submit to Mexican domination and to admit that Americans were willing to become like Mexicans. The prospect of being dominated by such untamed, uncivil, and disorderly creatures made a contest for racial hegemony inevitable." Descriptions of Mexicans are all grounded on a rhetorical construct founded on paradigms of dissimilarity The border was the line established both to delineate and inscribe that difference. Where the line is de-limited, the 'other' begins. The boundary was sacred, not to be transgressed. Yet, paradoxically, bridges and crossing passages were created as legitimate spaces where separation is established, precisely because the frontier , is created by contacts where "the points of differentiation between two bodies are also their common points In the case of the United States-Mexico border, the "contact zone" has become a "combat zone" where crossings and/or transgressions are the rule, rather than the exception Constructions, concrete and imaginary, are established distancing the 'other' at least symbolically, and in this case, south of that de-limitation. South of the Borderism" is , the way that the United States and its peoples have come to terms with Mexico as they continuously invent an 'other' image, and defend and define their own As soon as a boundary is established, the other side becomes desirable, the threshold to cross into the unknown, the yet unexplored landscape where 'the self' is discovered and the 'other' is invented The trope of difference becomes the figure most utilized by travellers and novelists writing about their adventures "south of the border" This trope, established from the initial moment of encounter and still prevalent today, opposes U.S. 'civilization' to Mexican 'barbarism'. an encounter where language, as a code of communication, is never or seldom mentioned, stressing and acknowledging that writers cannot cross the spoken code. Anthropologically we could say that the perspective is established as outside and above the culture. Paradoxically, , the attraction to a regenerative vitality conceived as present within 'Barbarism' continues to seduce the traveller to the point of demarcation, both physically and psychologically, where the 'other' is found. The adventure can be positive or negative For Paul Theroux, the crossing resembled a descent into hell. Looking south, across the river, I realize that I was looking toward another continent, another country, another world, ... Beyond that, past the Mexican city of Nuevo Laredo, was a black slope-the featureless, night-haunted republics of Latin America .... Laredo required the viciousness of its sister city to keep its own churches full. Laredo had the airport and the churches; Nuevo Laredo, the brothels and basket factories. Each nationality had seemed to gravitate to its own level of competence. The frontier was more than an example of cozy hypocrisy; it demonstrated all one needed to know about the morality of the Americas, the relationship between the puritanical efficiency north of the border and the bumbling and passionate disorder-the anarchy of sex and hunger-south of it. 1 0 Theroux's racism is rampant: Mexicans are naturally corrupt, lawless, unhygienic, a brutal and beaten people who "cruelly beat their animals." Laredo becomes a microcosm of all the United States; Nuevo Laredo not just of Mexico, but of Latin America. Theroux's writing exemplify a discourse of negation, domination, devaluation and fear that remain in the late 20th century, a powerful ideological constituent of the West's consciousness of the people and places it strives to hold in subjugation:

{**In the Mexico Oil 1NC**} The construction of the US-Mexico border stabilizes American identity around the racist projection of lawlessness and barbarity onto the Mexican other in need of domination.

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Borders and border policing are important and ongoing components of immigration enforcement in the US. And, as noted at the outset of the paper, the present clampdown at the border—as with Operations Hold-the-Line and Gatekeeper, initiated in the mid-1990s—translates into large numbers of fatalities there as undocumented migrants are forced to navigate treacherous landscapes adjacent to increasingly fortified urban corridors. This said, the argument I have tried to make in this paper is that there is more going on than borders and border policing when it comes to understanding how the US is dealing with immigration enforcement. I will conclude with three thoughts about how geographers might think differently about the location and substance of US immigration enforcement efforts of relevance to the Mexico–US border.¶ First, immigration enforcement can be rethought in terms broader than the straightforward deployment of troops and immigration agents directly at the external frontiers of the state. Part of what I have tried to conceptualize above is a shift in the where of immigration policing: that US immigration policing, particularly after 9/11, and through the lens of counterterrorism, has shifted gears insofar as interior enforcement has taken on a renewed importance since that date. Indeed, the emerging complementarity between immigration policing efforts at the border and new spaces of immigration geopolitics in the interior, via local and state actors who previously enjoyed little or no power to enforce immigration law, is what I take as the most significant aspect of post-9/11 immigration lawmaking. For this reason, geographers might differentiate between border policing (ie directly at the territorial margins of the state) and a spatially looser configuration of boundary policing practices. By boundary policing I mean practices of internal organization and external bounding constitutive of state territoriality (Agnew 1997), but undertaken by a multiplicity of federal and local actors and not geographically limited to the territorial margins of the state. In other words, boundary policing might refer to border policing and practices of immigrant regulation which take place away from state borders, even if they are in the end concerned to regulate the flow of bodies across the latter—a sort of border enforcement from afar. Moreover, using the Operation Predator example discussed above, immigration-related boundary policing need not have immigration enforcement strictly speaking as its goal, even if the deportation of aliens is achieved through the latter. Indeed, boundary policing, at least in terms of the discussion above, can be conceptualized as a far-reaching mode of “extended border control” in which undocumented migrants and others are “harbored subject to the whim of the government and may be deported whenever the government so desires … a shifting, even retroactive, regime of deportation sanctions” dependent on political context rather than strictly on the transgression of immigration law (Kanstroom 2000a:1907).¶ Second, to take up immigration enforcement as such—ie in terms of localized relations of social control, which while disproportionately impacting undocumented laborers does not entail an increase in workplace investigations—also means that geographers give renewed attention to the what of immigration enforcement. Immigration law has typically (and with good reason) been side-stepped by geographers in favor of a more grounded focus on immigration enforcement practices themselves, which at least in the Mexico–US case study raise a number of immediate and pressing social justice questions. But the expansion of interior immigration enforcement in the US over the 1990s and after 9/11, as I have tried to demonstrate, has to do with the criminalization of immigration law; or, with how lawmakers have merged and then sequestered criminal law and immigration law to an exceptional space of immigration enforcement practices paradoxically beyond judicial reproach. In this sense, practices of immigration enforcement are rooted squarely in the geopolitics of immigration law, which we might define as the strategic bracketing—or placing aside—of the reach of constitutional law. This strategic bracketing ensures the expedited removal of undocumented migrants and others under criminal law charges, now increasingly at the hands of local authorities and under the generally unproblematized guise of counterterrorism. While geographers have dealt broadly with the intersection of law, power and space, this specific nexus between law and immigration enforcement—and indeed, the geopolitical role played by immigration lawmaking—requires more research.¶ Lastly, to focus on the legal basis of immigration policing brings us to the problem of the uneven spatiality of immigration enforcement. To examine the geopolitics of immigration law is at once to examine how statecraft is about increasingly irregular and uncertain localized conditions of possibility rather than about coherent, macro-scale strategies of state governance (see generally, Dahlman and Ó Tuathail 2005; Graham 2004; Warren 2002). In addition to rethinking immigration enforcement away from the border and in terms of immigration law and the exceptional practices it authorizes, I think it important to underline how immigration enforcement is being multiplied and activated unevenly across sites which, although typically thought marginal or at least tangential to geopolitical practice, are increasingly otherwise. As noted above, the post-9/11 devolution of immigration law enforcement to local proxy forces has occasioned a patchwork municipal geography of interior immigration enforcement, as certain localities sign immigration enforcement memorandums with the Department of Homeland Security while others do not.¶ But the situation is arguably more complex than simply the production of an uneven geography of participating and non-participating localities. In other words, the problem is not simply one of regional differentiation. At stake is a larger question about the myriad, conflicting scales of immigration policing in the US, a problem rarely if at all noted in the academic literature. In the case of municipal non-compliance related to immigration, federal immigration law is obstructed on the ground via municipal ordinances which—in a sort of mirroring of the exceptionality of federal immigration law—declare cities as exceptional sites exempt from federal immigration laws. While immigration law works increasingly, then, via an exception to the domestic rule of law, municipal immigration-related ordinances themselves work via an exception to immigration law. And of course this is challenged by the post-9/11 extension of federal immigration proxies into select urban centers, which brings the exceptionality of federal immigration law to bear directly on urban spaces, albeit by non-federal agents. The result is a convoluted hierarchy of interpenetrating scales of exception or exemption in relation to the law, in which the final territorial jurisdiction of immigration enforcement remains fundamentally unsettled.

Coleman 2007[Coleman, M. (2007), Department of Geography, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA, "Immigration Geopolitics Beyond the Mexico–US Border". Antipode, 39: 54–76. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2007.00506.x]

By boundary policing I mean practices of internal organization and external bounding constitutive of state territoriality but undertaken by a multiplicity of federal and local actors and not geographically limited to the territorial margins of the state. In other words, boundary policing might refer to border policing and practices of immigrant regulation which take place away from state borders, even if they are in the end concerned to regulate the flow of bodies across the latter—a sort of border enforcement from afar. Indeed, boundary policing, at least in terms of the discussion above, can be conceptualized as a far-reaching mode of “extended border control” in which undocumented migrants and others are “harbored subject to the whim of the government and may be deported whenever the government so desires … a shifting, even retroactive, regime of deportation sanctions” dependent on political context rather than strictly on the transgression of immigration law But the expansion of interior immigration enforcement in the US over the 1990s and after 9/11, as I have tried to demonstrate, has to do with the criminalization of immigration law; or, with how lawmakers have merged and then sequestered criminal law and immigration law to an exceptional space of immigration enforcement practices paradoxically beyond judicial reproach. While geographers have dealt broadly with the intersection of law, power and space, this specific nexus between law and immigration enforcement—and indeed, the geopolitical role played by immigration lawmaking—requires more research.¶ To examine the geopolitics of immigration law is at once to examine how statecraft is about increasingly irregular and uncertain localized conditions of possibility rather than about coherent, macro-scale strategies of state governance The result is a convoluted hierarchy of interpenetrating scales of exception or exemption in relation to the law, in which the final territorial jurisdiction of immigration enforcement remains fundamentally unsettled.

The process of policing immigration along the US-Mexico border reinforces otherization and alienation of migrants.

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In addition, as is clear from the American media rhetoric about ‘broken borders’, the fanatical CNN news anchor Lou Dobbs uses this phrase regularly to refer specifically to the US-Mexico border, and my second point, the map image of the borders of the state still exercises a major influence on the territorial imagination of whose security is at stake and who most threatens it.Many of us still live in a world where political borders are the most important signs on a world map. Even though airports, for example, may well be major sites for the arrival of contested migrants and possible terrorists, the most popular idea is that of the former running, swimming, or otherwise penetrating land and sea borders. This powerful image of the border as a guardian of personal security akin to a security perimeter or fence around one’s home underwrites much of the hardening of border controls around the US and the European Union in recent years.62 Yet, of course, this is totally misleading; not only in the fact that most undocumented aliens/those without papers/ clandestini are not security threats (at least not in the sense frequently considered as involved in terrorist plots) and once they arrive fulfill a variety of economic functions that would otherwise go unfulfilled, but that the overwhelming majority of terrorist attacks around the world have involved legal visitors from ‘friendly’ countries or local citizens. The notion of trespass or unregulated violation appears to provide the primary ethical basis to the imaginative emphasis on the physical border per se as‘the face of the nation to the world’, so to speak. Rarely is it immigrants tout court who are openly in question, it is those without legal recognition. Of course, it is their very illegality that is attractive to employers and consumers because of the lack of qualification for public services and the ever-present threat of deportation as a disciplinary measure. No one talks much about how difficult it usually is to be a legal immigrant. Yet, the discourse frequently is more ambiguous in simultaneously always seeming to worry about the cultural threat that foreign immigrants of whatever legal status pose to the national identity because blood and family ties often count so much (either officially or unofficially) in most definitions of who ‘really belongs’ within the national territory.63 Even in countries which officially claim more ‘open’ definitions of citizenship than is typically the norm, such as France and the US, nativist movements have little doubt about who is more and who is less deserving of recognition as French or American. Debates about who does and who does not belong draw attention to both the fluid and the contested character of national identities.64

Agnew 2008 (John, Agnew is currently Distinguished Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). From 1975 until 1995 he was a professor at Syracuse University in New York. Dr. Agnew teaches courses on political geography, the history of geography, European cities, and the Mediterranean World., “Borders on the mind: re-framing border thinking,” Ethics and Global Politics, pg 11, http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/geog/downloads/856/258.pdf)

Many of us still live in a world where political borders are the most important signs on a world map. Even though airports, for example, may well be major sites for the arrival of contested migrants and possible terrorists, the most popular idea is that of the former running, swimming, or otherwise penetrating land and sea borders. this is totally misleading; not only in the fact that most undocumented aliens/those without papers/ clandestini are not security threats but the overwhelming majority of terrorist attacks around the world have involved legal visitors from ‘friendly’ countries or local citizens. The notion of trespass or unregulated violation appears to provide the primary ethical basis to the imaginative emphasis on the physical border per se as‘the face of the nation to the world’ the discourse frequently is more ambiguous in simultaneously always seeming to worry about the cultural threat that foreign immigrants of whatever legal status pose to the national identity because blood and family ties often count so much Even in countries which officially claim more ‘open’ definitions of citizenship than is typically the norm nativist movements have little doubt about who is more and who is less deserving of recognition as French or American. Debates about who does and who does not belong draw attention to both the fluid and the contested character of national identities

The only justification for the plan is fear. Even though the most vulnerable site for entry into a nation would be airports, we are still fixated on the idea of crossing through walls, swimming, and walking. Most who perform border crossings are NOT security threats

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Long ago, Karl Marx showed how misguided it is to assume that in modernity, state power is the only source of harm to individuals and groups. In fact, the state often creates spaces in which private power can operate to produce inequality and injustice. With that observation in mind, then, we cannot look exclusively at state-imposed mobility controls in our effort to understand mobility regimes. Private force also affects mobility, and even more important, state force and private force cannot always be separated. Sometimes they interpenetrate to produce cumulative effects, and sometimes they exhibit tension with each other. Amoore (2006) and Sparke (2006) conceptualize this problem as a tension between securitization and neoliberalist globalization, which operate both to enable and to restrict movement. While the nationalistic imperative of border security urges restriction, globalization demands unrestricted movement of economic actors. Nowhere is this more vividly demonstrated than in Sparke’s (2006) observation that the very same jet aircraft used to transport “extraordinary rendition” captives to overseas torture sites was also used for elite business travel. That example shows that the two logics (securitization and globalization) are not always in conflict, but sometimes work to accommodate one another. Together they stratify social relations, producing groupings based on mobility – mobility classes, if you will – whose members are readily identifiable by their movement capability just as Marx’s social groups were defined by their relationship to the production process. In short, then, “sorting” by surveillance, in the sense used by Gandy (1993) and Adey (2004), has the effect of distributing benefits and burdens, opportunities and risks, along discernible lines that both create and reinforce social inequalities. As Salter (2006) and others rightly point out, the political technologies of biometric surveillance cause surveillance to fall more and more on bodies, but that is not the end of the inquiry. Those technologies impact upon subjects unequally, and how well individuals can negotiate the surveillance of their bodies often depends on class status. If they can declare themselves blameless and be acquitted, they may pass, but the ability to do so is often influenced by race and class, as in the case of highway checkpoints discussed above. It may be impossible for some individuals to escape the discretionary processing that occurs at checkpoints, and agents’ perception of race and class becomes an externally imposed limitation on movement -- illegitimate in legal terms, but nonetheless real. Mitchell (2005) argues that U.S. courts have aided this sorting process, facilitating the free movement of economic elites by a certain kind of pro-privacy legal ruling, keeping those who would impede commerce (such as panhandlers) at a distance. The spaces created by these decisions, which Mitchell describes as “buffer zones” and “bubbles,” allow some individuals to move without impediment, as the state will enforce protective boundaries around them. Crucially, there are two types of state actions at work here. States erect public barriers at borders and elsewhere through which people must pass (and be slowed or stopped). But states also clear away private barriers in certain cases, so that movement is even freer than it would have been if the state had not intervened. Moreover, “ordinary” people can police the movement of suspicious “others.” Amoore (2006) notes that hand-held communication devices allow reporting of suspicious persons directly to federal authorities. With this development, border control diffuses through the social field, and restriction of movement occurs at innumerable nodal points at borders and elsewhere. This diffusion and internalization of discipline recalls Foucault’s (1978) depiction of power-knowledge regimes. However, changes wrought by globalization require some rethinking of his work. Fraser (2003) notes that Foucault’s power framework relied on nation-state power practices and regulation of subjects, which Fraser terms the “fordist mode of social regulation” (2003:160). The “denationalization” and “transnationalization” we have seen in the era of “postfordist globalization,” by contrast, calls for a new analysis (2003:165). Networks, for example, are able to combine rule-governed organization with flexibility, open-endedness, decenteredness and spatial dispersion” (2003:169). A more updated analysis of power practices would consider how network configurations regulate behavior, distribute privilege, and shape subjectivity.

Pallitto and Heyman 2008 [ Robert, Professor of Political Science, Josiah, Professor of Anthropology, “Theorizing Cross-Border Mobility: Surveillance, Security and Identity,” Surveillance & Society, 5(3): 315-333]

the state often creates spaces in which private power can operate to produce inequality and injustice state force and private force cannot always be separated they interpenetrate to produce cumulative effects, and sometimes they exhibit tension with each other. a tension between securitization and neoliberalist globalization, operate both to enable and to restrict movement the nationalistic imperative of border security urges restriction, globalization demands unrestricted movement of economic actors securitization and globalization are not always in conflict, but sometimes work to accommodate one another they stratify social relations sorting” by surveillance has the effect of distributing benefits and burdens, opportunities and risks, along discernible lines that both create and reinforce social inequalities. . If they can declare themselves blameless and be acquitted, they may pass, but the ability to do so is often influenced by race and class, as in the case of highway checkpoints It may be impossible for some individuals to escape the discretionary processing that occurs at checkpoints, and agents’ perception of race and class becomes an externally imposed limitation on movement -- illegitimate in legal terms, but nonetheless real U.S. facilitat the free movement of economic elites keeping those who would impede commerce at a distance. The spaces created by these decisions, which Mitchell describes as “buffer zones” and “bubbles,” allow some individuals to move without impediment, as the state will enforce protective boundaries around them. states clear away private barriers “ordinary” people can police the movement of suspicious “others.” border control diffuses through the social field, and restriction of movement occurs at innumerable nodal points at borders and elsewhere analysis of power practices would consider how network configurations regulate behavior, distribute privilege, and shape subjectivity.

The US- Mexico border is a one sided, racist system based on a collaboration of securitization and globalization- globalization necessitates securitization while creating and reinforcing social inequalities

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The tension between trade and security at the Mexico-US border is a longstanding¶ one. However, as I have tried to argue above, the Mexico-US border¶ as a ‘security/economy nexus’ – as constituted by countervailing trade¶ and security policies – has since September 2001 become much more¶ widely acknowledged in Washington DC. Indeed, my claim in this paper is¶ that the contemporary ‘Trojan horse’ recoding of borderland neoliberalism¶ has drawn new attention to the border as a contradictory site because of the¶ way it highlights the risks posed by crossborder flows in terms of both danger¶ and prosperity. On the one hand, and certainly not a novel theme, border porosity is seen as a geopolitical threat; on the other hand, however, there¶ is a growing awareness by law- and policy-makers that a reactionary geopolitics¶ of containment at US borders is likely to threaten America’s trade¶ linkages. The result is that while the ‘security/economy nexus’ is not new, its¶ surfacing after September 2001 has become the basis for a major (emerging)¶ rearrangement of US homeland security geopolitics, specifically regarding¶ immigration enforcement at the Mexico-US border. This transformation,¶ following the provocative analysis of ‘neoliberal geopolitics’ set forth by¶ Roberts et al., concerns a geopolitics of (immigration) engagement in spaces¶ at some remove from the border and once previously at arms length from¶ the federal power to police immigration.111 We might characterise this as a¶ lateral re-siting of US immigration enforcement away from the border itself:¶ on the one hand, its localisation in US cities, which amounts to a newly¶ intensified surveillance of everyday immigrant life at the urban scale; and on¶ the other hand, its regionalisation south of the Mexico-US border, which as¶ we saw amounts to a pre-infringement, extra-jurisdictional immigration¶ enforcement regime.112Importantly, both the localisation and regionalisation of US immigration¶ enforcement have their roots in the 1990s, and like the ‘security/economy¶ nexus’ itself, are not practices that we can neatly attribute to a ‘post-September¶ 2001’ period. Nonetheless, my contention is that their extension today – as¶ ‘neoliberal rollout’ tactics, designed in effect to protect the ‘rollback’ of the¶ borderland economy engineered in the wake of the 1982 debt crisis – is an¶ attempt to deflate the tension between trade and security directly at the border.¶ Whether or not these ‘rollout’ policies succeed is not my interest. Rather, I¶ want to draw attention to the generalisation of border life throughout a¶ number of previously ‘non-border’ spaces, or in other words how the border¶ and border policing are being reproduced in sites far away from the¶ border proper.¶ This remarkable redeployment of US state power to control immigration¶ means more than a simple retention of US state sovereignty in its territorial¶ guise. Instead, somewhat paradoxically, it signals an increasingly¶ deterritorialised field of state security tactics. By ‘deterritorialised’, I here follow¶ recent theorists of ‘geopolitics in the American key’ who posit that, in¶ the contemporary ‘interregnum’ (in which state territorial power has been¶ supplemented with an abundance of other modalities of power), state borders¶ function geopolitically as fixed frontiers and as ‘thresholds or points of passage’.¶ 113 In other words, US geopolitical practice works as much by transgressing¶ and displacing state borders as it does by building them. Otherwise said,¶ US statecraft no longer accords – if it ever did – to an abstract geopolitics of¶ ‘verticality’ and ‘encompassment’ – verticality meaning from a single point¶ ‘above’, and encompassment meaning over a carefully bordered and territorially¶ contiguous bloc of space.114 Indeed, if what I have described above holds,¶ the twin processes of localisation/devolution and regionalisation/preemptionin US immigration geopolitics constitute what we might call a proxy geography¶ of immigration enforcement. Rather than a tidy sovereign territoriality of¶ power, this proxy geography – outsourced, that is, to local and regional¶ abettors whose jurisdiction over immigration could be contested – defines a¶ ‘composite’ or ‘recombinant’ national security topography, an unbound¶ ‘domestic’ and ‘international’ field of immigration policing tactics stretching¶ from the urban scale to the continental scale.115 Lahav and Guiraudon, in¶ their excellent studies of EU immigration policing, point to a similar process¶ by which state geographies of immigration enforcement in Europe have¶ been reinvented as an ‘extended playing field of local, transnational, and¶ private actors outside the central state apparatus to forestall migration’.116 At the same time, we are obliged to highlight the ongoing importance¶ of border policing per se. US lawmakers’ fixation on the border, as well as¶ the increasing number of border deaths in the new millennium, demand¶ this. So, constitutive of an emerging neoliberal geopolitics of immigration enforcement, I contend, is a nascent tripartite ‘overseas enforcement-border¶ militarisation-interior enforcement’ assemblage. The upshot is what a US¶ immigration official has recently celebrated as ‘a seamless web of enforcement from the interior of the United States to the nation's borders and out to the farthest reaches of source and transit countries that will impact the flow of illegal immigrants to the United States’.117 In this sense, the Mexico-US border is becoming as deep as it is wide.

Coleman 7 [Mathew, Associate Professor, Department of Geography, The Ohio State University, A Geopolitics of Engagement:¶ “Neoliberalism, the War on Terrorism,¶ and the Reconfiguration of US¶ Immigration Enforcement,” Geopolitics, 12:607–634, 2007]

However, as I have tried to argue above, the Mexico-US border as a ‘security/economy nexus’ – as constituted by countervailing trade and security policies – has since September 2001 become much more widely acknowledged in Washington DC. On the one hand, and certainly not a novel theme, border porosity is seen as a geopolitical threat; on the other hand, however, there is a growing awareness by law- and policy-makers that a reactionary geopolitics of containment at US borders is likely to threaten America’s trade linkages. We might characterise this as a lateral re-siting of US immigration enforcement away from the border itself: on the one hand, its localisation in US cities, which amounts to a newly intensified surveillance of everyday immigrant life at the urban scale; and on the other hand, its regionalisation south of the Mexico-US border, which as we saw amounts to a pre-infringement, extra-jurisdictional immigration enforcement regime Nonetheless, my contention is that their extension today – as ‘neoliberal rollout’ tactics, designed in effect to protect the ‘rollback’ of the borderland economy engineered in the wake of the 1982 debt crisis – is an attempt to deflate the tension between trade and security directly at the border. Whether or not these ‘rollout’ policies succeed is not my interest. Rather, I want to draw attention to the generalisation of border life throughout a number of previously ‘non-border’ spaces, or in other words how the border and border policing are being reproduced in sites far away from the border proper. Otherwise said, US statecraft no longer accords – if it ever did – to an abstract geopolitics of ‘verticality’ and ‘encompassment’ – verticality meaning from a single point ‘above’, and encompassment meaning over a carefully bordered and territorially contiguous bloc of space. the twin processes of localisation/devolution and regionalisation/preemptionin US immigration geopolitics constitute what we might call a proxy geography of immigration enforcement. Lahav and Guiraudon, in their excellent studies of EU immigration policing, point to a similar process by which state geographies of immigration enforcement in Europe have been reinvented as an ‘extended playing field of local, transnational, and private actors outside the central state apparatus to forestall migration’ I contend, is a nascent tripartite ‘overseas enforcement-border militarisation-interior enforcement’ assemblage. The upshot is what a US immigration official has recently celebrated as ‘a seamless web of enforcement from the interior of the United States to the nation's borders and out to the farthest reaches of source and transit countries that will impact the flow of illegal immigrants to the United States’.117 In this sense, the Mexico-US border is becoming as deep as it is wide.

In an attempt to resolve the security/economy contradiction of the US-Mexico border, the United States has expanded the border by localization inwardly and preemption outwardly.

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¶ Reyes and the INS won popular and political support for the work, including vast¶ increases in operational budgets to bolster security resources, including the hiring of¶ more agents and direct military assistance. From 1993 to 2000, for example, the¶ Border Patrol more than doubled from 4000 to 9000 agents while the overall INS¶ budget increased from $1.5 billion to over $5 billion in this period (U.S. Department¶ of Justice, 2003).¶ What were some of the discursive elements used as speech acts to define the¶ security problem and justify this solution? As one example, in discussions, Border¶ Patrol officials often emphasized the ‘‘disorder’’ and ‘‘chaos’’ caused by undocumented¶ workers entering the U.S.–Mexico borderlands:¶ There is a very serious havoc that can be reeked by unchecked illegal¶ immigration (Mosier, 1996).¶ The Border Patrol was clear about the rhetorical and material implications of the¶ policy:¶ Operation Hold the Line was very simpledvery symbolic of what we were¶ trying to do and the name stuck (Mosier, 1993).¶ The Border Patrol’s spokesman, representative of numerous Border Patrol agents¶ and indeed many El Pasoens, also promotes the perceived ‘‘success’’ of the recent¶ initiatives in similar terms:¶ I think people are very happy.[we] are cleaning up of a lot of problemsdthat¶ was a positive effect of having the Operation (Mosier, 1996).¶ Another Border Patrol chief responded similarly:¶ Chaos reigned on the border. Not today (Veal, 2001).¶ The discourse created a dichotomy of ‘‘chaos’’ versus ‘‘order;’’ the border needed¶ to be ‘‘controlled’’ by reconfiguring difference and separation, in effect, securitizing¶ the frontier. As Reyes (1993: 1B) put it,¶ There was a disorder here when people were running around here which is¶ scary to people.¶ Reyes was not the only elite to articulate the problem of order in these terms. In¶ dramatic rhetoric, Alan Bersin, then U.S. Attorney General’s Special Representative¶ for border issuesdformer President Clinton’s ‘‘Border Czar’’dalso expressed this¶ central component of the discursive strategy, complete with nationalist zeal:¶ [O]ur duty and responsibility is to manage the border satisfactorily, to manage¶ it away from the epic of lawlessness that has characterized that border for the¶ 150 years that the American Southwest has been a part of the United States, as¶ contrasted with the northern half of Mexico (Bersin, 1997: 16).¶ In addition to all of this, several key events that occurred away from the U.S.–¶ Mexico border in 1993 also acted to foment anti-immigrant sentiment, further¶ pushing societal/state security concerns and a national political project of border control. The first bombing of the World Trade Center in that year was linked to,¶ among others, individuals who had received amnesty or had overstayed their visas;¶ so too was the killing of two CIA employees. There was also considerable outcry that¶ year about several hundred unauthorized Chinese who attempted to reach the U.S.¶ on the Golden Venture boat. These events, and the discourse that accompanied them¶ in the popular press and in the political realm, had repercussions which fueled some¶ of border security strategies discussed above (Francis, 1993: 20; Kwong, 1997;¶ Purcell & Nevins, in this issue).¶ Public discourse and political symbolism, combined with these material developments,¶ have thus served to help reconstruct America’s southern border through the¶ securitization of migrants as a threat. Moreover, by invoking elements of national¶ myth, by drawing firm symbolic, material, and rhetorical boundaries between ‘‘us’’¶ and the alien ‘‘other,’’ and by relegating and presenting the ‘‘problems’’ of disorder¶ and poverty to the border, securitization policies had an effect on American identity¶ and the idea of separation and ultimately helped define the problem as one impacting¶ societal security.¶ As one resident put it,¶ We have to confront the fact that this isn’t one big community anymore. And¶ pretty soon, there will be a wall to remind us about that (Vela, 1993: 3).¶ While the overall border security of the 1990s has been quite visible, it remains¶ unclear if undocumented migration has been actually reduced through the new¶ measures. The U.S. Congress’ investigative arm, the U.S. General Accounting Office¶ (1997), issued a study warning INS claims that policy had reduced undocumented¶ migration were ‘‘inconclusive’’. By analysis of apprehension data, it indeed is unclear¶ if overall flows of migrants diminished because of the security build-up. Nevins¶ (2002), for example, has identified the failings of such a law enforcement scheme in¶ his analysis of Operation Gatekeeper, pointing in part to migrant adaptability,¶ strong U.S.–Mexico ties, and the free trade/security paradox.¶ Taking the discussion back to the realm of discourse and security, it becomes clear¶ that elite speech acts worked to help construct migrants as a security threat in part to¶ justify and expand border control operations. Supporting this view, Edelman (1985)¶ and Bigo (2001) have demonstrated the way in which federal agencies both receive¶ and help define a ‘‘threat’’ or ‘‘problem’’ (such as migration) and then construct¶ particular solutions. This occurs despite the fact that such threats are often complex¶ and ambiguous. Are migrants, for example, really threats or actually vital boons to¶ the economy?

Ackleson 05 Ackleson, Jason. "Constructing security on the US–Mexico border." Political Geography 24.2 (2005): 165-184. Jason Ackelson has a Ph.D. from London School of Economics and Political Science, Co-Director, and a co-director at NMSU Border Security Research Group and Frontier Interdisciplinary Experiences Program¶ and a Policy Analyst at the Office of Policy and Strategy, Research and Evaluation Division, and US Citizenship and Immigration Services

vast¶ increases in operational budgets to bolster security resources, including the hiring of¶ more agents and direct military assistance. Border¶ Patrol officials often emphasized the ‘‘disorder’’ and ‘‘chaos’’ caused by undocumented¶ workers entering the U.S.–Mexico borderlands The discourse created a dichotomy of ‘‘chaos’’ versus ‘‘order;’’ the border needed¶ to be ‘‘controlled’’ by reconfiguring difference and separation, in effect, securitizing¶ the frontier. Reyes was not the only elite to articulate the problem of order in these terms. In¶ dramatic rhetoric expressed this¶ central component of the discursive strategy, complete with nationalist zeal several key events that occurred away from the U.S.–¶ Mexico border in 1993 also acted to foment anti-immigrant sentiment, further¶ pushing societal/state security concerns and a national political project of border control. The first bombing of the World Trade Center in that year was linked to,¶ among others, individuals who had received amnesty or had overstayed their visas so too was the killing of two CIA employees. These events, and the discourse that accompanied them¶ in the popular press and in the political realm, had repercussions which fueled some¶ of border security strategies discussed above ).¶ Public discourse and political symbolism, combined with these material developments,¶ have thus served to help reconstruct America’s southern border through the¶ securitization of migrants as a threat. , by invoking elements of national¶ myth, by drawing firm symbolic, material, and rhetorical boundaries between ‘‘us’’¶ and the alien ‘‘other,’’ and by relegating and presenting the ‘‘problems’’ of disorder¶ and poverty to the border, securitization policies had an effect on American identity¶ and the idea of separation and ultimately helped define the problem as one impacting¶ societal security.¶ We have to confront the fact that this isn’t one big community anymore. And¶ pretty soon, there will be a wall to remind us about that it remains¶ unclear if undocumented migration has been actually reduced through the new¶ measures Taking the discussion back to the realm of discourse and security, it becomes clear¶ that elite speech acts worked to help construct migrants as a security threat in part to¶ justify and expand border control operations. federal agencies both receive¶ and help define a ‘‘threat’’ or ‘‘problem’’ (such as migration) and then construct¶ particular solutions. This occurs despite the fact that such threats are often complex¶ and ambiguous. Are migrants, for example, really threats or actually vital boons to¶ the economy?

Discourse based on the dichotomy of chaos and order along the border allow the region to be controlled and securitize migrants as a threat to be eliminated.

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From a historical perspective, this "integration process" should be seen as a fresh manifestation of the Monroe Doctrine; there is a direct link between NAFTA and the expansionist tradition of the United States. U.S. Vice President AI Gore vividly expressed this connection, urbi et orbi, when he compared NAFTA to the territorial acquisitions of Louisiana and Alaska made by the United States in the last century.3 In this century, NAFTA is not the first example of expansion and the Western Hemisphere is not the first theater for it, as we can see by studying the "Grand Area" worked out between Franklin Roosevelt's government and the business community before and after World War II,4 or by examining other experiences linked to adaptations of Monroe-style integration, such as those deployed by German capitalism before World War II. It is worth recalling that each interventionist phase served to stave off the successive crises as they arose. Alan Milward (1986:19) has illustrated with abundant documentation that the interna? tional aspects of a controlled economy ? exchange controls and bilateral trade treaties could easily be incorporated into an expansionist foreign policy. Fascism, the form of capitalism that prevailed in Germany during this period, indeed set out to overcome the country's internal crisis by dividing up the world and laying claim to a "new Lebensraum" in which Germany would establish "large economic areas" under the jurisdiction of the motor economy of the "zone."5

(John Saxe-Fernández, professor in the School of Political and Social Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico , 1996, NAFTA: The Intersection of the Geopolitics and Geoeconomics of Capital, Social Justice, Social Justice, Vol. 23, No. 1/2 (63-64), The World Today (Spring-Summer 1996), pp.63-78, Accessed: 7/29/13)

From a historical perspective, this "integration process" should be seen as a fresh manifestation of the Monroe Doctrine; there is a direct link between NAFTA and the expansionist tradition of the United States. n he compared NAFTA to the territorial acquisitions of Louisiana and Alaska made by the United States NAFTA is not the first example of expansion and the Western Hemisphere is not the first theater for it exchange controls and bilateral trade treaties could easily be incorporated into an expansionist foreign policy

Economic integration is an extension of imperialism – NAFTA proves

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In their devastating critique of the costly and deadly "war on drugs," Drug War Politics: The Price of Denial, Peter Andreas and his co-authors show that the "war" on illicit drugs and drug-related crime actually exacerbates addiction, abuse, and "crimes" related to this underground economy. As Andreas and his colleagues point out, much of what we fear and condemn as drug-related crime is in fact the product of our drug policies, not the substances themselves (Bertram et al., 1996: 34).¶ Similarly, Andreas successfully shows how "free-trade" market liberalization policies and increased economic integration with Mexico have fueled legal and "illegal" economic flows between both countries (see also Massey and Espinosa, 1997: 991-992). Indeed, while much of the discourse among policymakers focuses on how "free trade" facilitates legal trade and commerce, Andreas tells us that:¶ an unintended side effect of liberal economic reforms in Latin America (deregulation, privatization, and the opening up of national markets) has been to encourage the export of illegal drugs and migrant labor. This can partly be explained by simple economic logic: opening the economy through market liberalization reduces the ability of the state to withstand external market pressures -- and the high market demand for illegal drugs and migrant labor in the U.S. is certainly no exception (1995: 6; see also 1998a: 206-207; 1996: 55).¶ Before the passage of NAFTA, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno claimed that once passed, NAFTA would help "protect our borders" and that, a failure to pass it would make "effective immigration control...impossible." This assertion is contradicted by documents Andreas obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. According to pre-NAFTA Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) studies, the increased entrance of Mexican trucks could "prove to be a definite boon to both the legitimate food industry and drug smugglers who conceal their illegal shipments in trucks transporting fruits and vegetables from Mexico to U.S. markets" (Andreas, 2000: 75).¶ Andreas' work (1994: 46) has suggested that the practice and ideology of market liberalization (e.g., NAFTA) might superficially appear to be a "retreat of the state" and a form of boundary erosion, but in reality increased militarization and cross-border economic flows on the U.S.-Mexico border suggest something else. thus, it can be argued that a new function of borders in a global economy might actually be to simultaneously "open" and "close" border(s) between countries. on the U.S.- Mexico border, Andreas argues, recent enforcement "has less to do with actual deterrence [of unauthorized migrants] and more to do with managing the border's image and coping with the deepening contradictions of economic integration" (1999a: 14, emphasis added).¶ Andreas (1998b: 353) even argues that border policing is a spectator sport, though the objective is to pacify rather than to inflame the passions of the spectators. His insightful examination into how recent border militarization has gone about "recrafting" an image of control on the border encounters problems, though, by limiting investigation of border militarization to the perceptions of the spectators (Congress, the media, local residents in the border areas, and the broad public). This position does not consider the effects of border militarization on the human rights of undocumented immigrants and fails to see the agency of immigrants. Analogies that reduce the process of undocumented immigration (in the context of a militarized U.S.-Mexico border) to "an endless game of cat-and-mouse" or "hunted vs. hunter" (Ibid.; see also Kossoudji, 1992: 159-180) problematically construct and view undocumented immigration only from the perspective of "the hunters" (see Hagan, 1998: 357-361).¶ For human rights groups like the Arizona Border Rights Coalition, documenting and challenging the abuses visited on undocumented immigrants by Border Patrol agents also includes monitoring the recent vigilantism by local ranchers toward would-be migrants near the Nogales and Douglas border area. Ironically, Andreas' line of argument, that U.S. border enforcement policy is flawed and not serious about thwarting unauthorized migration, is also used by anti-immigrant groups, such as the Nogales, Arizona-based "Neighborhood Ranch Watch," in their efforts to apprehend, detain, and turn "illegal" immigrants -- sometimes at gunpoint -- over to local law enforcement (see Palafox, 2000: 28-30). This discussion leads us to the work of Michael Huspek, who examines border enforcement strategies such as Operation Gatekeeper in San Diego, California.

