This paper argues that the border regime works through entanglements of digital and nondigital data and of “low-tech” and “high-tech” technologies. It suggests that a critical analysis of the assemblages between digital and nondigital requires exploring their effects of subjectivation on those who are labeled as “migrants.” The paper starts with a critique of the presentism and techno-hype that pervade research on borders and technology, and points to the importance of analyzing historical continuities and ruptures in the technologization of the border regime. It then explores the assemblages of high-tech and low-tech technologies used for controlling mobility and investigates the imbrication of digital and nondigital records that migrants need to deal with and show not only at the border but throughout their journeys and, eventually, to obtain refugee status. The third section discusses migrants’ tactical uses of digital and nondigital records, their attempts to erase or reconstruct traces of their passages, and states’ oscillation between politics of identification and nonidentification. Finally, the fourth section questions the image of the “data double” and contends that, rather than a discrete digital subject, migrants’ digital traces generate scattered digital subjectivities that migrants themselves cannot fully access.
{"title":"Digital–Nondigital Assemblages: Data, Paper Trails, and Migrants’ Scattered Subjectivities at the Border","authors":"Lucrezia Canzutti, Martina Tazzioli","doi":"10.1093/ips/olad014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olad014","url":null,"abstract":"This paper argues that the border regime works through entanglements of digital and nondigital data and of “low-tech” and “high-tech” technologies. It suggests that a critical analysis of the assemblages between digital and nondigital requires exploring their effects of subjectivation on those who are labeled as “migrants.” The paper starts with a critique of the presentism and techno-hype that pervade research on borders and technology, and points to the importance of analyzing historical continuities and ruptures in the technologization of the border regime. It then explores the assemblages of high-tech and low-tech technologies used for controlling mobility and investigates the imbrication of digital and nondigital records that migrants need to deal with and show not only at the border but throughout their journeys and, eventually, to obtain refugee status. The third section discusses migrants’ tactical uses of digital and nondigital records, their attempts to erase or reconstruct traces of their passages, and states’ oscillation between politics of identification and nonidentification. Finally, the fourth section questions the image of the “data double” and contends that, rather than a discrete digital subject, migrants’ digital traces generate scattered digital subjectivities that migrants themselves cannot fully access.","PeriodicalId":47361,"journal":{"name":"International Political Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-09-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50164767","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Visual politics is a fast-growing field and much of it is focused on images that inspire criticism. This tendency results in a lack of attention to oppressive visual practices. A political visual literacy approaches all visual practices as being layered with different “visual truths” that were developed in response to political commitments over time. These “visual truths” inflected visual practices in ways that may outlive the political settings in which they were first articulated. Most important of these is the desire to capture human difference that framed the development of visual technologies and is still embedded in a range of visual practices. The methodology I develop here links a conjunctural analysis of visual tools and practices and the visual truths implicated in them with their operationalisation by actors as cultural tools through the framework of mediated action. I develop this approach by interrogating two layered and harmful visual practices: the White-centrism of visual technologies and the racialised origins of transphobic visualities in automatic gender recognition technology.
{"title":"Political Visual Literacy","authors":"Yoav Galai","doi":"10.1093/ips/olad010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olad010","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Visual politics is a fast-growing field and much of it is focused on images that inspire criticism. This tendency results in a lack of attention to oppressive visual practices. A political visual literacy approaches all visual practices as being layered with different “visual truths” that were developed in response to political commitments over time. These “visual truths” inflected visual practices in ways that may outlive the political settings in which they were first articulated. Most important of these is the desire to capture human difference that framed the development of visual technologies and is still embedded in a range of visual practices. The methodology I develop here links a conjunctural analysis of visual tools and practices and the visual truths implicated in them with their operationalisation by actors as cultural tools through the framework of mediated action. I develop this approach by interrogating two layered and harmful visual practices: the White-centrism of visual technologies and the racialised origins of transphobic visualities in automatic gender recognition technology.","PeriodicalId":47361,"journal":{"name":"International Political Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42849483","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The Israeli military’s occupation of Palestinian territory relies heavily on its ability to shape the visual environment and set the terms of how Palestinians may see and be seen. However, the relationship between violent occupation and violent visualities has yet to be fully theorized. This article gathers several conceptual strands—biopolitics, visual biopolitics, and necropolitics—to theorize what I term “visual necropolitics.” Visual necropolitics is proffered as an analytical tool that furthers our understanding of the violent visual regulations that enable and sustain the conditions for the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands and the subjugation of the Palestinian people. To illustrate this, three distinct but related forms of visual violence will be analyzed: the deliberate infliction of ocular trauma through targeting of the eyes, the strategy of maiming in order to prevent telegenic death, and the imposition of visual regulations to govern the death of captured bodies. This theorization allows us to move beyond considering the politics of sight, vision, and representation only as an artifact of the colonial power relations that govern life and death in Palestine, towards understanding how visual violence is a constitutive dimension of occupation. Not only does colonial occupation use visual violence, but it cannot be sustained without it.
