Citation

Buscemi F. Geopolitics 2023; 28(1): 282-309.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/14650045.2021.1901083

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Predominant approaches in the rebel governance literature have looked at control over the means of violence as a prerogative of rebel-rulers, or armed/non-armed actors, somehow deterministically linked to territory. Here weapons have been understood as either autonomous technical-factors or as analytically invisible objects instrumental to human agencies and interactions aiming to territorial control. This paper challenges understandings of control over the means of violence as a central property radiating outwardly through hierarchically and geographically ordered spatial containers. It argues that the means of violence are relational networks among heterogeneous human-non-human entities - e.g. weapons, stockpiles, militarised architectures, forms, armed individuals/groups - that generate territory. These networks are controlled and stabilised via diffused techniques and rationalities of control. Drawing on the study of Ta'ang areas of Northern Shan State - among the few in Myanmar where well-established rebel movements have experienced official disarmament and later undertook a full-fledged re-armament - I find that controlling the means of violence occurs via turbulent combinations of technical objects, techniques and rationalities that relate to four main domains: narcotics eradication; institutionalisation; ethnonationality; and humanitarian security. Processes and practices through which attempts to control the means of violence are made entail alternative strategies to re-generate spatial organisational control and shape multiple shifting territories. Empirically exploring a highly under-researched case, the paper provides a view of the diffused character of controlling the means of violence and its mutually constitutive relations with territory, while illuminating also the role of weapons, other technical objects, and techniques.

Language: en