Palafox 2k Palafox, Jose. "Opening up borderland studies: A review of US-Mexico border militarization discourse." Social Justice 27.3 (81 (2000): 56-72. Jose Palafox, (josefox@uclink4.berkeley.edu) is a graduate student in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Palafox, born in Tijuana, B.C., Mexico, and raised in San Diego, California, has long been involved with border and immigrant rights groups. This is part of the author's doctoral dissertation tentatively titled: "The Open Veins of Undocumented Workers: Enforcing Global Apartheid Through U.S.-Mexico Border Boundary Policing, 1992-2000.

the practice and ideology of market liberalization (e.g., NAFTA) might superficially appear to be a "retreat of the state" and a form of boundary erosion, but in reality increased militarization and cross-border economic flows on the U.S.-Mexico border suggest something else. a new function of borders in a global economy might actually be to simultaneously "open" and "close" border(s) between countries. on the U.S.- Mexico border that border policing is a spectator sport, though the objective is to pacify rather than to inflame the passions of the spectators. Analogies that reduce the process of undocumented immigration (in the context of a militarized U.S.-Mexico border) to "an endless game of cat-and-mouse" or "hunted vs. hunter problematically construct and view undocumented immigration only from the perspective of "the hunters"

Economic integration enhances the spectral nature of borders – As the affirmative opens up space through trade, it simultaneously restricts by controlling flow and direction

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The USA-Canada boundary, traditionally seen as a ‘soft’ boundary, has now become much more difficult to cross, while the new restrictions have made it much more difficult for illegal migrants to cross the USA-Mexico boundary (Andreas and Snyder, 2000; Andreas and Biersteker, 2003; Brunet-Jailly, 2004c; Nicol, 2005). The self-appointed ‘minutemen’ vigilante activity which com- menced operations in 2005 demonstrates how the closing of borders has become as much a ‘bottom-up’ process as it has a ‘top- down’ process initiated by government, with the former feeding into the latter as part of a renewed sense of national self-defence and patriotic exclusiveness in the post-9/11 period (Ackleson, 2004; Olmedo and Sowden, 2005). Thus, contemporary studies are, once again, focusing on the implications of the border-closing process. This includes not only the mechanics of the process, but also the human and ethical implications of cutting off thousands of people from places of employment to the detriment of both the Mexican employees and the American employers on the other side of the border who have benefited from this source of cheap, unregistered, labour. The changing functional characteristics of the USA-Mexico boundary is a good example of the clash between the securitization and the economic discourse in relation to borders (Andreas, 2000; Nevins, 2002; Coleman, 2004; Laitinen, 2003; Purcell and Nevins, 2004). Economic interests of the past two decades have brought about an opening of borders, with the EU and NAFTA being the two major examples of this. In contrast, the securitiza- tion discourse has brought about the closing of borders because of the perceived and constructed fears of new threats from the outside. When the two discourses clash with each other (such as in the USA-Mexico example), it is generally the securitization discourse which predominates, bringing about a reclosing of borders. Nowhere is this more apparent at the local level than in Israel/ Palestine where the recent construction of the Separation Fence/Wall in the name of security, along with the physical withdrawal (disengagement) from the Gaza Strip, has prevented Palestinians from crossing into Israel to find employment as menial labourers, serving the basic subsistence needs of the Palestinian population.

Newman 2006, [David, Newman, Department of Politics and Government, Ben Gurion University, Beer Sheba, Israel, "Progress in Human Geography 30: The lines that continue to separate us: borders in our ‘borderless’ world", pp. 143–161]

Thus, contemporary studies are, once again, focusing on the implications of the border-closing process. The changing functional characteristics of the USA-Mexico boundary is a good example of the clash between the securitization and the economic discourse in relation to borders Economic interests of the past two decades have brought about an opening of borders, with the EU and NAFTA being the two major examples of this. In contrast, the securitiza- tion discourse has brought about the closing of borders because of the perceived and constructed fears of new threats from the outside. When the two discourses clash with each other (such as in the USA-Mexico example), it is generally the securitization discourse which predominates, bringing about a reclosing of borders. construction of the Separation Fence/Wall in the name of security, along with the physical withdrawal (disengagement) from the Gaza Strip, has prevented Palestinians from crossing into Israel to find employment as menial labourers

The collapse of economic barriers is followed by an influx of permanent securitization.

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NAFTA is the Western Hemisphere’s version of globalization. It envisions a free trade ¶ area that requires the relatively unrestricted movement of people, goods and services across the ¶ internal borders, ultimately leading to increased political, social, and cultural interdependence ¶ among the three member states. While the proponents of NAFTA emphasize positive economic ¶ outcomes for the three partners, the dependence of those outcomes on open borders inevitably ¶ brings with it the prospect of greater opportunities for transnational criminal activities. The easy ¶ movements of legal capital, services, goods and workers require less border control. Yet, at the ¶ same time, to prevent illegal flows of capital, goods, and workers, the border needs to be more ¶ fortified. And as internal economic integration strengthens, greater emphasis on controlling the ¶ common external NAFTA borders will become a significant policy issue as well. ¶ Border control is caught in a vice - control must be exercised to prevent illegal trans-2¶ border acts but legal commercial and people traffic cannot be brought to a halt. The examination ¶ of the responses of the NAFTA partners to this reality at their national borders is the topic of this ¶ paper. We argue that an appropriate and effective balance between opening and fortifying the ¶ borders, enabling and preventing traffic simultaneously, will only be achieved through ¶ coordinated and cooperative security and law enforcement policies by governments and agencies ¶ on both sides of the C-US and M-US borders. Specifically, we ask whether law enforcement ¶ cooperation at the internal borders of NAFTA will follow similar paths at the Canada-US and ¶ Mexico-US borders and will lead to the development of a common external NAFTA border ¶ control policy. We argue that the answer is no or not likely to both questions. ¶ Canada-United States (C-US) and Mexico-United States (M-US) border relations have ¶ long yet very different histories The C-US border is often proclaimed, by both sides, as the ¶ longest, peaceful, undefended border in the world. In contrast, the M-US border region has ¶ experienced a contentious and often violent history; it has been, in Schmidt’s (1997: 300) ¶ succinct summation, “an ecosystem for violence as a consequence of being removed form direct ¶ governmental supervision and a lack of law enforcement by the centers of power.” The creation ¶ of NAFTA incorporated two bi-lateral borders which have faced and will face distinctly different ¶ problems for police cooperation, and created a political, organizational and perceptual overlay on ¶ former bilateral relations which have had a profoundly different character (Zagaris, 1995-96, ¶ 1996). ¶ The conventional explanation for the disparate histories of the borders stresses the ¶ differences in objective, functional needs and conditions - the extent of trafficking in controlled ¶ goods, massive undocumented immigration and people smuggling, security threats to the ¶ partners (but mainly the USA) - which are so fundamental that contrasting patterns of crossborder relations at the strategic or policy level and among security and police agencies are a ¶ natural outcome. The balance of open and closed borders within NAFTA, under this view, ¶ reflects the conflicting interests in economic trade and protection against trans-border threats. At ¶ the C-US border, economic interests have outbalanced threats, at least until post 9-11, leading to ¶ fairly open borders and cooperative relations, while at the M-US border economic interests ¶ (which are large) have been counterbalanced by the greater levels of all trans-border threats, ¶ leading to a more fortified border and less cooperation (e.g., Andreas, 2000; Andreas and ¶ Biersteker, 2003). ¶ This conventional explanation is insufficient for it leaves out the power of imagery and ¶ the force of nationalism, the way the three partners see each other through perceptual and ¶ affective lenses which shape definitions of and responses to problems. The dissimilar approach ¶ by the US to trans-border threats at the internal NAFTA borders has not been a result of ¶ “rational” responses to divergent functional conditions (threats to the integrity of the borders); ¶ rather, the assessment by the US of both needs and policy goals have been and will continue to ¶ be filtered through imagery and stereotypes of self and others which have hardened into ¶ conventional understandings. The capacity to protect the border and the cooperate in security ¶ arrangements has been judged by different standards. From the US perspective, Mexico, ¶ perceived as the colonial child, cannot be trusted and dealt with in the same manner as Canada, ¶ the ally and cousin of the family (Gibbins, 1997; Schmidt, 1997).1¶ The influence of imagery also complicates the cooperation among law enforcement ¶ agencies required to properly balance freedom of legal movement with control of illegal ¶ activities. The impact of nationalistic sentiments and associated images and stereotypes of each ¶ other, and underlying assessments of the nature, character, credibility, capability and will of self ¶ and other, profoundly affect the possibilities of linkages and cooperation. Images develop ¶ independently of border threats but once formed will constrain and distort the capacity to create ¶ cooperative and cordial relations among the agencies joined in the mutual tasks of controlling a ¶ border. Over time, differences in police cooperation at the two internal (to NAFTA) borders may ¶ lessen but, given the contrasting histories of the borders, and the perceptual imagery, competing ¶ nationalistic sentiments, policy differences and distinct functional problems associated with ¶ those histories, such differences will not disappear soon. The coalescence of imagery and threats ¶ at the Canada-US border will continue to lead to cooperative and cordial relations; at the ¶ Mexico-US border imagery and threats combine to frustrate efforts to cooperate, leading instead ¶ to tensions, recriminations and failure. Yet as Papademetriou noted in Congressional hearings, ¶ NAFTA can only succeed as one economic system if the internal borders are treated similarly ¶ and partners are equally trusted to defend the external borders (U.S. Congress, 1999). This will ¶ only happen if imagery changes, and that will be a long process. ¶ Border policing, everywhere, presents unique and complicated challenges to law ¶ enforcement agencies, for normal concerns about order maintenance and crime control are ¶ overlaid, distorted and constrained by claims of sovereignty, the flux of foreign policy priorities, ¶ the dynamics of threats and needs, and mutual perceptions of each others' intentions, capabilities, ¶ and credibility. Responding to problems of transnational crime, disorder and security threats ¶ raises issues lacking in purely domestic law enforcement (e.g., Anderson, 1996; Davis, 1997; ¶ Hills, 2003; Marx, 1997; Snow, 1997). Although this paper mentions a variety of law ¶ enforcement issues at both borders, the focus is on cooperation in the war on drugs. Drug ¶ trafficking is not the only border control issue, yet it allows us to examine more precisely the ¶ intersections of policy preferences, imagery and functional threats as these affect the capacity for ¶ police cooperation. We present our argument in three sections: a description of threats to the ¶ internal borders; mutual imagery; and patterns of police cooperation at both borders.

Cottam and Marenin 2005[Cottam, Martha and Marenin, Otwan, Washington State University, "The Management of Border Security in NAFTA Imagery, Nationalism, and the War on Drugs"]

NAFTA is the Western Hemisphere’s version of globalization. It envisions a free trade area that requires the relatively unrestricted movement of people, goods and services across the internal borders, ultimately leading to increased political, social, and cultural interdependence among the three member states. The easy movements of legal capital, services, goods and workers require less border control. Yet, at the same time, to prevent illegal flows of capital, goods, and workers, the border needs to be more fortified. Border control is caught in a vice - control must be exercised to prevent illegal trans-2 border acts but legal commercial and people traffic cannot be brought to a halt. . The balance of open and closed borders within NAFTA, under this view, reflects the conflicting interests in economic trade and protection against trans-border threats. at the M-US border economic interests (which are large) have been counterbalanced by the greater levels of all trans-border threats, leading to a more fortified border and less cooperation (e.g., Andreas, 2000; Andreas and Biersteker, 2003). This conventional explanation is insufficient for it leaves out the power of imagery and the force of nationalism, the way the three partners see each other through perceptual and affective lenses which shape definitions of and responses to problems. Border policing, everywhere, presents unique and complicated challenges to law enforcement agencies, for normal concerns about order maintenance and crime control are overlaid, distorted and constrained by claims of sovereignty, the flux of foreign policy priorities, the dynamics of threats and needs, and mutual perceptions of each others' intentions, capabilities, and credibility.

The increased unrestricted trade at the US-Mexico border has reinforced the boundary between the two states by restricting the flow of immigrants.

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The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) "is reminiscent of an earlier era, when mother countries such as England offered preferential trade terms, or Commonwealth preferences, to their former colonies in order to ensure their continued economic, financial, and political dependence.... The motives of the [U.S.] government with regard to Mexico certainly remind us of those of the British Empire." This was written by Robert Kuttner in Business Week in mid-1991. At that time the intersection of U.S. "geoeconomics and geopolitics," as it would affect North America and the rest of the Western Hemisphere was already apparent. The idea was to "integrate" a Third World country of Latin America, a country that at the time of this writing is still officially known as the United States of Mexico into the larger economy of North America.1 Few Mexican citizens were aware that not only some of the constitutional principles established more than 150 years ago, but also crucial elements of the exercise of "jurisdiction" normally associated with the concept of the nation-state were at stake in the "negotiations" preceding the eventual implementation of NAFTA. More specifically, I refer to the "total" transformation of the "economic geography" (which covers not only trade, but also finance, industry, infrastructure, and agriculture) of North America, to the detriment of the "public interest" of Mexico and that of the other countries involved. The consequences will be especially costly and damaging for the formal wage-earning sector, whether blue- or white-collar. This sweeping transformation has been orchestrated mainly to cater to "U.S. private interests"2 and it entails a "geopolitics" that also serves large corporate interests. Both the geopolitics and the geoeconomics have been codified through the commercial, financial, geopolitical, and jurisdictional instruments developed by the most powerful of the three nations concerned during the process that culminated in the signing of NAFTA. From a historical perspective, this "integration process" should be seen as a fresh manifestation of the Monroe Doctrine; there is a direct link between NAFTA and the expansionist tradition of the United States. U.S. Vice President AI Gore vividly expressed this connection, urbi et orbi, when he compared NAFTA to the territorial acquisitions of Louisiana and Alaska made by the United States in the last century.3 In this century, NAFTA is not the first example of expansion and the Western Hemisphere is not the first theater for it, as we can see by studying the "Grand Area" worked out between Franklin Roosevelt's government and the business community before and after World War II,4 or by examining other experiences linked to adaptations of Monroe-style integration, such as those deployed by German capitalism before World War II. It is worth recalling that each interventionist phase served to stave off the successive crises as they arose. Alan Milward (1986:19) has illustrated with abundant documentation that the international aspects of a controlled economy exchange controls and bilateral trade treaties could easily be incorporated into an expansionist foreign policy. Fascism, the form of capitalism that prevailed in Germany during this period, indeed set out to overcome the country's internal crisis by dividing up the world and laying claim to a "new Lebensraum" in which Germany would establish "large economic areas" under the jurisdiction of the motor economy of the "zone."5

Saxe-Fernández, Professor and Senior Researcher at the Faculty of Political Sciences - National Autonomous University of Mexico, 1996 [John, NAFTA: The Intersection of the Geopolitics and Geoeconomics of Capital, Social Justice, Vol. 23, No. 1/2 (63-64), The World Today (Spring-Summer 1996), pp. 63-78]

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) "is reminiscent of an earlier era, when mother countries offered preferential trade terms, or Commonwealth preferences, to their former colonies in order to ensure their continued economic, financial, and political dependence.... The motives of the [U.S.] government with regard to Mexico certainly remind us of those The idea was to "integrate Latin America into the larger economy of North America Few Mexican citizens were aware that not only some of the constitutional principles established more than 150 years ago, but also crucial elements of the exercise of "jurisdiction" normally associated with the concept of the nation-state were at stake in the "negotiations" preceding the eventual implementation of NAFTA refer to the "total" transformation of the "economic geography" of North America, to the detriment of the "public interest" of Mexico and that of the other countries involved . This sweeping transformation has been orchestrated mainly to cater to "U.S. private interests"2 and it entails a "geopolitics" that also serves large corporate interests. Both the geopolitics and the geoeconomics have been codified through the commercial, financial, geopolitical, and jurisdictional instruments developed by the most powerful of the three nations concerned during the process that culminated in the signing of NAFTA. , this "integration process" should be seen as a fresh manifestation of the Monroe Doctrine; there is a direct link between NAFTA and the expansionist tradition of the United States. AI Gore vividly expressed this connection when he compared NAFTA to the territorial acquisitions of Louisiana and Alaska made by the United States in the last century.3 In this century, NAFTA is not the first example of expansion that the international aspects of a controlled economy exchange controls and bilateral trade treaties could easily be incorporated into an expansionist foreign policy. Fascism, the form of capitalism that prevailed in Germany during this period, indeed set out to overcome the country's internal crisis by dividing up the world and laying claim to a "new Lebensraum" in which Germany would establish "large economic areas"

The creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement turned Mexico into yet another casualty of American expansionism. This can be compared to the fascist economic policies of Nazi Germany in WW2

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The crux of the matter is, therefore, that the economic and geopolitical designs codified in NAFTA make Mexico a launch pad for a greater U.S. presence in the hemisphere. Mexico also becomes the pivot at the center of a global model. Henry Kissinger has argued that because of European and Japanese hesitance to submit to U.S. hegemony, the "new order" may be achieved in Latin America first. Kissinger expects that NAFTA and its hemispheric extension through the Initiative for the Americas (both endorsed by Clinton) will form the backbone of a New International Order. In this perspective, this highly asymmetric model is, therefore, to be globalized. It is an unbalanced, ill-conceived, and poorly negotiated structure that responds to the short-run interests of U.S. business to the exclusion of other "national public interests." It has much in common with the Treaty of Versailles, as shown by serious examinations of the various phases and economic "orders" set up since the Great War.9 From a global perspective, NAFTA has disturbing features. Not only does it codify and formalize the interests of transnational capital, and the abysmal imbalances between Mexico and the United States, but it is also riddled with the structural and global contradictions that have flourished so strongly in the aftermath of the Cold War. Insecurity, instability, fragmentation, and political and economic polarizations will necessarily become more acute, at the national and international levels ? especially if the Clinton administration uses NAFTA as a battering ram with which to impose a globalization model centered on "U.S. private interests" and internationalizes the contradictions implicit in this intersection of the geoeconomics and the geopolitics of U.S. capital.10 The Democratic administration has continued to design a "political and economic geography" for North America in accordance with immediate interests and with no checks on the belligerent, slothful tendencies of the monopolies, by devising a "Grand Area." The geopolitical boundaries of this area, which were drawn by the Republicans, hark back to old habits of hemispheric depredation and were merely renewed in the wake of the 1980s' debt crisis. This crisis made tributary economies of anything south of the border and it now culminates in NAFTA. Clinton's maneuvering to get NAFTA approved by Congress led to a split down the middle of the Democratic Party, when 156 of 258 Democratic representatives voted against the agreement. Following the passage of NAFTA, Democratic Representative Mary Kaptur accused Clinton of having become "Wall Street's candidate." At that decisive conjuncture, Clinton had backed down on an issue critical to Democratic representatives and senators who were loyal to unions, environmental groups, African American urban organizations, and vast sectors of the middle classes threatened by unemployment and falling incomes. Still, when it comes time for Clinton to make even more important decisions, the bankers and Kissingers, who so applauded him on NAFTA, are unlikely to stand by him in the electoral process of 1996. The schism within the Democratic Party is the result of the social structure and dynamics of the United States and its crises; hence, this division will not be breached quite as the White House would wish. The outright abandonment of the "grass roots" has created a climate of class antago? nism not seen since the social upheavals of the 1930s.

Saxe-Fernández, Professor and Senior Researcher at the Faculty of Political Sciences - National Autonomous University of Mexico, 1996 [John, NAFTA: The Intersection of the Geopolitics and Geoeconomics of Capital, Social Justice, Vol. 23, No. 1/2 (63-64), The World Today (Spring-Summer 1996), pp. 63-78]

The crux of the matter is that the economic and geopolitical designs codified in NAFTA make Mexico a launch pad for a greater U.S. presence in the hemisphere. Mexico also becomes the pivot at the center of a global model. because of European and Japanese hesitance to submit to U.S. hegemony, the "new order" may be achieved in Latin America first. NAFTA and its hemispheric extension through the Initiative for the Americas will form the backbone of a New International Order. In this perspective, this highly asymmetric model is, therefore, to be globalized. It is an , ill-conceived, negotiated structure that responds to the short-run interests of U.S. business to the exclusion of other "national public interests." , NAFTA has disturbing features. Not only does it codify and formalize the interests of transnational capital, and the abysmal imbalances between Mexico and the United States, but it is also riddled with the structural and global contradictions that have flourished so strongly in the aftermath of the Cold War. Insecurity, instability, fragmentation, and political and economic polarizations will necessarily become more acute if the administration uses NAFTA as a battering ram with which to impose a globalization model centered on "U.S. private interests" and internationalizes the contradictions implicit in this intersection of the geoeconomics and the geopolitics of U.S. capital The Democratic administration has continued to design a "political and economic geography" for North America in accordance with immediate interests and with no checks on the belligerent, slothful tendencies of the monopolies

NAFTA turned Mexico into a base to increase American hegemony in the region. This turned Latin America into the U.S.’s “new order” that does nothing but further the spread of globalization and imperialist policies

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Borders are neither natural nor fixed phenomena; they come and go in response to political and economic transformations. Most national boundaries were established less than two centuries ago. In 1985, the world’s total number of sovereign states was roughly 180; but over the next decade, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, that number grew to 202. Africa is filled with borders imposed as part of colonial domination or redrawn after wars of independence, which often run through populations with shared traditions and history. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) represents the latest attempt to tear down barriers to capital mobility, even as territorial demarcations were tightened for workers. Whether tangible or not, the drawing of borders always exposes hierarchies of power and authority. In this article we analyze the enforcement of boundaries under NAFTA. We argue that neoliberal economic policies were applied throughout Latin America to solve financial problems precipitated by the external debt crisis of the 1980s. During the 1970s, North American banks were awash in petrodollars. Desperate to find profitable investments, they made what were perceived to be secure loans to Latin American governments to finance development projects under import substitution industrialization (ISI). Ultimately, however, many countries were unable to repay these loans, and U.S. banks and federal many countries were unable to repay these loans, and U.S. banks and federal officials turned to NAFTA as a means of transforming risk into opportunity.

Fernandez and Massey 7-( Patricia Fernández-Kelly & Douglas S. Massey, professor of sociology at Princeton, Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University , Borders for Whom? The Role of NAFTA in Mexico-U.S. Migration, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 610, NAFTA andBeyond: Alternative Perspectives in the Study of Global Trade and Development (Mar., 2007),pp. 98-118, Accessed: 7/28/13)

Borders are neither natural nor fixed phenomena; they come and go in response to political and economic transformations Most national boundaries were established less than two centuries ago In 1985, the world’s total number of sovereign states was roughly 180 the next decade number grew to 202 NAFTA) represents the latest attempt to tear down barriers to capital mobility, even as territorial demarcations were tightened for workers Whether tangible or not, the drawing of borders always exposes hierarchies of power and authority neoliberal economic policies were applied throughout Latin America to solve financial problems precipitated by the external debt crisis of the 1980s the 1970s, North American banks were awash in petrodollars Desperate to find profitable investments, they made what were perceived to be secure loans to Latin American governments to finance development projects under import substitution industrialization (ISI). Ultimately, however, many countries were unable to repay these loans, and U.S. banks and federal many countries were unable to repay these loans, and U.S. banks and federal officials turned to NAFTA as a means of transforming risk into opportunity.

NAFTA represents the latest attempt by the US to tear down the border and spread neoliberalism

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Thus, the purpose of NAFTA was not merely to facilitate trade and open markets, but to expand opportunities for capital investment. The treaty paid little attention to worker mobility, in striking contrast to the European Union, which made labor central to the broader process of market integration. The consolidation of European markets was effected by multilateral policies designed to harmonize social policies, equalize economic infrastructures, and guarantee worker rights and mobility within the trade zone. In contrast, NAFTA omitted these pro visions, and its U.S. backers instead insisted on the unilateral right to prevent Mexican workers from migrating through restrictive border policies. The result of this contradiction was a lopsided process of development in North America, in which rising capital mobility and growing U.S. investment south of the border coincided with repressive efforts to limit the cross-border movement of Mexicans, although the number of workers seeking opportunities in the United States had increased as a result of NAFTA. The privatization of Mexico's collective farms under neoliberalism and the elimination of agricultural subsidies under NAFTA also increased the number of displaced peasants seeking economic opportunities elsewhere. The combination of continued pressures for emigration and increasingly restrictive border policies had a profound effect on patterns and processes of Mexico-U.S. migration. Although migrants continued to arrive at the border and cross into the United States, they did not return to Mexico in the same numbers as before. Instead, unauthorized migrants reduced cyclical movements to spare themselves the greater costs and risks of reentry after 1986. The reduction in return migration led, in turn, to unprecedented accretions to the Mexican population living north of the border. We conclude by offering concrete recommendations to rationalize U.S. immigration policy in the context of the economic integration that is occurring under NAFTA.

Fernandez and Massey 7-(Patricia Fernández-Kelly & Douglas S. Massey, professor of sociology at Princeton, Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University , Borders for Whom? The Role of NAFTA in Mexico-U.S. Migration, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 610, NAFTA andBeyond: Alternative Perspectives in the Study of Global Trade and Development (Mar., 2007),pp. 98-118, Accessed: 7/28/13)

the purpose of NAFTA was not merely to facilitate trade and open markets, but to expand opportunities for capital investment The treaty paid little attention to worker mobility NAFTA omitted these pro visions, and its U.S. backers instead insisted on the unilateral right to prevent Mexican workers from migrating through restrictive border policies rising capital mobility and growing U.S. investment south of the border coincided with repressive efforts to limit the cross-border movement of Mexicans, although the number of workers seeking opportunities in the United States had increased as a result of NAFTA The privatization of Mexico's collective farms under neoliberalism and the elimination of agricultural subsidies under NAFTA also increased the number of displaced peasants seeking economic opportunities elsewhere increasingly restrictive border policies had a profound effect on patterns and processes of Mexico-U.S. migration Although migrants continued to arrive at the border and cross into the United States, they did not return to Mexico in the same numbers as before Instead, unauthorized migrants reduced cyclical movements to spare themselves the greater costs and risks of reentry The reduction in return migration led, in turn, to unprecedented accretions to the Mexican population living north of the border.

NAFTA sought to break down the border and facilitate neoliberal ideas of trade and capital to flow while oppressing the Mexican people

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Inadmissible, deportable, undesirable, terrorist, no-fly list: all of these categories exist on a continuum that marks the border crosser. Crossing borders, even the borders that are understood to be “friendly,” often reveals the production of differentiated racial ontologies of immigrant/migrant communities situated within nation-states. The experience of border crossing is an ontological one whereby both the technologies used in border security and the mode of securitization are understood to have a profound effect on the immigrant and migrant communities within nation-states. In North America, as well as other “securitized” regions, the coupling of racial profiling strategies and the renewed politics of nationalizing identity as a response to the “War on Terror” has revealed the extent of the racial ontological formation of border crossing.¶ With the manifestation of the “War on Terror,” scholarship has focused on questions regarding the limitations of civil liberties, the limits to human rights, and changes in legal and extrajudicial processes. While it is important to note the particular shifts and changes that have been brought about through national security policies, domestic policing, and border control agendas, it is also necessary to question the relation of the present to the past. In the context of border control in North America, and specifically the border shared between Canada and the United States, the public image of this “friendly” border has radically altered through the “War on Terror” discourse. What was once regarded as a “friendly” border has become a “leaky border” and a suspect border. Canadian media have reported on the resistance of Canadians to the compulsory use of passports or national identity cards to travel to the United States (Globe and Mail 2006). This national representation of the border is somewhat disturbing to me, and I think it reveals the historical vestige of this border crossing. For many migrants and nonwhite immigrants, the experience of crossing this border is not necessarily so “friendly.” In the first half of the twentieth century in both Canada and the United States, Asian and South Asian migrants faced insidious forms of surveillance and¶ 404¶ management through rigid forms of border controls including the introduction of identification certificates predating the instantiation of passports (Torpey 2000). In this context, it is important to examine how contemporary regressive border control mechanisms, such as racial profiling, have indeed shaped and informed the development of the shared border between Canada and the United States. In turn, these processes have shaped a racial ontological condition in both Canada and the United States.¶ Formal and informal practices of border controls regulate the mobility of citizens, nationals, and noncitizens in distinct ways. In the case of crossing borders, identity and the condition of being human comprise a highly categorized experience. Various technologies of border crossing, such as picture identification, retina eye scans, human thermal recognition, and the constitution of detailed personal data, determine the state of being human in numerous public contexts. Border technologies permit the state to substantiate the ontological status of a person who is subjected to modes of categorization, such as inadmissible, deportable, detainee, or terrorist suspect. Through the acts of detainment, deportation, and imprisonment, the condition of being human is rearticulated, as the act of crossing borders is taking on greater significance in the intensive securitization of borders. By viewing border crossings as a racial ontological practice, I am not only investigating how borders act as a technology of self, identification, and subjection, but also showing how the border is present in the day-to-day lives of border crossers. Is it possible that by examining border crossings as a racialized ontological practice, the extension of the border into the day-to-day lives of border crossers is made evident? By viewing the crossing of borders as a racial ontological practice, in which ways has national identity been rearticulated through the management of borders? In the present context of the securitization and militarization of North American borders, what significance do racial profiling and racial targeting play, and how does this affect the ideological and policy manifestation of multiculturalism and cultural plurality? I examine the racial ontology of border crossing to highlight the multiple ways in which the human condition is reorganized by border control mechanism1 and by nation-state processes in this present period of militarized imperialism otherwise known as the “War on Terror.”¶ The border separating the United States of America from Canada is popularly imagined as the “world’s greatest undefended border” or as a “friendly border dividing two great neighbors” (Drache 2004; Laxer). Until recently, crossing this border was paid little attention in the public political and cultural sensibilities in either the Canadian or American perspectives. The border, which is the conduit of something in the realm of $1.3 billion of two-way daily trading (Andreas 2006, 10), has—somewhat remarkably—been understood in the public discourse as something¶ 405¶ unremarkable and uneventful.2 After the attacks of September 11, 2001, in New York and Washington and the ensuing proclamation of an endless “War on Terror” which has come to define American and Canadian foreign policy, this border has been produced somewhat differently in the public imagination. Rather than a friendly border, Canada has come under suspicion from the United States regarding its domestic immigration and refugee policies. Canada’s national character as a multicultural, tolerant, and plural nation is questioned. This suspicion has resulted in a newly emergent sense of risk regarding Canada’s shared border with the United States of America. The internalization of fear produces an experience or ontology of race in a very particular way in the subject who is surveyed. This does not simply help produce the Islamic fundamentalist, the inadmissible, or the deportee, but, rather, security and surveillance borrowed from the border and deployed in the subject produce ontological “effects.” The effects may range from the feeling of not belonging or of being external to the nation-project, to being forcibly made external, policed, and detained. Such effects can be demonstrated in the case of Maher Arar, in his self-restricted movement, state-produced immobility, and general paralysis of identity (discussed below). Securitization is also dependent on a circulation of fear that externally manifests itself as new border regulations and forms of detainment and control. Fear of this kind is “ontologized” in the form of border guards and border detainees. But this border and detention are forms of ontology that have also been exported to the internal limits of citizenship and the immigrants, police, and newcomers who practice that limit on a day-to-day basis. This is the onto-connection to the “war on terror.”¶

Bhandar, 8 (Davina, Trent University, Canadian Studies, Faculty Member, Resistance, “Detainment, Asylum: The Onto-Political Limits of Border Crossing in North America” in War, Citizenship, Territory, Chapter 13)

Inadmissible, deportable, undesirable, terrorist, no-fly list: all of these categories exist on a continuum that marks the border crosser. Crossing borders, even the borders that are understood to be “friendly,” often reveals the production of differentiated racial ontologies of immigrant/migrant communities The experience of border crossing is an ontological one whereby both the technologies used in border security and the mode of securitization are understood to have a profound effect on the immigrant and migrant communities In securitized” regions, the coupling of racial profiling strategies and the renewed politics of nationalizing identity as a response to the “War on Terror” has revealed the extent of the racial ontological formation of border crossing scholarship has focused on questions regarding the limitations of civil liberties, the limits to human rights, and changes in legal and extrajudicial processes. , it is also necessary to question the relation of the present to the past. In the context of border control in North America, the public image of this “friendly” border has radically altered through the “War on Terror” discourse. What was once regarded as a “friendly” border has become a “leaky border” This national representation of the border is somewhat disturbin it reveals the historical vestige of this border crossing. For many migrants and nonwhite immigrants, the experience of crossing this border is not necessarily so “friendly , it is important to examine how border control mechanisms, such as racial profiling, have indeed shaped and informed the development of the shared border Formal and informal practices of border controls regulate the mobility of citizens, nationals, and noncitizens in distinct ways. In the case of crossing borders, identity and the condition of being human comprise a highly categorized experience. technologies of border crossing determine the state of being human in numerous public contexts. Border technologies permit the state to substantiate the ontological status of a person who is subjected to modes of categorization, such as inadmissible, deportable, detainee, or terrorist suspect. The internalization of fear produces an experience or ontology of race in a very particular way in the subject who is surveyed. security and surveillance borrowed from the border and deployed in the subject produce ontological “effects.” The effects may range from the feeling of not belonging or of being external to the nation-project, to being forcibly made external, policed, and detained. Securitization is also dependent on a circulation of fear that externally manifests itself as new border regulations and forms of detainment and control. Fear of this kind is “ontologized” in the form of border guards and border detainees. This is the onto-connection to the “war on terror.”¶

Crossing the border is an ontological experience. War on Terror discourse turns “friendly” borders into “leaky” borders, and the securitization of borders categorize individuals as inadmissible, detainee, or deportable.

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The case of road haulage is particularly interesting in this regard. If it is the¶ case that cross-border trucking had recently emerged as a key pathway for clandestine migrants and refugees seeking to enter the UK from continental Europe,¶ then carrier sanctions have sought to turn the truck and its entire routeway into¶ a dispersed, mobile border. The nature of air travel largely precludes the possibility of clandestine migration. At the airport it’s largely a matter of training¶ airline staff in the techniques of document inspection – the verification of¶ identity. But with trucking it’s much more a question of detecting hidden bodies.¶ To this end, the UK immigration service now provides companies and their staff¶ with detailed instructions on what we might call the ‘securitization’ of the truck¶ and its milieu (UK Immigration Service, 2004). The very surface of the truck is¶ to be made impermeable to unauthorized entry. The outer fabric on the vehicle¶ is to be suitably resistant to cutting open. All external storage compartments are¶ to be secured with seals and padlocks. Drivers and their supervisors are to be¶ trained in the responsibilities and procedures of regularly inspecting their own¶ vehicles, especially when stopping en route at petrol stations and restaurants.¶ Similarly, scanners and CO2 detectors are to be used to mechanically see and¶ smell every recess within the vehicle.¶ Can we say that with road haulage we have moved beyond even the situation¶ where the UK relocates its borders to the desks of its overseas embassies and¶ consulates, where visas are issued, or the check-in areas of airports in distant¶ countries? Once applied to road haulage, the entire road transportation system¶ becomes a kind of networked border. The border transforms into a mobile, noncontiguous zone materializing at the very surface of the truck and every place it¶ stops. If the 1980s saw Europe’s routeways identified and re-imagined as one of¶ its foremost ‘Trans-European Networks’, an instrument to positively integrate¶ Europe along new spatial and social axes (Barry, 1996), then carrier sanctions –¶ and the many little practices this policy insinuates into the everyday conduct of¶ transportation and commerce – aspire to project a regime of surveillance into the¶ very capillaries of these same networks. The project becomes one of TransEuropean networks of control.¶ It would be misleading to consider remote control as a recent invention.¶ Zolberg dates the emergence of remote control to 1924 (1999: 75–6) when, in¶ response to the perception of uncontrolled immigration from Europe and human¶ chaos at its great ports, the US federal government put in place a system requiring ‘all foreign nationals coming from overseas to produce an entry visa prior to¶ boarding a US-bound vessel’. Similarly, it would be mistaken to see remote¶ control as though it were the expression of some kind of social or technological¶ logic; as though the border were simply one more setting where the inexorable¶ tendency of the control society works itself out. Guiraudon and Lahav (2000)¶ point to an interplay of quite specific political logics that underpin the spread of¶ remote control today. These include a desire on the part of Western governments¶ to intercept refugees before they have an opportunity to activate human rights¶ claims within the territory. But they also include a concern to decongest border¶ crossings in the interests of further liberalizing and accelerating circuits of transnational tourism, trade and production.

