Chasing Dragons

Measuring Violence/Gendering Violence

I currently find myself well north of the Arctic circle, contributing to a doctoral workshop on advanced issues in security studies. Earlier today we got to listen to a provocative presentation from Keith Krause, a Professor at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies and Director of the Small Arms Survey, on the subject of violence.

One of the points that he explored in depth was that the measurement of levels of violence attributed to armed conflict usually grossly underestimates the actual number of deaths--note: death is usually used as a proxy measurement for both levels of violence and of crime.

Sometimes this is due to data collection problems, but often it is a function of the way in which violence is narrowly defined. This allows particular instances of violence that cannot be easily attributed to an actor involved in the conflict to be excluded (e.g., car bombs in a conflict zone for which no one takes responsibility). It also allows certain forms of death--like malnutrition and disease--that arise as people leave areas of settlement in attempts to escape violence to be excluded.

Moreover, forms of sexualized and gendered violence further contribute to underestimations  as these are often not reported or not understood--even by those harmed--as acts of violence. Depending on the context, those most affected may also be either unable or unwilling to report these acts. This could be linked to power-relations and gender dynamics but could also include the way in which the violence itself--and being a recipient of it--are understood to be gendered.

Beyond the politics of measuring violence, what this raises for me then broadly is a series of questions about how does it become possible within a given socio-political context for violence to become a norm for conflict resolution, the exercise of authority, or resistance to it even if a declared armed conflict is officially over? More specifically, it has got me thinking about how gender violence can become normalized as well as how forms of violence themselves become connected to specific conceptions of masculinity and/or femininity.

And lest one think that this is only a problem in areas defined as conflict zones, I want to direct your attention to a post at sociological images about a recent feature in Playboy magazine. It demonstrates in a very frightening way how sexual assault is normalized, presented in highly gendered ways, and made light of within contemporary popular culture.

Image Credit: sOcialanimal

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 16

In this version of the weekend reading round-up, the focus is on Canada and a very solid round of investigative journalism from the Toronto Star.

• Canadian PM Stephen Harper rejects the Supreme Court of Canada decision that requires the government repatriate 22 year old Omar Khadar, a Canadian imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay since the age of 15.

• Young autistic Canadian man stranded in Kenya for 3 years because he didn't look like his passport photo .

• Canadian mother detained for three months after airline and government officials decide she doesn't look like the picture on her passport.

• 'Amateur Hour' Canadian officials dropping the ball left, right, and center.

With a right-wing government that has positioned itself as anti-immigrant, anti-diversity, and pro-war on terror, do you think there might be a pattern here?

Photo credit: SimonDavo

SHOWstudio's 'Killed': Aesthetics, Politics, Power

A fascinating on-line exhibition called 'Killed' by SHOWstudio was recently brought to my attention. It contains a selection of published and unpublished fashion imagery that was commissioned and produced prior to the 9/11 attacks. While some of the images did appear in magazines, others were 'killed' because they were deemed to be 'inappropriate' for the post 9/11 climate by the editors who commissioned them.

The exhibition also features two essays. ' A War of Aesthetics' by Jo-Ann Furniss explores the fashion industry's response to 9/11 by providing insight into how its desire to appear a-political--if not non-political--harboured a very distinct political orientation. In 'The Worst Thing in the World' by John Taylor, an analysis is provided of how photographic images contribute to the collective experience of catastrophe.

As an exhibition, Killed reveals not only that aesthetics are an important element of politics but also that politics itself contributes to what we find aesthetically pleasing, arresting, or disturbing. Thus, claims that politics and aesthetics are not connected should themselves be seen as deeply political statements that attempt to hide a very powerful dynamic that shapes global social relations.

Photo credit 1: '"McDonaldization" by Richard Bush, styled by Jane How. Commissioned for the October 2001 issue of i-D and killed after the 9/11 attacks.'

Photo credit 2: '"Falling to Peaces" by Tim Walker, Vogue Nippon, January 2002, pp.188-199. Originally commissioned by Vogue Italia and killed after the 9/11 attacks.'

Thanks to Denise at theswellelife.com for the link!

UK Police May Be Outfitted With New 'Super' Taser

 

The Guardian has reported that the Home Office is considering the use of a new high powered taser by UK police. This new super taser fires electric shock projectiles up to 30m and delivers a 20 second 500v shock.

This eXtended Range Electronic Projectile (XREP) taser increases the range of the weapon nearly 75 feet while increasing the duration of the shock by 15 seconds.

In responding to concerns raised about the dangers by Amnesty, a Taser International spokesperson said that the XREP  'was a safer way to immobilize someone than shooting them with live ammunition.' That's not exactly a difficult threshold to achieve, is it?

