Lecture Week 9 Flashcards
(16 cards)
How can conflict be seen as a transforming moment (Lachner)?
Violent conflict produces new realities and logics that deeply transform societies. Violence draws rifts through the social fabric; it either strengthens cohesion or causes fragmentation among groups that rely on solidarity among their members to defend themselves against threats. It thereby redefines political communities and creates new ones
How can war be seen as a social possibility (Richards)?
- om oorlog te begrijpen moet je de speciale status ervan wegdenken: oorlog is net zoals vrede georganiseerd door sociale agents.
- Oorlog is 1 van de sociale mogelijkheden, het wordt vormgegeven door sociale acties en kan daarom beter worden gezien als iets dat niet exceptioneel is.
-All war is a long-term struggle – organised for political ends in a specific social context;
What are examples of armed groups
Mali: Jihadist groups
DRC: rebel, movement, foreign armed groups, non-state armed groups
Syria: Syrian Democratic forces, ISIS, pro-Assad
Do armed groups get enough agency?
NO
- ‘armed actors generally are given little agency, instead being primarily portrayed as manipulated and controlled by elites’ (Matanock & Staniland)
- ‘the politics of knowledge construction on rebel groups … the ways in which narratives about a rebel group may reveal more about the intentions of the actor framing the group than about the group itself’ (Titeca)
Definition of an organized armed group
An “organized armed group” is the armed wing of a non-state party to a non-international armed conflict, and may be comprised of either:
- dissident armed forces (for example, breakaway parts of state armed forces); or
- other organized armed groups which recruit their members primarily from the civilian population but have developed a sufficient degree of military organization to conduct hostilities on behalf of a party to the conflict.
The term organized armed group refers exclusively to the armed or military wing of a non-state party to a non-international armed conflict. It does not include those segments of the civilian population that are supportive of the non-state party such as its political wing.
What happens with governance when a armed group is active?
The loss of the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of violence does not lead to polypolies of violence. That would be characterised by anarchy and war of all against all.
That’s unrealistic. Its reather a oligopoly of violence which is made up of a fluctuating number of partly competing, partly co-operating actors of violence of different quality.
Why do rebels invest scare resources and manpower in governing?
- to increase civilian support
- to consolidate territorial control
- to receive international recognition
- to transform society and politics according to their goals
- to stabilise economic production
What is stateness?
- a discours of power associated with formality/officiality, bureaucracy, political and territorial sovereignty, citizenship
- organization similar to army
- employment symbols of officiality
- state-like extractive practices like taxation
How can stateness be used as a technique by armed groups?
- Stateness can be ‘effectively propelled by institutions which challenge the state but depend on the idea of it to do so’ (Lund);
- In constantly ‘doing the state’, (armed groups) are ‘complicit in the everyday reproduction of stateness’, both in its symbolic and material dimensions;
- ‘in order to legitimise their claims to authority armed groups consistently refer to notions of statehood and deploy forms of governance issued out of already existing practices of statehood. By constantly invoking the state, armed actors entrench the symbolic efficacy of the principle of the state and the symbol of power and regulation’ (Lund);
- However, armed groups not same resources (eg international position, access to networks, etc) and not necessarily mimic the state but can produce new arrangements
What are community based armed groups?
- ’parochial rebels, who fight to protect circumscribed communities [and] face obligations to heed the interests of their community backers’ (Reno);
- Small-scale, strongly embedded in society;
- Guided by communal interests, centered around protection (no larger ideology);
- Discourse of authochtony, role of spiritual registers and traditional authorities;
- Potential shifts from protection force to larger alliance (aggregation of violence) that disconnects from society
What are vigilantes?
‘citizens who organize themselves into groups to take the law into their own hands in order to reprimand criminals’,
or as ‘associations in which citizens have joined together for self-protection under conditions of disorder’
Purpose of vigilantism: ‘crime control and/or social control’ directed at members of the own community, or measures to defend the community against external threats.
primary function: providing security, rather than pursuing political or economic interests
In reality: tendency to transform into militias and gangs;
In its transformed version, vigilantes can turn into ‘para-states’—paramilitaries who establish their own fiefdom in which they ‘operate as the functional equivalents of states’.
How do vigilantes and their organisation work?
First, it involves planning and premeditation by those engaging in it;
Second, its participants are private citizens whose engagement is ;
Third, it is a form of “autonomous citizenship” and, as such, constitutes a social movement;
Fourth, it uses or threatens the use of force;
Fifth, it arises when an established order is under threat from the transgression, the potential transgression, or the imputed transgression of institutionalized norms;
Sixth, it aims to control crime or other social infractions by offering assurances or guarantees of security both to participants and to others.
Vigilantism in Burkina Faso
Starting in 2016, armed groups mobilized in Burkina Faso to confront what they called “bandits”;
The historical roots lie in ancient hunting and surveillance activities in the countryside, which are about to be revitalized;
Rural mobilization – social movement – addressing the government;
Active agents in social order making
Statetism in Burkina Faso
In their quest for respectability, the Koglweogo mobilize symbolic capital linked to the state in order to display their professionalism, while showing off what “ it doesn’t do”;
The Koglweogo copy state practices: identification cards, police uniforms, reports… ;
It’s an ambiguous process: ‘we criticize the state, but these practices also enable us to have relations with the administration (police, town hall, etc.)’.
How did Burkina Faso structure supervising the rural world?
The Koglweogo are particularly adepted at forging local alliances to strengthen their legitimacy :
with politicians: mayors, members of parliament,
administration: police, governor…,
with the local aristocracy, which still plays an important political role in the countryside ;
* These intermediaries are also important for the state, which can monitor and control mob violence thanks to these brokers;
Controlling the movement of people and goods;
In most cases, the vigilante group challenges public authorities by seizing sovereign prerogatives in the name of law and order.
How is individual decisionmaking important in armed groups?
While the return to armed struggle is a ‘profoundly multi-layered and social process’ (Wiegink), so is the individual decision to take part in it;
The presence of armed groups is to be considered a moment of social rupture as much as an experiment in constituting new social spaces, a new way of life, a new form of social and symbolic capital, and eventually a new identity;
Combatants’ consequent capacity to navigate between different spaces largely defines their response to political or security dynamics, to mobilization and demobilization campaigns, or to their own individual challenges and ambitions;