Walters 6 [William, Professor of Political Science and Sociology at Carleton University, Ph.D. from York, “Border/Control,” European Journal of Social Theory 9(2)]

If it is the case that cross-border trucking had recently emerged as a key pathway for clandestine migrants and refugees carrier sanctions have sought to turn the truck and its entire routeway into a dispersed, mobile border. The very surface of the truck is to be made impermeable to unauthorized entry outer fabric on the vehicle is to be suitably resistant to cutting open external storage compartments are to be secured with seals and padlocks scanners and CO2 detectors are to be used to mechanically see and smell every recess within the vehicle the entire road transportation system becomes a kind of networked border. The border transforms into a mobile, noncontiguous zone materializing at the very surface of the truck and every place it stops carrier sanctions aspire to project a regime of surveillance into the very capillaries of these same networks. The project becomes one of networks of control. Zolberg dates the emergence of remote control to 1924 when the US federal government put in place a system requiring ‘all foreign nationals coming from overseas to produce an entry visa prior to boarding a US-bound vessel’ interplay of quite specific political logics underpin the spread of remote control today These include a desire on the part of Western governments to intercept refugees before they have an opportunity to activate human rights claims within the territory. But they also include a concern to decongest border crossings in the interests of further liberalizing and accelerating trade

The system of transportation necessitated by trade and globalization creates a violent networked border

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Following Agamben's claim referred to earlier, that ‘it is by starting from this uncertain terrain and from this opaque zone of indistinction that today we must once again find the path of another politics, of another body, of another world’, Edkins and Pin-Fat argue that strategies for contesting sovereign power ‘cannot consist of a call for a reinstatement of classical politics, a reinstatement of the distinction between zoē and bios’.44 In other words, it will not do for any such contestation to find its basis in the very logic it is trying to overcome. Edkins emphasises that identity politics, associated with social movements, for instance, would reappropriate rather than displace that flawed logic.45 This is because, as she explains, identity-based claims ultimately work within the same horizon as sovereign power: ‘such a claim is a demand for inclusion in or recognition by the state, (p.141) not a claim that contests or disrupts the notions of inclusion and exclusion upon which sovereign power depends’.46 Rather, what is required is a displacement of the logic that might tie resistance back to sovereign politics: If a logic of sovereign power is identified that relies for its very operation on the production and organisation of bare life as a form of life that is hospitable to its operation, then it is in a sense obvious that a challenge to sovereignty might be framed in terms of a refusal or destabilisation of that very form of life itself.47

Vaughn-Williams 9 ( Nick, IR MA @ university of Warwick IR PhD @ Aberystwyth, “Border Politics: The Limits of Sovereign Power” pg 141)

by starting from this uncertain terrain and from this opaque zone of indistinction that today we must once again find the path of another politics, of another body, of another world’ strategies for contesting sovereign power ‘cannot consist of a call for a reinstatement of classical politics, a reinstatement of the distinction between zoē and bios’.44 that identity politics, associated with social movements, for instance, would reappropriate rather than displace that flawed logic This is because, as she explains, identity-based claims ultimately work within the same horizon as sovereign power such a claim is a demand for inclusion in or recognition by the state not a claim that contests or disrupts the notions of inclusion and exclusion upon which sovereign power depends’ Rather, what is required is a displacement of the logic that might tie resistance back to sovereign politics: that a challenge to sovereignty might be framed in terms of a refusal or destabilisation of that very form of life itself.47

Using ID politics for social movements recreates sovereign power since the borders of the state created those identities- destabilizing the system comes first

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Another major focus of border studies during the past decade is the relationship between borders and identity formation (Leimgruber, 1991; Falah and Newman, 1995; Paasi, 1995; 1996; 1999a; Berdahl, 1997; Ackleson, 1999; Wilson and Donnan, 1998; Donnan and Wilson, 1999; Knippenberg and Markusse, 1999; Klemencic, 2000; Albert et al., 2001; Brown, 2001; Agnew, 2002; Kaplan and Hakli, 2002; Meinhof, 2002; Migdal, 2002). The opening of bor- ders does not, automatically, result in the hybridization of ethnic and national identity. Separate identities are dependent on the existence of group categorization, be they religious, cultural, economic, social or ethnic. Ethnicity remains a key determinant of group affiliation, inclusion and exclusion, while the removal, or opening, of the borders does not necessarily or automatically trans- form a member of a national State into a European, or global, citizen. Even if we have become more mobile and find it easier to cross the boundaries that previously hindered our movement, most of us retain strong ethnic or national affiliations and loyalties, be they territorial-focused or group affiliations (Sigurdson, 2000). The global access to cyberspace and the unhindered spatial dissemination of information and knowledge has, paradoxically, engendered a national identity among diaspora populations which have previously been remote and - dislocated from their places (or parents’ places) of origin, but who are now possessed with more information, and greater ease of access, to the ancestral (sic) homelands, and identify with the causes and struggles of the ethnic or national groups in faraway places. Language remains the one great boundary which, for so many of us, remains difficult¶ to cross, in the absence of a single, global, borderless form of communication.¶ Scale has also figured prominently in much of the recent border literature. There has been a geographical refocusing of the border away from the level of the State, down to internal regions, municipalities and neigh- bourhoods (Lunden and Zalamans, 2001). We live in a world of scale hierarchies, where different borders affects our daily life prac- tices at one and the same time (Blatter, 2001). Many towns and cities, which are normally perceived as constituting single functional entities, are divided along the national and State borders, the degree of transboundary coordination and integration contingent upon the nature of political and power relations between the two sides (Bucken- Knapp, 2001; Buursink, 2001; Matthiesen and Burkner, 2001). At the most micro of scales, anthropologists remind us of the personal, often invisible to the eye, borders, which determine our daily life practices to a much greater extent than do national boundaries – across which the majority of the global population do not even cross once in their lifetime (Alvarez, 1995).

Newman 2006, [David, Newman, Department of Politics and Government, Ben Gurion University, Beer Sheba, Israel, "Progress in Human Geography 30: The lines that continue to separate us: borders in our ‘borderless’ world", pp. 143–161]

Another major focus of border studies during the past decade is the relationship between borders and identity formation The opening of bor- ders does not, automatically, result in the hybridization of ethnic and national identity. Separate identities are dependent on the existence of group categorization, be they religious, cultural, economic, social or ethnic. Ethnicity remains a key determinant of group affiliation, inclusion and exclusion, while the removal, or opening, of the borders does not necessarily or automatically trans- form a member of a national State into a European, or global, citizen. Scale has also figured prominently in much of the recent border literature. There has been a geographical refocusing of the border away from the level of the State, down to internal regions, municipalities and neigh- bourhoods We live in a world of scale hierarchies, where different borders affects our daily life prac- tices at one and the same time Many towns and cities, which are normally perceived as constituting single functional entities, are divided along the national and State borders, the degree of transboundary coordination and integration contingent upon the nature of political and power relations between the two sides borders, which determine our daily life practices to a much greater extent than do national boundaries – across which the majority of the global population do not even cross once in their lifetime

Different identities are constructed from separate cultural, ethnic, social, and economic boundaries.

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The question of “place” has been newly raised in recent years from a variety of¶ perspectives — from its relation to the basic understanding of being and knowing¶ to its fate under globalization and the extent to which it continues to be an aid or¶ a hindrance for thinking about culture and the economy. This questioning, of course,¶ is not coincidental; for some, placelessness has become the essential feature of the¶ modern condition, and a very acute and painful one in many cases, such as those¶ of exiles and refugees. Whether celebrated or decried, the sense of atopia seems to¶ have settled in. This seems to be as true of discussions in philosophy, where place¶ has been ignored by most thinkers (Casey 1993, 1997); theories of globalization,¶ that have effected a significant discursive erasure of place (Dirlik, 2000); or debates¶ in anthropology, which have seen a radical questioning of place and place making.¶ Yet the fact remains that place continues to be important in the lives of many people,¶ perhaps most, if we understand by place the experience of a particular location with¶ some measure of groundedness (however, unstable), sense of boundaries (however,¶ permeable), and connection to everyday life, even if its identity is constructed, traversed¶ by power, and never fixed. There is an “implacement” that counts for more¶ than we want to acknowledge, which makes one ponder if the idea of “getting back¶ into place” — to use Casey’s expression — or a defense of place as project — in¶ Dirlik’s case — are not so irrelevant after all2.¶ To be sure, the critique of place in anthropology, geography, communications,¶ and cultural studies of recent times has been both productive and important, and¶ continues to be so. New spatial concepts and metaphors of mobility— deterritorialization,¶ displacement, diaspora, migration, traveling, border-crossings, nomadology,¶ etc. — have made us aware of the fact that the principal dynamics of culture and¶ economy have been significantly altered by unprecedented global processes. Yet¶ there has been a certain asymmetry in these debates. As Arif Dirlik argues (Dirlik¶ 1998, 2000), this asymmetry is most evident in discourses of globalization, where¶ the global is often equated with space, capital, history and agency, and the local¶ with place, labor, and tradition. Place has dropped out of sight in the “globalization¶ craze” of recent years, and this erasure of place has profound consequences for our¶ understanding of culture, knowledge, nature, and economy. It is perhaps time to¶ reverse some of this asymmetry by focusing anew — and from the perspective¶ afforded by the critiques of place themselves — on the continued vitality of place¶ and place-making for culture, nature, and economy. Restoring some measure of symmetry,¶ as we shall see, does not entail an erasure of space as a domain of resistance¶ and alterity, since both place and space are crucial in this regard, as they are in the¶ creation of forms of domination. It does mean, however, a questioning of the privilege¶ accorded to space in analyses of the dynamics of culture, power, and economy.¶ This is, indeed, an increasingly felt need of those working at the intersection of¶ environment, culture and development, despite the fact that the development experience¶ has meant for most people a sundering of local life from place of greater depth¶ than ever before. Not only are scholars and activists in environmental studies confronted¶ with social movements that commonly maintain a strong reference to place¶ and territory, but faced with the growing realization that any alternative course of¶ action must take into account place-based models of nature, culture, and politics.¶ While it is evident that “local” economies and culture are not outside the scope of¶ capital and modernity, it also needs to be newly acknowledged that the former are¶ not produced exclusively by the latter; this place specificity, as we shall see, enables¶ a different reading of culture and economy, capitalism and modernity. The inquiry¶ into place is of equal importance for renewing the critique of eurocentrism in the¶ conceptualizaton of world regions, area studies, and cultural diversity. The marginalization¶ of place in European social theory of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries¶ has been particularly deleterious to those social formations for which placebased¶ modes of consciousness and practices have continued to be important. This¶ includes many contemporary societies, perhaps with the exception of those most¶ exposed to the de-localizing, disembedding and universalizing influence of modern¶ economy, culture and thought. The reassertion of place thus appears as an important¶ arena for rethinking and reworking eurocentric forms of analysis.

Escobar 2001 (Arturo, Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, “Culture sits in places: reflections on globalism and subaltern strategies of localization” Political Geography 20)

The question of “place” has been newly raised in recent years from a variety of¶ perspectives placelessness has become the essential feature of the¶ modern condition, and a very acute and painful one in many cases theories of globalization,¶ that have effected a significant discursive erasure of place debates¶ in anthropology, which have seen a radical questioning of place and place making. place continues to be important in the lives of many people if we understand by place the experience of a particular location with¶ some measure of groundedness (however, unstable), sense of boundaries (however,¶ permeable), and connection to everyday life, even if its identity is constructed, traversed¶ by power, and never fixed New spatial concepts and metaphors of mobility— deterritorialization,¶ displacement, diaspora, migration, traveling, border-crossings, nomadology have made us aware of the fact that the principal dynamics of culture and¶ economy have been significantly altered by unprecedented global processes. Yet¶ there has been a certain asymmetry in these debates Place has dropped out of sight in the “globalization¶ craze” of recent years, and this erasure of place has profound consequences for our¶ understanding of culture, knowledge, nature, and economy Restoring some measure of symmetry,¶ does mean, a questioning of the privilege¶ accorded to space in analyses of the dynamics of culture, power, and economy.¶ this place specificity enables¶ a different reading of culture and economy, capitalism and modernity. The inquiry¶ into place is of equal importance for renewing the critique of eurocentrism in the¶ conceptualizaton of world regions, area studies, and cultural diversity. The marginalization¶ of place in European social theory of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries¶ has been particularly deleterious to those social formations for which placebased¶ modes of consciousness and practices have continued to be important. The reassertion of place thus appears as an important arena for rethinking and reworking eurocentric forms of analysis.

Place and boundaries have a connection to our view of everyday life. Assessing its influence allows us to question capitalism, modernity, and Eurocentric thought.

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Critical approaches tend to avoid treating borders as a stable reality. Étienne Balibar indicates that ‘to define or identify in general is nothing more than the creation of a border’ (2005, p. 77). Therefore, we may regard the border not as the territorial separation between two political identities but rather the point where one entity differs from another. The process of continually defining and identifying borders points to an ever changing and unstable reality. Borders should be studied not by their ‘appearance’ but rather by an ‘appearing’ or ‘bordering’ process (Deleuze 2008, p. 22). It is during this ‘appearing’ process that a phenomenon acquires retrospectively the sense of being there (Foucault 2009, p. 79). Michel Foucault maintains that bodies, couples, races, species or borders are never completely closed off. Rather it is through their constant redefining that they are given sense (2009, p. 83). Hence borders should not be taken as an assumption that can be simply described as absent or present. Any analysis should concentrate on how continual practices bring them into existence. As such, bordering is not restricted to the territorial separation understood as the limit of the Nation-State. A common critical argument is that borders have not disappeared, rather they are being found at sites that Noel Parker and Nick Vaughan-Williams state are ‘increasingly ephemeral and/or impalpable: electronic, non-visible, and located in zones that defy straightforwardly territorial logic’ (2009, p. 583). In Border Politics Vaughan-Williams attempts to defy territorial logic in his reworking of the border concept, claiming that borders are no longer at the territorial border by focusing on the bordering process. Nevertheless, his efforts achieve mixed results as they appear to narrow analysis exclusively to state power whilst excluding other possible border sites. This essay will discuss the limitations of Vaughan-Williams’ work and propose alternative ways of understanding the bordering process.

Jerrems 11-(Ari Jerrems, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid graduate, ph.d contender , 2011, BOOK REVIEW of Border Politics: The Limits of SovereignPower by Nick Vaughan-Williams, Borderlands VOLUME 10 NUMBER 1, 2011, Accessed: 7/27/13)

Critical approaches tend to avoid treating borders as a stable reality to define or identify in general is nothing more than the creation of a border’ Therefore, we may regard the border not as the territorial separation between two political identities but rather the point where one entity differs from another. The process of continually defining borders points to an ever changing and unstable reality. Borders should be studied not by their ‘appearance’ but rather by an ‘appearing’ or ‘bordering’ process borders should not be taken as an assumption that can be simply described as absent or present. Any analysis should concentrate on how continual practices bring them into existence. As such, bordering is not restricted to the territorial separation understood as the limit of the Nation-State. borders have not disappeared, rather they are being found at sites t state are ‘increasingly ephemeral and/or impalpable: electronic, non-visible, and located in zones that defy straightforwardly territorial logic’ that borders are no longer at the territorial border by focusing on the bordering process. Nevertheless, his efforts achieve mixed results as they appear to narrow analysis exclusively to state power whilst excluding other possible border sites

The alt is a criticism the flawed notion that borders are marked by territorial boundaries—only way to put limits on power

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Whether to have some kind of border or not cannot be the choice, as borders for states are precondition for the possibility of choice. Why that should be so thorny for them has been recently articulated with a Derridian insight by Nick Vaughan-Williams.23 States are perpetually embroiled in biopoli- tics by their efforts to control human persons through their domination of territory. Under the heading of ‘Alternative border imaginaries’, this leads Vaughan-Williams to evince a concept of ‘the generalized biopolitical border’, primarily in the light of Agamben’s account of the fundamental biopolitical nature of state sovereignty. But this is pursued with a take on all discrim- inations, derived from Derrida’s early work24 – that of Agamben included. In Derrida’s deconstructivist understanding, no discrimination of any kind can be final. If states are involved in combining government of territory together with government of persons, then they cannot rest content with any established determination of their borders as final. States cannot live without borders, but cannot afford to abandon the business of determining and re-determining borders. So, rather than looking at any supposed state decision to have bor- ders, we should be looking for variations in articulations of the borders that states make. An analytically powerful point of departure would be the dif- ferent materials, physical as well as symbolic, that need to be drawn upon in any determination of borders. In a word, we should study the ways in which states ‘inscribe’ their borders. We make the categorisation of planes that follows for analytical purposes. This is a limited set of more-or-less independent fields, which need to be examined separately to get a purchase on the different ways that states can ‘pick’ their borders. These planes, we contend, provide a grid through which we can understand bordering prac- tices by states. In short, a state’s choices concern which planes to inscribe their borders upon, and how to formulate inscriptions that will be ‘read’ as intended by the various addressees inside and outside.

Parker and Addler-Nissen 12, Department of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, 2012 [Noel and Rebecca, “Picking and Choosing the ‘Sovereign’ Border: A Theory of Changing State Bordering Practices”, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2012.660582]

Whether to have some kind of border or not cannot be the choice, as borders for states are precondition for the possibility of choice States are perpetually embroiled in biopoli- tics by their efforts to control human persons through their domination of territory. States cannot afford to abandon the business of determining and re-determining borders. we should be looking for variations in articulations of the borders that states make. we should study the ways in which states ‘inscribe’ their borders. We make the categorisation of planes that follows for analytical purposes. These planes provide a grid through which we can understand bordering prac- tices by states. a state’s choices concern which planes to inscribe their borders upon, and how to formulate inscriptions that will be ‘read’ as intended by the various addressees inside and outside.

Analyzing the way states re-inscribe borders is fundamental to broader understandings of their political structures

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Customarily, the analysis of the relations between politics and the political is worked out within the conceptual confines of an implicitly Western territorial state. There is an assumption of a pre-given territorial integrity and impermeability.9 But in the situation of peripheral polities, the historical realities of external power and its effects within those polities are much more difficult to ignore. What this contrast points to is the lack of equality in the full recognition of the territorial integrity of nation-states. For the societies of Latin America, Africa and Asia, the principles governing the constitution of their mode of political being were deeply structured by external penetration, by the invasiveness of foreign powers. The framing of time and the ordering of space followed an externally imposed logic, the effects of which still resonate in the postcolonial period. The struggles to recover an autochthonous narrative of time, to counter a colonialist rule of memory, and to rediscover an indigenous amalgam of meanings for the territory of the nation have formed a primary part of post-Independence politics. In what were referred to as ‘wars of national liberation’, the struggle to breathe new life into the time–space nexus of independence lay at the core of the anti-imperialist movement. This then is one modality of the geopolitical, of a transformative rupture, where anti-colonial movements were the disrupting and destabilizing currents able to challenge and eventually bring to an end the colonial appropriation of national space. But within the bounded territories of nation-states there is another modality of the geopolitical. Across a broad array of societies of the South, movements have emerged which challenge the established territorial orderings of the state. In some instances, such social movements have been rooted in ethnic identities, as has been the case in the post-1994 Zapatista uprising in the Chiapas region of Mexico, while in other cases as in Bolivia, Colombia and Peru, the geopolitical has been partly associated with ethnic-regional mobilizations but also with broader coalitions to restructure and decentralize centralized state power. Here the challenge to the territorial ordering of the central state has assumed a close connection with the notion of extending the territoriality of democratic politics through a decentralization of the state (Slater 2002). In this example, the geopolitical as I have defined it could be also thought of as a counter-geopolitics, where an alternative indigenous memory of territory is deployed as part of the ideological struggle against a centralized and mono-cultural state. This is clearly to be seen in the case of the Zapatista uprising in Mexico, discussed in chapter 8. There are many themes that could be taken up for further consideration. However, at this stage, I want to simply indicate how both geopolitics and its counter, the geopolitical, are best approached as inhabiting a variety of spheres, both international and national, both inside and outside. The ‘geo-’ in politics and the political needs to be set free from any pre-given anchorage in any spatial level. At the same time, as Bonura (1998) has suggested, critical geopolitical analysis can be made more effective if questions of cultural representation are connected to the power of spatial politics. In my own approach I want to include some suggestions on what it might mean to think critically, in a geopolitical context. There is already an excellent literature in the area of ‘critical geopolitics’,10 and in my own case, and as already noted in the preface, I shall develop a perspective that revolves around rethinking the geopolitics of North–South relations in historical perspective, and with specific regard to the relations between the United States and the societies of the South, especially, although not exclusively, the societies of Latin America. But how might we think the ‘critical’ in critical geographical analysis or more generally the critical in critical thought itself?

Slater, 2004 [David Slater, Emeritus Professor of Political Geography, & Associate Fellow of the Institute for the Study of the Americas at the University of London, Geopolitics and the Postcolonial: Rethinking North-South Relations, Blackwell Publishing Ltd]

the analysis of the relations between politics and the political is worked out within the conceptual confines of an implicitly Western territorial state. There is an assumption of a pre-given territorial integrity and impermeability. the historical realities of external power and its effects within those polities are much more difficult to ignore. For the societies of Latin America the principles governing the constitution of their mode of political being were deeply structured by external penetration, framing of time and the ordering of space followed an externally imposed logic, The struggles to counter a colonialist rule of memory, and to rediscover an indigenous amalgam of meanings have formed a primary part of post-Independence politics. wars of national liberation breathe new life into the time–space nexus of independence lay at the core of the anti-imperialist movement. This then is one modality of the geopolitical, of a transformative rupture anti-colonial movements were the disrupting and destabilizing currents able to challenge and eventually bring to an end the colonial appropriation Across a broad array of societies of the South, movements have emerged which challenge the established territorial orderings of the state. such social movements have been rooted in ethnic identities, as has been the case in the post-1994 Zapatista uprising while in other cases the geopolitical has been partly associated with broader coalitions to restructure and decentralize centralized state power. extending the territoriality of democratic politics through a decentralization of the state the geopolitical as I have defined it could be also thought of as a counter-geopolitics an alternative indigenous memory of territory is deployed as part of the ideological struggle against a centralized and mono-cultural state. The ‘geo-’ in politics and the political needs to be set free from any pre-given anchorage in any spatial level. critical geopolitical analysis can be made more effective if questions of cultural representation are connected with specific regard to the relations between the United States and the societies of the South, especially Latin America.

The integration of social movements and critical analysis of geopolitics offer different modalities of rupturing colonialism and spatial ordering – the alternative is necessary for Latin American liberation.

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The ethical sensibility offered in the thought of Emmanuel Levinas provides an important contribution to the ethics-as-nonviolent encounter thematized in my analysis. Levinas regarded war, the ultimate form of violence, as the suspension of morality; "it renders morality derisory," he said. Moreover, Levinas's thought fits the more general anti- Clausewitzian/antirationalist approach to war thematized in prior chapters, for Levinas regarded a strategically oriented politics—"the art of foreseeing war and of winning it by every means," which is "enjoined as the very essence of reason"—as "opposed to morality."8 In order to oppose war and promote peace, Levinas enacted a linguistic war on the governing assumptions of Western philosophy. He argued that philosophy from Plato through Heidegger constructed persons and peoples within totalizing conceptions of humanity. The ethical regard, he insisted, is one that resists encompassing the Other as part of the same, that resists recognizing the Other solely within the already spoken codes of a universalizing vision of humankind. However problematic Levinas's notion of infinite respect for an alterity that always evades complete comprehension may be (an issue I discuss later), it nevertheless makes possible a concern with the violence of representation, with discursive control over narratives of space and identity, which is central to my analysis. Edward Said emphasized the ethicopolitical significance of systems of discursive control, locating the violence of imperialism in the control over stories: "The power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming and emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism, and constitutes one of the main connections between them."9 Indeed, contemporary neoimperialism resides in part in the dominance of a spatial story that inhibits the recognition of alternatives. A geopolitical imaginary, the map of nation-states, dominates ethical discourse at a global level. Despite an increasing instability in the geopolitical map of states, the more general discourses of "international affairs" and "international relations" continue to dominate both ethical and political problematics. Accordingly, analyses of global violence are most often constructed within a statecentric, geostrategic cartography, which organizes the interpretation of enmities on the basis of an individual and collective national subject and on cross-boundary antagonisms. And ethical theories aimed at a normative inhibition of these antagonisms continue to presume this same geopolitical cartography.10 To resist this discursive/representational monopoly, we must challenge the geopolitical map. Although the interpretation of maps is usually subsumed within a scientific imagination, it is nevertheless the case that "the cartographer's categories," as J. B. Harley has put it, "are the basis of the morality of the map."11 "Morality" here emerges most significantly from the boundary and naming practices that construct the map. The nominations and territorialities that maps endorse constitute, among other things, a "topographical amnesia."12 Effacements of older maps in contemporary namings and configurations amount to a nonrecognition of older, often violently displaced practices of identity and space. Among the consequences of this neglected dimension of cartography, which include a morality-delegating spatial unconscious and a historical amnesia with respect to alternatives, has been a radical circumspection of the kinds of persons and groups recognized as worthy subjects of moral solicitude. State citizenship has tended to remain the primary basis for the identities recognized in discourses such as the "ethics of international affairs."13 The dominance and persistence of this discursive genre, an "ethics" predicated on absolute state sovereignty, is evident in a recent analysis that has attempted to be both critical of the ethical limitations of the sovereignty system and aware that "conflict has increasingly moved away from interstate territorial disputes."14 Despite these acknowledged sensitivities, the analysis proceeds within a discourse that reinstalls the dominance of geopolitical thinking, for it remains within its cartography and conceptual legacy. Arguing for a humanitarianism that avoids interstate partisanship, the writers go on to reproduce the geopolitical discourse on war, which grants recognition only to state subjects. Even as they criticize the language of "intervention" as a reaffirmation of a sovereignty discourse, they refer to the "Persian Gulf War" on the one hand and "insurgencies" on the other. As I noted in chapter i, Bernard Nietschmann has shown that the map of global warfare changes dramatically when one departs from the language of sovereignty. Challenging the state-oriented language of war and unmapping the geostrategic cartography of "international relations," Nietschmann refers to the "Third World War," which is "hidden from view because the fighting is against peoples and countries that are often not even on the map"—a war in which "only one side of the fighting has a name." Focusing on struggles involving indigenous peoples, Nietschmann proceeds to map 120 armed struggles as part of the "war." In his mapping, only 4 of the struggles involve confrontations between states, while 77 involve states against nations.15 In order to think beyond the confines of the state sovereignty orientation, it is therefore necessary to turn to ethical orientations that challenge the spatial predicates of traditional moral thinking and thereby grant recognition outside of modernity's dominant political identities. This must necessarily also take us outside the primary approach that contemporary philosophy has lent to (Anglo-American) ethical theory. As applied at any level of human interaction, the familiar neo-Kantian ethical injunction is to seek transcendent values. Applied to the interstate or sovereignty model of global space more specifically, this approach seeks to achieve a set of universal moral imperatives based on shared values and regulative norms. A brief account of an encounter between alternative spatial imaginaries helps to situate the alternative ethical frame to be elaborated later. It is provided by the reflections of the writer Carlos Fuentes after an unanticipated encounter with a Mexican peasant. Lost while driving with friends in the state of Morelos, Mexico, Fuentes stopped in a village and asked an old peasant the name of the village. "Well, that depends," answered the peasant. "We call it the Village Santa Maria in times of peace. We call it Zapata in times of war." Fuentes's meditation on this response reveals the historical depth of forms of otherness that exist relatively unrecognized within modernity. He notes that the peasant has existed within a narrative trace that tends to be uncoded in the contemporary institutionalized discourses on space: That old campesino knew what most people in the West have ignored since the seventeenth century: that there is more than one time in the world, that there is another time existing alongside, above, underneath the linear time calendars of the West. This man who could live in the time of Zapata or the time of Santa Maria, depending, was a living heir to a complex culture of many strata in creative tension.18 Fuentes's reaction constitutes an ethical moment. Provoked by an Other, he engages in an ethnographic self-reflection rather than reasserting modernity's dominant temporal and spatial imaginaries; he recognizes an Other who cannot be absorbed into the same. His reaction cannot therefore be contained solely within what constitutes the ethical life of his community. By encountering an alterity that is at once inside and wholly outside of the particular narrative within which his social and cultural self-construction has been elaborated, he is able to step back from the story of modernity that is continually recycled within the West's reigning discourses on time and space: "What we call 'modernity' is more often than not this process whereby the rising industrial and mercantile classes of Europe gave unto themselves the role of universal protagonists of history."19 Face to face with an otherness that these "protagonists," those who have managed to perform the dominant structures of meaning, have suppressed, Fuentes is able to recover the historical trace of that otherness and, on reflection, to recognize that the encounter must yield more than mere affirmation for his practices of self. Most significantly, the encounter produces a disruption of the totalizing conceptions that have governed contemporary societies—for example, the illusion that they are unproblematically consolidated and that they have quelled recalcitrant subjectivities. Therefore, in order to elaborate the ethical possibilities toward which Fuentes's story points, we can consider an approach that assails such totalizations with the aim of providing an ethics of encounter.

Shapiro 97 (Michael, Prof. of PoliSci @ Hawaii, Violent Cartographies, p. 175-179)

Levinas regarded war, the ultimate form of violence, as the suspension of morality In order to oppose war and promote peace, Levinas argued that philosophy from Plato through Heidegger constructed persons and peoples within totalizing conceptions of humanity. However problematic infinite respect nevertheless makes possible a concern with the violence of representation, with discursive control over narratives of space and identity, which is central to my analysis. "The power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming and emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism, and constitutes one of the main connections between them."9 Indeed, contemporary neoimperialism resides in part in the dominance of a spatial story that inhibits the recognition of alternatives. A geopolitical imaginary, the map of nation-states, dominates ethical discourse at a global level. analyses of global violence are most often constructed within a statecentric, geostrategic cartography, which organizes the interpretation of enmities on the basis of an individual and collective national subject and on cross-boundary antagonisms. And ethical theories aimed at a normative inhibition of these antagonisms continue to presume this same geopolitical cartography. To resist this discursive/representational monopoly, we must challenge the geopolitical map. the cartographer's categories are the basis of the morality of the map Effacements of older maps in contemporary namings and configurations amount to a nonrecognition of older, often violently displaced practices of identity and space. Among the consequences of this neglected dimension of cartography, which include a morality-delegating spatial unconscious and a historical amnesia with respect to alternatives, has been a radical circumspection of the kinds of persons and groups recognized as worthy subjects of moral solicitude. State citizenship has tended to remain the primary basis for the identities recognized in discourses such as the "ethics of international affairs." The dominance and persistence of this discursive genre predicated on absolute state sovereignty, is evident in a recent analysis the analysis proceeds within a discourse that reinstalls the dominance of geopolitical thinking, for it remains within its cartography and conceptual legacy. the writers go on to reproduce the geopolitical discourse on war, which grants recognition only to state subjects. they refer to the "Persian Gulf War" on the one hand and "insurgencies" on the other. Nietschmann has shown that the map of global warfare changes dramatically when one departs from the language of sovereignty. Challenging the state-oriented language of war and unmapping the geostrategic cartography which is "hidden from view because the fighting is against peoples and countries that are often not even on the map"—a war in which "only one side of the fighting has a name." In order to think beyond the confines of the state sovereignty orientation, it is therefore necessary to turn to ethical orientations that challenge the spatial predicates of traditional moral thinking This must necessarily also take us outside the primary approach that contemporary philosophy has lent to ethical theory Lost while driving Fuentes stopped in a village and asked an old peasant the name of the village. that depends," answered the peasant. "We call it the Village Santa Maria in times of peace. We call it Zapata in times of war." Fuentes's meditation on this response reveals the historical depth of forms of otherness that exist relatively unrecognized within modernity the peasant has existed within a narrative trace that tends to be uncoded in the contemporary institutionalized discourses on space there is more than one time in the world underneath the linear time calendars of the West. Provoked by an Other, he engages in an ethnographic self-reflection rather than reasserting modernity's dominant temporal and spatial imaginaries By encountering an alterity that is at once inside and wholly outside of the particular narrative within which his social and cultural self-construction has been elaborated, he is able to step back from the story of modernity that is continually recycled within the West's reigning discourses on time and space 'modernity' is this process whereby the rising industrial and mercantile classes of Europe gave unto themselves the role of universal protagonists of history." Face to face with an otherness that these "protagonists," have suppressed, Fuentes is able to recover the historical trace of that otherness and to recognize that the encounter must yield more than mere affirmation for his practices of self. Most significantly, the encounter produces a disruption of the totalizing conceptions that have governed contemporary societies for example, the illusion that they are unproblematically consolidated and that they have quelled recalcitrant subjectivities. we can consider an approach that assails such totalizations with the aim of providing an ethics of encounter.

Cartography hides and displaces bloodshed and violence and creates a “historical amnesia” with which the state masks violence. Only by encountering the Other outside of our dominant spatial construction can we disrupt violent cartographies and unmask historical violence.

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Fuentes's experience and the conclusions he draws from it are elaborately prescripted in the ethical writings of Levinas, for whom the face-to-face encounter and the experience of the Other as a historical trace are crucial dimensions of an ethical responsibility. To confront Levinas is to be faced with an ethical tradition quite different from those traditionally applied to issues of global encounter. In Levinas's ethical thinking and writing, morality is not an experience of value, as it is for both the Kantian tradition and Alasdair Maclntyre's post-Kantian concern with an anthropology of ethics, but a recognition of and vulnerability to alterity. This conception of vulnerability to alterity is not a moral psychology, as is the case with, for example, Adam Smith's notion of interpersonal sympathy.20 It is a fundamentally ethical condition attached to human subjectivity; it is an acceptance of the Other's absolute exteriority, a recognition that "the other is in no way another myself, participating with me in a common existence."21 According to Levinas, we are responsible to alterity as absolute alterity, as a difference that cannot be subsumed into the same, into a totalizing conceptual system that comprehends self and Other. For relations with Others to be ethical they must therefore be nontotalizing. Rejecting ontologies that homogenize humanity, so that self-recognition is sufficient to constitute the significance of Others, Levinas locates the ethical regard as a recognition of Others as enigmatically and irreducibly other, as prior to any ontological aim of locating oneself at home in the world: "The relations with the other ... [do] not arise within a totality nor does it establish a totality, integrating me and the other.22 Ontologies of integration are egoistically aimed at domesticating alterity to a frame of understanding that allows for the violent appropriation of the space of the Other: My being in the world or my 'place in the sun,' my being at home, have not also been the usurpation of spaces belonging to the other man whom I have already oppressed or starved, or driven out into a third world; are they not acts of repulsing, excluding, exiling, stripping, killing?23 To be regarded ethically, the Other must remain a stranger "who disturbs the being at home with oneself."24 The ethical for Levinas is, in sum, "a non-violent relationship to the other as infinitely other."25 If we recall the problematic presented in chapter 5, it should be evident that within a Levinasian ethical perspective, one would, for example, accept Ward Just's perpetually enigmatic Vietnam rather than endorse Norman Schwarzkopf's domesticated version.

Shapiro 97 (Michael, Prof. of PoliSci @ Hawaii, Violent Cartographies, p. 179-180)

in the ethical face-to-face encounter and the experience of the Other as a historical trace are crucial In Levinas's a recognition of and vulnerability to alterity is a fundamentally ethical condition attached to human subjectivity; it is an acceptance of the Other's absolute exteriority, a recognition that "the other is in no way another myself, participating with me in a common existence." we are responsible to alterity as absolute alterity, as a difference that cannot be subsumed into the same, into a totalizing conceptual system that comprehends self and Other. For relations with Others to be ethical they must therefore be nontotalizing. Ontologies of integration are egoistically aimed at domesticating alterity to a frame of understanding that allows for the violent appropriation of the space of the Other the Other must remain a stranger "who disturbs the being at home with oneself."

We must reject the homogenization of identity by which the state justifies violence through the domestication of alterity. An encounter with the Other is a recognition of their difference and exteriority

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This leads Edkins to deny that sovereign power constitutes the only possible form of political life and, indeed, that it constitutes a political life at all.39 The suggestion that the biopolitical sovereign order does not constitute ‘a political life at all’ ties into a broader argument Edkins and Pin-Fat seek to establish: that sovereign power is not a relation of power in the Foucauldian sense, as discussed in Chapter 3, but rather one of violence.40 Relations of violence do not produce subjectivities in the same way as power relations. Instead, the former is a type of relation that involves the technologised administration of sovereign biopolitics: in other words a form of slavery or servitude.41 With the emergence of a global zone of indistinction in which we can no longer distinguish between ‘our biological life as living beings and our political existence’, the possibilities for resistance arguably have been curtailed.42 Thus, according to Edkins and Pin-Fat, any attempt at contesting sovereign biopolitics must, however paradoxical it may seem, seek to reinstall power relations ‘with their accompanying freedoms and potentialities’.43 On this basis, the challenge for practical politics is to envisage how such a reinstallation might take place. Following Agamben's claim referred to earlier, that ‘it is by starting from this uncertain terrain and from this opaque zone of indistinction that today we must once again find the path of another politics, of another body, of another world’, Edkins and Pin-Fat argue that strategies for contesting sovereign power ‘cannot consist of a call for a reinstatement of classical politics, a reinstatement of the distinction between zoē and bios’.44 In other words, it will not do for any such contestation to find its basis in the very logic it is trying to overcome. Edkins emphasises that identity politics, associated with social movements, for instance, would reappropriate rather than displace that flawed logic.45 This is because, as she explains, identity-based claims ultimately work within the same horizon as sovereign power: ‘such a claim is a demand for inclusion in or recognition by the state, (p.141) not a claim that contests or disrupts the notions of inclusion and exclusion upon which sovereign power depends’.46 Rather, what is required is a displacement of the logic that might tie resistance back to sovereign politics: If a logic of sovereign power is identified that relies for its very operation on the production and organisation of bare life as a form of life that is hospitable to its operation, then it is in a sense obvious that a challenge to sovereignty might be framed in terms of a refusal or destabilisation of that very form of life itself.47 One way of challenging sovereign power would be to remove the grounds upon which it is able to produce bare life in the first place thereby rendering the biopolitical machine inoperative on its own terms. This implies the need for a life that is inseparable from its form: one where the classical binary between zoē and bios does not hold and cannot be blurred in a zone of indistinction. Crucially, as far as the potential for a politics of resistance is concerned, Agamben's notion of ‘whatever being’ lacks the features permitting sovereign capture: ‘what the state cannot tolerate in any way […] is that the singularities form a community, without affirming an identity, that humans co-belong without any representable condition of belonging’.48 Somewhat ironically, then, as Edkins has pointed out, the form of being produced by sovereign power, that is, bare life, ‘turns out to be that form of being sovereign power finds intolerable’.49 Put differently, the form of life sovereign power produces for its own survival is also potentially the source of its undoing. The type of politics that might follow from Agamben's formulation – a ‘whatever politics’ as Edkins puts it – is one that capitalises on this potential ‘weakness’ in sovereign power. In practical terms, Edkins and Pin-Fat argue that such a politics consists of two interrelated moves: the refusal to draw abstract lines of the sort sovereign power itself relies upon; and/or what they call the assumption of bare life.50 These moves, and their implications for how thinking in terms of a generalised biopolitical border might prompt a reframing of ethical– political practice/thought, warrant closer attention. To produce a zone of indistinction between zoē and bios that is hospitable to the cultivation of bare life, the logic of sovereign power must assume a distinction between the two to begin with. This (p.142) involves drawing abstract lines or borders between different forms of life in order to distinguish the politically qualified life of the polis from life that is deemed not to be worthy as such. What counts as politically qualified life is not a static given but a historically contingent outcome. Different groups have been excluded from politics throughout history (for example slaves, women, and Jews) although the fear arising from Agamben's work is that we are now all potentially excluded as homines sacri. To counter this, Edkins and PinFat suggest that one form of resistance would be to reject or to prevent the inscription of borders between zoē and bios, inside and outside, human and inhuman: It is only through a refusal to draw any lines at all (and, indeed, nothing else will do) that sovereign power (as a form of violence) can be contested and a properly political power relation can be reinstated.51 Importantly, Edkins and Pin-Fat emphasise that they are not arguing for a renegotiation of where these lines are drawn: to renegotiate in this fashion would be to remain inside the relation of violence. Rather, they argue that to move outside this relation of violence and reinstall a properly political power relation must involve the cessation of line-drawing in toto: ‘[…] we need not only to contest its right to draw lines in particular places, but also to resist the call to draw any lines of the sort sovereign power demands’.52 The second and interrelated strategy of resistance put forward by Edkins and Pin-Fat involves what they call an acceptance of bare life and it is this line of thought that perhaps reflects Agamben's notion of inoperativity most closely. Such an acceptance occurs when the subject both acknowledges and also demands recognition of its status as nothing but bare life. In this way properly political power relations are reinstalled as the subject transforms bare life into what Agamben calls form-of-life.53 The transformation occurs as the subject literally lays bare the violent excesses upon which sovereign power rests by assuming them. To illustrate this point, Edkins and PinFat draw on the provocative example of the phenomenon of lip sewing among refugees. Among others they cite the case of Abbas Amini, an Iranian national seeking asylum in Britain, who, in 2003, protested against the government's immigration policies by sewing shut his eyes, ears and mouth: (p.143) Amini's political act of resistance, using his own body, can be read as an act where, with all hope lost, the only site left for resistance is in complete embrace of bare life as a form-of-life that has its own bios.54 This example offers a useful illustration of what Agamben means by an act of transgression that un-works the biopolitical system from within. By assuming bare life Amini takes away the grounds upon which sovereign power would otherwise operate. His actions adopt the logic of the system in order to jam it. Another example of an attempt to render the sovereign biopolitical machine inoperative is Agamben's own refusal to travel to the United States.55 Since March 2004, Agamben has protested against what he considers to be the ‘biopolitical tattooing’ of the US Department of Homeland Security by publically resigning from his position as Visiting Professor at New York University and banning himself from air travel to the United States.56 In an article published in Le Monde in 2004, Agamben claims that: ‘History teaches us how practices first reserved for foreigners find themselves applied later to the rest of the citizenry.’57 Citing the capture and filing of finger print and retina data as reflecting a new ‘normal’ biopolitical relationship between the citizen and the state, he argues: By applying these techniques and these devices invented for the dangerous classes to a citizen, or rather to a human being as such, states, which should constitute the precise space of political life, have made the person the ideal suspect, to the point that it's humanity itself that has become the dangerous class.58 Agamben's decision to ban himself from travel to the United States, thereby effectively rendering himself immobile, jams the generalised biopolitical border because, as we have seen in previous chapters, it relies precisely on circulation of people, goods and services. Indeed, this example highlights that, for border security to work effectively, subjects need to be constantly on the move: without movement biopolitical bordering practices cannot operate. The profanatory potential of this insight has yet to be mobilised as far as resistance against some of the most insidious practices legitimised by the ‘War on Terror’ is concerned.