A bigger concern not addressed in the Guardian report is whether this weapon would encourage an increase in the number of 'preemptive taserings' committed by the police? How many people will end up getting tasered from 30m away simply because it will make arresting them easier? How many people will get tasered whose innocence could be immediately determined if arresting officers did something radical like actually talk to them ?

The Home Office needs to figure out that the problem they need to be focusing on is not how to make arresting people easier but rather how to restore public trust in the police as an institution. Addressing the latter may actually have a positive effect on the former.

Photo credit: publik15

The Crisis of Policing: The Climate Camp Open Letter and the Politics of Security

Although the government will not admit it, policing is in crisis in the UK.

The fatal shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, the beating of Ian Tomlinson and the attempted cover-up by the police of the circumstances contributing to his death, the use of 'kettling' tactics during the G20 summit, the unexplained circumstances surrounding the death of Sean Briggs while in police custody, the revelation that CCTV cameras are not effective in fighting crime, the use of pre-emptive tasering, the volume of unwarranted stop and searches conducted, and serious concerns over the ways in which cases of sexual assault are investigated are all recent stories that have generated a great deal of national media attention.

What these stories have begun to do is call into question how public security is provided by the police--as an institution-- and who it is provided to. Rather than serving and protecting the public, a growing number of groups and individuals increasingly perceive the police as primarily serving and protecting the interests of big business, governments, and of themselves.

More importantly, as shown in the Climate Camp video above, otherwise law-abiding citizens are starting to view the police as a threat to their individual security. Given the way in which police have targeted previous Climate Camps and their participants, this is a completely understandable viewpoint. At the same time, the obvious loss of trust between members of the general public and the police is not something to be celebrated.

Rather, it is vital that fundamental transformations in UK policing take place in order to restore levels of trust. However, the crisis in policing will not be resolved until it is recognized as being symptomatic of a broader power dynamic.

Primarily, liberal democratic governments over the past three decades have reconfigured the way in which they view security and how it should be provided. Security is now understood as being obtained by identifying 'abnormal' traits and features that are said to indicate a potential to engage in dangerous behavior as opposed to focusing on the specific commissioning of this behavior itself. This is otherwise known as 'profiling'.

The objective then is to pre-emptively prevent these traits from spreading because this decreases the likelihood that a danger perceived to be associated with a particular trait might actually occur.

Particularly over the past decade, public expression of dissent has been one of those traits that has been classified as potentially suspicious despite the fact that virtually all protesters and activists demonstrate peacefully, respectfully, and responsibly. The way in which these events are policed, and the often horrible outcomes that result, are therefore a product of a more complex set of dynamics than is often understood. It is not just a case of 'bad cops' or overly aggressive policing. Rather these outcomes are the result of a fundamental paradox of contemporary liberal rule: the willingness to wage war on society for the sake of protecting society (from itself).

Until this more diffuse and problematic conception of security is confronted and dismissed, the crisis of policing will continue. That's bad news for the police and for the general public.

Mapping Global (Dis)Order: The Cartography of Containment

Critical geographers have made the point for some time that cartographic depictions of the world are a product of relations of power. Dominant cartographic images tend to be those that best reflect the understandings of those who disproportionately benefit from the current status quo.

The follow on is that the ways in which maps convey information shapes the way in which particular global problems are understood more broadly. Thus, one of the ways of resisting current configurations of power is to produce alternative cartographic representations of them that can call these dominant understandings into question. Here's an example with respect to global inequality, global security, and the politics of containment.

Back in 2003, Thomas P. Barnett was featured in Esquire Magazine as the author of the 'Pentagon's New Map', which was claimed to represent the way in which the US defense establishment was viewing the world geopolitically. And the geopolitical problem, as Barnett argued,  was how to manage relations between a 'functioning core' and 'non-integrating gap' (click on image to enlarge).

He suggested a two pronged strategy: where possible seek to integrate states from the gap, and where not, be prepared to use violence to contain their deleterious phenomena--like terrorism--so that these do not spill over into the core.

There is a lot that could be said here, but the important thing for the moment is that problems are said to rest in the gap with the core vested with responsibility and agency to fix them--where possible.

Now compare Barnett's cartographic representation of global geopolitics with 'The Walled World' of Theo Deutinger, an architect based in the Netherlands(click on image to enlarge). His depiction immediately brings the issue of economic disparity to the front of the viewer's mind. Moreover, whereas Barnett locates the failure to integrate within the gap itself, Deutinger very cleverly shows the specific practices of border containment enacted by the core that prevent significant forms of integration. Thus, the problematic conveyed shifts from thinking about what changes are needed to the governance structures of Barnett's 'non-integrating gap' in order to secure a better world for everyone to thinking more closely about the very practices initiated by core states to ensure that inequality persists.

