Theorizing the Temporal Exception: The Importance of the Present for the Study of War

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 543-558 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher McIntosh

Abstract Despite an increasing focus on the importance of temporality, time, and timing in international relations (IR) and security studies, there has been relatively less movement toward thinking about the temporal present as a conceptual area of inquiry. This article argues that taking the present seriously as a concept, method, and theoretical area of analysis offers unique value for the study of war. Paying attention to the manner in which the present time of war (wartime) is sociopolitically articulated as a space of temporal exception exposes how it is understood as diverging from representations of politics, past and future. It also foregrounds war's irreducible temporal dimension and exposes the relational bases of wartime's apparent universality. This article uses a close reading of Clausewitz's On War (1832) as generative dialogue and illustrative example, showing how an awareness of the importance of temporal dynamics—particularly, the concept of the present—is both valuable and workable in the study of war. A temporal imaginary of war centered on what Hutchings calls the “heterotemporal” present enhances inquiry into contemporary political violence, the ontology of war, and the emergent attributes of collective violence.

2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 311-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donatella della Porta ◽  
Heinz-Gerhard Haupt

Research on political violence occurs in waves, generally corresponding to the successive swells of violence that in many ways define modern society. Critically, this violence is characterized as much by diversity as by uniformity. As each new spate in research on political violence has shown us, rarely can we generalize about either the aims or the repertoires of action of the purveyors of violence. Some similar mechanisms are in play, however, as violence develops from political conflicts between states and their opponents.This suggestion comes from social movement studies, whose influence is increasing in the analysis of political violence. These studies developed especially from a critique of ‘terrorism studies,’ which emerged within security studies as a branch of international relations and have traditionally been more oriented toward developing antiterrorist policies than toward a social scientific understanding of political violence.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 170 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Eylem Özkaya Lassalle

The concept of failed state came to the fore with the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the USSR and the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Political violence is central in these discussions on the definition of the concept or the determination of its dimensions (indicators). Specifically, the level of political violence, the type of political violence and intensity of political violence has been broached in the literature. An effective classification of political violence can lead us to a better understanding of state failure phenomenon. By using Tilly’s classification of collective violence which is based on extent of coordination among violent actors and salience of short-run damage, the role played by political violence in state failure can be understood clearly. In order to do this, two recent cases, Iraq and Syria will be examined.


2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (04) ◽  
pp. 739-746 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna M. Agathangelou

International relations (IR) feminists have significantly impacted the way we analyze the world and power. However, as Cynthia Enloe points out, “there are now signs—worrisome signs—that feminist analysts of international politics might be forgetting what they have shared” and are “making bricks to construct new intellectual barriers. That is not progress” (2015, 436). I agree. The project/process that has led to the separation/specialization of feminist security studies (FSS) and feminist global political economy (FGPE) does not constitute progress but instead ends up embodying forms of violence that erase the materialist bases of our intellectual labor's divisions (Agathangelou 1997), the historical and social constitution of our formations as intellectuals and subjects. This amnesiac approach evades our personal lives and colludes with those forces that allow for the violence that comes with abstraction. These “worrisome signs” should be explained if we are to move FSS and FGPE beyond a “merger” (Allison 2015) that speaks only to some issues and some humans in the global theater.


2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (02) ◽  
pp. 408-413 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Sjoberg

InGender and International Security: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security, J. Ann Tickner (1992) identified three main dimensions to “achieving global security”—national security, economic security, and ecological security: conflict, economics, and the environment. Much of the work in feminist peace studies that inspired early feminist International Relations (IR) work (e.g., Brock-Utne 1989; Reardon 1985) and many of Tickner's contemporaries (e.g., Enloe 1989; Peterson and Runyan 1991; Pettman 1996) also saw political economy and a feminist conception of security as intrinsically interlinked. Yet, as feminist IR research evolved in the early 21st century, more scholars were thinking either about political economy or about war and political violence, but not both.


2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 260-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen M. Kinsella ◽  
Laura Sjoberg

AbstractIn this article, we focus on the subset of evolutionary theorising self-identified as Feminist Evolutionary Analytic (FEA) within security studies and International Relations. We offer this accounting in four sections. First, we provide a brief overview of the argument that reproductive interests are the ‘origins’ of international violence. Second, we break down the definitions of gender, sex, and sexuality used in evolutionary work in security studies generally and in FEA specifically, demonstrating a lack of complexity in FEA’s accounts of the potential relations among the three and critiquing their essentialist heteronormative assumptions. Third, we argue that FEA’s failure to reflect on the history and context of evolutionary theorising, much less contemporary feminist critiques, facilitates its forwarding of the state and institutions as primarily neutral and corrective bulwarks against male violence. Fourth, we conclude by outlining what is at stake if we fail to correct for this direction in feminist, IR, and security research. We argue that FEA work misrepresents and narrows the potential for understanding and responding to violence, facilitating the continued instrumentalisation of women’s rights, increased government regulation of sexuality, and a more expansive form of militarism.


2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 681-711 ◽  
Author(s):  
NICOLAS GUILHOT

In the disciplines of political science and international relations, Machiavelli is unanimously considered to be “the first modern realist.” This essay argues that the idea of a realist tradition going from the Renaissance to postwar realism founders when one considers the disrepute of Machiavelli among early international relations theorists. It suggests that the transformation of Machiavelli into a realist thinker took place subsequently, when new historical scholarship, informed by strategic and political considerations related to the transformation of the US into a global power, generated a new picture of the Renaissance. Focusing on the work of Felix Gilbert, and in particular hisMachiavelli and Guicciardini, the essay shows how this new interpretation of Machiavelli was shaped by the crisis of the 1930s, the emergence of security studies, and the philanthropic sponsorship of international relations theory.