Vaughan-Williams 2009, (Nick, Published to Edinburgh Scholarship Online, “Border Politics: The Limits of Sovereign Power”, 3/12/09, 6/28/13|Ashwin)

The suggestion that the biopolitical sovereign order does not constitute ‘a political life at all’ ties into a broader argument that sovereign power is not a relation of power but rather one of violence any attempt at contesting sovereign biopolitics must, however paradoxical it may seem, seek to reinstall power relations ‘with their accompanying freedoms and potentialities ‘it is by starting from this uncertain terrain and from this opaque zone of indistinction that today we must once again find the path of another politics, of another body, of another world’ contesting sovereign power ‘cannot consist of a call for a reinstatement of classical politics identity politics, associated with social movements, for instance, would reappropriate rather than displace that flawed logic what is required is a displacement of the logic that might tie resistance back to sovereign politics One way of challenging sovereign power would be to remove the grounds upon which it is able to produce bare life in the first place thereby rendering the biopolitical machine inoperative on its own terms This implies the need for a life that is inseparable from its form the form of being produced by sovereign power, that is, bare life, ‘turns out to be that form of being sovereign power finds intolerable’ form of life sovereign power produces for its own survival is also potentially the source of its undoing such a politics consists of two interrelated moves: the refusal to draw abstract lines of the sort sovereign power itself relies upon; and/or what they call the assumption of bare life thinking in terms of a generalised biopolitical border might prompt a reframing of ethical– political practice/thought This (p.142) involves drawing abstract lines or borders between different forms of life in order to distinguish the politically qualified life of the polis from life that is deemed not to be worthy as such one form of resistance would be to reject or to prevent the inscription of borders between inside and outside, human and inhuman they are not arguing for a renegotiation of where these lines are drawn: to renegotiate in this fashion would be to remain inside the relation of violence. Rather, they argue that to move outside this relation of violence and reinstall a properly political power relation must involve the cessation of line-drawing The second and interrelated strategy of resistance put forward volves what they call an acceptance of bare life when the subject both acknowledges and also demands recognition of its status as nothing but bare life the subject literally lays bare the violent excesses upon which sovereign power rests by assuming them This offers a illustration of transgression that un-works the biopolitical system from within. By assuming bare life Amini takes away the grounds upon which sovereign power would otherwise operate. His actions adopt the logic of the system in order to jam it. for border security to work effectively, subjects need to be constantly on the move: without movement biopolitical bordering practices cannot operate

Vote negative to assume a politics that renders the biopolitical machine inoperative—the cessation of line-drawing under the sovereign body and assuming the situation of bare life reframes the ethical-political thought and inscribes a politics more open to potentialities

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The second and interrelated strategy of resistance put forward by Edkins and Pin-Fat involves what they call an acceptance of bare life and it is this line of thought that perhaps reflects Agamben's notion of inoperativity most closely. Such an acceptance occurs when the subject both acknowledges and also demands recognition of its status as nothing but bare life. In this way properly political power relations are reinstalled as the subject transforms bare life into what Agamben calls form-of-life.53 The transformation occurs as the subject literally lays bare the violent excesses upon which sovereign power rests by assuming them. To illustrate this point, Edkins and PinFat draw on the provocative example of the phenomenon of lip sewing among refugees. Among others they cite the case of Abbas Amini, an Iranian national seeking asylum in Britain, who, in 2003, protested against the government's immigration policies by sewing shut his eyes, ears and mouth: (p.143) Amini's political act of resistance, using his own body, can be read as an act where, with all hope lost, the only site left for resistance is in complete embrace of bare life as a form-of-life that has its own bios.54 This example offers a useful illustration of what Agamben means by an act of transgression that un-works the biopolitical system from within. By assuming bare life Amini takes away the grounds upon which sovereign power would otherwise operate. His actions adopt the logic of the system in order to jam it. Another example of an attempt to render the sovereign biopolitical machine inoperative is Agamben's own refusal to travel to the United States.55 Since March 2004, Agamben has protested against what he considers to be the ‘biopolitical tattooing’ of the US Department of Homeland Security by publically resigning from his position as Visiting Professor at New York University and banning himself from air travel to the United States.56 In an article published in Le Monde in 2004, Agamben claims that: ‘History teaches us how practices first reserved for foreigners find themselves applied later to the rest of the citizenry.’57 Citing the capture and filing of finger print and retina data as reflecting a new ‘normal’ biopolitical relationship between the citizen and the state, he argues: By applying these techniques and these devices invented for the dangerous classes to a citizen, or rather to a human being as such, states, which should constitute the precise space of political life, have made the person the ideal suspect, to thepoint that it's humanity itself that has become the dangerous class.58

Vaughn-Williams 9 ( Nick, IR MA @ university of Warwick IR PhD @ Aberystwyth, “Border Politics: The Limits of Sovereign Power” pg 143)

an acceptance of bare life and it is this line of thought that perhaps reflects Agamben's notion of inoperativity most closely Such an acceptance occurs when the subject both acknowledges and also demands recognition of its status as nothing but bare life. The transformation occurs as the subject literally lays bare the violent excesses upon which sovereign power rests by assuming them. example of the phenomenon lip sewing among refugees. the case of Abbas Amini protested against the government's immigration policies by sewing shut his eyes, ears and mouth using his own body with all hope lost, the only site left for resistance is in complete embrace of bare life as a form-of-life that has its own bios. By assuming bare life Amini takes away the grounds upon which sovereign power would otherwise operate. His actions adopt the logic of the system in order to jam it

The alternative is to accept bare life- this radical action of acceptance is ironically the opposite of what the sovereign wants and assuming this bare life grinds the logic of the system to a halt

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This example offers a useful illustration of what Agamben means by an act of transgression that un-works the biopolitical system from within. By assuming bare life Amini takes away the grounds upon which sovereign power would otherwise operate. His actions adopt the logic of the system in order to jam it. Another example of an attempt to render the sovereign biopolitical machine inoperative is Agamben's own refusal to travel to the United States.55 Since March 2004, Agamben has protested against what he considers to be the ‘biopolitical tattooing’ of the US Department of Homeland Security by publically resigning from his position as Visiting Professor at New York University and banning himself from air travel to the United States.56 In an article published in Le Monde in 2004, Agamben claims that: ‘History teaches us how practices first reserved for foreigners find themselves applied later to the rest of the citizenry.’57 Citing the capture and filing of finger print and retina data as reflecting a new ‘normal’ biopolitical relationship between the citizen and the state, he argues: By applying these techniques and these devices invented for the dangerous classes to a citizen, or rather to a human being as such, states, which should constitute the precise space of political life, have made the person the ideal suspect, to thepoint that it's humanity itself that has become the dangerous class.58 Agamben's decision to ban himself from travel to the United States, thereby effectively rendering himself immobile, jams the generalised biopolitical border because, as we have seen in previous chapters, it relies precisely on circulation of people, goods and services. Indeed, this example highlights that, for border security to work effectively, subjects need to be constantly on the move: without movement biopolitical bordering practices cannot operate. The profanatory potential of this insight has yet to be mobilised as far as resistance against some of the most insidious practices legitimised by the ‘War on Terror’ is concerned.

Vaughn-Williams 9 ( Nick, IR MA @ university of Warwick IR PhD @ Aberystwyth, “Border Politics: The Limits of Sovereign Power” pg 143-44)

Agamben means by an act of transgression that un-works the biopolitical system from within assuming bare life Amini takes away the grounds upon which sovereign power would otherwise operate. His actions adopt the logic of the system in order to jam it attempt to render the sovereign biopolitical machine inoperative is Agamben's own refusal to travel to the United States Agamben has protested against what he considers to be the ‘biopolitical tattooing’ of the US Department of Homeland Security by publically resigning from his position as Visiting Professor at New York University and banning himself from air travel to the United States Citing the capture and filing of finger print and retina data as reflecting a new ‘normal’ biopolitical relationship between the citizen and the state, made the person the ideal suspect, to thepoint that it's humanity itself that has become the dangerous class Agamben's decision to ban himself from travel to the United States, thereby effectively rendering himself immobile, jams the generalised biopolitical border because relies precisely on circulation of people, goods and services Indeed, this example highlights that, for border security to work effectively, subjects need to be constantly on the move: without movement biopolitical bordering practices cannot operate.

The alternative is to render ourselves immobile in the face of the biopolitical border- borders and border security cannot operate without the continuous flow of goods and people

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The metaphor of borders and bridges provides a refreshing cartogra­phy/architecture for border studies. Bridging and connection have been promi­nent in border studies yet the focus has been one-dimensional in terms of studies of immigration, transborder communities, and commodity chains. Rather than maintaining the horizontal line that dissects and crosses the nation state(s), the notion of borders and bridges provides a specific verticality and a new dimension. It is not solely the crossings that are important, but the connections, the nodes, and the intervening process involved in the possible focus of study. Connections are not necessarily harmonious (see Grimson and Vila 2002.), and bridges span tur­bulence and the underbelly, including the figure of the subaltern. Bridges connect contrasting venues and control crossings in various ways. What I am suggesting is a different analytic to disrupt (not replace) the entrenched epistemology of the border. We are in need of a new architecture that builds on the studies and epis­temology of the past, but one that helps break the cartography created to produce new perceptions of analysis and understanding. The actuality and the metaphor of borders and bridges helps query both the current restricted notion of the border and the study of specific processes that include entrance and closure, connectivity and contrasts, construction, and depth and range in border thinking and em­pirical study. Rather than be restricted to the horizontal line in the sand, work in this area should be attentive to the broader spans of borderlands, spaces, and places. The primary interest of the present work in terms of borders and bridges is with the ethnographic—not solely as a method to study local human behavior but also as a conceptual parameter to address broad and complex spans of activity. The ethnographic is often synonymous with the local, the qualitative, and the construction of everyday life. But the ethnographic lens also provides insight, and queries broader institutional and structural influences that condition human be­havior and societal process. Take, for example, Lugo’s (2008) study of maquildoras. Lugo begins by illustrating the deep place and connection of Juarez-El Paso with Mexico’s colonial past while illustrating the constructed border and its generative control through inspections in the entire Juarez-El Paso range. Utilizing a border narrative, Lugo exposes the racial, gendered, and class connections among Mex- icanos and Mexicanas of Juarez; these people live along the border, labor in its industry, and maneuver in the stronghold of the state and economy. The maquilas are structural entities constructed by economic, commercial processes; but they have dramatically conditioned social forms, local relations, and communities, as well as the role of the nation state and society on both sides of the Mexico-U.S. border. In the end, people’s lives have changed dramatically not only along the border but also in the broader range and depth of the borderlands and mobile frontiers of the nation state.

Alvarez 2012 (Robert, University of California, San Diego, The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Vol. 17, No. 1)

The metaphor of borders and bridges provides a refreshing cartogra­phy/architecture for border studies. Bridging and connection have been promi­nent in border studies yet the focus has been one-dimensional Rather than maintaining the horizontal line that dissects and crosses the nation state(s), the notion of borders and bridges provides a specific verticality and a new dimension. bridges span tur­bulence and the underbelly, including the figure of the subaltern. Bridges connect contrasting venues and control crossings in various ways. What I am suggesting is a different analytic to disrupt (not replace) the entrenched epistemology of the border. We are in need of a new architecture that builds on the studies and epis­temology of the past, but one that helps break the cartography created to produce new perceptions of analysis and understanding. The actuality and the metaphor of borders and bridges helps query both the current restricted notion of the border and the study of specific processes in border thinking and em­pirical study. The primary interest of the present work in terms of borders and bridges is with the ethnographic The ethnographic is often synonymous with the local, the qualitative, and the construction of everyday life. But the ethnographic lens also provides insight, and queries broader institutional and structural influences that condition human be­havior and societal process Lugo’s study of maquildoras begins by illustrating the deep place and connection of Juarez-El Paso with Mexico’s colonial past Utilizing a border narrative, Lugo exposes the racial, gendered, and class connections among Mex- icanos and Mexicanas of Juarez The maquilas are structural entities constructed by economic, commercial processes; but they have dramatically conditioned social forms, local relations, and communities

Envisioning the border as a bridge breaks the one-dimensional discourse concerning state boundaries. We must disrupt the current epistemology surrounding the border to create the possibility of a new understanding

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Clearly the persistence of the strategic view is owed to more than reasons of state. Identity-related territorial commitments and the cartographic imaginaries they produce at the level of representation are tied to ontological structures of self-recognition. The nation-state and its related world of Others persists in policy discourses because of ontological impulses that are dissimulated in strategic policy talk, articulations in which spatial predicates are unproblematic. To foreground the significance of ontology in warring violence and to heed the cartographic predicates of self-Other interpretations, space must be treated explicitly as a matter of practice. Rather than naturalizing spaces of enactment by focusing on the actions by which boundaries are policed, defended, and transgressed—the familiar focus of war and security studies—the emphasis must be on the practices, discursive and otherwise, for constructing space and identity, on the ways that the self-alterity relationships are historically framed and played out. This emphasis requires an anthropological rather than a strategic approach to war, or, more specifically, ethnographic inquiries into how war is located among contending forces at social and cultural levels rather than strategic inquiries into how war is conducted logistically. While strategic approaches to warfare tend to be explanatory in emphasis (and indeed tend to suppress their interpretive predicates), an ethnographic focus is more concerned with the interpretive practices that sustain the antagonistic predicates of war. Moreover, a critical ethnography attempts to disrupt dominant interpretations by locating the silenced remainders of various discourses. Rather than naturalizing the boundaries by which states maintain their control over the representations of global issues, the focus involves both criticism and recovery. It is aimed first at disclosing how representations of alterity (dangerous Others) reproduce the identities and spaces that give nation-states and nations in general their coherence, and second at disclosing other forms of affiliation uncoded in state-oriented interpretations. A focus on ontological investments rather than the strategic aspects of warring violence turns our attention to the identity dimensions imposed on interpretations of enemy-Others. To elaborate this identity significance in terms of the Euro- and Native American encounters I have discussed, it should be noted that the erasure of indigenous peoples, in fact and in representation, has been part of the self-recognition by which state societies have territorialized and stabilized their identities. In recent years, however, instabilities in the territorial frames on which nation- states have relied have highlighted the identity stakes attached to state spatial practices, while at the same time making them more contentious. Given the heightened identity anxieties that this instability has produced, it is a propitious time to investigate the significance of those stakes in relation to modern state warfare. An examination of indigenous societies, which have tended to foreground the ontological investments and the identity stakes of warfare to which they give rise, provides an effective, distancing strategy, a way to make that which has been all too familiar appear strange, or at least historically contingent.

Shapiro 97 (Prof of PoliSci @ Hawaii, Violent Cartographers, pages 30-32)

Clearly the persistence of the strategic view is owed to more than reasons of state. Identity-related territorial commitments and the cartographic imaginaries they produce at the level of representation are tied to ontological structures of self-recognition. The nation-state and its related world of Others persists in policy discourses because of ontological impulses that are dissimulated in strategic policy talk, articulations in which spatial predicates are unproblematic Rather than naturalizing spaces of enactment by focusing on the actions by which boundaries are policed, defended, and transgressed the emphasis must be on the practices, discursive and otherwise, for constructing space and identity, on the ways that the self-alterity relationships are historically framed and played out ethnographic inquiries into how war is located among contending forces at social and cultural levels an ethnographic focus is more concerned with the interpretive practices that sustain the antagonistic predicates of war , a critical ethnography attempts to disrupt dominant interpretations by locating the silenced remainders of various discourses , the focus involves both criticism and recovery. It is aimed first at disclosing how representations of alterity ) reproduce the identities and spaces that give nation-states and nations in general their coherence, and second at disclosing other forms of affiliation uncoded in state-oriented interpretations. A focus on ontological investments rather than the strategic aspects of warring violence turns our attention to the identity dimensions imposed on interpretations of enemy-Others the erasure of indigenous peoples has been part of the self-recognition by which state societies have territorialized and stabilized their identities An examination of indigenous societies, which have tended to foreground the ontological investments and the identity stakes of warfare to which they give rise, provides an effective, distancing strategy, a way to make that which has been all too familiar appear strange, or at least historically contingent.

Our Alternative is to work within the framework of critical ethnographic. This effectively disrupts dominate power structures by locating the discourses silenced by state practice

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The growing interest of social scientists in the structure and function of international borders, and in the lives of border peoples and communities, has increasingly demonstrated the dialectical relationships between borders and their states - relationships in which border regions often have a critical impact on the formation of nations and states. These relationships are like many between the state and its regions, and they remain one of the most important and least understood in the general scholarship of nations and states, which too often takes a topdown view in which all power flows from the 'centre'. Perhaps more so than colleagues in other disciplines, anthropologists are well placed to view borders from both local and national perspectives, from the distance of capital cities to the villages of border areas (or, indeed, in those metropolitan centres - such as Jerusalem and Nicosia - which are themselves divided by international borders). An anthropology of borders is distinctive in a number of ways (Donnan and Wilson 1994). Anthropological theories and methods enable ethnographers to focus on local communities at international borders in order to examine the material and symbolic processes of culture. This focus on everyday life, and on the cultural constructions which give meaning to the boundaries between communities and between nations, is often absent in the wider perspectives of the other social sciences. The anthropology of borders is one perspective in political anthropology which reminds social scientists outside the discipline, and some within it, that nations and states, and their institutions, are composed of people who cannot or should not be reduced to the images which are constructed by the state, the media or of any other groups who wish to represent them. The anthropological study of the everyday lives of border communities is simultaneously the study of the daily life of the state, whose agents there must take an active role in the implementation of policy and the intrusion of the state's structures into its people's lives. When ethnographers study border peoples, they do so with the intention of narrating the experiences of people who often are comfortable with the notion that they are tied culturally to many other people in neighbouring states. An anthropology of borders simultaneously explores the cultural permeability of borders, the adaptability of border peoples in their attempts ideologically to construct political divides, and the rigidity of some states in their efforts to control the cultural fields which transcend their borders. Anthropologists thus study the social and economic forces which demand that a variety of political and cultural boundaries be constructed and crossed in the everyday lives of border people. The anthropology of borders has a long but not very deep history, which began in many ways with Barth's (1969) paradigmatic ideas on ethnic boundaries, but which owes just as much to work that, although not specifically focused on culture, nation and state at international borders, nevertheless showed the value of localised studies for the understanding of how cultural landscapes are superimposed across social and political divides (see, for example, Cohen 1965 and Frankenberg 1989 [1957]). Historical and ethnological studies (as collected, for example, in Bohannan and Plog 1967) also helped to develop this interest, though it was only in the 1970s as anthropologists began to address issues of nationalism, political economy, class, migration and the political disintegration of nations and states that a distinctive body of anthropological work on international borders emerged. Following the ground-breaking research in the Italian Tyrol by Cole and Wolf (1974) on the durability of cultural frontiers long after the political borders of state and empire had shifted, anthropologists began to use their field research at international or interstate borders as a means of widening perspectives in political anthropology to encompass the formal and informal ties between local communities and the larger polities of which they are a part (in ways so clearly solicited by many of the most influential anthropologists of their time, such as Wolf (1966) and Boissevain (1975)). They have accomplished this in a variety of ways: some have looked at how international borders have influenced local culture (Douglass 1977, Heyman 1991, Kavanagh 1994) or have created the conditions which have shaped new rural and urban communities (Alvarez 1991, Price 1973 and 1974); others have examined nation- and state-building (Aronoff 1974, Kopytoff 1987, Pettigrew 1994); and yet others have focused on people who choose or are forced to move across borders (Alvarez 1994, Alvarez and Collier 1994, Hann and Hann 1992, Hansen 1994, Malkki 1992). Recent studies have concentrated on the symbols and meanings which encode border life (see, for example, Lask 1994, Lavie 1990, Shanks 1994, Stokes 1994). Regardless of theoretical orientation or locale, however, most of these studies have focused on how social relations, defined in part by the state, transcend the physical limits of the state and, in so doing, transform the structure of the state at home and its relations with its neighbours. Anthropological attention to the ways in which local developments have an impact on national centres of power and hegemony has been influenced in part by historical analyses of localities and the construction of national identities (see, for example, Sahlins 1989). These analyses are indicative of the need to view the anthropology of borders as historical anthropology. Borders are spatial and temporal records of relationships between local communities and between states. Ethnographic explorations of the relationship between symbolic and political or juridical boundaries are salient beyond anthropology because of what they may tell us of the history of cultural practices as well as the role of border cultures and communities in policy-making and diplomacy. For example, Driessen's study (1992) of the Spanish enclave in Morocco, at the interface of two states and two continents, provides a history of the creation and maintenance of a variety of identities in an urban border zone, but also suggests how local forces have influenced the Spanish state. Borneman's analysis (1991, 1992a) of kin and state in Berlin before and after the dramatic changes of a few years ago problematises the divergent 'national' traditions of law and social policy in East and West Germany in terms of generational adaptations to the new, 'unified' state. These books are perhaps the best recent examples of the growing importance of a border perspective in political anthropology, in which the dialectical relations between border areas and their nations and states take precedence over local culture viewed with the state as a backdrop.

Wilson and Donnan 98 [Thomas M., The Queen*s University of Belfast, Hastings, The Queen*s University of Belfast, “Border identities: Nation and state at international frontiers,” pg. 3-4.]

the structure and function of international borders has demonstrated the dialectical relationships between borders and their states - relationships in which border regions often have a critical impact on the formation of nations and states. ). An anthropology of borders is distinctive in a number of ways Anthropological theories and methods enable ethnographers to focus on local communities at international borders in order to examine the material and symbolic processes of culture This focus on everyday life on cultural constructions which give meaning to the boundaries between communities and between nations, is often absent in the wider perspectives The anthropology of borders reminds social scientists that nations and states, and their institutions, are composed of people who cannot or should not be reduced to the images which are constructed by the state, the media or of any other groups who wish to represent them. The anthropological study of the everyday lives of border communities is simultaneously the study of the daily life of the state, whose agents there must take an active role in the implementation of policy and the intrusion of the state's structures into its people's lives. An anthropology of borders simultaneously explores the cultural permeability of borders, the adaptability of border peoples in their attempts ideologically to construct political divides, and the rigidity of some states in their efforts to control the cultural fields which transcend their borders. Anthropological attention to the ways in which local developments have an impact on national centres of power and hegemony has been influenced in part by historical analyses of localities and the construction of national identities These analyses are indicative of the need to view the anthropology of borders as historical anthropology. Borders are spatial and temporal records of relationships between local communities and between states Ethnographic explorations of the relationship between symbolic and political or juridical boundaries are salient beyond anthropology because of what they may tell us of the history of cultural practices as well as the role of border cultures and communities in policy-making and diplomacy.

The alternative is to engage in an anthropological study of borders—only way to understand the formations of hegemonic relationships in international relations

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Despite the large and growing literature on the anthropology of borders, there has been little comparative research and little in the way of anthropological theories of border regions. This parallels the situation in other social sciences, as summarised by Prescott (1987: 8): Attempts to produce a set of reliable theories about international boundaries have failed. Attempts to devise a set of procedures by which boundaries can be studied have been successful. This is due in part to a misconception about what it is that might be theorised. The theoretical importance of an anthropology of borders lies primarily in what it might reveal about the interplay between nation and state, and about the role of the border in the past, present and future of nation and state. As such, an anthropology of borders sits squarely within the wider anthropology of nationalism (for a review of the relationship between the concepts of nation and state, in anthropology and in other disciplines, see Grillo 1980). It is our view that the more anthropologists objectify border cultures and communities in ethnographic study, the less able they will be to trace the relationships among culture, power and the state, thereby missing a valuable opportunity to contribute to the wider social science of nationalism. Given the long tradition of anthropological analysis of the evolution of the state, in archaeology as well as in social and cultural anthropology, it is surprising how few anthropological studies of borders focus principally on the modern nation-state and nationalism. Here anthropologists' reticence to problematise 'nation' and 'state' as the terms of reference for local studies of society and culture plays a part (cf. Alonso 1994). 'Nation' and 'state' are concepts which do not readily fit classic anthropological notions about cultures, because all three concepts are seen by many people to share the same properties of integrity, unity, linearity of time and space, and discreteness. Nevertheless, anthropologists have made many important and lasting contributions to the comparative study of culture and power among nations and states. Among the most influential have been studies of the origins of nationalism (Gellner 1983); nationalist ideologies (Verdery 1991; Fox 1990); nation- and state-building (Wolf 1959; Lofgren 1995); states and empires (Mintz 1972; Wolf 1982); and post-colonial states (Geertz 1973). Over the last generation political anthropology has increasingly turned to the analysis of the roles of state institutions at local levels, the impact of policies on localities, and the symbolic constructions of ethnicity and nation which are often treated as aspects of 'identity'. But difficulties in problematising nation and state remain for many anthropologists. As Handler points out with reference to Quebecois identity, the nation may be perceived as bounded, continuous and homogeneous, but the current content of national identity is continuously contested and negotiated (1988: 32; see also Handler 1994). In this view, a 'culture' is simultaneously objectified, an entity associated with a place and owned by a people, and subjectified, a context for relations which seek the realisation of the idealised goals intrinsic to the objectified culture. We recognise that the state is also simultaneously a form of objectified and subjectified culture. While the subjective and constructed notions of culture have become for many anthropologists the principal means of understanding national identities, we must not forget that the institutions and the agents of the state, as well as the representatives of national and international capital, see themselves as objective entities with concrete, bounded and unilinear goals. Simply put, the state is an object whose reality will be denied if we focus exclusively on deconstructed representations of it, and nowhere is this more apparent than at borders, where the powers of the state are monumentally inscribed. Nations and their individuated members may be in a perpetual condition of becoming, but this is only partially true of the state. The state exists. Its institutions and representatives make and enforce the laws which regiment most daily activities of its citizens and residents, in direct relations of cause and effect. Border peoples, because of their histories, and objectified and subjectified cultures, not only have to deal with the institutions of their own state, but with those institutions of the state or states across the border, entities of equal and sovereign power which overshadow all border relations. An anthropology of borders is simultaneously one of a nation's history and of a state's frontiers. In our assessment of the theoretical and disciplinary implications of an anthropology of international borders in the contemporary world, it may be worth recalling how such borders differ from those in stateless societies. Considering Turner's frontier thesis in relation to Africa, Kopytoff (1987) suggests that the term 'border' must include the notion of shifting margins if it is to accommodate the particularities of a situation where it is people and not land that are seen as relatively scarce. Much like the traditional Southeast Asian state (see Carsten, this volume), social formations and their frontiers in West Africa arguably developed in response to a need to bring ever greater numbers of people within their domain. Governance of people rather than place thus characterised large parts of pre-colonial Africa. But as the government of people gave way to the government of territory, so the need for clearly bounded divisions of ownership and control correspondingly increased, and land came to be seen as something potentially valuable and of limited availability. These new borders still operated as part of 'a relation between people and space, but where the space is finite, and the centre can control a more or less continuous boundary, such relationships change, and the border becomes a state weapon' (Tonkin 1994: 27). Territoriality thus became one of the first conditions of the state's existence, and the sine qua non of its borders.

Wilson and Donnan 98 [Thomas M., The Queen*s University of Belfast, Hastings, The Queen*s University of Belfast, “Border identities: Nation and state at international frontiers,” pg. 7-9.]

an anthropology of borders reveal the interplay between nation and state, and about the role of the border in the past, present and future of nation and state an anthropology of borders sits squarely within the wider anthropology of nationalism anthropologists have made many important and lasting contributions to the comparative study of culture and power among nations and states the current content of national identity is continuously contested and negotiated the subjective and constructed notions of culture have become for anthropologists the principal means of understanding national identities, the state is an object whose reality will be denied if we focus on deconstructed representations of it, and nowhere is this more apparent than at borders, where the powers of the state are monumentally inscribed An anthropology of borders is simultaneously one of a nation's history and of a state's frontiers borders operate as part of 'a relation between people and space, but where the space is finite, and the centre can control a more or less continuous boundary, such relationships change, and the border becomes a state weapon

An anthropological study of borders reveals the root of state-based relationships

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The denizenry: (exposure) As the most common and recognisable form of homo sacer and bare life, Agamben sees the refugee as “the central figure of our political history” (Means Without End 22). As such, he argues that the increase of people who “are no longer representable inside the nation-state” threatens its very foundations (21-22). He writes that, industrialized> countries face ... a permanently resident mass of non-citizens who do not want to be and cannot be either naturalized or repatriated. These non-citizens often have nationalities of origin, but, inasmuch as they prefer not to benefit from their own states’ protection, they find themselves as refugees, in a condition of de facto statelessness ... “denizens” (Means Without End 23). Agamben argues that, as a neologism, “denizens” “has the merit of showing how the concept of citizen is no longer adequate for describing the socio-political reality of modern states” (23) [17]. He then expands on the theme, beyond the situation in which statelessness is imposed or, in other ways involuntary, to that in which citizens effectively opt out (or desert from) constitutional political participation. He writes that these people show “ an evident propensity to turn into denizens, into noncitizen permanent residents” (23). Criticism of Agamben’s work has focused on the idea that the state of exception “invests all structures of power and eradicates any experience and definition of democracy” (Negri) and on the unrealistic “bifurcation of the population into two halves: political beings and bare life” (Ong 22). Ong argues that “in this rigid binary opposition, Agamben seems to preclude the possibility of non-rights mediation or complex distinctions that can buttress claims for moral protection and legitimacy” (23). However, in the figure of the denizen, we do not find this bifurcation. She is a political being inhabiting (at least some of) the conditions of bare life. And the stance of the denizen seems to include the possibility of “non-rights mediation.” The denizen can also be seen as an example of how, as Negri has noted, Agamben’s analysis “can be realist and revolutionary” (The Ripe Fruit of Redemption). Still, there are limitations. The denizen’s conscious or unconscious acceptance of the exposure of a state of exception, and the ban, and a refusal of the enclosure of laws, rights and citizenship could not be said to inhabit a realm of “political life” (as Arendt would have it). This acceptance, as residing in consciousness (or unconsciousness), does not amount to political action. However, if the figure of the denizen contains the possibility of the adoption – the taking up of a political position – of exposure, exception and the ban and of the refusal of enclosure in the laws, rights and citizenship inscribed into the state order, the possibility for a different “experience and definition” of democracy could be opened. How long will it be before citizens more deliberately renounce citizenship of their countries of birth, to become conscious denizens, because states of exception and the suspension or denial of civil rights has rendered being a citizen of that state meaningless? Until now the act of denying citizenship of a state to certain native born residents has been exercised only by states. Agamben claims that the refugee, in “breaking the identity between the human and the citizen and ... between nativity and nationality ... brings the originary fiction of sovereignty to crisis” (21). If this is so, what then would the presence of deliberate denizens – who inhabit a legal space like that of the refugee and who refuse the refuge of their “own” state’s laws and rights – mean for the integrity of the state? The presence of large groups of “rights rejecters” within the state would firstly reduce the efficacy of anything like a blind trade. The state would need to either present or force through exceptional measures without pleas and appeals to the security of a contract, or would have to abandon them. Regardless of the possible strategies of governments in response to such a situation, the denizen contains the potential to change a political situation – whether they represent a ruinous rupture in the political fabric, or whether they represent a new kind of bug that a state has to learn how to swat. This question cannot be answered until, or unless, or if, enough denizens take such a stance. If nothing else, to consciously take up a position of exposure and the ban is to embrace the possibility of inscribing a political life as “being open to all, free” in such a way that (as with the medieval outlaw) the state is opened up to contestation. To invoke the denizen as a notion of political life and activity is not to call for a return to or “re-creation” of the classical Greek ideal of “life devoted to matters of the polis” (Arendt, The Human Condition 13). Such “retrospective consciousness of a lost archaic community” is of an ideal community that “has never taken place along the lines of our projections” (Nancy 10-11). And so, it’s impossible. Jean-Luc Nancy argues that such an ideal repeats the mistake of “the thinking of community as essence” which is effectively “the closure of the political,” rather than thinking of a “being in common” as exposure, openness and sharing (xxxviii). For Nancy, this “being in common means ... no longer having, in any form, in any empirical or ideal place ... a substantial identity and sharing this ... “lack of identity” ” (xxxviii). The denizen is a political being without a political identity. That is, without an identity associated with a (closed) community or state. “The denizenry” is “being in common” rather than a “being in essence.” The invocation of the denizen is not to invoke the polis as a physical location or ideal community but as “being in common of acting, speaking and sharing and, as a response to the call to “be a polis” (Arendt, The Human Condition 198). In a similar way, the invocation can be understood as a response to an understanding of the word “democracy,” of which we are “legatees,” and which has been “addressed to us for centuries” (Derrida 8-9), and under which political life is more than merely holding rights or opinions. This understanding cannot but reject the existence of a blind trade. In recognising the blind trade as a means of keeping citizens enclosed in the reciprocal illusion of the social contract and as a veil behind which the state of exception and bare life can become more prevalent, we open the way for its rejection. This rejection is a gesture on the way to taking up a position of exposure, which can be understood as a position which opens towards a “being in common” or a “community without community” (Nancy 71) or a even a “democracy to come” (Derrida 8). The denizen allows us to imagine the possibility to engage in political action and activity as one might in a polis, without the enclosure of rights and identity that are inscribed in our received liberal and classical notions. In the figure of the denizen is the possibility to be a polis. The denizen opens the way for a response to the erosion of civil rights in liberal democracies that does not rely on the logic that makes that erosion possible.

Eyssens 2008 [Terry, PhD candidate in Philosophy in the School of Behavioural & Social Sciences & Humanities @ U. of Ballarat, “Democracy of the Civil Dead: The Blind Trade in Citizenship” Transformations, Vol. 16, http://www.transformationsjournal.org/journal/issue_16/article_03.shtml]

The denizenry: (exposure) As the most common and recognisable form of homo sacer and bare life, Agamben sees the refugee as “the central figure of our political history he argues that the increase of people who “are no longer representable inside the nation-state” threatens its very foundations industrialized> countries face ... a permanently resident mass of non-citizens who do not want to be and cannot be either naturalized or repatriated. , they find themselves as refugees, in a condition of de facto statelessness ... “denizens” Agamben argues that, as a neologism, “denizens” “has the merit of showing how the concept of citizen is no longer adequate for describing the socio-political reality of modern states He then expands on the theme, beyond the situation in which statelessness is imposed or, in other ways involuntary, to that in which citizens effectively opt out (or desert from) constitutional political participation. He writes that these people show “ an evident propensity to turn into denizens, into noncitizen permanent resident She is a political being inhabiting (at least some of) the conditions of bare life. And the stance of the denizen seems to include the possibility of “non-rights mediation.” The denizen can also be seen as an example of how, as Negri has noted, Agamben’s analysis “can be realist and revolutionary” The denizen’s conscious or unconscious acceptance of the exposure of a state of exception, and the ban, and a refusal of the enclosure of and citizenship could not be said to inhabit a realm of “political life How long will it be before citizens more deliberately renounce citizenship of their countries of birth, to become conscious denizens, because states of exception and the suspension or denial of civil rights has rendered being a citizen of that state meaningless? Agamben claims that the refugee, in “breaking the identity between the human and the citizen and ... between nativity and nationality ... brings the originary fiction of sovereignty to crisis The presence of large groups of “rights rejecters” within the state would firstly reduce the efficacy of anything like a blind trade. . Regardless of the possible strategies of governments in response to such a situation, the denizen contains the potential to change a political situatio If nothing else, to consciously take up a position of exposure and the ban is to embrace the possibility of inscribing a political life as “being open to all, free” in such a way that the state is opened up to contestation. To invoke the denizen as a notion of political life and activity is not to call for a return to or “re-creation” of the classical Greek ideal of “life devoted to matters of the polis For Nancy, this “being in common means ... no longer having, in any form, in any empirical or ideal place ... a substantial identity and sharing this ... “lack of identity The denizen is a political being without a political identity In recognising the blind trade as a means of keeping citizens enclosed in the reciprocal illusion of the social contract and as a veil behind which the state of exception and bare life can become more prevalent, we open the way for its rejection. This rejection is a gesture on the way to taking up a position of exposure, which can be understood as a position which opens towards a “being in common” or a “community without community” The denizen allows us to imagine the possibility to engage in political action and activity as one might in a polis, without the enclosure of rights and identity that are inscribed in our received liberal and classical notions The denizen opens the way for a response to the erosion of civil rights in liberal democracies that does not rely on the logic that makes that erosion possible.