Thanks to informationisbeautiful.net for the link!

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 15

Here is this weekend's reading material:

• 'Biologists Napping While Work Militarized' by Professor Malcolm Dando (Bradford) via nature.com

• 'Why Free E-Books Should be a Part of the Plot for Writers' by Cory Doctorow via guardian.co.uk

• 'Why are Cops Tasering Grandmothers, Pregnant Women, and Kids' by Scott Thill via alternet.org

And for your viewing pleasure, a lecture from Professor George Lakoff (Berkeley) on 'The Politics of Language' via FORA.tv

Photocredit: Hamed Masoumi

Can You Run the Fed?

I'm not sure if this will appeal to many other than irredeemable Alex P. Keaton types, but the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco gives you the opportunity to macro-manage the economy with its 'So You Want to Be In Charge of Monetary Policy?' video game.

As noted on gamepolitics.com, it isn't exactly Grand Theft Auto or Halo, but it does provide a decent  primer on how neo-liberal economists assume the economy works, the kind of hardship that they normalize--like a 5% unemployment rate--and what they assume to be the proper role of fiscal policy (i.e., mainly keeping inflation low). And we all know how well those assumptions work when put into practice...

Be warned though: it does not come complete with fellow free-market disciples who will worship you no matter how big a mess you end up making of things.

The Pursuader™ and PeaceKeeper™: Gendering Militarism, Militarizing Gender?

The links between fashion and the politics of gender have long been recognized. Similarly, that the aesthetic sensibility of fashion has both influenced--and been influenced by--the social context from which it emerges, is also well-covered ground. But fashion's relationship to gender, militarism, and the gendering of military violence, whether as explicit as the manufacturing of Nazi uniforms by Hugo Boss in the 1940s, to the more subtle as seen in the incorporation of camouflage into generations of street wear, is something that often escapes notice.

By way of example, American designer James Piatt has brought The Pursuader™ and PeaceKeeper™ to the lucrative handbag market. The adoption of the sub-machine gun and brass knuckles for handbag design could be seen as an attempt to play against stereotype by appropriating these tools of violence for an item socially coded as explicitly feminine. In other words, looking 'tough' need not just be for 'boys'. 

At the same time though, as the photo gallery on the website illustrates, the representations of gender at play are extremely orthodox. In essense, the handbag--as an object of desire-- is a means to objectify the female model--another potential object of desire. The allure of the handbags then is overtly linked to the perceived sexual appeal--from what appears to be the perspective of a heterosexual male gaze--of combining traditional standards of femininity with the capacity for (militarized) violence. With the growth of this kind of female archetype in popular culture--from Laura Croft in the Tomb Raider video game series to the marketing of female participation in mixed martial arts competitions--are these handbags connected to a more general dynamic in the zeitgeist? What do you think?

Is This What a Global Pandemic Would Look Like? v. 2

Back in June, I wrote about Pandemic II, a video game that lets you assume the role of a bacteria, virus, or parasite, with your mission being to wipe out humanity. Beyond the novelty, what interested me was whether the cartographic representations central to the game play potentially contributed to particular understandings of disease transmission that implicitly favoured some forms of health management over others?

Well, there is a new game called The Great Flu that offers another opportunity to examine how infectious disease is represented in video games. This time, rather than playing as the disease itself, you assume the role of the head of the World Pandemic Control Agency and attempt to stop a series of successively nasty outbreaks--with a limited budget. For a free on-line game that looks to be running on a Flash platform, there are some interesting multi-media elements incorporated into the game-play, including brief documentaries on historical viral outbreaks and influenza transmission.

Not surprisingly, cartographic representations--with an emphasis on the global and regional levels though why the US counts for 3 of 20 regions is beyond me--again play a central role in organizing game-play. Unlike Pandemic II, circulatory flows are unseen, making it extremely difficult to control the spread of infection through strategies of containment at a global level. Thus, the emphasis is on building up infrastructures geared towards disease identification and treatment.

But there are problems. The underlying narrative--at least for the scenarios I've gone through--is that pandemics originate in the global south. Moreover, the game-play stops once a vaccination has been successfully developed, leaving untouched the political economy of how medicines are actually distributed and the biopolitics of who is left to die in the process.

While identifying representational practices is a necessary part of the study of the artifacts of popular culture, the questions I ended with last time still remain unanswered: do these cyber-representations of global health security shape the (geopolitical) perspective of those who play them? And if so, does a game like The Great Flu merely reflect assumptions about the geographing of disease or does it actually constitute the very dynamics it seeks to simulate?

If you have any opinions, I'd love to hear them!

Thanks geeks.co.uk for the link!