2020 ◽  
pp. 25-37
Author(s):  
Pere Freixa

Over the last two decades, digital journalism and interactive documentaries have produced works in which interactivity, multimedia, and participation articulate the access and consumption of information. These are basically multimedia and dynamic texts that delve into two-way communication and hypertext, and motivate active reading. These are informational pieces typical of the digital ecosystem that often mutate via social networks and present significant transformations in their temporal evolution. Reading, analyzing, and understanding these texts requires specific tools and methodologies that consider: (a) the dynamism of such pieces, as well as their temporal modification, (b) their multimodal dimension, and (c) their transmedia development. This article proposes a methodological reflection on the ways of reading interactive documentary audiovisual texts and proposes strategies and tools for their understanding and analysis based on detailed reading (close reading), and decoupage. This research focuses on an analysis of the temporal evolution of these journalistic pieces. The need to observe and analyze the temporal dimension of journalistic texts in the digital ecosystem has allowed the development of specific methodologies (Widholm, 2016; Karlsson; Sjøvaag, 2016; Buhl; Günther; Quandt, 2018) focused on the immediacy and mutability of journalistic news, its permanence in networks, and its temporal evolution. However, these tools do not consider the study of large-scale journalistic stories, typical of interactive documentaries, which require a specific multimodal approach (Hiippala, 2017; Van-Krieken, 2018, Freixa et al., 2014; Freixa, 2015). A detailed reading reveals how the interactive documentary considers the dimension, both temporal and of content and form, of the traditional documentary text, by becoming part of a transmedia framework as part of a dialogue with the public. Resumen Desde hace dos décadas, el periodismo digital y el documental interactivo produce obras en las que la interactividad, la multimedialidad y la participación articulan el acceso y consumo de la información. Básicamente se trata de textos multimediales y dinámicos, que ahondan en la comunicación bidireccional y el hipertexto, y que proponen lecturas activas. Se trata de piezas informacionales propias del ecosistema digital que, a menudo, mutan en las redes sociales y presentan significativas transformaciones en su evolución temporal. La lectura, el análisis y la comprensión de estos textos precisa de herramientas y metodologías específicas que contemplen: a) el dinamismo de las piezas, así como su modificación temporal; b) su dimensión multimodal y c) su desarrollo transmedia. En este artículo se propone una reflexión metodológica sobre las formas de lectura de los textos audiovisuales interactivos documentales, y se proponen estrategias y herramientas para su comprensión y análisis basadas en la lectura detallada (close reading), y el découpage. La investigación focaliza su interés en el análisis de la evolución temporal de estas piezas periodísticas. La necesidad de observar y analizar la dimensión temporal de los textos periodísticos en el ecosistema digital ha permitido el desarrollo de metodologías específicas (Widholm, 2016; Karlsson; Sjøvaag, 2016; Buhl; Günther; Quandt, 2018) focalizadas en la inmediatez y mutabilidad de la noticia periodística, su permanencia en red y evolución temporal. Estas herramientas, sin embargo, no contemplan el estudio de los relatos periodísticos de gran dimensión, propios del documental interactivo, que precisan de una aproximación multimodal específica (Hiippala, 2017; Van-Krieken, 2018, Freixa et al., 2014; Freixa, 2015). La lectura detallada permite observar cómo el documental interactivo cuestiona la dimensión, tanto temporal como de contenido y forma, del texto documental tradicional, al pasar a formar parte de un entramado transmedia en diálogo con el público.


Urban Studies ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily M Miltenburg ◽  
Tom WG van der Meer

The large and growing body of neighbourhood effect studies has almost exclusively neglected individuals’ particular residential histories. Yet, former residential neighbourhoods are likely to have lingering effects beyond those of the current one and are dependent on exposure times and number of moves. This paper tests to what extent this blind spot induced a misestimation of neighbourhood effects for individuals with differential residential histories. Ultimately, we develop a methodological framework for studying the temporal dynamics of neighbourhood effects, capable of dealing with residential histories (moving behaviour, the passage of time and temporal exposure to different neighbourhoods). We apply cross-classified multi-level models (residents nested in current and former neighbourhoods) to analyse longitudinal individual-level population data from Dutch Statistics, covering fine-grained measures of residential histories. Our systematic comparison to conventional models reveals the necessity of including a temporal dimension: our models reveal an overestimation of the effect of the current neighbourhood by 16–30%, and an underestimation of the total body of neighbourhood effects by at least 13–24%. Our results show that neighbourhood effects are lingering, long-lasting and structural and also cannot be confined to a single point in time.


2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 8-16
Author(s):  
Navnita Chadha Behera ◽  
Kristina Hinds ◽  
Arlene B Tickner

2022 ◽  
pp. 30-51
Author(s):  
Madiha Batool

As the year 2020 dawned, the world underwent a paradigmatic shift that impacted all aspects of life. While it is axiomatic that the coronavirus pandemic left an indelible effect on all age groups, the author is especially interested in analysing the impressions that the pandemic can leave on the lives of youth. With history providing anecdotes of contagions having led to political violence and widespread massacres, this chapter will explore how the current pandemic can lead to youth radicalisation in an age of social media and in countries witnessing youth bulge. This study will be carried out at the intersection of international relations, international security, and political psychology and within the parameters of youth bulge, social-psychology, and radicalisation. In doing so, the author will propose a prognostic approach to provent youth radicalisation rather than prevent it in retrospect.


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