The alternative is denizenry—abandoning political citizenship renders borders useless

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2013

Returning to Benítez-Rojo and the possibilities that adhere to Chaos and the archipelago, it is ¶ useful to note that this is a unique assemblage (DeLanda, 2006; Deleuze & Guattari, 1986) ¶ and a complex ecology (Botkin, 1989; Haila & Dyke, 2006), whereby “bits and pieces achieve ¶ significance in relation to others” (Law & Mol, 1995: 276). The significance of the assemblage ¶ is ontogenic: it is not simply a gathering, a collection, a composition of things that are believed ¶ to fit together. Assemblages act in concert: they actively map out, select, piece together, and ¶ allow for the conception and conduct of individual units as members of a group. Deleuze & ¶ Guattari (1986) use the example of constellations: assemblages of heavenly bodies that, like ¶ Orion the Hunter, take on one (or more) recognizable forms only when their wholeness arises ¶ out of a process of articulating multiple elements by establishing connections amongst them. ¶ An archipelago is similar: its framing as ‘such and such an assemblage’ draws our attention to ¶ the ways in which “practices, representations, experiences, and affects articulate to take a ¶ particular dynamic form” (Slack & Wise, 2005: 129). Perhaps, at least as conceptual ¶ manifestations, archipelagos are fluid cultural processes, sites of abstract and material relations ¶ of movement and rest, dependent on changing conditions of articulation or connection. ¶ DeLoughrey (2001: 23) is an early proponent of the need for such liquid narratives: in her ¶ case, in relation to island migrations that speak to the ‘rosaries’ of archipelagos that are the ¶ Pacific and Caribbean: ¶ [blockquote] … no island is an isolated isle and … a system of archipelagraphy—that is, a ¶ historiography that considers chains of islands in fluctuating relationship to their ¶ surrounding seas, islands and continents—provides a more appropriate metaphor ¶ for reading island cultures. Not surprisingly, writers from the Caribbean and ¶ Pacific such as Edouard Glissant, Epeli Hau’ofa, and Derek Walcott have called ¶ for a cartography of archipelagoes that maps the complex ebb and flow of ¶ immigration, arrival, and of island settlement. [end blockquote]¶ Assuredly, an archipelagic turn is salient in the Pacific: the first ocean to be settled, the last ¶ major island region to be colonized by the West, and the one that has proportionately ¶ witnessed most indigenous people survive ‘the fatal impact’ (Moorehead, 1990). The Pacific ¶ was probably the site of the development of the world’s first ocean-going vessels and ¶ navigation systems, and the original settling of and travel between the islands, from which ¶ emerged powerful collective identities, as well as shared myths and languages (Nunn, 2009).

Stratford et al. 11 [Elaine, Ph.D. Philosophy, Professor, Geography and International Studies at UTasmania; Godfrey Baldacchino, Ph.D. Sociology/Anthropology, Professor, Island Studies Program, U of Prince Edward Island; Elizabeth McMahon, Ph.D. Literature, Associate Professor, School of English, Media, and Performing Arts at U of New South Wales; Carol Farbotko, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, U of Wollongong; Andrew Harwood, Research Fellow, School of Geography and Environmental Studies at UTasmania, “Envisioning the Archipelago,” Island Studies Journal 6(2)]

the archipelago is a unique assemblage nd a complex ecology whereby “bits and pieces achieve ¶ significance in relation to others” it is not simply a gathering of things that are believed ¶ to fit together Assemblages act in concert: they actively map out, select, piece together, and ¶ allow for the conception and conduct of individual units as members of a group. use the example of constellations assemblages of heavenly bodies that take on recognizable forms only when their wholeness arises ¶ out of a process of articulating multiple elements by establishing connections amongst them. ¶ An archipelago is similar: its framing draws our attention to ¶ the ways in which “practices, representations, experiences, and affects articulate to take a ¶ particular dynamic form” archipelagraphy provides a more appropriate metaphor ¶ for reading island cultures writers from the Caribbean have called for a cartography of archipelagoes maps the complex ebb and flow of ¶ immigration, arrival, and of island settlement an archipelagic turn is salient in the Pacific: the first ocean to be settled, the last ¶ major island region to be colonized by the West, and the one that has proportionately ¶ witnessed most indigenous people survive ‘the fatal impact’

Archipelagraphy exposes the colonial history of the Carribbean

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The question then, is how can thinking with the archipelago change how we think about ¶ the world and our place in it? Firstly, I claim that Envisioning the archipelago both reflects and ¶ contributes to an increasingly prominent theme in the contemporary social sciences and ¶ humanities; namely, the ‘spatial turn’. Thinking with the archipelago denaturalizes space so ¶ that space is more than the mere backcloth for political or ethical debate. Instead, reflective of ¶ a spatial turn in thinking, it emphasizes more fluid tropes of assemblages (Tsai, 2003), ¶ mobilities, and multiplicities associated with island-island movements.

Pugh 13 [Jonathan, Ph.D. Geography from ULondon, Senior Academic Fellow at the School of Geography, Politics, and Sociology at Newcastle University, “Island Movements: Thinking with the Archipelago,” Island Studies Journal 8(1)]

how can thinking with the archipelago change how we think about ¶ the world and our place in it? Envisioning the archipelago both reflects and contributes to the ‘spatial turn’. Thinking with the archipelago denaturalizes space so ¶ that space is more than the mere backcloth for political or ethical debate. it emphasizes more fluid tropes of assemblages mobilities and multiplicities associated with island-island movements.

Viewing islands within an archipelago exposes the history of colonialism that forms the basis of the US-Cuba relationship

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Stratford et al. (2011, p. 118) say that in “the field of island studies, the archipelago remains ¶ one of the least examined metageographical concepts.” To then start with a definition of the ¶ archipelago, they usefully outline their conceptualization of it by positioning this against how ¶ islands have tended to be previously studied: ¶ Certain limitations arise from the persistent consideration of two common relations of ¶ islands in the humanities and social sciences: land and sea, and island and ¶ continent/mainland. What remains largely absent or silent are ways of being, knowing ¶ and doing—ontologies, epistemologies and methods—that illuminate island spaces as ¶ inter-related, mutually constituted and co-constructed: as island and island (ibid.). ¶ Their point is that the study of islands has too often focused upon boundaries and dichotomies, ¶ and fixated upon borders: land and sea, island and mainland. Their response is to encourage us ¶ to emphasize instead the connections between ‘island and island’ and, therefore, to consider ¶ how the notion of the archipelago unsettles static tropes of singularity, isolation, dependency ¶ and peripherality that presently dominate how islands are conceptualized in the literature. For ¶ Stratford et al. the question is, as they say, ontological. When they write that an emphasis upon ¶ archipelagos is a form of “counter-mapping” (Stratford et al., 2011, p. 121) they are referring ¶ to producing better maps through more effective empirical research and methodological ¶ practices, and seeking to operate on an ontological land fundamental level.

Pugh 13 [Jonathan, Ph.D. Geography from ULondon, Senior Academic Fellow at the School of Geography, Politics, and Sociology at Newcastle University, “Island Movements: Thinking with the Archipelago,” Island Studies Journal 8(1)]

the archipelago remains ¶ one of the least examined metageographical concepts Certain limitations arise from the persistent consideration of two common relations of ¶ islands : land and sea, and island and ¶ continent/mainland. What remains largely absent or silent are ways of being, knowing ¶ and doing that illuminate island spaces as ¶ inter-related, mutually constituted and co-constructed: as island and island the study of islands has too often focused upon boundaries and dichotomies, ¶ and fixated upon borders: land and sea, island and mainland. Their response is to encourage us ¶ to emphasize instead the connections between ‘island and island’ and, therefore, to consider ¶ how the notion of the archipelago unsettles static tropes of singularity, isolation, dependency ¶ and peripherality that presently dominate how islands are conceptualized in the literature. emphasis upon ¶ archipelagos is a form of “counter-mapping” producing better maps through more effective empirical research and methodological ¶ practices, and seeking to operate on an ontological land fundamental level.

Archipelagy breaks down dichotomies that construct islands as vulnerable – this notion informs all of US/Cuba relations

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The state is therefore the individual in macrocosm for the purpose of understanding the necessity for a coherence-inducing negation. And Hegel is explicit about the analogy: "The state is an individual, and individuality essentially implies negation."10 Hegelian (i.e., spiritualized and individualized) states need enemies for their health and solidarity. And Hegel extends this principle to groups of states. These aggregates are also like individuals, needing negation to maintain their coherence: "Even if a number of states make themselves into a family, this group as an individual must engender an opposite and create an enemy." Despite his position on war as a "necessity," Hegel disparages particular hostilities and registers himself in opposition to overzealous destruction during war. Again treating states as individuals, he emphasizes the mechanism of mutual recognition through which states are sustained in their autonomy. This exchange of recognition continues during war and functions to inhibit war's duration and destructive aim. Although his language is descriptive, Hegel's commitments to state interdependence and mutual respect, parallel with his views on civic life* should allow the reader to infer an advocacy of limiting war's aims so that "the possibility of peace be retained" and that "war not be waged against domestic institutions, against the peace of family and private life, or against persons in their private capacity."12 These inhibitions Hegel wants to apply to war, like his eager acceptance of war as a vital necessity, derive from his philosophy of identity, which he applies consistently across various levels of aggregation from individuals through states to state alliance groups. It is therefore misleading and simplistic to regard Hegel's advocacy of war as an attitude or a direct discursive performance. It is more appropriate to say that Hegel supplies an ontological justification for war. Whatever the claims particular states make to justify war—seeking to increase their protection, to settle grievances or acquire resources—Hegel's interest is in the affirmation they achieve as states by experiencing the "negation" of war through the violent confrontation with another autonomous entity. We are therefore left with an apparent paradox: the Hegelian war enemy is an object of desire. But if we conceive of "desire" in its Hegelian sense, elaborately explicated in Alexandre Kojeve's influential lectures on Hegel, paradox yields to consistency and comprehension. Hegelian desire is reflexive. It is not an emotional projection outward toward an object or person. It is aimed against the other in a way that allows its projection back toward the self. It is what brings a person back to herself or himself. It is animated by a resistance to being absorbed into the object.13 Through desire a person becomes a conscious and autonomous "I."14 The external object therefore serves as a force of resistance to be overcome through the action of negation. The individual negates alterity's independence and absorbs it into the I. Desire is not merely a "sentiment of self," something to be satisfied as in the case of an animal desire such as hunger; it is precisely resistance to a fall into animal (i.e., nonself-conscious) nature. Desire moves toward nonbeing or nonnatural dependence by revealing and creating the "I"15 and thus achieving autonomy and freedom. Rather than being enslaved by the object, one's confrontations with alterity are aimed at self-recognition, which is a nonbiological desire.16 The Hegelian enemy, as an object of desire, is therefore an opportunity for the self-affirmation of the state body, an essential moment in the production of its coherence through a recognition of its autonomy and freedom. The Hegelian ontological impetus toward war is exemplary. Hegel is both instructive about the significance of identity attachments and an exemplar of one committed to the kind of collective identity coherence that translates as a commitment to a strong nationalism. Therefore, rather than allowing Hegel to merely instruct as though he provides a detached philosophical stance, we can also treat his commitment as a datum and seek to discern the pervasiveness of his form of desire; we can learn as much from what he manifests as from the objects of attention in his writing. Allowing Hegel an exemplary role, we can locate his kind of attachment to war in a more general cultural production of antagonism in which enemy/Others become acceptable—indeed, desirable—targets of violence for ontological rather than merely utilitarian reasons. Antagonistic Others serve as objects to perpetuate the identity of those who locate them as oppositional. This is the case for individuals as well as for collectivities such as peoples, nations, and states. Taking instruction from the broad outlines of this Hegelian model, Edward Said notes that the construction of identity requires an oppositional Other, for the struggles between peoples have involved contention over "historical and social meaning" as much as over territorial control.17 In the case of war, the use of the oppositional Other involves a more intense and higherstakes identity confrontation. But in the case of the modern state, this dimension of the antagonism is often difficult to discern because it tends to be overcoded with strategic rationales.

Shapiro 97 (Michael, Prof. of PoliSci @ Hawaii, Violent Cartographies, p. 42-45)

The state is the individual in macrocosm for the purpose of understanding the necessity for a coherence-inducing negation. The state is an individual, and individuality essentially implies negation. Hegelian states need enemies for their health and solidarity. Hegel extends this principle to groups of states. Even if a number of states make themselves into a family, this group as an individual must engender an opposite and create an enemy." he emphasizes the mechanism of mutual recognition through which states are sustained in their autonomy. This exchange of recognition continues during war and functions to inhibit war's duration and destructive aim. Whatever the claims particular states make to justify war—seeking to increase their protection, to settle grievances or acquire resources—Hegel's interest is in the affirmation they achieve as states by experiencing the "negation" of war through the violent confrontation with another autonomous entity. Hegelian desire is reflexive. It is aimed against the other in a way that allows its projection back toward the self. It is what brings a person back to herself or himself. It is animated by a resistance to being absorbed into the object The external object therefore serves as a force of resistance to be overcome through the action of negation. The individual negates alterity's independence and absorbs it into the I. The Hegelian enemy, as an object of desire, is therefore an opportunity for the self-affirmation of the state body, an essential moment in the production of its coherence through a recognition of its autonomy and freedom. Antagonistic Others serve as objects to perpetuate the identity of those who locate them as oppositional. This is the case for individuals as well as for collectivities such as peoples, nations, and states. Said notes that the construction of identity requires an oppositional Other, for the struggles between peoples have involved contention over "historical and social meaning" as much as over territorial control. in the case of the modern state, this dimension of the antagonism is often difficult to discern because it tends to be overcoded with strategic rationales.

The purpose of the “other” is only to affirm the identity of the oppressor. The creation of state identity is only possible through antagonizing the “other”

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Those at the margins of world politics understand violence. They negotiate with it daily. Yet elites, whether led by Bush or bin Laden, exploit violence to affix collective identities, forge a common political project, and subsume dissent. In this way, they deny opportunities for transformation in exchange for more violence. Nine days after the September 11 attacks, George W. Bush addressed a joint session of Congress to outline America’s ‘‘war on terror’’ and to finger Osama bin Laden as its chief suspect. Bin Laden responded with a videotape broadcasted on October 7 by Al-Jazeera television based in Qatar. Although from opposing camps, the two speeches share remarkable similarities. Each leader targets the other as the cause of violence and destruction in the world, generally, and against their own country or people, specifically. They declare that the other must be defeated or killed. Each leader presents the national Self as innocent, victimized, virtuous, moral, and rational; the enemy Other, as demonic, murderous, and radically barbaric. Both leaders conclude that militarization must be globalized as the only moral imperative to achieving national security, couched as taking care of one’s own.

Agathangelou 04 [Anna, University of Houston–Clear-Lake and Global Change Institute “Power, Borders, Security, Wealth: Lessons of Violence and Desire from September 11” International Studies Quarterly (2004) 48, 517–538]

elites, exploit violence to affix collective identities, forge a common political project, and subsume dissent. In this way, they deny opportunities for transformation in exchange for more violence. Bush and bin Laden target the other as the cause of violence and destruction in the world Each leader presents the national Self as innocent, victimized, virtuous, moral, and rational; the enemy Other, as demonic, murderous, and radically barbaric. Both leaders conclude that militarization must be globalized as the only moral imperative to achieving national security

Leaders use national interest as a justification for the creation good/evil dichotomies with the other

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In combining the Freudian and Hegelian emphases on the problem of the subject, Lacan helps us to understand what I have called Clausewitz's aggressive misrecognition. Like the Hegelian subject, the Lacanian subject seeks a coherent selfhood and uses alterity in the service of that aim. However, unlike Hegel, who posited a wholly successful narrative of the development of a continuously more self-conscious and coherent subject, Lacan emphasized the Freudian dissimulating mechanisms whereby the subject dwells in misapprehensions, projecting meanings on objects as a result of irreconcilable incoherences within its aims. These incoherences are related to the misrecognition of aspects of otherness within the subject—for example, the masculine subject who seeks to recognize its aspects of the feminine and at the same time to avoid that recognition and maintain an unambiguously masculine self-interpretation. This troubling disjuncture can produce aggressiveness as the subject focuses on the world rather than its own coherence problem, thus "throwing back onto the world the disorder of which it is composed."45 The turn to Lacan to investigate the ontological dimension of warfare is appropriate, therefore, because the various displacements and projections through which objects of violence are interpretively selected are at issue, and because this interpretive dynamic operates in relation to the ontological interest of the subject. This frame can be applied to collective models of subjectivity as well. Just as Hegel took his view of the necessity for negation from the level of the individual to that of the state, we can move the Lacanian model of aggressivity from individual to collectivity. The individual's symbolic participation in national enmities derives from identification with the national body. The nation's coherence producing activities and boundary policing serve to affirm the coherence sought by the individual while at the same time projecting a collective unity that constitutes a denial of social antagonisms and other fragmenting domestic forces. At a collective level, the domestic negotiation of a national identity, which is an ongoing historical and often contentious process, involves a continuous search for dangerous forms of disorder, various Others whose dangers involve threats that are not exhausted by merely strategic considerations; they are fueled by interpretations that cannot be comfortably focused on various contentious dynamics involved in attempts to produce an ideology of national coherence.46 One should expect, therefore, that a strong identification with unambiguous boundaries for one's collectivity—that is, a strong demand for a coherent model of national autonomy and difference—can produce adversaries, both within and without. These become national objects of desire; they are both necessary for self-identity and a threat insofar as they reflect a disorder too unacceptable to be recognized as part of one's own order.

Shapiro 97 (Michael, Prof. of PoliSci @ Hawaii, Violent Cartographies, p. 58-59)

Lacan emphasized the Freudian dissimulating mechanisms whereby the subject dwells in misapprehensions, projecting meanings on objects as a result of irreconcilable incoherences within its aims for example, the masculine subject who seeks to recognize its aspects of the feminine and at the same time to avoid that recognition and maintain an unambiguously masculine self-interpretation. This can produce aggressiveness as the subject focuses on the world rather than its own coherence problem the various displacements and projections through which objects of violence are interpretively selected are at issue, and because this interpretive dynamic operates in relation to the ontological interest of the subject. Just as Hegel took his view of the necessity for negation from the level of the individual to that of the state, we can move the Lacanian model of aggressivity from individual to collectivity. The individual's symbolic participation in national enmities derives from identification with the national body. The nation's coherence producing activities and boundary policing serve to affirm the coherence sought by the individual while at the same time projecting a collective unity that constitutes a denial of social antagonisms and other fragmenting domestic forces. the domestic negotiation of a national identity involves a continuous search for dangerous forms of disorder, various Others whose dangers involve threats that are not exhausted by merely strategic considerations a strong identification with unambiguous boundaries for one's collectivity—that is, a strong demand for a coherent model of national autonomy and difference—can produce adversaries, both within and without. These become national objects of desire; they are both necessary for self-identity and a threat insofar as they reflect a disorder too unacceptable to be recognized as part of one's own order.

Nations seek to reconcile internal aspects of their existence that are contradictory to an ideal national identity that is generated by the creation and reinforcement of boundaries. This results in violence internal and external to the nation state.

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In order to understand why it appears to be diffi cult to get beyond particular categories, I want to turn to some recent work in cognitive science that investigates the role categories play in human cognitive mechanisms (Barth, 2000; Bowker and Star, 1999; Brubaker et al., 2004; Lakoff, 1987; Lakoff and Johnson, 1999; Worchel and Austin, 1986). Like nonrepresentational theories in geography (Rose, 2002; Thrift, 1996), much recent work in cognitive science has emphasized the embodiedness of human conceptual systems. Lakoff and Johnson (1999) argue that mind– body dualism – that is, the idea of a disembodied reason, itself an important tenet of many modern philosophical texts – is not supported by research in cognitive science. They instead suggest that human concepts and categories are drawn from our shared, embodied experiences as beings that move through and perceive the world spatially, which ‘create[s] our conceptual systems and modes of reason’ (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999: 4). These conceptual systems are based on categories. Lakoff and Johnson argue that ‘every living being categorizes’ because of the way our brains are organized. In human brains, and the brains of all animals, there are far fewer connections between parts of the brain than there are neurons and synapses in each part. Thus, in order for information to move between parts of the brain it has to be grouped into manageable units, that is, it must be categorized. They further argue that we do not categorize in any way we want, but rather our categories are ‘a consequence of how we are embodied’ which establishes ‘what kinds of categories we will have and what their structure will be’ (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999: 17–18). Echoing the points made by many poststructural scholars, they note too that ‘there is no reason whatsoever to believe that there is a disembodied reason or that the world comes neatly carved up into categories or that the categories of our mind are the categories of the world’ (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999: 29). This agreement between cognitive science and poststructural thought is important because scholars approaching the question of categories from completely different perspectives end up with the same conclusions about the disconnection between conceptual categories and the world around us. For Lakoff and Johnson (1999), although our conceptual categories are often inexact, we still cannot ‘“get beyond” our categories and have a purely uncategorized and unconceptualized experience. Neural beings cannot do that’ (p. 19). The final key point that emerges from Lakoff and Johnson’s work is what they call the container schema. They argue that, Downloaded from phg.sagepub.com at University of Texas Libraries on July 28, 2013 Reece Jones: Categories, borders and boundaries 179 cognitively, humans perceive categories to be containers. Consequently, we imagine categories to have a defi nite inside, boundary, and an outside, like a container (Barth, 2000: 27–8; Lakoff and Johnson, 1999: 31–2). Lakoff (1987: 284) uses the image of a liquid being poured into a cup to illustrate the container schema. As the liquid is poured in, it homogeneously spreads to the edges without passing through them, creating a sharp division between what is on the inside and on the outside. Both Weber (1968), in his discussions of open and closed social relationships, and Wittgenstein (1958), in his references to the definition of a game, recognized what I see here as a major conceptual problem related to the container schema. Because we cognitively think of categories as containers, we consequently imagine all categories to be inherently closed, with fixed, stable boundaries between them. Yet, intellectually, we know that these boundaries are almost always fluid and permeable. In order to illustrate this point, Wittgenstein (1958: 34–38) uses the example of the game. He argues that we all know what a game is and what is not a game, which makes it seem to be a closed category. In our minds we can imagine a container into which we can place all things that are games. However, defining a game precisely is difficult. Is a game played on a board? Do you have to keep score? Is it played between two people? Are there teams? What about something like solitaire? The list could go on and on. The point is that although in our minds we think of the category ‘game’ as a container with rigid boundaries that allow us to mentally place some things into the container and to place others on the outside, when you try to define it the category’s boundaries turn out to be quite open. Instead of a container there is, according to Lakoff and Johnson, a cognitive system or, according to Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, a socially constructed system that simplifies, organizes and limits the diversity of the world. 3 The paradox of categories The paradox of categories, then, is that when we are trying to think of the boundaries between categories as open and porous – which, intellectually, we know they are – we tend cognitively to understand categories as closed and bounded containers. Several problems arise out of this paradox. On one hand, categories appear to be necessary in order to understand the world around us. Indeed, it seems that without categories the diversity of the world would be incomprehensible. On the other hand, these same categories, as Foucault and others have demonstrated, are the instruments through which order is established and power exercised. Categories appear to play a crucial role in how we make sense of the world while, at the same time, these categories limit and control those same experiences. Consequently, rather than suggesting, as Peet has done, that in order for geography to be respected as a discipline it needs to shed its association with categories and categorization, I would propose that geography should re-emphasize its connection with these topics through an analysis of the inchoate process of bounding that delimits the categories that shape daily life and academic work.

Jones 8 (Reese, Associate Professor and Chair of Graduate Studies Department of Geography University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, 13 May 2008, “Categories, borders and boundaries” Progress in Human Geography)

recent work in cognitive science that investigates the role categories play in human cognitive mechanisms cognitive science has emphasized the embodiedness of human conceptual systems. that mind– body dualism – that is, the idea of a disembodied reason, itself an important tenet of many modern philosophical texts – is not supported by research in cognitive science human concepts and categories are drawn from our shared, embodied experiences as beings that move through and perceive the world spatially, which ‘create[s] our conceptual systems and modes of reason’ based on categories every living being categorizes’ because of the way our brains are organized we do not categorize in any way we want, but rather our categories are ‘a consequence of how we are embodied’ which establishes ‘what kinds of categories we will have and what their structure will be’ scholars approaching the question of categories from completely different perspectives end up with the same conclusions about the disconnection between conceptual categories and the world around us we still cannot ‘“get beyond” our categories and have a purely uncategorized and unconceptualized experience. Neural beings cannot do that’ The final key point is call the container schema cognitively, humans perceive categories to be containers. Consequently, we imagine categories to have a defi nite inside, boundary, and an outside, like a container Because we cognitively think of categories as containers, we consequently imagine all categories to be inherently closed, with fixed, stable boundaries between them. Yet, intellectually, we know that these boundaries are almost always fluid and permeable to illustrate this point, Wittgenstein uses the example of the game we all know what a game is and what is not a game, which makes it seem to be a closed category However, defining a game precisely is difficult. Is a game played on a board? Do you have to keep score? Is it played between two people? Are there teams? What about something like solitaire? although in our minds we think of the category ‘game’ as a container with rigid boundaries that allow us to mentally place some things into the container and to place others on the outside, when you try to define it the category’s boundaries turn out to be quite open. he paradox of categories, is that when we are trying to think of the boundaries between categories as open and porous – which, intellectually, we know they are – we tend cognitively to understand categories as closed and bounded containers categories appear to be necessary in order to understand the world around us. On the other hand, these same categories, as Foucault and others have demonstrated, are the instruments through which order is established and power exercised categories limit and control experiences I would propose that geography should re-emphasize its connection with these topics through an analysis of the inchoate process of bounding that delimits the categories that shape daily life and academic work.

Cognitive science proves that categorization via the creation of borders is the root of us-them distinctions

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Beyond removing the stigma of building border fences, the events of 11 September are significant because they crystallised feelings of difference and allowed exclusionary narratives about civilised and barbaric behaviour to pervade the popular discourse. Borders are where these abstract notions of us and them are materialised. At the border the idea of a nation of people is reified in the form of a line on a map. The lines on the map become the containers for these categories and are where mental categories are solidified. The border also becomes the last defence to protect the privilege and perceived homogeneity of the state’s population. Indeed, most of the new borders barriers are erected to fight against migrations, even if this dimension is often mixed with other concerns such as terrorism and security. In an unexpected twist, the movement that defines the concept of globalisation resulted in a pronounced trend towards the enclosure of wealthy societies around the world.

Jones 11-(REECE JONES, Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Hawaii , September 2011, Border security, 9/11 and the enclosure of Civilization, The Geographical Journal, The Geographical Journal, Vol. 177, No. 3, September 2011, pp. 213–217,, Accessed: 7/28/13)

Beyond removing the stigma of building border fences Borders are where these abstract notions of us and them are materialised. At the border the idea of a nation of people is reified in the form of a line on a ma The lines on the map become the containers for these categories and are where mental categories are solidified. The border also becomes the last defence to protect the privilege and perceived homogeneity of the state’s population new borders barriers are erected to fight against migrations, even if this dimension is often mixed with other concerns such as terrorism and security. the movement that defines the concept of globalisation resulted in a pronounced trend towards the enclosure of wealthy societies around the world

Borders are the root cause of us-them dichotomies that cause violence and securitization

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As Virilio (2002: 8) points out in an analysis he undertook during the first Gulf War, the militarized state looks inward as well as outward, manifesting a ‘panicked anticipation of internal war’. In the case of the post-9/11 ‘war on terror’, the same preemption involved in assaults on states has been turned inward. A state of siege mentality is effacing the inside/outside boundary of the war. Achille Mbembe (2003: 30) puts it succinctly: ‘The state of siege is itself a military institution.’ In contrast with the firefights deployed on distanced terrains, the weapons used internally are surveillance technologies and extra- juridical modes of detention. For example, as an instance of hysterical per- ception, an FBI fingerprinting laboratory identified a lawyer in Oregon as one whose fingerprints were found among the detritus of the train bombings in Madrid in 2004. Furthermore, FBI agents pressed their perceptions for some time, despite a rejection of their fingerprint data by their counterparts in Madrid. The technologies deployed in the ‘war on terror’ have operated on two fronts, the distant and the home. For example, the drone, which was ‘weaponized’ for use on a distant battlefield, is being employed in its spare, observational version in US–Mexico border areas to help prevent illegal entry of immigrants. According to a report in the New York Times, on 25 June 2004, unmanned planes known as drones, which use thermal and night-vision equipment, were used in the US southwest to catch illegal immigrants attempting to cross into the USA from Mexico. The drones form part of the domestic front in the USA’s ‘war on terror’; specifically, they are part of ‘the Department of Homeland Security’s “operational control” of the border in Arizona’ (Myers, 2004). However, while one agency involved in the ‘war on terror’ is diverting its technology to help exclude Hispanic bodies, another is actively recruiting them for duty on the external war fronts. As shown in Michael Moore’s documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, military recruiters are most in evidence in poorer and disproportionately ‘ethnic’ neighborhoods and venues – for example, the parking lots of discount department stores. Ironically, given the participation of southwestern border patrol agencies within the Homeland Security network, much of the recruiting is aimed at those Hispanics that live on the margins of the national economy. An item about recruitment in the Denver area tells much of the story: In Denver and other cities where the Hispanic population is growing, recruiting Latinos has become one of the Army’s top priorities. From 2001 to 2005, the number of Latino enlistments in the Army rose 26 percent, and in the military as a whole, the increase was 18 percent. The increase comes at a time when the Army is struggling to recruit new soldiers and when the enlistment of African-Americans, a group particularly disillu- sioned with the war in Iraq, has dropped off sharply, to 14.5 percent from 22.3 percent over the past four years (Alvarez, 2006). Where are the recruiters searching? The story continues: Sgt. First Class Gavino Barron, dressed in a crisp Army uniform, trawls the Wal-Mart here for recruits, past stacks of pillows and towers of detergent, he is zeroing-in on one of the Army’s ‘special missions’: to increase the number of Hispanic enlisted soldiers. But the military’s domestic initiatives go beyond collecting bodies. It is also militarizing other agencies, assembling them within what I have called the ‘tertiary spatialization of terrorism’. As the author of The Pentagon’s New Map points out, ‘a whole lot more than just the Defense Department’ is actively pursuing the ‘war on terror’ (Barnett, 2004: 95). One aspect of that broadened participation is evident in a recent collaboration between three kinds of institutions: Hollywood film-making, the military, and the university, all of whom share participation in the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies. The collaboration exemplifies ‘the tertiary spatial- ization of terrorism’ inasmuch as it is located in the sector of the institutional ecologies of militarization that involve relations among military, entertain- ment, and university agencies. Leaving aside the historical development of the film industry (which, like the Internet, has borrowed much of its tech- nology from innovations in the military’s information technologies), USC’s involvement can be located in a long history of the university’s role in national policy.

Shapiro 7 [Michael J. Shapiro is Professor of Political Science at the University of Hawai’I, “The New Violent Cartography”, Security Dialogue 2007 38: 291]

the militarized state looks inward as well as outward, manifesting a ‘panicked anticipation of internal war’ the same preemption involved in assaults on states has been turned inward A state of siege mentality is effacing the inside/outside boundary of the war the weapons used internally are surveillance technologies and extra- juridical modes of detention The technologies deployed in the ‘war on terror’ have operated on two fronts, the distant and the home. For example, the drone, which was ‘weaponized’ for use on a distant battlefield, is being employed in its spare, observational version in US–Mexico border areas to help prevent illegal entry of immigrants unmanned planes known as drones, which use thermal and night-vision equipment, were used in the US southwest to catch illegal immigrants attempting to cross into the USA from Mexico The drones form part of the domestic front in the USA’s ‘war on terror’; specifically, they are part of ‘the Department of Homeland Security’s “operational control” of the border in Arizona’ , while one agency involved in the ‘war on terror’ is diverting its technology to help exclude Hispanic bodies, another is actively recruiting them for duty on the external war fronts. military recruiters are most in evidence in poorer and disproportionately ‘ethnic’ neighborhoods and venues much of the recruiting is aimed at those Hispanics that live on the margins of the national economy. the military’s domestic initiatives go beyond collecting bodies. It is also militarizing other agencies, assembling them within what I have called the ‘tertiary spatialization of terrorism , ‘a whole lot more than just the Defense Department’ is actively pursuing the ‘war on terror’ One aspect of that broadened participation is evident in a recent collaboration between three kinds of institutions: Hollywood film-making, the military, and the university, The collaboration exemplifies ‘the tertiary spatial- ization of terrorism’ inasmuch as it is located in the sector of the institutional ecologies of militarization that involve relations among military, entertain- ment, and university agencies

State borders fueled the designation of terrorists and a militarized response

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America’s ‘‘war on terror’’ and Al Qaeda’s ‘‘jihad’’ reflect mirror strategies of imperial politics. Each camp transnationalizes violence and insecurity in the name of national or communal security. Neoliberal globalization underpins this militarization of daily life. Its desire industries motivate and legitimate elite arguments (whether from ‘‘infidels’’ or ‘‘terrorists’’) that society must sacrifice for its hypermasculine leaders. Such violence and desire draw on colonial identities of Self vs. Other, patriotism vs. treason, hunter vs. prey, and masculinity vs. femininity that are played out on the bodies of ordinary men and women. We conclude with suggestions of a human security to displace the elite privilege that currently besets world politics.

Agathangelou 4-Associate Professor of Political Science and Women’s Studies @ York University [Anna, International Studies Quarterly, “Power, Borders, Security, Wealth: Lessons of Violence and Desire from September 11,” intro, 2004, WileyOnlineLibrary, DKP]

America’s ‘‘war on terror’’ and Al Qaeda’s ‘‘jihad’’ reflect mirror strategies of imperial politics. Each camp transnationalizes violence and insecurity in the name of national or communal security. Neoliberal globalization underpins this militarization of daily life. Such violence and desire draw on colonial identities of Self vs. Other, patriotism vs. treason, hunter vs. prey, and masculinity vs. femininity

The “war on terror” and Al Quada’s “jihad” are mirror strategies of transnational violence in the name of national security

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In the end, the discourse of the global war on terror that gained widespread currency after the events of 11 September is clearly implicated in the immediate justifications for many of these border security projects. Nevertheless, they were under consideration for many years before 11 September and achieved other goals beyond strictly providing security against terrorism. Therefore, rather than being understood as a novel aspect of the global war on terror, these walls and security projects are better seen as only the latest example of the long-term expansion of the sovereign state through the performance of sovereignty and the attempt to bring order to the people and practices within a particular territory. The dominant narrative of globalisation is no longer ‘the borderless world’, but rather one that describes the protection of civilisation in the US, Europe and other privileged societies through the prevention of dangerous flows from other places. Indeed, the confluence of the narratives of globalisation and the globalwar on terror produced the most bounded and bordered world we have ever known.

Jones 11-(REECE JONES, Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Hawaii , September 2011, Border security, 9/11 and the enclosure of Civilization, The Geographical Journal, The Geographical Journal, Vol. 177, No. 3, September 2011, pp. 213–217,, Accessed: 7/28/13)

n the end, the discourse of the global war on terror that gained widespread currency after the events of 11 September is clearly implicated in the immediate justifications for many of these border security projects. they were under consideration for many years before 11 September and achieved other goals beyond strictly providing security against terrorism rather than being understood as a novel aspect of the global war on terror, these walls and security projects are better seen as only the latest example of the long-term expansion of the sovereign state through the performance of sovereignty and the attempt to bring order to the people and practices within a particular territory The dominant narrative of globalisation is no longer ‘the borderless world’, but rather one that describes the protection of civilisation in the US, Europe and other privileged societies through the prevention of dangerous flows from other places Indeed, the confluence of the narratives of globalisation and the globalwar on terror produced the most bounded and bordered world we have ever known.

The war on terror is the latest example of the expansion of sovereign power

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William Connolly points to the rather more Janus-faced character of borders between states when he argues that ‘‘boundaries form indispensable protections against violation and violence; but the divisions they sustain also carry cruelty and violence’’ (Connolly 1995:163). On the latter, Connolly refers to the etymology of the concept of territory as deriving from the Latin root terrere, which means to frighten or terrorize (Connolly 1995:xxii). From here Connolly suggests that territory can be thought of as precisely ‘‘land occupied and bounded by violence’’ (Connolly 1995:xxii). On this view, to territorialize is ‘‘to establish boundaries around [territory] by warning other people off’’ (Connolly 1995:xxii). This etymological connection between territory and violence is also made by Barry Hindess: ‘‘While terror may sometimes pose a threat to the territorial order of state, the possibility that territory and terror derive from the same Latin root suggest that it might also be an integral part of this order’s functioning’’ (Hindess 2006:244). For Hindess, terror and territory are intrinsically linked not just because territorial impulses imply violence to those who are deemed not to belong; the threat of violence is also imminent to those who do belong through the regulation of conduct using fear (Hindess 2006:244). Indeed, as Hindess reminds us, the territorial order of states often fails to domesticate terror: when states do not have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force; when terror is used as an instrument of policy by a state against their own or other states’ populations; when there are disputes over the government of a population that are under the jurisdiction of another state (Hindess 2006). Echoing the connection between violence and territory made by Connolly and Hindess, Walker has argued that borders between states should not be read as sites of ‘‘airbrushed achievement’’ but re-appraised, and indeed re-politicized, as a ‘‘site of struggle’’ (Walker 2002:22). On his view, the historical transition from a system of overlapping loyalties and allegiances in favor of sharp borders did not happen either peacefully or overnight: ‘‘One has to ask how have we so easily forgotten the concrete struggles that have left their traces in the clean lines of political cartography and the codifications of international law’’ (Walker 1990:159). Connolly, Hindess, and Walker thus emphasize a deep connection between the borders, territory, law triad and violence that is not only etymological but historical, structural, and colonial. The next part of the article seeks to explore this connection further by drawing on analyses of the violence of the foundation and reproduction of juridical–political order offered by Benjamin and Derrida.

Vaughan-Williams 8 (Nick Vaughan-Williams, ph.d Assistant Professor of International Security , 2008, Borders, Territory, Law, University of Exeter, International Political Sociology (2008) 2, 322–338, Accessed: 7/27/13,)

‘‘boundaries form indispensable protections against violation and violence; but the divisions they sustain also carry cruelty and violence’’ territory as deriving from the Latin root terrere, which means to frighten or terrorize From here territory can be thought of as precisely ‘‘land occupied and bounded by violence’’ to territorialize is ‘‘to establish boundaries around [territory] by warning other people off’’ ). This etymological connection between territory and violence is also made by Barry Hindess While terror may sometimes pose a threat to the territorial order of state, the possibility that territory and terror derive from the same Latin root suggest that it might also be an integral part of this order’s functioning’’ terror and territory are intrinsically linked not just because territorial impulses imply violence to those who are deemed not to belong the threat of violence is also imminent to those who do belong through the regulation of conduct using fear territorial order of states often fails to domesticate terror: when states do not have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force; when terror is used as an instrument of policy by a state against their own or other states’ population when there are disputes over the government of a population that are under the jurisdiction of another stat borders between states should not be read as sites of ‘‘airbrushed achievement’’ but re-appraised, and indeed re-politicized, as a ‘‘site of struggle’’ a deep connection between the borders, territory, law triad and violence that is not only etymological but historical, structural, and colonial

Boundaries sustain cruelty and violence as they allow for the use of terror and fear upon the states own people

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Violence is one of the most profound ongoing stories influencing the (re)production of space. Similarly, individual and embodied narratives of violence woven out of a more expansive spatial logic may become acute, forming constellations that delineate and associate place. Accordingly, it may be useful to begin to think about ‘violent narratives’, not simply as stories about violence, but rather as a spatial metaphor analogous to violent geographies and in direct reference to Massey’s (2005) re-conceptualization of space and place. Allen Feldman (1991: 1) looks to bodily, spatial, and violent practices as configuring a unified language of material signification, compelling him to ‘treat the political subject, partic- ularly the body, as the locus of manifold material practices.’ To Feldman approaching violence from its site of effect and generation (agency) is to examine where it takes place, thereby embedding violence in the situated practices of agents. Violence is bound up within the production of social space (Bourdieu, 1989), and because, by virtue of spatiality, social space and somatic place continually predicate each other, the recognition of violence having a direct bearing on those bodies implies a geography of violence. Foucault (1980: 98) has argued that ‘individuals are the vehicles of power, not its points of application’, and this is precisely how power and violence depart, as individuals are at once both the vehicles of violence and its points of application. In the end, because the body is where all violence finds its influence e be it direct and thus obvious to the entangled actors, or structural and thus temporally and spatially diffused before reaching its final destination at and upon the embodied geographies of human beings e place is the site where violence is most visible and easily discerned. Yet violence is only one facet of the multiple, variegated, and protean contours of place. So while violence bites down on our lived experiences by affixing itself to our everyday geographies and by colonizing our bodies, violence itself, much like culture, is by no means restricted to place, nor is place static. Thus, the place-based dynamics of violence that seemingly make it possible to conceive a ‘culture of violence’ actually render this notion untenable precisely because of place’s relationality and proteanism. The embodied geographies of experience (including violence) that exist in places stretch their accounts out through other places, linking together a matrix of narratives in forming the mutable landscapes of human existence (Tilley, 1994). This porosity of boundaries is essential to place, and it reveals how local specific- ities of culture are comprised by a complex interplay of internal constructions and external exchange. In the face of such perme- ability an enculturation of violence is certainly conceivable. All forms of violence are not produced by the frenzied depravity of savage or pathological minds, but are instead cultural performances whose poetics derive from the sociocultural histories and relational geographies of the locale (Whitehead, 2004). Violence has a culturally informed logic, and it thereby follows that because culture sits in places (Basso, 1996; Escobar, 2001), so too does violence. Yet the grounds on which some insist on affixing and bounding violence so firmly to particular places in articulating a ‘culture of violence’ argument are inherently unstable.1 The shifting, kaleidoscopic nature of space-time demonstrates the sheer impossibility of such attempts. So while it is important to highlight the emplacement of all cultural practices (including violence), whereby culture is carried into places by bodies engaged in practices that are at once both encultured and enculturing (Escobar, 2001), it is only through a geographical imagination constructed on a parochial agenda, rooted in colonial modes of thought, and dislocated from the dynamic material underpinnings of place that a culture itself can be caricatured as violent. In short, while violence forms a part of any given culture, it is never the sole defining feature.

Springer 2011 [Simon, Department of Geography, University of Otago. “Violence sits in places? Cultural practice, neoliberal rationalism, and virulent imaginative geographies” Political Geography Vol. 30]

Violence is one of the most profound ongoing stories influencing the (re)production of space. Feldman looks to bodily, spatial, and violent practices as configuring a unified language of material signification, compelling him to ‘treat the political subject, partic- ularly the body, as the locus of manifold material practices.’ . Violence is bound up within the production of social space and because, by virtue of spatiality, social space and somatic place continually predicate each other, the recognition of violence having a direct bearing on those bodies implies a geography of violence. individuals are at once both the vehicles of violence and its points of application. In the end, because the body is where all violence finds its influence be it direct and thus obvious to the entangled actors, or structural and thus temporally and spatially diffused before reaching its final destination at and upon the embodied geographies of human beings place is the site where violence is most visible and easily discerned So while violence bites down on our lived experiences by affixing itself to our everyday geographies and by colonizing our bodies, violence itself, much like culture, is by no means restricted to place, nor is place static. Thus, the place-based dynamics of violence that seemingly make it possible to conceive a ‘culture of violence’ actually render this notion untenable precisely because of place’s relationality and proteanism. In the face of such perme- ability an enculturation of violence is certainly conceivable. All forms of violence are not produced by the frenzied depravity of savage or pathological minds, but are instead cultural performances whose poetics derive from the sociocultural histories and relational geographies of the locale Yet the grounds on which some insist on affixing and bounding violence so firmly to particular places in articulating a ‘culture of violence’ argument are inherently unstable

Spatial differences and borders are the root cause of all violence—they create spheres of power and domination

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Heyman (1998a, 1998b, 1999) has argued that militarization of the border cannot always be explained by the superexploitation of workers. He explains that border procedures are often the result of popular panic, encouraged by opportunistic politicians who turn rhetoric into real bureaucracies of violence. The border, like other technologies of violence used by modern states, is often part of exploitative systems, but explanations that posit class struggles in simple, single-interest-group types of models are often insufficient. At times, military violence is usefully understood as a way to maintain the increasing polarization of wealth and the hegemony of neoliberalism (Sluka, 2000: 30), but sometimes violence is expressive and ‘nonstrategic’ (Mahmood, 2000). A number of anthropologists have already described how state violence is not necessarily functional, but often expressive of historically unique meanings.9 The fact that terrorist acts are often more expressive than instrumental in nature is oddly reciprocated by the industry of counterterrorism, which despite its rhetoric of brute realism is focused on strategies that appeal philosophically but are rarely pragmatic responses to the violence they purport to address. (Mahmood, 2000: 81) While acknowledging and documenting the class effects of the border, this article has argued against simple class analysis of violence by pointing to the racial and political logic for a militarized border. But to say that violence is often racial and nonstrategic in an obvious material sense is not to say that it works outside the production and circulation of power in a class system. The criminalization of undocumented workers stigmatizes them and this is an important characteristic of class societies (see Heyman, 1998a: 173–4). It serves to distance employers from the humanity of those they exploit and exclude. The processes of class exploitation are integrated with, but not necessarily causative of, nationalist or racist violence. Border maintenance is largely symbolic action directed primarily at Israelis, but ‘symbolic action has quite real effects’ (Heyman, 1998a: 161). Since that meeting with Shmuel, I’ve decided that he was partly right. The border is a mechanism of exploitation, but it is also more complicated. Border enforcement on the Green Line has often been a performance of security for the Israeli public in which politicians respond to long-standing racial and political fears of anti-Semitism. The conclusion that racialized state violence and class struggle overlap, rather than privileging surplus extraction as an explanatory logic, is particularly important in conflicts like Israel-Palestine, where enemies are so intimately bound together in dailylife, yet their antagonistic motivations are so misunderstood. The persistent misapprehension of their opponents has resulted in tactics and strategies on both sides that only exacerbate the division and the danger. Most Palestinians and their sympathizers locate the conflict in the history of colonialism and European imperialism. Zionists and their sympathizers tend to locate the conflict within the history of anti-Semitism. The theoretical position presented here teaches that the motivations of militarization are more complicated than surplus extraction and that those motivations can have impoverishing consequences

Bornstein 2(Avram, professor @ John Jay college anthropology PhD and masters @ Columbia, “Borders and the Utility of Violence State Effects on the ‘Superexploitation’ of West Bank Palestinians” vol 22)

border procedures are often the result of popular panic, encouraged by opportunistic politicians who turn rhetoric into real bureaucracies of violence The border, like other technologies of violence used by modern states, is often part of exploitative systems, but explanations that posit class struggles in simple violence is expressive and ‘nonstrategic’ number of anthropologists have already described how state violence is not necessarily functional, but often expressive of historically unique meanings despite its rhetoric of brute realism is focused on strategies that appeal philosophically but are rarely pragmatic responses to the violence they purport to address the racial and political logic for a militarized border is often racial and nonstrategic in an obvious material sense is not to say that it works outside the production and circulation of power in a class system. The criminalization of undocumented workers stigmatizes distance employers from the humanity of those they exploit and exclude The processes of class exploitation are integrated with nationalist or racist violence The border is a mechanism of exploitation, The conclusion that racialized state violence and class struggle overlap, rather than privileging surplus extraction as an explanatory logic, is particularly important in conflicts where enemies are so intimately bound together in dailylife yet their antagonistic motivations are so misunderstood The persistent misapprehension of their opponents has resulted in tactics and strategies on both sides that only exacerbate the division and the danger. those motivations can have impoverishing consequences

Borders create a mutual xenophobic otherization of those across the border- this causes zones of structural violence that devalue lives.

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My first suggestion is that the process of globalization, fuelled as it is¶ by ‘turbo’ or ‘fast’ capitalism, has been and continues to be configured¶ not only by unevenness but also by an important series of tensions and¶ counterpoints. Thus, while the processes of global economic integration¶ proceed, the more trends towards social and political disintegration¶ become accentuated. This phenomenon has been described in terms of¶ a combined dynamic of fusion and fission (Ramonet 1997). Hence, on¶ the one side there is a drive towards supranational economic integration,¶ as exemplified by NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement),¶ the European Union, Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay)¶ and the projected FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas), and on¶ the other, propelled by the energies of resurgent nationalism and discourses¶ of ethnic identification, multi-ethnic states are destabilized from¶ below by new political fissures. Moreover, while instantaneous electronic¶ movements of money and messages give meaning to notions of a¶ ‘borderless world’, in other zones ‘fortified enclaves’ or ‘gated communities’¶ are erected to separate high-income spaces from the social worlds¶ of poverty, crime and disorder (Caldeira 1996). In a similar vein, an¶ explosion of interconnectivity is contradicted by a turning in, reflected¶ for example by a tangible reduction in the coverage of foreign affairs by¶ key Western media outlets (Moisy 1997). Hence ‘going global’ can exist¶ side by side with a tendency, certainly visible in the US, towards the¶ re-assertion of an inner-directed gaze, a tendency also reflected in¶ the content of US textbooks on international relations where the world¶ beyond the US, albeit pre-September 11, was minimally present (Dalby¶ 2003: 148)¶ An ethos of turning inward can also be connected to a refusal to¶ recognize the rights of others, be they from ethnic minorities, different¶ religions, migrant communities or poor neighbourhoods. In the US and¶ Europe, the desire to defend borders and erect ‘fortresses’ sits uneasily¶ with support for the free movement of commodities, open economies, the¶ abolition of economic protectionism, and deregulation. Hence, while on the one hand the opening up of space to the free flow of capital is championed, the free flow of labour is checked at the border. Within¶ the transnational space of NAFTA, for example, the US places increasing¶ restrictions on the inflow of Mexican labour while reasserting the¶ centrality of open economies; in fact, for some Mexicans there is a¶ ‘new Berlin Wall’ exemplified in the refortification of the fence along¶ the US–Mexican frontier (see Nevins 2002 and Smith 1998).¶ Underlying these kinds of tensions and counterpoints, one can discern¶ a deeply-rooted unevenness which is symptomatic of the process of¶ globalization. Such an unevenness is tellingly depicted by the Cuban artist¶ and writer Mosquera (1994), who argues that while the word ‘globalization’¶ may evoke the idea of a planet in which all points happen to be¶ interconnected in a web-like network, in actual fact, connections occur¶ inside a radial and hegemonic pattern around the centres of power, while¶ the peripheral countries tend to remain disconnected from one another, or¶ are only connected indirectly via and under the control of the centres. For¶ Mosquera, there is a twin structure of ‘axial globalization’ and ‘zones of¶ silence’ which forms the basis of the economic, political and cultural¶ network that moulds the whole planet. In the highly centralized system¶ of museums, galleries, collectors and market networks, Mosquera argues¶ that the countries which host the art of other cultures are at the same time¶ curating the shows, so that the world is being practically divided between¶ ‘curating cultures and curated cultures’.1 Mosquera’s couplet of ‘axial globalization’ and ‘zones of silence’¶ highlights a key dimension of the geopolitical unevenness of globality,¶ while also foregrounding the place of the periphery in contemporary¶ treatments of culture. A primary theme here concerns the issue of how¶ genuinely global is the contemporary theorization of global politics. In¶ some instances, it is clear that a North–South divide emerges when the¶ question of global change is posed. Nakarada (1994), for example,¶ reporting on a workshop held in Zimbabwe, where the theme was the¶ future of ‘world order’, noted the existence of a crucial North–South¶ difference in the orientation of the discussion. The participants from the¶ North tended to stress the phenomena of speed and the dissolution of¶ spatial borders, with some emphasizing the positive potential of globalization.¶ By contrast, participants from the South were far more negative¶ in their diagnosis of globalization, referring to the South as a new object¶ of recolonization and global apartheid.¶ This kind of split raises the question of the existence of a North–South¶ divide in terms of the effects of globalization and also of the presence of a North–South differential in the manner that this divide is diagnosed.¶ A contemporary example of the former differential can be seen in the¶ current political debate on US–Latin American relations.¶ If, for instance, we look at the impacts of NAFTA for Mexico, it can be¶ noted that while Mexican trade with the US has skyrocketed, going from¶ US$36 billion in 1993 to $450 billion in 2002, most of the high-volume¶ South–North exchanges have been between a handful of transnational¶ subsidiaries in Mexico and their US-based corporate headquarters (Latin¶ America Press no. 1, 15 Jan. 2003: 6). During these years, a substantial¶ number of Mexico’s banks have now become controlled by US, Canadian¶ and Spanish investors, while US-based Wal-Mart has become Mexico’s¶ leading retailer. Mexican agriculture has been badly affected by imports¶ – 6 million tons of cheap US and Canadian corn, much of it genetically¶ modified, enters Mexico each year, displacing small farmers from the¶ internal market. Moreover, farmers have now to sell to transnationals¶ such as Cargill which have taken over the nation’s privatized grain¶ distribution infrastructure. Basic food imports have increased by 77 per¶ cent over the past decade to an estimated $78 billion, equivalent to the¶ government’s public debt, and critics fear Mexico is losing its food¶ sovereignty. There is inequality also in food subsidies, so while per capita¶ subsidies of $21,000 per annum enable US farmers to sell produce in¶ Mexico at prices 20 per cent below production costs, Mexican farm¶ subsidies have continually fallen so that they are now at an average of¶ $760 per farmer (Latin America Press ibid.).¶ With increased poverty in the rural areas of Mexico, many farmers¶ have joined the immigration flow to the US. Further, in accordance with¶ a 10-year-old NAFTA schedule, the programmed suspension at the¶ beginning of January 2003 of all tariffs on basic agricultural imports¶ from the US has provoked Mexican peasant farmers into organizing¶ militant protests. During a recent demonstration (December 2002)¶ of rural workers outside the Mexican Congress, where using sledgehammers¶ and tractors as battering rams, the campesinos broke down the¶ gates of the building, one 80-year-old peasant farmer from Guanajuato¶ said, ‘I’m an old man and I’ve never had to work in El Norte [the US]¶ because my land gave me what I needed to live –but now this government¶ is forcing me to go there’ (Latin America Press ibid.).¶ The radical opposition expressed by Mexican peasant farmers to the¶ subordinating effects of ‘free trade doctrine’ has been shared more generally.¶ In late October 2002, in Quito, Ecuador, for example, at a meeting¶ of trade ministers for the FTAA (Free Trade Area for the Americas), demonstrators who were organizing protests against the new trade deal¶ for 2005 proclaimed ‘We don’t want to be an American colony!’, linking¶ their protests to the Brazilian President Luis Ina´cio Lula da Silva’s¶ description of the FTAA as a policy of ‘annexation, not integration’¶ (Latin America Press no. 24, 2 Dec. 2002: 4–5).¶ Similarly critical while broader evaluations of neo-liberal globalization¶ were voiced in Havana in April 2000 when members of the Group¶ of 77 came together to discuss North–South issues (see Third World¶ Resurgence, no. 117, May 2000),2 and such critiques continue to spread,¶ as exemplified by Vindana Shiva’s (2003: 87–8) statement that ‘globalization¶ is a project of domination by the North over the South,¶ by corporations over citizens, by patriarchal structures over women, by¶ humans over other species’. Overall, such representations, especially in¶ relation to the terms of transnational integration, connect historically to¶ Jose´ Martı´’s views on American economic integration in the late nineteenth¶ century (mentioned in chapter 2), and raise the issue of the¶ political nature of integration, of the balance between interdependence¶ and dependence/domination. This is not a new theme.

Slater 4 [David, David Slater is a British geographer with a BA and PhD and currently Professor of Social and Political Geography at Loughborough University. “Geopolitics and¶ the Post-colonial” Page 70-73]

My first suggestion is that the process of globalization, fuelled as it is¶ by ‘turbo’ or ‘fast’ capitalism, has been and continues to be configured¶ not only by unevenness but also by an important series of tensions and¶ counterpoints. Thus, while the processes of global economic integration¶ proceed, the more trends towards social and political disintegration¶ become accentuated. Hence, on¶ the one side there is a drive towards supranational economic integration,¶ as exemplified by NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement),¶ the European Union, Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay)¶ and the projected FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas), and on¶ the other, propelled by the energies of resurgent nationalism and discourses¶ of ethnic identification, multi-ethnic states are destabilized from¶ below by new political fissures. Moreover, while instantaneous electronic¶ movements of money and messages give meaning to notions of a¶ ‘borderless world’, in other zones ‘fortified enclaves’ or ‘gated communities’¶ are erected to separate high-income spaces from the social worlds¶ of poverty, crime and disorder (Caldeira 1996). An ethos of turning inward can also be connected to a refusal to¶ recognize the rights of others, be they from ethnic minorities, different¶ religions, migrant communities or poor neighbourhoods. In the US and¶ Europe, the desire to defend borders and erect ‘fortresses’ sits uneasily¶ with support for the free movement of commodities, open economies, the¶ abolition of economic protectionism, and deregulation. Hence, while on the one hand the opening up of space to the free flow of capital is championed, the free flow of labour is checked at the border. the US places increasing¶ restrictions on the inflow of Mexican labour while reasserting the¶ centrality of open economies; in fact, for some Mexicans there is a¶ ‘new Berlin Wall’ exemplified in the refortification of the fence along¶ the US–Mexican frontier (see Nevins 2002 and Smith 1998).¶ Underlying these kinds of tensions and counterpoints, one can discern¶ a deeply-rooted unevenness which is symptomatic of the process of¶ globalization. connections occur¶ inside a radial and hegemonic pattern around the centres of power, while¶ the peripheral countries tend to remain disconnected from one another, or¶ are only connected indirectly via and under the control of the centres. A primary theme here concerns the issue of how¶ genuinely global is the contemporary theorization of global politics. In¶ some instances, it is clear that a North–South divide emerges when the¶ question of global change is posed. . The participants from the¶ North tended to stress the phenomena of speed and the dissolution of¶ spatial borders, with some emphasizing the positive potential of globalization.¶ By contrast, participants from the South were far more negative¶ in their diagnosis of globalization, referring to the South as a new object¶ of recolonization and global apartheid. .¶ A contemporary example of the former differential can be seen in the¶ current political debate on US–Latin American relations.¶ If, for instance, we look at the impacts of NAFTA for Mexico, it can be¶ noted that while Mexican trade with the US has skyrocketed, going from¶ US$36 billion in 1993 to $450 billion in 2002, most of the high-volume¶ South–North exchanges have been between a handful of transnational¶ subsidiaries in Mexico and their US-based corporate headquarters (Latin¶ America Press no. 1, 15 Jan. 2003: 6). During these years, a substantial¶ number of Mexico’s banks have now become controlled by US, Canadian¶ and Spanish investors, while US-based Wal-Mart has become Mexico’s¶ leading retailer. Mexican agriculture has been badly affected by imports¶ – 6 million tons of cheap US and Canadian corn, much of it genetically¶ modified, enters Mexico each year, displacing small farmers from the¶ internal market. Basic food imports have increased by 77 per¶ cent over the past decade to an estimated $78 billion, equivalent to the¶ government’s public debt, and critics fear Mexico is losing its food¶ sovereignty demonstrators who were organizing protests against the new trade deal¶ for 2005 proclaimed ‘We don’t want to be an American colony!’, linking¶ their protests to the Brazilian President Luis Ina´cio Lula da Silva’s¶ description of the FTAA as a policy of ‘annexation, not integration’¶ (Latin America Press no. 24, 2 Dec. 2002: 4–5). Similarly critical while broader evaluations of neo-liberal globalization¶ were voiced in Havana in April 2000 when members of the Group¶ of 77 came together to discuss North–South issues (see Third World¶ Resurgence, no. 117, May 2000),2 and such critiques continue to spread,¶ as exemplified by Vindana Shiva’s (2003: 87–8) statement that ‘globalization¶ is a project of domination by the North over the South,¶ by corporations over citizens, by patriarchal structures over women, by¶ humans over other species’. Overall, such representations, especially in¶ relation to the terms of transnational integration, connect historically to¶ Jose´ Martı´’s views on American economic integration in the late nineteenth¶ century (mentioned in chapter 2), and raise the issue of the¶ political nature of integration, of the balance between interdependence¶ and dependence/domination.

The re-entrenching of economic and social inequality is symptomatic of the 1AC’s globalization of Latin America. Latin American economies become dependent on the hegemon eliminating economic sovereignty while social exclusion and the separation from higher and lower classes creates a larger divide.

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In regard to Agamben’s thought, a particularly strong line of criticism takes issue with how a society of reason—and hence its borders—is created through force alone. This line maintains that in his quest to go beyond modernist thinking, Agamben becomes embroiled in an esoteric world of mythological beginnings. José Luis Pardo argues that any imagined scenario about the foundation of society, such as Therefore, the creation of a legal system through the suspension of law in a ‘state of exception’ presumes a mythical order of events where a social state is forced upon nature (1998-1999, p. 163). In his analysis Pardo identifies two types of power, Potentia or natural power and Potestas or power through rights and obligations. According to Agamben, the natural Potentia of the sovereign is what founds the Potestas and therefore any sovereign state is founded upon unjustifiable prepolitical violence (1998-1999, p. 164). The inclusion and exclusion of ‘bare life’ in the polis becomes problematic as it is revealed that it is dependent on the belief in this hidden originary myth. It reduces bordering to a violent discriminatory process with no possibility for the creation of meaning by democratic means. This is largely due to the context of Carl Schmitt’s definition of sovereign power that Agamben relies upon. One should take into account that Schmitt’s definition of sovereignty explicitly sought to eliminate differences between democratic and dictatorial government (Pardo 1998-1999, p. 165). His thinking reflects a period of nostalgia for archaic sovereignty amidst a crisis of belief in civil accords after the First World War (Pardo 1998-1999, p. 166). Following such ideas based on a specific interpretation of sovereign power creates severe limitations when it comes to thinking about bordering processes of non-State identities.

Jerrems 11-(Ari Jerrems, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid graduate, ph.d contender , 2011, BOOK REVIEW of Border Politics: The Limits of SovereignPower by Nick Vaughan-Williams, Borderlands VOLUME 10 NUMBER 1, 2011, Accessed: 7/27/13)

a particularly strong line of criticism takes issue with how a society of reason—and hence its borders—is created through force alone the foundation of society the creation of a legal system through the suspension of law in a ‘state of exception’ presumes a mythical order of events where a social state is forced upon nature identifies two types of power natural power power through rights and obligations any sovereign state is founded upon unjustifiable prepolitical violence The inclusion and exclusion of ‘bare life’ in the polis becomes problematic as it is revealed that it is dependent on the belief in this hidden originary myth It reduces bordering to a violent discriminatory process with no possibility for the creation of meaning by democratic means definition of sovereignty explicitly sought to eliminate differences between democratic and dictatorial government a specific interpretation of sovereign power creates severe limitations when it comes to thinking about bordering processes of non-State identities

Sovereignty and society is created through a force that results in bare life for non-state identities

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The theoretical innovation central to Vaughan-Williams’ thesis is based heavily on Giorgio Agamben’s philosophy (Cf. Agamben 1998, 2005). Agamben builds upon Foucault’s biopower thesis (Cf. Foucault 1998, 2007). He alters Foucault’s concept of modern sovereignty, as the ability to make life live or leave it to die, by arguing that this inclusion/exclusion of biological life is the original practice of sovereign power (Vaughan-Williams 2009, p. 98). Agamben’s theoretical work argues that the originary separation in Ancient Greek thought between zoé (the biological fact of living) and bios (politically qualified life) has become increasingly indistinguishable in modern society (Vaughan-Williams 2009, p. 97). Sovereign power generates a confused state where zoé can be taken as bios and vice versa. The individual in this confused state is exposed as ‘bare life’ to be categorized by the whim of sovereign decision (Vaughan-Williams 2009, p. 103). In this blurred state or ‘state of exception’, the sovereign power is necessary as a law founding decision of inclusion and exclusion to fill the legal vacuum. Agamben implies that the existence of citizenship and political institutions depends on a discriminatory law founding violence (Vaughan-Williams 2009, p. 99). ‘Bare life’ is the founding element which is simultaneously included and excluded in the system, creating the appearance of unity, yet relying on the excluded other to give it meaning. The idea that the implementation of law is a constant bordering decision is the key element which Vaughan-Williams discusses. However, whilst Vaughan-Williams offers a detailed and accurate reading of Agamben, he spends far too little time interacting with critical interpretations which will be discussed later in this essay.

Jerems 11-(Ari Jerrems, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid graduate, ph.d contender , 2011, BOOK REVIEW of Border Politics: The Limits of SovereignPower by Nick Vaughan-Williams, Borderlands VOLUME 10 NUMBER 1, 2011, Accessed: 7/27/13)

modern sovereignty, as the ability to make life live or leave it to die arguing that this inclusion/exclusion of biological life is the original practice of sovereign power originary separation in Ancient Greek thought between zoé and bios has become increasingly indistinguishable in modern society ). Sovereign power generates a confused state where zoé can be taken as bios and vice versa The individual in this confused state is exposed as ‘bare life’ to be categorized by the whim of sovereign decision In this blurred state or ‘state of exception’ the sovereign power is necessary as a law founding decision of inclusion and exclusion to fill the legal vacuum citizenship and political institutions depends on a discriminatory law founding violence Bare life’ is the founding element which is simultaneously included and excluded in the system, creating the appearance of unity, yet relying on the excluded other to give it meaning. of law is a constant bordering decision is the key element

Sovereignty is the ultimate biopolitical control of the state

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Accordingly, our first thesis is the following. ‘Borders’ are not only geographic¶ but also political, subjective (e.g. cultural) and epistemic and, contrary to¶ frontiers, the very concept of ‘border’ implies the existence of people, languages,¶ religions and knowledge on both sides linked through relations established by¶ the coloniality of power (e.g. structured by the imperial and colonial differences).¶ Borders in this precise sense, are not a natural outcome of a natural or divine¶ historical processes in human history, but were created in the very constitution¶ of the modern/colonial world (i.e. in the imaginary of Western and Atlantic¶ capitalist empires formed in the past five hundred years). If we limit our observations¶ to the geographic, epistemic and subjective types of borders in the¶ modern/colonial world (from the European Renaissance till today), we will see¶ that they all have been created from the perspective of European imperial/¶ colonial expansion: massive appropriation of land accompanied by the constitution¶ of international law that justified the massive appropriation of land¶ (Grovogui, 1996; Schmitt, 1952); control of knowledge (the epistemology of the¶ zero point as representation of the real) by disqualifying non-European languages¶ and epistemologies and control of subjectivities (by conversation, civilization,¶ democratization) or, in today’s language – by the globalization of culture.

Mignolo & Tlostanova 2006 [Walter D. & Madina V., Duke University & People’s Friendship Univ, Moscow, “Theorizing from the Borders Shifting to Geo- and Body-Politics of Knowledge”, European Journal of Social Theory 9(2): 205–221]

Borders’ are not only geographic but also political, subjective d epistemic and, contrary to frontiers, the very concept of ‘border’ implies the existence of people, languages, religions and knowledge on both sides linked through relations established by the coloniality of power Borders in this precise sense, are not a natural outcome of a natural or divine historical processes in human history, but were created in the very constitution of the modern/colonial world we limit our observations to the geographic, epistemic and subjective types of borders in the modern/colonial world we will see that they all have been created from the perspective of European imperial/ colonial expansion: massive appropriation of land accompanied by the constitution of international law that justified the massive appropriation of land control of knowledge by the globalization of culture

Borders are colonialism. First by the expropriation of land, then by the imposition of international law and western culture.

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Categories shape the world around us. Everything inside an office or outside in a forest can be categorized and organized in some way. Humans have spent generations categorizing history into eras, dirt into soil types, plants and animals into phyla and species, and people into classes, ethnicities, nations and races. Scholars in cognitive science have argued this is an embodied practice that allows humans and other creatures to survive in the world by sorting out the diversity present into a manageable system. Without being able to categorize items as food or not food, for example, an organism would not be able to survive (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999). Poststructural scholars have argued that these same categories allow power to be exercised as the world is ordered and organized in particular ways that are favorable to a select group of people. Scholars from both fields, although approaching the question of categories from different perspectives, end up with the same conclusions about the disconnection between conceptual categories and the wider world. Categories do not simply mimetically represent the world but, instead, simultaneously create it and limit it. The result is a paradox in which categories cognitively fit neatly into containers even while intellectually the boundaries between them appear to be messy and inexact. Here I have argued that thinking of the boundaries of categories as inchoate – as never fully formed – allows a move away from this paradoxical relationship and creates a space to contest categorization schemes. I have also proposed that the inchoate process of bounding that results in the categories that shape, organize and control everyday life – which are already at the center of many academic pursuits across a range of disciplines – should be thought of collectively as the field ‘boundary studies’. However, linking together inquiries into bounding processes and categorization schemes as a unified field of boundary studies does not imply that bounding processes occur uniformly over space/time. Although I suggest that all categories cannot be thought of as such without first having boundaries, regardless of how ambiguous and blurred, to mark them off as distinct, the everyday narratives and practices that establish boundaries and create the perception of a particular set of categories cannot be generalized. The bounding process that results in the understanding of the boundary between the categories ‘white’ and ‘not-white’ in the United States is not the same as the bounding process that results in the boundary between the categories of ‘mountain’ and ‘hill’. At the same time, none of these four categories has any meaning without the perception of a boundary between them. Consequently, the inchoate process of bounding, although particular and unique in each context, is essential to both. By thinking of research into categorization from across academia as a single endeavor, the currently fragmented insights into bounding processes can be consolidated in the field of boundary studies. Geography, given its attention to context, difference and particularity, is the ideal discipline in and through which we may investigate the complex bounding processes of categorization. A boundary, after all, is fundamentally a spatial phenomenon. It allows an entity or idea to be spatially differentiated and identified. Political geographers have long made this point in terms of how territoriality is employed to carve up the space of the world into places as states, regions, or scales. Here I have argued that cognitive bounding processes should also be within the domain of geography. The container schema takes abstract undifferentiated ideas and reifies them as distinct categories by creating mental boxes with solid boundaries into which they can be placed. This insight into how categories cognitively operate as containers is crucial to understanding why particular categories are able to retain the appearance of being fixed and permanent even while it is widely accepted that they are not. These containers then frame the way the world is ordered, organized and understood. If geographers only look at this second step – the territorialization of categories at different scales and sites in the world – then the previous bounding processes of categorization have been overlooked and left unexplored. Rather than allowing boundary studies to be ‘another missed boat’ (Dicken, 2004), geographers should work to establish geography as the discipline that is fundamentally concerned with the inchoate bounding processes of categorization. The xenophobic and exclusionary categorization of the present era brings the importance of investigating bounding processes into sharp focus. The narration of the ‘global war on terror’ by politicians, journalists and commentators as a struggle of modernity against barbarity and right against wrong allows these framings of the world to be sedimented into the public discourse (Gregory, 2004; Gregory and Pred, 2007). It is the shifting and blurring of boundaries between the inside and outside of these categories – from terrorist/civilian, modern/traditional, to here/there – that organizes and limits the world around us. Although these boundaries are often problematic, it is not possible to simply get beyond categories and create a world that is unbounded and uncategorized. At the same time, this does not mean that inherited categories must be uncritically accepted. Instead, by emphasizing bounding processes – rather than categories that appear fixed and finalized – scholars can demonstrate that particular framings that rely on exclusive categories are not as immutable as they often appear. By recognizing the inchoate nature of the bounding process and the flexible and open categories that are produced, we can begin to understand the paradox of categories as we interrogate the bounding of the containers that order the world.

Jones 8-(Reese, Associate Professor and Chair of Graduate Studies Department of Geography University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, 13 May 2008, “Categories, borders and boundaries” Progress in Human Geography)

Categories shape the world around us. Humans have spent generations categorizing history into eras, dirt into soil types, plants and animals into phyla and species, and people into classes, ethnicities, nations and races Scholars although approaching the question of categories from different perspectives, end up with the same conclusions about the disconnection between conceptual categories and the wider world Categories do not simply mimetically represent the world but, instead, simultaneously create it and limit it. he result is a paradox in which categories cognitively fit neatly into containers even while intellectually the boundaries between them appear to be messy and inexact. thinking of the boundaries of categories as inchoate allows a move away from this paradoxical relationship and creates a space to contest categorization schemes inchoate process of bounding that results in the categories that shape, organize and control everyday life – should be thought of collectively as the field ‘boundary studies’ The bounding process that results in the understanding of the boundary between the categories ‘white’ and ‘not-white’ in the United States is not the same as the bounding process that results in the boundary between the categories of ‘mountain’ and ‘hill’. At the same time, none of these four categories has any meaning without the perception of a boundary between them. Consequently, the inchoate process of bounding, although particular and unique in each context, is essential to both. cognitive bounding processes should also be within the domain of geography. This insight into how categories cognitively operate as containers is crucial to understanding why particular categories are able to retain the appearance of being fixed and permanent even while it is widely accepted that they are not. These containers then frame the way the world is ordered, organized and understood. If geographers only look at this second step – the territorialization of categories at different scales and sites in the world – then the previous bounding processes of categorization have been overlooked and left unexplored The narration of the ‘global war on terror’ by politicians, journalists and commentators as a struggle of modernity against barbarity and right against wrong allows these framings of the world to be sedimented into the public discourse . Although these boundaries are often problematic, it is not possible to simply get beyond categories and create a world that is unbounded and uncategorized. At the same time, this does not mean that inherited categories must be uncritically accepted. Instead, by emphasizing bounding processes – rather than categories that appear fixed and finalized – scholars can demonstrate that particular framings that rely on exclusive categories are not as immutable as they often appear. By recognizing the inchoate nature of the bounding process and the flexible and open categories that are produced, we can begin to understand the paradox of categories as we interrogate the bounding of the containers that order the world.

Constructing border to establish space is the root cause of the social borders across lines of race, gender, nature, and nations—root cause of exclusion

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The main argument made in this article about NEXUS concerns the ways in which this little known expedited border-crossing program and its development are symptomatic of the neoliberalization of citizenship in today’s North American context. This is a context, as I have explained, shaped at once by the transnational entrenchment of free market rights and the increasingly oppressive impact of securitized nationalism. NEXUS lane participants the people who ‘cross often’ and want to ‘make it simple’, the people who are prepared to buy flexible citizenship because ‘the fastlane is where you want to be’ would seem to represent the paradigmatic neoliberal citizen-players on the transnational level playing field of free trade, neoliberal citizens for whom transnational mobility rights are part of the more general transnational business class privilege that continues to be expanded and entrenched globally through the ‘new constitutionalism’ of free trade and related laws. As such, the kinetic elites of the NEXUS lane appear to be able to buy for themselves at least a little of the borderless world fantasy-life whose most transcendently transnational subjects can rise above it all as Gulfstream citizens of the world, the world of transnational property rights and mobility rights seen best through the Enhanced Vision System of a Gulfstream jet. But then we have the kinetic underclasses of expedited removal and extraordinary rendition whose borderless world is, by contrast, a world without a constitution, a world which may well extend transnationally via Gulfstream jets across borders, but only so as to better cast out its dehumanized and rights-deprived subjects into the spaces of exception that now increasingly seem to form a transnational gulag of incarceration and outsourced torture. The violence of extraordinary rendition may seem especially context contingent, in this regard, not a neoliberal or otherwise economically induced outcome, but a result of an exceptional American ability to combine free market fundamentalism with an inhuman disregard for foreigners deemed unfit (often because of orientalist codes) for business. Consider in this regard what happened when Edward Markey, a democratic congressman from Massachusetts, introduced legislation to ban extraordinary rendition in 2005. Republican House speaker Dennis Hastert said the legislation was going nowhere, and, when Herbert (2005: A 25), a columnist from the New York Times asked why, he was told: ‘‘The speaker does not support the Markey proposal. He believes that suspected terrorists should be sent to their home countries’’. Then, when Herbert asked why they should not be held and prosecuted in the US, Pete Jeffries from the speaker’s office replied: ‘‘Because U.S. taxpayers should not necessarily be on the hook for their judicial and incarceration costs’’. This response seems a telling illustration of the white-Americans-first exceptionalism that has led many in US government to think that creating spaces of exception to human rights laws is just fine. But it is also, I think, an extraordinarily telling indictment of the neoliberal logic through which extraordinary rendition has been thought out and justified by its perpetrators. American taxpayers, Jeffries seemed to be saying, should not have to pay for government services (whether they be torture or its prevention) when they are being ‘consumed’ by those who do not pay taxes in America. Also overdetermined by economic codes, expedited removal seems to reflect a similarly consumerist neoliberal revisioning of citizenship and security, being imagined by the 1996 legislative promoters of IIRIRA as part of the same individualized contractualism that turned welfare into workfare and recoded American citizenship more generally in the terms of the payments and debts of private commercial contracts. In other words, while both extraordinary rendition and expedited removal both clearly need to be understood in terms of the extra-capitalistic imperatives associated with virulently nationalistic (and thus racist and masculinist) imperatives, they also appear to reflect some of the same economic hall-marks of a neoliberalism that, as Foucault once argued, turns citizens into entrepreneurs of their selves. Thus, while asylum seekers thrown into subcontracted prison space by DHS and carceral cosmopolitans such as Maher Arar are completely deprived of agency and choice, their plight needs nonetheless to be understood in relation to the ways in which the normative citizen of North America has meanwhile been ‘‘re-specified as an active agent both able and obliged to exercise autonomous choices.’’ (Larner, 2000: 13). The implication of the argument that neoliberal ideas and imperatives overdetermine extraordinary rendition and expedited removal is not that these appallingly inhuman state practices are an inevitable outcome of the same neoliberalism that has extended the freedom and choice of economic elites across transnational space (far more intrinsically interconnected, it seems, are the unfree flows of undocumented Mexican workers into the US economy). But nor are the spaces of exception created by rendition and removal entirely disconnected from neoliberalism either. They are not just a contingent outcome of the exceptional American context with its history of free market capitalism rooted in that most profitable as well as paradigmatic space of exception: the slave plantation. There is instead a more complexly interrelated relationship between the neoliberal dynamics and the violence of expedited removal and rendition, a relationship where neoliberalism provides both the capitalistic context and some of the structuring order too. Private sector promoters of programs such as NEXUS and US-VISIT sometimes note that the systems offer an alternative to racist border agents and a way of introducing a neutral kind of third party technical administration that keeps the agents themselves as much as the travelers accountable to the formal protocols of the law. Yet, as we have seen, expedited removal rules like expedited crossing lanes have also been implemented through the mediation of privately procured services. Extraordinary rendition relies in its own turn on the very vehicles used to transport business elites around their borderless world. But more than this private sector context and mediation, both practices would seem to be structured by a neoliberal double standard: a double standard that is like liberalism’s own inaugural double standards with rights for whites in Europe and often utter inhumanity in the colonies (Mehta, 2000) but which is also significantly reterritorialized and reorganized by contemporary transnational business class power. The result is a recodification of the normative citizen-subject as a transnationally mobile soft cosmopolitan with heightened human capital vis-a`-vis all the kinetic underclasses: some of the latter being merely marooned in nationalestate spaces with weakened political and social citizenship rights; others being expedited into the ‘world without a constitution’ of carceral cosmopolitanism. Examples of such reterritorialized and reorganized neoliberal double standards are by no means exceptional to America (see Hyndman, 2005; Rajaram, 2003). For example, the neoliberalization of EU citizenship has not happened without the creation of its own spaces of exception. This is what William Walters argues in his account of the partial transnationalization of EU citizenship, a transnationalization which he notes is a ‘‘neoliberal project which focuses on enhancing mobility and freedom across an extended European space.’’ Tracking this extension of mobilities and freedoms in which business has also enjoyed the major benefits Walter’s also notes that ‘‘from the perspective of those now named and shunned as ‘asylum-seekers’, European governance might invoke the renewal of a much older art of government that of police but now on a transnational basis’’ (Walters, 2004: 170). EU Schengen policing may not yet have created the same record of abuse recorded by the critics of expedited removal and extraordinary rendition, but it does suggest that the neoliberal advance of transnational citizenship rights is repeatedly related to the redrawing of lines that shut out and imprison diverse others sometimes using biometrics to do so (Van Der Ploeg, 1999). For such transnationals who are expedited into otherness, the invitation to cross often and make it simple seems at once barbed and barred forever.

Sparke 2006 [Matthew B., Professor of Geography and International Studies, Adjunct Professor of Global Health, Director of the University of Washington's Online Integrated Social Science Major, “A neoliberal nexus: Economy, security and the biopolitics of citizenship on the border,” Political Geography 25 (2006) 151-180]

the people who are prepared to buy flexible citizenship because ‘the fastlane is where you want to be’ would seem to represent the paradigmatic neoliberal citizen-players on the transnational level playing field of free trade we have the kinetic underclasses of expedited removal and extraordinary rendition whose borderless world is, by contrast, a world without a constitution only so as to better cast out its dehumanized and rights-deprived subjects into the spaces of exception that now increasingly seem to form a transnational gulag of incarceration and outsourced torture. The violence of extraordinary rendition may seem especially context contingent, in this regard, not a neoliberal or otherwise economically induced outcome, but a result of an exceptional American ability to combine free market fundamentalism with an inhuman disregard for foreigners deemed unfit for business. Consider in this regard what happened when Edward Markey introduced legislation to ban extraordinary rendition Hastert said the legislation was going nowhere, and, when Herbert asked why, he was told: He believes that suspected terrorists should be sent to their home countries’’. when Herbert asked why they should not be held and prosecuted in the US Jeffries replied: ‘‘Because U.S. taxpayers should not necessarily be on the hook for their judicial and incarceration costs’’. This response seems a telling illustration of the white-Americans-first exceptionalism that has led many in US government to think that creating spaces of exception to human rights laws is just fine. it is also an extraordinarily telling indictment of the neoliberal logic through which extraordinary rendition has been thought out American taxpayers should not have to pay for government services when they are being ‘consumed’ by those who do not pay taxes in America. while both extraordinary rendition and expedited removal both clearly need to be understood in terms of the extra-capitalistic imperatives they also appear to reflect some of the same economic hall-marks of a neoliberalism that turns citizens into entrepreneurs of their selves. these appallingly inhuman state practices are an inevitable outcome of the same neoliberalism that has extended the freedom and choice of economic elites across transnational space nor are the spaces of exception created by rendition and removal entirely disconnected from neoliberalism either. There is instead a more complexly interrelated relationship between the neoliberal dynamics and the violence of expedited removal and rendition, a relationship where neoliberalism provides both the capitalistic context and some of the structuring order too. expedited removal rules like expedited crossing lanes have also been implemented through the mediation of privately procured services. Extraordinary rendition relies in its own turn on the very vehicles used to transport business elites around their borderless world. The result is a recodification of the normative citizen-subject as a transnationally mobile soft cosmopolitan with heightened human capital vis-a`-vis all the kinetic underclasses For such transnationals who are expedited into otherness, the invitation to cross often and make it simple seems at once barbed and barred forever.

Securitized borders result in extraordinary rendition and spaces of exception – those outside of the US State border are rendered inhuman

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The partial ‘politics/economics’ separation was a pre-condition for this switch too. It increasingly meant that the laws of the market could be enforced by independent states for foreign-owned as for indigenous capital. Capitalism’s historical development and global spread meant ‘economic’ power increased relative to ‘political’ power (Wood 2003), and as surplus generally came to be extracted from free labour by economic means, there was a decreasing need for the direct political control in formal territorial empires which previously had been essential (e.g., in the slave labour economies of the various European empires in the Americas – Rosenberg 1994). Broadly speaking, the development of the partial separation was roughly matched by the sequence of types of labour used – from slave or serf, to indentured, to free (Anderson 2001a). Geopolitically, the British Empire initiated a partial switch to informal empire in the 19th century in the formally independent national states of Latin America; since WWI the US empire has been almost entirely informal (Smith 2003); and by the 1960s ‘informal’ had become the global norm with the European de-colonisations and the globalization of nationalism.¶ This new imperialism works well when states play by the rules of liberalism (e.g., as desired/imposed by the neo-liberal ‘Washington Consensus’), but it has an Achilles’ heel, or rather several of them. States do not always play by these rules - in practice they break their own rules to discriminate against foreign-owned capital, or on principle they favour general state control or ownership, in a worse case scenario ‘nationalising’ foreign assets into state capitalism. Investments in the more peripheral parts of the global economy rely on a multiplicity of variably ‘unreliable’ states with their own divergent and conflicting interests. The partial separation of ‘politics/economics’ is not much defense against a nationalising government which actively contests the separation. Stronger measures are needed, including economic sanctions and military force, though preferably the threat of it is sufficient to force such state governments to ‘play by the rules’ and enforce them ‘fairly’. In the 19th century the British sent gunboats from their naval bases to threaten Latin American states, today the US tries to keep control by sending aircraft carriers and planes from its world-wide 'archipelago' of military bases in independent countries.¶ The task has been getting more difficult for several reasons, paradoxically encouraging both the strengthening of borders for ‘security’ and transgressing them with ‘interventions’ (invasions) in the name of ‘security’. Recurrent capitalist crises over the last four decades - severest in some peripheral parts of the global economy disrupted by neo-liberalism - have fostered general instability, a global 'implosion', and (as we shall discuss) a new spatial fix of migrant labour, all bringing further pressure on borders. The world has got more unruly but also the hegemonic power of the USA has weakened, despite having the now essential large ‘home territory’ of a successful hegemon, and despite too its unprecedented and unrivalled archaeopelago of bases, military superiority and spending. Partly because of now being increasingly rivalled economically (e.g., by the EU and China), there has been discernable hegemonic decline, and particularly in the effectiveness of the less costly options of persuasive power and only having to threaten rather than actually needing to invade other states. The difficulties of disciplining recalcitrant states and staying ahead of rivals are the context for the high-risk 'Bush doctrine’ (gamble) of pre-emptive strikes across ‘sovereign’ borders (Anderson 2003). The ‘Iraq adventure’ may be exceptional in its wider aim (and failure) to give US hegemony a new lease of life, and in the extent of territorial occupation by the US, but invasion and regime-change per se are an integral part of the new imperialism of informal empire (not some neo-conservative ‘optional extra’). Recalcitrant states have to be threatened, and threats do sometimes have to carried out, though the costly mess of getting embroiled in a territorial occupation graphically demonstrates why informal rather than formal empire is still the easier, cheaper option.

Anderson, School of Geography and Centre for International Borders Research Queen’s University Belfast In ‘5 [James, “Borders, fixes and empires: Territoriality in the new imperialism”, Centre for International Borders Research]

separation increasingly meant that the laws of the market could be enforced by independent states for foreign-owned as for indigenous capital Capitalism’s historical development and global spread meant ‘economic’ power increased relative to ‘political’ power and as surplus generally came to be extracted from free labour by economic means, there was a decreasing need for the direct political control in formal territorial empires which previously had been essential the development of the partial separation was roughly matched by the sequence of types of labour used the British Empire initiated a partial switch to informal empire in the 19th century in the formally independent national states of Latin America since WWI the US empire has been almost entirely informal informal’ had become the global norm with the European de-colonisations and the globalization of nationalism This new imperialism works well when states play by the rules of liberalism States do not always play by these rules in practice they break their own rules to discriminate against foreign-owned capital, or on principle they favour general state control or ownership, in a worse case scenario ‘nationalising’ foreign assets into state capitalism. Investments in the more peripheral parts of the global economy rely on a multiplicity of variably ‘unreliable’ states with their own divergent and conflicting interests. The partial separation of ‘politics/economics’ is not much defense against a nationalising government which actively contests the separation the British sent gunboats from their naval bases to threaten Latin American states, today the US tries to keep control by sending aircraft carriers and planes from its world-wide 'archipelago' of military bases in independent countries.¶ The task has been getting more difficult for several reasons, paradoxically encouraging both the strengthening of borders for ‘security’ and transgressing them with ‘interventions’ in the name of ‘security’ Recurrent capitalist crises over the last four decades have fostered general instability, a global 'implosion', and new spatial fix of migrant labour, all bringing further pressure on borders. The world has got more unruly but also the hegemonic power of the USA has weakened, despite having the now essential large ‘home territory’ of a successful hegemon, and despite too its unprecedented and unrivalled archaeopelago of bases, military superiority and spending. there has been discernable hegemonic decline, and particularly in the effectiveness of the less costly options of persuasive power and only having to threaten rather than actually needing to invade other states. The ‘Iraq adventure’ may be exceptional in its wider aim to give US hegemony a new lease of life, and in the extent of territorial occupation by the US, but invasion and regime-change per se are an integral part of the new imperialism of informal empire

Borders produce a world system that can be exploited for wealth though gunboat diplomacy and neoliberal regimesof trade

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Texas (UTNIF)

Kritiks

2013

The list of challenges to established political conventions is undoubtedly long. It offers ample potential for scholarly squabbles and public debates about sequencing and priorities. It certainly exceeds the analytical competence of established disciplinary traditions of scholarship, not least because established scholarly disciplines are already overcommitted to specific sequences and priorities. It feeds multiple disputes about the interpretation of information and the specific ontological, epistemological and axiological commitments these interpretations should stimulate. Specific claims sometimes lead to sophisticated conceptual and empirical innovation; though they also lead to disputes about the grounds on which conceptual and empirical sophistication might now be judged. Sometimes such claims generate wild speculation, righteous indignation, and desperate affirmations of entrenched theoretical traditions; though they also intensify suspicions that the grounds on which we have come to think about both tradition and radical possibility are now precisely what is being called into question. Most significantly, claims about specific trends and problems generate further claims about the limitations of established forms of political authority, especially about the always uncertain relationship between various practices of power and the territorially located institutions and procedures through which deployments of, and responses to, power are understood to be legitimate. Whether in relation to narratives about new or intensified trends and dangers, or to contestations over basic principles that have long been taken for granted, claims that we need to be more imaginative in our ability to work together (as the political animals of the polis, as Aristotle would put it, as participants in some community as we tend to put it now) increasingly run up against the multiple ways in which our authoritative expressions of political engagement are firmly located in a particular somewhere: within and between the spatial boundaries of modern states. 7 To imagine some other way of being political, it is often assumed, is also to imagine future possibilities without the benefit of those boundaries, those lines of both discrimination and relation that have shaped our most basic assumptions about what it means to be modern political subjects capable of responding to specific challenges or to more general structural and historical transformations. This is what gives such disconcerting force to claims that we need to reimagine where and what political life might be. To articulate suspicions that political life often fails to take place where it is supposed to take place is to generate multiple questions about how to engage with whatever politics is supposed to be from those places within which it is supposed to occur. To contemplate the implications of various claims about the speed, acceleration and temporal contingency of contemporary political practices is to generate questions about how such practices can be contained and organized within the spatial boundaries of a particular somewhere. To claim that the boundaries of the modern state and the modern system of states are being displaced is to provoke uncertainty about where we are or what we might be as political subjects. To suspect that contemporary political life exceeds the instrumental and/or imaginative capacities of modern subjects conceiving themselves to be citizens of a particular somewhere is to raise doubts about our capacity to think about the prospects for liberty, equality, security and democracy, and thus about how we might still claim to be both members of a particular community and participants in some more broadly defined community, perhaps even one encompassing the entirety of humankind. To contemplate the possibilities of resistance or emancipation in relation to claims about the failings of the modern state, or to envisage plans for updating the United Nations so as to meet demands for fairer and more effective forms of governance, or to make claims about the significance of social movements that are somehow new, a civil society that is somehow global, or forms of violence that require still more violence, is to come up against many well defined boundaries, whether understood as physical borders or as other, less tangible forms of limitation: limits in space, limits in time, and limits in our capacity to imagine where and what we are in space and in time. Most disturbingly, to try to respond to claims that the problems of our age are worldwide in scope, involving complex economic, ecological and cultural processes that exceed the grasp of established political authorities, is to generate profound doubts about our capacity to engage with a world that has already been excluded as the necessary condition under which modern political authority has been constituted in the formalized spaces of abstractly sovereign jurisdictions. Consequently, it is now scarcely possible to engage with contemporary political life without some sense that we risk speaking in terms that have lost much of their grip not only upon important empirical events but even more so upon the theoretical principles through which we are encouraged to make sense of and respond to empirical events. While many specific problems or trends attract pragmatic responses requiring little attention to conceptual coherence or to grandiose notions of spatiotemporality, once these responses impinge on established principles of political authority, responsibility, liberty, equality, security and democracy – upon the principles through which we have come to understand the possibilities and limits of a politics of modern subjects enabled within and between modern sovereign states the spatiotemporal organization of what counts as a coherent and acceptable form of political life quickly become of great controversy. In the meantime, ambitious one-liners are thrown around as once merely speculative concepts are puffed up for the talk shows, the best-seller lists, the quick sound-bites and the executive summaries. Claims about globalization, postmodernity, a conflict of civilizations, a coming anarchy, a third way, a risk society, a tipping point or a new empire blind us in a momentary glare, and then fade as complexities impinge and contingencies are brought to order. The stories we are told about contemporary transformations vary enormously. Anyone who claims to know how to offer a reasoned scholarly judgement about what they add up to is certainly tempting the fates. Nevertheless, in my judgement it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that our capacity to know how to engage with political possibilities because we know where those possibilities are to be engaged is in serious trouble. Much of this trouble arises in those contexts that we call the international: that strange and very puzzling place in which we are encouraged to imagine ourselves engaged in a politics that encompasses, or might one day encompass, the entire world; as if a politics both enabled by and sustaining the ambitions of specifically modern subjects could ever encompass the entire world from which such subjects have been separated as the necessary but impossible condition under which they can celebrate their liberties, equalities and securities.

Walker 9 [RBJ, Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Victoria, Canada, After the Globe, Before the World, p 33-35]

claims about specific trends and problems generate further claims about the limitations of established forms of political authority, especially about the always uncertain relationship between various practices of power and the territorially located institutions and procedures through which deployments of, and responses to, power are understood to be legitimate claims that we need to be more imaginative in our ability to work together increasingly run up against the multiple ways in which our authoritative expressions of political engagement are firmly located in a particular somewhere: within and between the spatial boundaries of modern states. To imagine some other way of being political is also to imagine future possibilities without the benefit of those boundaries those lines of both discrimination and relation that have shaped our most basic assumptions about what it means to be modern political subjects capable of responding to specific challenges or to more general structural and historical transformations we need to reimagine where and what political life might be To articulate suspicions that political life often fails to take place where it is supposed to take place is to generate multiple questions about how to engage with whatever politics is supposed to be from those places within which it is supposed to occur To claim that the boundaries of the modern state and the modern system of states are being displaced is to provoke uncertainty about where we are or what we might be as political subjects To suspect that contemporary political life exceeds the instrumental and/or imaginative capacities of modern subjects conceiving themselves to be citizens of a particular somewhere is to raise doubts about our capacity to think about the prospects for liberty, equality, security and democracy, and thus about how we might still claim to be both members of a particular community and participants in some more broadly defined community, perhaps even one encompassing the entirety of humankind. To contemplate the possibilities of resistance or emancipation in relation to claims about the failings of the modern state, is to come up against many well defined boundaries, whether understood as physical borders or as other, less tangible forms of limitation: limits in space, limits in time, and limits in our capacity to imagine where and what we are in space and in time to try to respond to claims that the problems of our age are worldwide in scope, involving complex economic, ecological and cultural processes that exceed the grasp of established political authorities, is to generate profound doubts about our capacity to engage with a world that has already been excluded as the necessary condition under which modern political authority has been constituted in the formalized spaces of abstractly sovereign jurisdictions it is now scarcely possible to engage with contemporary political life without some sense that we risk speaking in terms that have lost much of their grip not only upon important empirical events but even more so upon the theoretical principles through which we are encouraged to make sense of and respond to empirical events While many specific problems or trends attract pragmatic responses requiring little attention to conceptual coherence or to grandiose notions of spatiotemporality, once these responses impinge on established principles of political authority, responsibility, liberty, equality, security and democracy – upon the principles through which we have come to understand the possibilities and limits of a politics of modern subjects enabled within and between modern sovereign states the spatiotemporal organization of what counts as a coherent and acceptable form of political life quickly become of great controversy. Claims about globalization, postmodernity, a conflict of civilizations, a coming anarchy, a third way, a risk society, a tipping point or a new empire blind us in a momentary glare, and then fade as complexities impinge and contingencies are brought to order

Borders and place come before and determine politics – where we locate political authority is a prerequisite to political engagement

Borders Kritik - UTNIF 2013.html5

Texas (UTNIF)

Kritiks

2013

We have yet to develop a new language to account for the com- plex processes of the modern/colonial world-system without relying on the old liberal language of the three arenas. For example, the fact that world-systems theorists characterize the modern world-system as a world-economy misleads many people into thinking that world-sys- tems analysis is about analyzing the so-called economic logic of the system. This is precisely the kind of interpretation Wallerstein at- tempts to avoid in his critique of the three autonomous domains. However, as Wallerstein himself acknowledges, the language used in world-systems analysis is still caught in the old language of nineteenth- century social science and to dispense with this language is a huge challenge. What if capitalism is a world-economy, not in the limited sense of an economic system, but in the sense of Wallerstein's histori- cal system defined as "an integrated network of economic, political and cultural processes the sum of which hold the system together" (Wallerstein, 1991a: 230)? We need to find new concepts and a new language to account for the complex entanglement of gender, racial, sexual, and class hierarchies within global geopolitical, geocultural, and geo-economic processes of the modern/colonial world-system where the ceaseless accumulation of capital is affected by, integrated to, constitutive of, and constituted by those hierarchies. In order to find a new language for this complexity, we need to go outside our paradigms, approaches, disciplines, and fields. I propose that we examine the metatheoretical notion of heterarchies developed by Greek social theorist, sociologist, and philosopher Kyriakos Konto- poulos (1993) as well as the notion of coloniality of power developed by Anîbal Quijano (1991; 1993; 1998). Hierarchical thinking is an attempt to conceptualize social struc- tures with a new language that breaks with the liberal paradigm of nineteenth-century social science (Kontopoulos, 1993). The old lan- guage of social structures is a language of closed systems, that is, of a single, overarching logic determining a single hierarchy. To define a historical system as a "nested hierarchy," as Wallers tein proposed in the Gulbenkian Commission report Open the Social Sciences (1996), undermines the world-systems approach by continuing to use a metatheoretical model that corresponds to closed systems, precisely the opposite of what the world-systems approach attempts to do. In contrast, heterarchies move us beyond closed hierarchies into a language of complexity, open systems, entanglement of multiple and heterogeneous hierarchies, structural levels, and structuring logics. The notion of logics here is redefined to refer to the heterogeneous entanglement of multiple agents' strategies. The idea is that there is neither autonomous logics nor a single logic, but multiple, heteroge- neous, entangled, and complex processes within a single historical reality. The notion of entanglement is crucial here and approaches Wallerstein's notion of historical systems understood as "integrated network[s] of economic, political and cultural processes" (1991a: 230). The moment multiple hierarchical relationships are considered to be entangled, according to Kontopoulos, or integrated, according to Wallerstein, no autonomous logics or domains remain. The no- tion of a single logic runs the risk of reductionism, which is contrary to the idea of complex systems, while the notion of multiple logics runs the risk of dualism. The solution to these ontological questions (the reductionist/autonomist dilemma) in heterarchichal thinking is to go beyond the monism/dualism binary opposition and to talk about an emergentist materialism that implies multiple, entangled processes at different structural levels within a single historical mate- rial reality (which includes the symbolic/ideological as part of that material reality). Heterarchies keep the use of the notion of logics only for analytical purposes in order to make certain distinctions or to abstract certain processes that once integrated or entangled in a concrete historical process acquire a different structural effect and meaning. Heterarchical thinking provides a language for what Immanuel Wallerstein calls a new way of thinking that can break with the liberal nineteenth-century social sciences and focus on com- plex historical systems.

Grosfoguel 2 (Ramón Grosfoguel, Associate Professor. Ethnic Studies Department , 2002, Colonial Difference, Geopolitics of Knowledge, and Global Coloniality in the Modern/ColonialCapitalist World-System, Review (Fernand Braudel Center), Vol. 25, No. 3, Utopian Thinking (2002), pp. 203-224, Accessed: 7/31/13)

We have yet to develop a new language to account for the com- plex processes of the modern/colonial world-system without relying on the old liberal language For example fact that world-systems theorists characterize the modern world-system as a world-economy misleads many people into thinking that world-sys- tems analysis is about analyzing the so-called economic logic of the system the language used in world-systems analysis is still caught in the old language What if capitalism is a world-economy not in the limited sense of an economic system, but in the sense of an integrated network of economic, political and cultural processes the sum of which hold the system together We need to find new concepts and a new language to account for the complex entanglement of gender, racial, sexual, and class hierarchies within global geopolitical, geocultural, and geo-economic processes of the modern/colonial world-system where the ceaseless accumulation of capital is affected by, integrated to, constitutive of, and constituted by those hierarchies In order to find a new language for this complexity, we need to go outside our paradigms, approaches, disciplines, and fields I propose that we examine the metatheoretical notion of heterarchies developed by Greek social theorist, sociologist, and philosopher Kyriakos Konto- poulos (1993) as well as the notion of coloniality of power developed by Anîbal Quijano Hierarchical thinking is an attempt to conceptualize social struc- tures with a new language that breaks with the liberal paradigm of nineteenth-century social science The old lan- guage of social structures is a language of closed systems To define a historical system as a "nested hierarchy undermines the world-systems approach by continuing to use a metatheoretical model that corresponds to closed systems, precisely the opposite of what the world-systems approach attempts to do In contrast, heterarchies move us beyond closed hierarchies into a language of complexity, open systems, entanglement of multiple and heterogeneous hierarchies, structural levels, and structuring logics The notion of logics here is redefined to refer to the heterogeneous entanglement of multiple agents' strategies The idea is that there is neither autonomous logics nor a single logic, but multiple, heteroge- neous, entangled, and complex processes within a single historical reality The notion of entanglement is crucial here and approaches Wallerstein's notion of historical systems understood as "integrated network[s] of economic, political and cultural processes he moment multiple hierarchical relationships are considered to be entangled, according to Kontopoulos, or integrated, according to Wallerstein, no autonomous logics or domains remain. The no- tion of a single logic runs the risk of reductionism in heterarchichal thinking is to go beyond the monism/dualism binary opposition and to talk about an emergentist materialism that implies multiple, entangled processes at different structural levels within a single historical mate- rial reality (which includes the symbolic/ideological as part of that material reality). Heterarchies keep the use of the notion of logics only for analytical purposes in order to make certain distinctions or to abstract certain processes that once integrated or entangled in a concrete historical process acquire a different structural effect and meaning

Language and knowledge production must be investigated first – western approaches misrepresent hiearchal systems of domination

Borders Kritik - UTNIF 2013.html5

Texas (UTNIF)

Kritiks

2013

As scholars we must recognize that we always speak from a specific location in the gender, class, racial, and sexual hierarchies of a particular region in the modern/colonial world-system. Our knowl- edges, as the feminist thinker Donna Haraway contends, are always already situated (1988), but I will add, following Quijano (1993) and Mignolo (2000), that they are situated within the axis of the colonial difference produced by the coloniality of power in the modern/ colonial world-system. The Western/masculinist idea that we can produce knowledges that are unpositioned, unlocated, neutral, and universalistic, is one of the most pervasive mythologies in the mod- ern/colonial world. Universal/global designs are always already situ- ated in local histories (Mignolo, 2000). Those in power positions in the European/Euro-American vs. non-European hierarchy of the modern/colonial world often think in terms of global designs or universalistic knowledges to control and dominate colonized/ racial- ized/subordinated peoples in the capitalist world-system. The colonial difference formed by centuries of European colonial ex- pansion in the modern/colonial world-system is always constitutive of processes of knowledge production. To speak from the subaltern side of the colonial difference forces us to look at the world from angles and points of view critical of hegemonic perspectives. This requires an effort on our part. "Border thinking" or "border episte- mology" are precisely the terms used by Walter Mignolo (2000), inspired in the work of Chicana and Chicano scholars such as Gloria Anzaldua (1987), Norma Alarcon (1983), and José David Saldivar (1998), to refer to this in-between location of subaltern knowledges, critical of both imperial global designs (global coloniality) and anti- colonial nationalist strategies (internal coloniality).

Grosfoguel 2 (Ramón Grosfoguel, Associate Professor. Ethnic Studies Department , 2002, Colonial Difference, Geopolitics of Knowledge, and Global Coloniality in the Modern/ColonialCapitalist World-System, Review (Fernand Braudel Center), Vol. 25, No. 3, Utopian Thinking (2002), pp. 203-224, Accessed: 7/31/13)

As scholars we must recognize that we always speak from a specific location in the gender, class, racial, and sexual hierarchies of a particular region in the modern/colonial world-system Our knowl- edges, as the feminist thinker contends, are always already situated that they are situated within the axis of the colonial difference produced by the coloniality of power in the modern/ colonial world-system. The Western/masculinist idea that we can produce knowledges that are unpositioned, unlocated, neutral, and universalistic, is one of the most pervasive mythologies in the mod- ern/colonial world Universal/global designs are always already situ- ated in local histories Those in power positions in the European/Euro-American vs. non-European hierarchy of the modern/colonial world often think in terms of global designs or universalistic knowledges to control and dominate colonized/ racial- ized/subordinated peoples in the capitalist world-system The colonial difference formed by centuries of European colonial ex- pansion in the modern/colonial world-system is always constitutive of processes of knowledge production This requires an effort on our part. "Border thinking" or "border episte- mology" are precisely the terms to refer to this in-between location of subaltern knowledges, critical of both imperial global designs (global coloniality) and anti- colonial nationalist strategies (internal coloniality).

Epistemology comes first – there’s no such thing as objective neutrality means we must investigate the production of knowledge as a prerequisite to policy outcomes

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Kritiks

2013

According to Derrida, a deconstructive perspective must ‘neither re-frame nor fantasise the absence of the frame’.129 In other words, the work of deconstruction is to negotiate between two competing imperatives. On the one hand, because the activity of framing is always contingent, unstable and violent, deconstructive analysis should not aspire to, or be satisfied with, merely switching one problematic frame (for example, the concept of the border of the state) for another (for example, the concept of the generalised biopolitical border). On the other hand, deconstructive analysis requires sensitivity to the way in which frames are used everyday through language and, while the activity of framing never works because of infinite context, it will not do simply to wish this activity away: some form of closure is necessary for anything to happen and so we need frames. This means that any form of practice/theory ultimately relies (p.158) upon line drawing: even a mode of thinking that advocates the refusal of drawing lines. Interestingly, this is reflected in the counter-response to Prozorov given by Edkins and Pin-Fat: that their reading of Agamben leads to ‘a politics of decisioning and particular distinctions’.130 In this way, despite Agamben's insistence on the necessity of adopting a logic of the field, his accounts of the activity of sovereign power and the prospects for resistance against it do not overcome a reliance on borders, distinctions and separations. It must be reiterated, however, that, for Derrida, this is not necessarily something to lament. Although borders continually break down, they are nevertheless necessary. What this means is that the politics of framing must be marked and negotiated as such. The implications of Derrida's account of what I have called the politics of framing can be summarised as follows. First, as we have seen in relation to the use of the concept of the border of the state, different frames in global politics do not simply produce different representations of global politics. The activity of framing, of invoking borders, distinctions and separations to try to make sense of contemporary political life, is not divorced from global politics but fundamentally part of it. Therefore, any form of framing constitutes praxis in its own right, with important ethical and political ramifications. Second, in the absence of a meta-frame or absolute standard, the use of a particular frame to try to make sense of contemporary political life must be seen as a political move. In other words, the adoption of one frame or another is always something that cannot be fully justified and is therefore open to the possibility of unending scrutiny, debate and/or contestation. On this basis, for example, my own elaboration of the concept of the generalised biopolitical border can be read as a political act using the work of a variety of theorists to articulate an alternative imaginary to that dominated by the concept of the border of the state. Third, part of the work of deconstruction is to expose practices of framing in order that particular frames might be interrogated and/or resisted as contingent outcomes: as borders drawn to provide comfort and security in the otherwise meaninglessness of the flux. A deconstructive ethos is to show how, no matter how established or settled a given frame appears to be, it is always produced in a limitless context of interpretation and reinterpretation which, necessarily, (p.159) denies the possibility of any sort of closure, finitude or totalisation. Fourth, as well as vigilance towards diverse practices of framing, deconstruction implies the need for a constant questioning of frames. On this basis, it is necessary continually to reflect on the frames used to try to make sense of global politics and project these reflections into our analyses. Following this ethos, it is necessary perpetually to return to, question and realise the limitations of framings in global politics which any further uptake of the concept

Vaughn-Williams 9 ( Nick, IR MA @ university of Warwick IR PhD @ Aberystwyth, “Border Politics: The Limits of Sovereign Power” pg157-59)

a deconstructive perspective must ‘neither re-frame nor fantasise the absence of the frame’ In other words, the work of deconstruction is to negotiate between two competing imperatives Although borders continually break down, they are nevertheless necessary. What this means is that the politics of framing must be marked and negotiated as such different frames in global politics do not simply produce different representations of global politics The activity of framing, of invoking borders, distinctions and separations to try to make sense of contemporary political life, is not divorced from global politics but fundamentally part of it any form of framing constitutes praxis the absence of a meta-frame or absolute standard, the use of a particular frame to try to make sense of contemporary political life must be seen as a political move the adoption of one frame or another is always something that cannot be fully justified and is therefore open to the possibility of unending scrutiny, debate and/or contestation , part of the work of deconstruction is to expose practices of framing in order that particular frames might be interrogated and/or resisted as contingent outcomes A deconstructive ethos is to show how, no matter how established or settled a given frame appears to be, it is always produced in a limitless context of interpretation and reinterpretation which, necessarily denies the possibility of any sort of closure finitude or totalisation deconstruction implies the need for a constant questioning of frames is necessary continually to reflect on the frames used to try to make sense of global politics and project these reflections into our analyses it is necessary to, question and realise the limitations of framings in global politics which any further uptake of the concept

A framework for debate totalizes discussion and other forms of politics- turns education and locks in current border dialogue

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Kritiks

2013

Schaffter et al.’s argument hinges on the need for boundary studies to stick to materiality. They imply that I am trying radically to despatialize or dematerialize boundary studies. My intention was the exact opposite: by emphasizing the embodied spatial experiences on which primary metaphors rely, I am arguing that everyday experiences with the world are imbued with prior spatial understandings. Smith and Katz (1993: 69) also recognize the problematic nature of spatial metaphors when they argue that ‘it is precisely this apparent familiarity of space, the givenness of space, its fi xity and inertness, that make a spatial grammar so fertile for metaphoric appropriation’. Recognizing the spatiality of the ‘categories are containers’ metaphor opens up new ways to contest the notion that categories are fi xed and bounded containers of social life. Schaffter et al. suggest, however, that ‘intrinsically non-spatial’ concepts should be left to other disciplines. This is a flawed proposition for two reasons. First, by looking only at the stuff inside a category rather than the boundary-making process, they fall directly into the trap Barth (1969), Abbott (1995), and Newman (2003) warn against. They are focusing on things and are missing the process that produced those understandings. Second, their argument flies in the face of some of the most important contributions geographers have made over the last few decades by requiring scholars in other disciplines to recognize that many concepts that they treat as non-spatial givens are always imbued with spatial meanings and practices (Agnew, 1994; Lee, 2002). For example, Schaffter et al. (2009: 257) argue that ‘“Economy” is a non-spatial concept’. It is unclear to me how economic activities could actually be practiced non-spatially. What benefit, then, is there in maintaining the distinction that the concept itself is nonspatial? Leaving that aside, what I want to emphasize is how the concept is defined. How do we understand whether a thing or process is part of the economy? We can take a concept like ‘monetary policy’ and say that it fits within the economy while another concept, for example ‘sleep’, would not go in the category economy. The ability to say it is ‘in’, ‘out’, or ‘part of’ the category demonstrates how the metaphor of ‘categories are containers’ is transposed onto the category. Even when talking about a supposedly non-spatial category, it relies on a spatial schema. There is a boundary between the categories ‘economy’ and ‘noteconomy’ that allows us metaphorically to put things into the container or not. To put it another way, the categories that shape our understanding of the world rely on the spatial metaphor of boundaries, inclusion, and exclusion regardless of whether the concept itself is supposedly ‘intrinsically’ spatial, spatialized, or non-spatial.

Jones 10 (Reese, Associate Professor and Chair of Graduate Studies Department of Geography University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, March 31, 2010 “The spatiality of boundaries” Progress in Human Geography)

Schaffter ’s argument hinges on the need for boundary studies to stick to materiality. They imply that I am trying radically to despatialize or dematerialize boundary studies. My intention was the exact opposite: by emphasizing the embodied spatial experiences on which primary metaphors rely I am arguing that everyday experiences with the world are imbued with prior spatial understandings. Recognizing the spatiality of the ‘categories are containers’ metaphor opens up new ways to contest the notion that categories are fi xed and bounded containers of social life. Schaffter et al. suggest, however, that ‘intrinsically non-spatial’ concepts should be left to other disciplines. This is a flawed proposition for two reasons. only at the stuff inside a category rather than the boundary-making process, They are focusing on things and are missing the process that produced those understandings their argument flies in the face of some of the most important contributions geographers have made over the last few decades by requiring scholars in other disciplines to recognize that many concepts that they treat as non-spatial givens are always imbued with spatial meanings and practices Schaffter argue that ‘“Economy” is a non-spatial concept’. It is unclear economic activities could actually be practiced non-spatially. How do we understand whether a thing or process is part of the economy? We can take a concept like ‘monetary policy’ and say that it fits within the economy while another concept, for example ‘sleep’, would not go in the category economy. the categories that shape our understanding of the world rely on the spatial metaphor of boundaries, inclusion, and exclusion regardless of whether the concept itself is supposedly ‘intrinsically’ spatial, spatialized, or non-spatial.

Questions of boundaries should come first. They produce our understanding of all other social constructions

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In the light of Olney’s dictum, it can be noted that an expansion of spatial power or the establishment of a new spatial-political order needs a justification, an ensemble of ideas and concepts that can provide a moral and cultural foundation. Moreover, in the context of relations with other societies, and specifically in the Americas, remembering Jefferson’s notion of the United States having a ‘hemisphere to itself’, the construction of a geopolitical identity included the positing of difference as inferiority and danger. The outside world contained threats to security and to the diffusion of mission. The perceived threat of disorder and chaos to the rule of the emerging American Empire could be taken as an example of the key relation between the perception of threat and the geopolitics of intervention to maintain a sense of security. It can be argued here that any discussion of threats to order and stability must be linked to discourses of identity and difference. What exactly is being threatened? What are the discourses or regimes of truth that are immanent in the power relations that seek to preserve order? In the case of nineteenth-century US power, the spread of progress and a civilizational mission were predominantly envisaged as being rooted in a specifically ‘American destiny’. There were the pressures of economic expansion, but the USA’s representation of itself to the world, the construction of a project of leadership (backed by the capacity and willingness to deploy force) was crucial to any understanding of the geopolitics of interventionism. Threats and perceptions of disorder are predicated on governing visions which are one expression of the complex intersections of power and cultural representation. But these visions are also a reflection of a hegemonic ambition. Further, in a context that is international, where the intersubjectivity that is a pivotal part of power relations stretches across national boundaries, and therefore national cultures, and where the attempt to develop a hegemonic project comes up against nationalist opposition, one kind of counter-geopolitics, the resistance to imperial persuasion, has been strikingly resilient, even if it has never been the only tendency, as will be mentioned below. What needs to be remembered, as I shall suggest below, is that in any account of the power/discourse intersection, the effectiveness of counter-discourses or counter-representations to Empire ought to be included as a significant part of the analysis.

Slater, 2004 [David Slater, Emeritus Professor of Political Geography, & Associate Fellow of the Institute for the Study of the Americas at the University of London, Geopolitics and the Postcolonial: Rethinking North-South Relations, Blackwell Publishing Ltd]

an expansion of spatial power or the establishment of a new spatial-political order needs a justification, an ensemble of ideas and concepts in the context of relations with other societies, and specifically in the Americas, the construction of a geopolitical identity included the positing of difference as inferiority and danger. The outside world contained threats to security and to the diffusion of mission. threat of disorder and chaos to the rule of the emerging American Empire could be taken as an example of the key relation between the perception of threat and the geopolitics of intervention to maintain a sense of security. any discussion of threats to order and stability must be linked to discourses of identity and difference. the spread of progress and a civilizational mission were predominantly envisaged as being rooted in a specifically ‘American destiny’. There were the pressures of economic expansion, but the USA’s representation of itself to the world was crucial to any understanding of the geopolitics of interventionism. Threats and perceptions of disorder are predicated on governing visions which are one expression of the complex intersections of power and cultural representation. these visions are also a reflection of a hegemonic ambition. the intersubjectivity that is a pivotal part of power relations stretches across national boundaries, and therefore national cultures the attempt to develop a hegemonic project comes up against nationalist opposition, one kind of counter-geopolitics any account of the power/discourse intersection, the effectiveness of counter-discourses or counter-representations to Empire ought to be included as a significant part of the analysis.

Focus on discourse and representations is key in the context of our criticism – threat construction and the securitization of national identities legitimize violent intervention in the name of United States hegemony – critical analysis is necessary.

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Over 10 years ago, Said (1989, p. 214), expressed a complaint about the ‘‘total absence of any reference to American imperial intervention’’ in studies of epistemology and difference. Such an analysis is critical because, as Said argues, the ‘‘structures of location and geographical reference’’ found in United Statesian cultural representations are predicated upon and underwritten by ‘‘structures of attitude’’ that legitimate inequality. To reveal the inner workings and material consequences of such discursive patterns, Said (1995, p. 34), advocates wedding, rather than separating, political context––‘‘a context that is primarily imperial’’––with representations and ‘‘their production, circulation, history, and interpretation’’. Given that scholars operate within a world not of their own making, their research questions, however innovative, are rooted in systems of thinking and bodies of literature that articulate certain discursive categories and modes of representation, which in turn are embedded in specific socio-political and historical conditions. For this reason, as Said notes, situating representations within political contexts and locating researchers within geographical networks is key to understanding how scholarship and scholarly discourses embody, (re)produce, and contest social relations. In light of the history of US interests and interventions in Latin American countries, this section situates geographical knowledge about Latin America within a broader geo-political context. In particular, I am interested in critically asking to what extent knowledge produced in the US is constituted by and reflects United Statesian perspectives and interests. 3.1. Latin American studies and the (re)production of inequality Since the Monroe Doctrine in 1823 and subsequent declarations of ‘‘manifest destiny’’, the United States has sought to assert hegemonic power in the Western Hemisphere. Although Latin Americans from diverse countries have consistently called the US an imperialist force (Cardoso and Faletto, 1979; Dorfman, 1975), diplomats and scholars within the US have debated the accuracy or appropriateness of this term. For many, US imperialism was ‘‘an aberration, or a fleeting episode’’ in the late 19th century (Kaplan and Pease, 1993, p. 13). Others submit to the accusation, but suggest that US policy is driven solely by economic considerations. While some US academics and policy makers continue to engage in an ‘‘ongoing pattern of denial’’ about US imperialism (Kaplan and Pease, 1993, p. 11), others seek to re-conceptualize how we research and analyze imperial encounters on the ground (Joseph et al., 1998). Historian Mark Berger’s study, Under Northern Eyes––the North American equivalent to Said’s Orientalism––is an explicit attempt to make ‘‘the relationship between power and knowledge central to the examination of the North American study of Latin America’’ (1995, p. 1). Although Latin American studies has been ‘‘cloaked in assertions of ‘‘objectivity’’ and [articulates] a commitment to scientific and rational discourses’’, Berger’s painstakingly detailed analysis situates scholars within the specific socio-historical contexts that condition their views of Latin America (1995, p. 19). Arguably, the most important factor shaping the context in which scholars operate is the US government’s shifting interests in individual Latin American countries. As Berger notes, the boundaries between academia and the state have been blurred in Latin American studies. Not only have academics moved back and forth between academia and the various agencies of the government, but the state also has attempted to shape the kinds of research undertaken. For instance, the 1958 Defense Education Act created funding for area studies programs, in recognition of ‘‘the strategic value of cultural knowledge’’ about Latin America and other regions of the world (Morris-Suzuki, 2000, p. 14). 10 Ultimately, scholars suggest, such policies ‘‘explicitly recognized that the development of area studies programs could contribute to the successful exercise of US world power’’ (Morris-Suzuki, 2000, p. 14). 11 In light of these close ties, Berger (1995, p. 2), argues that ...North American historical and social science professions facilitate the creation and maintenance of the national and international organizations, institutions, inter-state relations and politico-economic structures that sustain and extend US hegemony in Latin America and around the world. Furthermore, history and social science disciplines derive their power and authority from their linkages to these organizations, institutions and political structures. In using Berger’s analysis to highlight the connections between geo-politics and the production of knowledge, my goal is not to suggest that all United States researchers working in Latin America have the interests of the state at heart; nor do I wish to argue that place determines outlook. Rather, I want to point out that Latin American studies in the US and consequently, geographies of Latin America are embedded in and emerge from specific contexts characterized by asymmetrical power relations. Such a genesis has implications for the kinds of interpretative categories and research questions underwriting US research in the region. One such consequence is that Latin American studies consistently positions the ‘‘West’’ or the US as ‘‘the implicit referent, i.e. the yardstick by which to encode and represent’’ Latin America (after Mohanty, 1991, p. 55). As Berger notes, between the mid-19th century and World War I, Latin American studies reflected and reproduced ‘‘Anglo-Saxonist assumptions about North American civilization as the highest form of civilization in history’’ (Berger, 1995, p. 30; see also Schoultz, 1998). Scholars looked to biological differences between North American and Latin American peoples to explain socio-political phenomena in Latin American countries. After World War II, the majority of scholarship on Latin America was structured by modernization theory, which cast these ideas in a new light. Notions of racial differences were replaced with cultural conceptions of ‘‘development’’, ‘‘progress’’, although an idealized vision of the ‘‘West’’ remained the yardstick by which Latin American nations and people were measured. Binaries such as developed/underdeveloped emerged to replace earlier versions like advanced/ backward. The discourses have shifted, but the underlying presumption of the superior white North American self as referent of analysis remain the same (see also Schoultz, 1998). 12 Berger’s study illustrates the extent to which research on Latin America coming out of the United States presumes a white, elite, (masculine) United Statesian referent of analysis. This is also to say that United Statesian representations of Latin America may say more about US interests and identities than about Latin American people and society. Clearly, geography, geographical location, and geo-political context matter greatly in the production of knowledge about Latin America. Although a Berger-like self-critique is yet to be elaborated, a number of geographers have begun to analyze the epistemological assumption underlying Anglo-American geographical research on Latin America. 3.2. Contesting Anglo-American geographies of Latin America Berman Santana (1996) provides a compelling example of how geographers from the United States enlisted biological and cultural hierarchies to describe and analyze Puerto Rico’s socio-spatial characteristics. Between the 1930s and 1950s during US occupation of Puerto Rico, geographers from the US conducted research on the island and participated in such projects as the Rural Land Classification Program and ‘‘Operation Bootstrap’’––a development program based upon export-led industrialization. In the process, geographers produced a series of studies about the island. One outcome of this research was the theory of nonviability, which asserted that Puerto Rico was ‘‘too small, geographically too strategic, too poor in natural and human resources, and too overpopulated’’ and therefore ‘‘was not viable as an independent state’’ (Berman Santana, 1996, p. 459). Interestingly, the geographers’ recommendations coincided with and supported the US government’s strategies and goals for the island. Even as Berman Santana disputes the accuracy of geographical representations, her analysis highlights their emergence in the context of asymmetrical power relations between the United States and an island colony. Such a genesis, she contends, has the effect of attributing the underscored characteristics as internal or essential to Puerto Rican people and nature, rather than the outcome of overlapping histories of colonialism, political exclusion, and environmentally destructive extractive economies. In this case, Berman Santana (1996, p. 458), argues, development models ‘‘provided an explanation for inequality among nations without placing responsibility on colonialist exploitation––thus allowing it to continue’’. Ultimately, the theory of nonviability, which drew upon and reproduced beliefs about the inherent inferiority of Puerto Ricans, had the effect of authorizing the US to shape the island’s future. In a somewhat different approach, Lawson and Klak (1993, p. 1068), challenge geographers working in Latin America to undertake an ‘‘analysis of our own practice of knowledge production’’ to ‘‘reveal the workings of an ideology of power relations that marginalizes research on the South within the academy’’. The authors specifically interrogate the ‘‘political economy of knowledge in Anglo social science’’ wherein concepts and categories flow unilaterally from North to South (Lawson and Klak, 1993, p. 1073; see also Ramırez, 2000). This has the effect of positioning the South as little more than a series of case studies demonstrating North American concepts and theories. Moreover, the authors suggest, Latin America tends to be analyzed either in isolation from the North or as a ‘‘peripheral’’ region subject to forces emanating from the ‘‘core’’ (see also Dussell, 1998; Coronil, 1996). The interconnections and interdependencies between places are made invisible by these representational practices; each region is made to stand apart, different and distant from one another. Finally, Lawson and Klak suggest that the prevalence of dualisms such as First World/Third World, developed/ developing in geographical analyses imply that North America continues to be used as the yardstick against which Latin American countries and people are measured. Ultimately, these modes of representation leave intact dichotomous thinking practices that are also inherently hierarchical. Although Berman Santana and Lawson and Klak traverse new terrain in pursuing an internal critique of geographies of Latin America, the authors do not go far enough. Following Coronil (1996), I want to consider how Anglo-American epistemological positions and representations of Latin America are implicated in practices of self-fashioning. In a recent article, Coronil (1996, p. 56), seeks to extend Edward Said’s work by ‘‘reorienting our attention from the problematic of ‘Orientalism,’ which focuses on the deficiencies of the West’s representations of the Orient, to that of ‘Occidentalism,’ which refers to the conceptions of the West animating these representations.’’ In this sense, Coronil’s (1996, p. 56), project is to unearth the ‘‘implicit constructions of ‘Selfhood’ that underwrite’’ representations of Others; Occidentalism, then, is ‘‘not the reverse of Orientalism but its condition of possibility.’’ For Coronil, analyzing Occidentalism is critical to understanding how asymmetrical power relations are (re)produced in everyday practices of knowledge production. To more fully explore how epistemological positions and modes of representation in geographies of Latin America constitute practices of self-fashioning that (re)produce inequality, I now turn to an analysis of the connections between objectivity, epistemology, and subject formation. I begin with an exploration of the implicit constructions of selfhood that underwrite prevailing notions of objectivity and extend this analysis to geographies of Latin America. 3.3. Objectivity and practices of epistemological self-fashioning If prevailing notions of objectivity obliterate the bodies and geographies of geographers as outlined here, then objectivity-as-we-know-it is underwritten by very particular constructions of selfhood: as disembodied, un-located or unlimited by place, and separate or separable from the ‘‘objects of research’’. Indeed, as Barnes and Gregory (1997, p. 15), suggest, the geographer in European and North American human geography has been imagined as ‘‘elevated above the rest of the population,’’ occupying ‘‘a position from which he could survey the world with a detachment and a clarity that was denied to those closer to the ground (whose vision was supposed to be necessarily limited by their involvement in the mundane tasks of ordinary life).’’ What are the implications of these practices of self-fashioning? How do constructions of the objective self inform geographies of Latin America? The objective observer is, first and foremost, an identity category built upon acts of exclusion. While the objective observer claims the capacity for bodily transcendence, historically men of color and all women were excluded from performing such practices based upon the perception that they were mired in bodily or private (local) concerns (Haraway, 1997). In contemporary Anglo-American social sciences, this epistemological stance is re-articulated in the spatial politics of theory production. Not only is the ‘‘West’’ situated as ‘‘the fountainhead of theories with which to interpret the rest of the world’’ (Morris-Suzuki, 2000, p. 19), but the production of theory that is of universal value, applicable across time and space has been restricted to that emerging from Europe (Chakrabarty, 2000). 13 In the context of Latin American studies, as Lawson and Klak (1993, p. 1078), note, ‘‘theory produced in Anglo settings is privileged as generalizable, whereas theory from Latin America is typically labelled and identified as specific in origin and applicability.’’ Consequently, geographers tend to work very little with scholarship from Latin America, despite the availability of works in translation or written in English by prominent theoreticians such as Coronil (1996), Dussel (1995, 1998), Mignolo (1995), Mignolo (1999), and Quijano (2000) (to name just a few of particular interest to geographers). 14 Without this engagement, Anglo-American frames of reference remain intact. Secondly, if the (white, elite) objective self is constituted as detached and unaffected by the ‘‘objects of research,’’ then knowledge production is framed as the exclusive property or outcome of the researcher and not something that emerged from the embodied interactions between researcher and the people and objects being researched. How the research process changed the researcher’s ideas and identity also remains outside the purview of such perspectives. This framing of research is pervasive in geographies of Latin America, wherein predominant epistemological positions and writing conventions render research transparent and indeed unremarkable. If we do not ask how the daily practices of fieldwork, the interactions and negotiations between researcher and the many individuals encountered shape knowledge, then the geographer is constituted as the ultimate authority in the production of knowledge about other people and places (Mullings, 1999; Pratt, 2000). Following from this, to claim to be ‘‘above and detached from the world under investigation’’ is also to assume a ‘‘position of mastery’’ (Bondi, 1997, p. 247). In this sense, the geographical self is constituted and performed as a ‘‘monarch-of-all-I-survey,’’ to borrow Pratt’s (1992, p. 201), evocative term. Indeed, the history of geography and other disciplines is one of intimate connections between research and the exercise of imperial power (Livingstone, 1992). As Maori scholar L.T. Smith (1999, p. 2), notes, ‘‘the pursuit of knowledge is deeply embedded in the multiple layers of imperial and colonial practices.’’ L.T. Smith (1999, p. 2), argues that white or ‘‘Western’’ researchers often position themselves and their research as ‘‘serving a greater good ‘for mankind’.’’ However, indigenous peoples around the world tell ‘‘counter-stories’’ about research that point to its ‘‘absolute worthlessness to us, the indigenous world, and its absolute usefulness to those who wielded it as an instrument’’ (L.T. Smith, 1999, p. 3).

Sundberg 5 [Juanita, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, “Looking for the critical geographer, or why bodies and geographies matter to the emergence of critical geographies of Latin America”, Geoforum 36 (2005) 17–28]

, Said ), expressed a complaint about the ‘‘total absence of any reference to American imperial intervention’’ in studies of epistemology and difference Such an analysis is critical because the ‘‘structures of location and geographical reference’’ found in United Statesian cultural representations are predicated upon and underwritten by ‘‘structures of attitude’’ that legitimate inequality. scholars are rooted in systems of thinking and bodies of literature that articulate certain discursive categories and modes of representation, which in turn are embedded in specific socio-political and historical conditions situating representations within political contexts and geographical networks is key to understanding how scholarship and scholarly discourses embody, (re)produce, and contest social relations light of the history of US interests and interventions in Latin American countries, this section situates geographical knowledge about Latin America within a broader geo-political context. Since the Monroe Doctrine the United States has sought to assert hegemonic power in the Western Hemisphere. diplomats and scholars within the US have debated the accuracy of this For many, US imperialism was ‘‘an aberration, or a fleeting episode’’ US academics and policy makers continue to engage in an ‘‘ongoing pattern of denial’’ about US imperialism ( Latin American studies has been ‘‘cloaked in assertions of ‘‘objectivity’’ and [articulates] a commitment to scientific and rational discourses’’ the most important factor shaping the context in which scholars operate is the US government’s shifting interests in individual Latin American countrie the boundaries between academia and the state have been blurred in Latin American studies the state has attempted to shape the kinds of research undertaken such policies ‘‘explicitly recognized that the development of area studies programs could contribute to the successful exercise of US world power’’ North American historical and social science professions facilitate the creation and maintenance of the national and international organizations, institutions, inter-state relations and politico-economic structures that sustain and extend US hegemony in Latin America and around the world history and social science disciplines derive their power and authority from their linkages to these organizations, institutions and political structures Latin American studies in the US and consequently, geographies of Latin America are embedded in and emerge from specific contexts characterized by asymmetrical power relations Latin American studies consistently positions the ‘‘West’’ or the US as ‘‘the implicit referent, i.e. the yardstick by which to encode and represent’’ Latin America Latin American studies reflected and reproduced ‘‘Anglo-Saxonist assumptions about North American civilization as the highest form of civilization in history’ Scholars looked to biological differences between North American and Latin American peoples to explain socio-political phenomena in Latin American Notions of racial differences were replaced with cultural conceptions of ‘‘development’’, ‘‘progress’’, although an idealized vision of the ‘‘West’’ remained the yardstick by which Latin American nations and people were measured Binaries such as developed/underdeveloped emerged to replace earlier versions like advanced/ backward United Statesian representations of Latin America may say more about US interests and identities than about Latin American people and society. geography, geographical location, and geo-political context matter greatly in the production of knowledge about Latin America , development models ‘‘provided an explanation for inequality among nations without placing responsibility on colonialist exploitation––thus allowing it to continue’’ Latin America tends to be analyzed either in isolation from the North or as a ‘‘peripheral’’ region subject to forces emanating from the ‘‘core’’ The interconnections and interdependencies between places are made invisible by these representational practices; each region is made to stand apart, different and distant from one another. the prevalence of dualisms such as First World/Third World, developed/ developing in geographical analyses imply that North America continues to be used as the yardstick against which Latin American countries and people are measured these modes of representation leave intact dichotomous thinking practices that are also inherently hierarchical. objectivity-as-we-know-it is underwritten by very particular constructions of selfhood: as disembodied, un-located or unlimited by place, and separate or separable from the ‘‘objects of research’’ The objective observer is an identity category built upon acts of exclusion. Not only is the ‘‘West’’ situated as ‘‘the fountainhead of theories with which to interpret the rest of the world’ but the production of theory that is of universal value, applicable across time and space has been restricted to that emerging from Europe theory produced in Anglo settings is privileged as generalizable, whereas theory from Latin America is typically labelled and identified as specific in origin and applicability. the history of geography and other disciplines is one of intimate connections between research and the exercise of imperial power the pursuit of knowledge is deeply embedded in the multiple layers of imperial and colonial practices white or ‘‘Western’’ researchers often position themselves and their research as ‘‘serving a greater good ‘for mankind’

Their research is motivated solely by the interests of sustaining the US State and entrenches the narrative of Latin American inferiority – be skeptical of the aff’s claims to objectivity

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Prima facie, Agamben seems to lead in somewhat pessimistic, even despairing, directions. Indeed, his diagnosis of the relationship between politics and life, analysis of the production of bare life in zones of indistinction, and prognosis that ‘we are all virtually homines sacri’ imply a bleak picture of the possibility for contestation, change and, in short, politics. For this reason, Andreas Kalyvas argues that Agamben's portrayal of the ‘unstoppable march to the camp’ is ‘totalistic […], and though it is concerned with politics and its eclipse, it is itself quite un-political’.15 William Connolly arrives at a similar conclusion: ‘Agamben […] carries us through the conjunction of sovereignty, the sacred, and biopolitics to a historical impasse’.16 In an interview in 2004, however, Agamben replied to his critics: I've often been reproached for (or at least attributed with) this pessimism that I am perhaps unaware of. But I don't see it like that. There is a phrase from Marx, cited by Debord as well, that I like a lot: ‘the desperate situation of society in which I live fills me with hope’. I don't see myself as pessimistic.17 By now a growing number of scholars have identified a more ‘positive’ moment in Homo Sacer. On Jenny Edkins's view, a bleak assessment of Agamben's work, such as that reached by Kalyvas and Connolly, ‘overlooks a significant facet of Agamben's work, where he seeks to propose an alternative to, and indeed a contestation of, sovereign biopolitics’.18 Central to Agamben's thinking about ethical–political praxis and resistance against sovereign biopolitics is his conception of the subject (p.137) as an interval or remainder between what he refers to as practices of subjectification and de-subjectification.19 According to Agamben, the biopolitical terrain of global politics can be understood as ‘a kind of desubjectification machine: it's a machine that both scrambles all the classical identities and […] a machine that […] recodes these very same dissolved identities’.20 For Agamben it is possible to think through the potential for resistance by rendering the machine inoperative on its own terms.21 Agamben's thought does not lead to nihilism or passivity but calls for the radical invention of new practices: ‘a movement on the spot, in the situation itself’.22 In The Time That Remains [2005], Agamben gives the example of St Paul's negotiation with the Jewish law that divides Jews and non-Jews. Agamben is interested in the way in which, instead of applying a universal principle to argue against this sovereign cut, Paul intervenes by taking the law on on its own terms. According to Agamben, Paul does this by dividing the division itself: by introducing a further division between the Jew according to the flesh and the Jew according to the spirit. This division of the division means that, instead of a simple separation between Jews/non-Jews, there are now ‘Jews who are not Jews, because there are Jews who are Jews according to the flesh, not the spirit, and [non-Jews] who are [non-Jews] according to the flesh, but not according to the spirit’.23 Consequently, a remainder is produced that renders the applicability and operativity of the law ineffective: a new form of subject that is neither a Jew nor a non-Jew but a ‘non-non-Jew’.24 Applying this logic to contemporary conditions, Agamben places his hope for a kind of minority politics in this form of unworking of the system or biopolitical machine from within: One should proceed in this way, from division to division, rather than by asking oneself: ‘What would be the universal communal principle that would allow us to be together?’To the contrary. It is a matter, confronted with the divisions introduced by the law, of working with what disables them through resisting, through remaining – résister, rester, it's the same root.25 Elsewhere, Agamben links the move to render the system inoperative with notions of ‘profanation’, meaning to violate or transgress, and play.26 He illustrates the logic of profanation through play with the (p.138) example of the cat that plays with the ball of string as if it were a mouse. The game frees the mouse from being cast as prey and at the same time the predatory activity of the cat is shifted away from the chasing and killing of the mouse: ‘and yet, this play stages the very same behaviours that define hunting’.27 With this example Agamben seeks to demonstrate the profanatory potential in play as a means of creating a new use of something by deactivating an old one. The ultimate call is to subvert the given machine or apparatus according to its own logic: ‘to wrest from the apparatuses – from all apparatuses – the possibility of use that they have captured’.28

Vaughn-Williams 9 ( Nick, IR MA @ university of Warwick IR PhD @ Aberystwyth, “Border Politics: The Limits of Sovereign Power” pg 137-38)

Agamben replied to his critics: I've often been reproached for (or at least attributed with) this pessimism that I am perhaps unaware of. But I don't see it like that. There is a phrase from Marx, cited by Debord as well, that I like a lot: ‘the desperate situation of society in which I live fills me with hope’ I don't see myself as pessimistic. By now a growing number of scholars have identified a more ‘positive’ moment in Homo Sacer. overlooks a significant facet of Agamben's work, where he seeks to propose an alternative to, and indeed a contestation of, sovereign biopolitics’. Central to Agamben's thinking about ethical–political praxis and resistance against sovereign biopolitics is his conception of the subject For Agamben it is possible to think through the potential for resistance by rendering the machine inoperative on its own terms.21 Agamben's thought does not lead to nihilism or passivity but calls for the radical invention of new practices: ‘a movement on the spot, in the situation itself’ Applying this logic to contemporary conditions, Agamben places his hope for a kind of minority politics in this form of unworking of the system or biopolitical machine from within: One should proceed in this way, from division to division, rather than by asking oneself: ‘What would be the universal communal principle that would allow us to be together? Elsewhere, Agamben links the move to render the system inoperative with notions of ‘profanation’, meaning to violate or transgress, and play Agamben seeks to demonstrate the profanatory potential in play as a means of creating a new use of something by deactivating an old one. The ultimate call is to subvert the given machine or apparatus according to its own logic: ‘to wrest from the apparatuses – from all apparatuses – the possibility of use that they have captured’.28

Complete Negativity is key- only through imagining political praxis can we create change

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Kritiks

2013

Border thinking needs its own genealogy and its own history; a history and a¶ genealogy that emerge in the very act of performing border thinking. Without¶ it, border thinking will remain either an appendix of modern Western imperial¶ epistemology and the variants of canonical history of Western civilization told¶ from the imperial perspective (from the Renaissance, to Hegel, to Marx); or an¶ object of study for the social sciences (like the savage mind for earlier anthropologists).¶ If border thinking is to emerge and prosper in the ex-second world today,¶ it would have to happen in the colonial and ex-colonial locales of the subaltern¶ empires, among the people who were multi-marginalized and denied their voice¶ by Western modernity – directly and through subaltern imperial mediation. It is¶ the Caucasus and Central Asia (with regard to Russia), the Kurds, the Greeks¶ and the Armenians (with regard to the Ottoman Empire), the Yugoslavian¶ bundle of contradictions in the Balkans, etc. But these voices are never heard and¶ will hardly be heard soon. These mutes colonized by the subaltern empires are¶ split between the original of Western culture (now also accessible to them) and¶ its bad subaltern empire copies, the ex-mediators of civilization, plus their own¶ native ethnic traditions continue to play their part in the process of the already¶ split selves being shattered into even smaller pieces. That’s why the manifestation¶ of the ‘multitude’ (in Georgia, the Ukraine or Kirgizstan) is mobilized more¶ by a desire to assimilate to the West than to engage in imagining a possible future¶ beyond the options offered by communism and its aftermath, and liberalism and¶ its aftermath.

Mignolo & Tlostanova 2006 [Walter D. & Madina V., Duke University & People’s Friendship Univ, Moscow, “Theorizing from the Borders Shifting to Geo- and Body-Politics of Knowledge”, European Journal of Social Theory 9(2): 205–221]

Border thinking needs its own genealogy and its own history; a history and a genealogy that emerge in the very act of performing border thinking Without it, border thinking will remain either an appendix of modern Western imperial epistemology from the imperial perspective or an object of study for the social sciences If border thinking is to emerge and prosper it would have to happen in the colonial and ex-colonial locales

Western thought can’t move beyond borders – the perm fails and just reentrenches them

Borders Kritik - UTNIF 2013.html5

Texas (UTNIF)

Kritiks

2013

While imperial epistemology is based on theological and egological principles,¶ the shift to geo- and body- political principles is indeed a de-colonial move. Geo and¶ body-politics are the ‘displaced inversion’ of theo- and ego-politics of knowledge.¶ It is an ‘inversion’ because it is assumed that John Locke’s ‘secondary qualities’¶ cannot be bracketed in the process of knowing and understanding. And in¶ a world order in which the imperial and colonial differences establish all hierarchies,¶ from economy to knowledge, ‘secondary qualities’ that matter are colonial¶ local histories (geo-politics) subordinated to imperial local histories, on the one¶ hand, and colonial subjectivities (e.g. what Frantz Fanon described as ‘the¶ wretched of the earth’), on the other. Colonial subjectivities are the consequences¶ of racialized bodies, the inferiority that imperial classification assigned to every¶ body that does not comply with the criteria of knowledge established by white,¶ European, Christian and secular men. Thus, ‘displaced inversion’ means that it¶ is not just a change in the content but fundamentally in the terms of the conversation:¶ the geo- and body-political perspectives de-link from the imperial and¶ totalitarian bent of theo- and ego-logical principles. It is hardly enough to¶ question the secularity of the social sciences from the perspective of theology, as¶ John Milbank does. It is of the essence to move away from inversions internal to¶ imperial epistemology and to shift the geo-graphy and the bio-graphy of reason.

Mignolo & Tlostanova 2006 [Walter D. & Madina V., Duke University & People’s Friendship Univ, Moscow, “Theorizing from the Borders Shifting to Geo- and Body-Politics of Knowledge”, European Journal of Social Theory 9(2): 205–221]

the shift to geo- and body- political principles is indeed a de-colonial move. Geo and body-politics are the ‘displaced inversion’ of theo- and ego-politics of knowledge in a world order in which the imperial and colonial differences establish all hierarchies, from economy to knowledge Colonial subjectivities are the consequences of racialized bodies, the inferiority that imperial classification assigned to every body that does not comply with the criteria of knowledge established by white, European, Christian and secular men displaced inversion’ is not just a change in the content but fundamentally in the terms of the conversation: the geo- and body-political perspectives de-link from the imperial and totalitarian bent of theo- and ego-logical principles It is of the essence to move away from inversions internal to imperial epistemology and to shift the geo-graphy and the bio-graphy of reason

Perm fails – it’s impossible to reconcile bordered and anti-border thinking, and starting from a Western viewpoint dooms the perm and causes cooption

Borders Kritik - UTNIF 2013.html5

Texas (UTNIF)

Kritiks

2013

Our second thesis is the following. ‘Border thinking’ (or border epistemology)¶ emerges primarily from the people’s anti-imperial epistemic responses to the¶ colonial difference – the difference that hegemonic discourse endowed to ‘other’¶ people, classifying them as inferior and at the same time asserting its geohistorical¶ and body-social configurations as superior and the models to be¶ followed. These people refuse to be geographically caged, subjectively humiliated¶ and denigrated and epistemically disregarded. For this reason, the de-colonial¶ epistemic shift proposes to change the rule of the game – and not just the content¶ – and the reason why knowledge is produced: de-colonization, instead of¶ working toward the accumulation of knowledge and imperial management,¶ works toward the empowerment and liberation of different layers (racial, sexual,¶ gender, class, linguistic, epistemic, religious, etc.) from oppression, and toward¶ the undermining of the assumption upon which imperial power is naturalized,¶ enacted and corrupted. Second, border thinking could emerge also from the¶ imperial difference, i.e. the same mechanism of the colonial difference but¶ applied to people in similar socio-economic conditions as the ones who are in a¶ dominant position. Western (Christian and secular) discourses about Indians and¶ Blacks (that is, Africans transported to the Americas) founded the colonial difference¶ and the modern matrix of racism. During the same period, the sixteenth¶ and seventeenth centuries, Western Christian and secular discourse founded the¶ imperial difference with the Ottoman and the Russian Empires. Turks and¶ Russian, in other words, were obviously not Indians and Blacks in the Western¶ hegemonic geo- and body-classification of the world. However, it was clear to¶ everybody in the West that Turks and Russians might not be Blacks or Indians,¶ but they were not European either. However, ‘second-class’ empires in the history¶ of Western capitalist ones also had to deal with colonies. Empires like the¶ Russian/Soviet (and also Japan, 1895–1945) and the Ottoman, before its demise,¶ are all Janus-faced empires: one eye is pointing toward Western capitalist and¶ dominant empires, while the other looks toward their own colonies (Tlostanova,¶ 2003).

Mignolo & Tlostanova 2006 [Walter D. & Madina V., Duke University & People’s Friendship Univ, Moscow, “Theorizing from the Borders Shifting to Geo- and Body-Politics of Knowledge”, European Journal of Social Theory 9(2): 205–221]

Border thinking’ emerges primarily from the people’s anti-imperial epistemic responses to the colonial difference the difference that hegemonic discourse endowed to ‘other’ people, classifying them as inferior and at the same time asserting its geohistorical and body-social configurations as superior and the models to be followed. the de-colonial epistemic shift proposes to change the rule of the game and the reason why knowledge is produced de-colonization, instead of working toward the accumulation of knowledge and imperial management, works toward the empowerment and liberation of different layers from oppression, and toward the undermining of the assumption upon which imperial power is naturalized, enacted and corrupted border thinking could emerge also from the imperial difference, one eye is pointing toward Western capitalist and dominant empires, while the other looks toward their own colonies

STARTING POINTS MATTER – the perm begins with the dominant viewpoint of the state, ensuring a new politics will never emerge

Borders Kritik - UTNIF 2013.html5

Texas (UTNIF)

Kritiks

2013

In Means Without End [2000], Agamben is clear that any move to render biopolitical apparatuses inoperative must do so on the basis of his diagnosis of the relationship between politics and life as outlined in the previous chapter: It is by starting from this uncertain terrain and from this opaque zone of indistinction that today we must once again find the path of another politics, of another body, of another world. I would not feel up to forgoing this indistinction of public and private, of biological body and body politic, of zoē and bios, for any reason whatsoever. It is here that I must find my space once again – here or nowhere else. Only a politics that starts from such an awareness can interest me.29 The figure that Agamben draws upon to think through the possibility of resistance is what he calls ‘whatever being’.30 The notion of ‘whatever being’ refers to being-as-such: ‘the simple fact of one's own existence as possibility or potentialit’.31 ‘Whatever being’ has no essence that can be separated from its attributes.32 It constitutes a ‘pure singularit’ in the sense that it cannot be broken down into different parts.33 The task, then, is not to mobilise resistance on the basis of universal generalised principles such as human rights. Rather, it is to explore and invent the profanatory potential that resides within remnants of forms of subjectification and desubjectification produced by sovereign power itself. Prospects for thinking and acting otherwise in global politics centre around the figure of the refugee in Agamben's work. According to Agamben, this figure, which can be understood precisely as the ‘remnant’ of sovereign biopolitics, is perhaps the ‘only imaginable (p.139) figure of the people today’: a ‘whatever being’ that throws conventional juridical–political categories into disarray.34 Indeed, for Agamben, this unique figure acts as a site for the invention of alternative forms of political community not based on unity, sovereignty, citizenship or other conventional categories. Rather, the refugee […] should be considered for what he [sic] is, that is, nothing less than a border concept that radically calls into question the principles of the nation-state and, at the same time, helps clear the field for a no-longer-delayable [sic] renewal of categories.35Taking the refugee as a starting point for the reconstruction of political categories and philosophy demands attention to how the topology wrought by this figure, reflecting the Möbius strip outlined in the previous chapter, might stimulate alternative conceptualisations of ethical–political relationality. Agamben illustrates the direction in which this thinking could lead against the backdrop of the politics of space in Jerusalem.36 The prospect of this city as the capital of two states, without territorial divisions, ‘could be generalized as a model of new international relations’. Agamben continues: Instead of two national states separated by uncertain and threatening boundaries, one could imagine two political communities dwelling in the same region and in exodus one into the other, divided from each other by a series of reciprocal extraterritorialities, in which the guiding concept would no longer be the ius of the citizen, but rather the refugium of the individual.37 This alternative topology, embodied by the figure of the refugee, disaggregates political space from the homogeneous and territorially bordered sovereign nation-state to create the possibility for new political arrangements: It is only in a land where the spaces of states will have been perforated and topologically deformed, and the citizens will have learned to acknowledge the refugee that he himself is, that man's political survival today is imaginable.38

Vaughn-Williams 9 ( Nick, IR MA @ university of Warwick IR PhD @ Aberystwyth, “Border Politics: The Limits of Sovereign Power” pg 139-40)

is by starting from this uncertain terrain and from this opaque zone of indistinction that today we must once again find the path of another politics, of another body, of another world. I would not feel up to forgoing this indistinction of public and private, of biological body and body politic, of zoē and bios, for any reason whatsoever. It is here that I must find my space once again – here or nowhere else Only a politics that starts from such an awareness can interest me resistance is what he calls ‘whatever being’ The notion of ‘whatever being’ refers to being-as-such: ‘the simple fact of one's own existence as possibility or potentialit’.31 Whatever being’ has no essence that can be separated from its attributes It constitutes a ‘pure singularit’ in the sense that it cannot be broken down into different parts The task, then, is not to mobilise resistance on the basis of universal generalised principles such as human rights. Rather, it is to explore and invent the profanatory potential that resides within remnants of forms of subjectification and desubjectification produced by sovereign power itself. figure of the refugee remnant’ of sovereign biopolitics the ‘only imaginable figure of the people today whatever being’ that throws conventional juridical–political categories into disarray this unique figure acts as a site for the invention of alternative forms of political community not based on unity, sovereignty, citizenship or other conventional categories. , that is, nothing less than a border concept that radically calls into question the principles of the nation-state and, at the same time, helps clear the field for a no-longer-delayable renewal of categories Taking the refugee as a starting point for the reconstruction of political categories and philosophy demands attention to how the topology wrought by this figure, This alternative topology, embodied by the figure of the refugee, disaggregates political space from the homogeneous and territorially bordered sovereign nation-state to create the possibility for new political arrangements: It is only in a land where the spaces of states will have been perforated and topologically deformed, and the citizens will have learned to acknowledge the refugee that he himself is, that man's political survival today is imaginable

Bringing in other movements fails conflicting ideologies destroys change- Instead a starting point of profane act of “whatever being” can change politics

Borders Kritik - UTNIF 2013.html5

Texas (UTNIF)

Kritiks

2013

Statecentric academic, official, and media political discourses approached adequacy only in their role of legitimating the authority of nation-states. Helping to contain ethical and political conversations within the problematics that served the centralizing authorities of states and the state system, they were complicit in reproducing modernity's dominant, territorial imaginary. To recognize that the dominant geopolitical map has been imposed on the world by power rather than simply emerging as an evolutionary historical inevitablity, as the dominant consensual narratives would have it, one needs to achieve an effective conceptual distance, to think outside of the state system's mode of global comprehension, outside of the spatial predicates of its structures of power, authority, and recognition. 42 As Henri Lefebvre has noted, space, especially for those occupying it, tends to have an air of neutrality, to appear empty of normative imposition, as "the epitome of rational abstraction . . . because it has already been occupied and used, and has already been the focus of past processes whose traces are not always evident in the landscape."

Shapiro 97 (Prof of PoliSci @ Hawaii, Violent Cartographers, pages 15-16)

Statecentric academic, official, and media political discourses approached adequacy only in their role of legitimating the authority of nation-states Helping to contain ethical and political conversations they were complicit in reproducing modernity's dominant, territorial imaginary. To recognize that the dominant geopolitical map has been imposed on the world by power rather than simply emerging as an evolutionary historical inevitablit one needs to achieve an effective conceptual distance, to think outside of the state system's mode of global comprehension, outside of the spatial predicates of its structures of power, authority, and recognition. the epitome of rational abstraction . . . because it has already been occupied and used, and has already been the focus of past processes whose traces are not always evident in the landscape."

Total rejection key-inclusion of statecentric discourses is a complicity with domination and kills alt solvency

Borders Kritik - UTNIF 2013.html5

Texas (UTNIF)

Kritiks

2013