{"title":"Visual Necropolitics and Visual Violence: Theorizing Death, Sight, and Sovereign Control of Palestine","authors":"Miriam Deprez","doi":"10.1093/ips/olad016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olad016","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The Israeli military’s occupation of Palestinian territory relies heavily on its ability to shape the visual environment and set the terms of how Palestinians may see and be seen. However, the relationship between violent occupation and violent visualities has yet to be fully theorized. This article gathers several conceptual strands—biopolitics, visual biopolitics, and necropolitics—to theorize what I term “visual necropolitics.” Visual necropolitics is proffered as an analytical tool that furthers our understanding of the violent visual regulations that enable and sustain the conditions for the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands and the subjugation of the Palestinian people. To illustrate this, three distinct but related forms of visual violence will be analyzed: the deliberate infliction of ocular trauma through targeting of the eyes, the strategy of maiming in order to prevent telegenic death, and the imposition of visual regulations to govern the death of captured bodies. This theorization allows us to move beyond considering the politics of sight, vision, and representation only as an artifact of the colonial power relations that govern life and death in Palestine, towards understanding how visual violence is a constitutive dimension of occupation. Not only does colonial occupation use visual violence, but it cannot be sustained without it.","PeriodicalId":47361,"journal":{"name":"International Political Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47581687","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Who can speak from the perspective of the Global South? In answering this question, Global International Relations (IR) finds itself in a cul de sac: rather than globalize IR, Global IR essentializes non-Western categories by associating difference and knowledge to place (countries, regions, and civilizations) which occludes de-territorialized forms of knowledge production. To reach out for these forms of knowledge, we develop the concept of “hybrid subjectivity,” and propose a shift from the macro to the micro. We propose autoethnography as a method to proceed with this move and present two case studies based on our experiences as hybrid IR scholars to illustrate it. In doing so, we demonstrate the relevance of our self-reflexive exercise in deconstructing reified categories and rendering visible new forms of knowledge in the Global IR debate. This article’s conceptualization of hybrid subjectivity enables the recasting of Global IR in a relational, hybrid, and truly global framework for analysis. The argument goes beyond the confines of Global IR and adds essential analytical value to critical, decolonial, and pluriversal critiques of wester-centrism in IR; in the sense of opening new theoretical and empirical possibilities, as an alternative to current intellectual efforts to recover non-colonial or pre-colonial forms of non-Western authenticity.
{"title":"An Autoethnography of Hybrid IR Scholars: De-Territorializing the Global IR Debate","authors":"Haro L Karkour, M. Vieira","doi":"10.1093/ips/olad015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olad015","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Who can speak from the perspective of the Global South? In answering this question, Global International Relations (IR) finds itself in a cul de sac: rather than globalize IR, Global IR essentializes non-Western categories by associating difference and knowledge to place (countries, regions, and civilizations) which occludes de-territorialized forms of knowledge production. To reach out for these forms of knowledge, we develop the concept of “hybrid subjectivity,” and propose a shift from the macro to the micro. We propose autoethnography as a method to proceed with this move and present two case studies based on our experiences as hybrid IR scholars to illustrate it. In doing so, we demonstrate the relevance of our self-reflexive exercise in deconstructing reified categories and rendering visible new forms of knowledge in the Global IR debate. This article’s conceptualization of hybrid subjectivity enables the recasting of Global IR in a relational, hybrid, and truly global framework for analysis. The argument goes beyond the confines of Global IR and adds essential analytical value to critical, decolonial, and pluriversal critiques of wester-centrism in IR; in the sense of opening new theoretical and empirical possibilities, as an alternative to current intellectual efforts to recover non-colonial or pre-colonial forms of non-Western authenticity.","PeriodicalId":47361,"journal":{"name":"International Political Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43424497","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The role of violent histories and their legacies in reconciliation processes has been a central question in debates on reconciliation and nation building after conflict: whether, how, and when painful events should be remembered in post-conflict and post-transition societies. A dominant approach to this question since the 1980s has been the “reconciliation paradigm,” which views addressing violent histories as condition for reconciliation. A comparative study of the implementation in practice of this global paradigm by civil society–based memory activists in Poland and Israel–Palestine raises questions about its applicability. The findings point to two weaknesses: first, mistreatment of asymmetrical violence and power relations between the conflict sides and, second, the lack of systematic consideration of how reconciliation is perceived by local actors in practice. In light of these weaknesses, local memory activists developed alternative strategies to those of the reconciliation paradigm, while governments infused reconciliation with different meanings that impede reconciliation instead of advancing it. Cultivating a sociological approach to reconciliation theory, this article proposes new theoretical modifications that would expand the paradigm's applicability: reciprocity or mutual respect instead of mutual acknowledgments, a normative basis that transcends the liberal boundaries of reconciliation, and an agonistic memory instead of consensus about the past.
{"title":"Reconciling Theory and Practice: Confronting Violent Histories in Poland and Israel–Palestine","authors":"Y. Gutman","doi":"10.1093/ips/olac023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olac023","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The role of violent histories and their legacies in reconciliation processes has been a central question in debates on reconciliation and nation building after conflict: whether, how, and when painful events should be remembered in post-conflict and post-transition societies. A dominant approach to this question since the 1980s has been the “reconciliation paradigm,” which views addressing violent histories as condition for reconciliation. A comparative study of the implementation in practice of this global paradigm by civil society–based memory activists in Poland and Israel–Palestine raises questions about its applicability. The findings point to two weaknesses: first, mistreatment of asymmetrical violence and power relations between the conflict sides and, second, the lack of systematic consideration of how reconciliation is perceived by local actors in practice. In light of these weaknesses, local memory activists developed alternative strategies to those of the reconciliation paradigm, while governments infused reconciliation with different meanings that impede reconciliation instead of advancing it. Cultivating a sociological approach to reconciliation theory, this article proposes new theoretical modifications that would expand the paradigm's applicability: reciprocity or mutual respect instead of mutual acknowledgments, a normative basis that transcends the liberal boundaries of reconciliation, and an agonistic memory instead of consensus about the past.","PeriodicalId":47361,"journal":{"name":"International Political Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42497253","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Elena B. Stavrevska, Sladjana Lazić, Vjosa Musliu, D. Karabegović, J. Sardelić, Jelena Obradovic-Wochnik
This collective discussion brings together six women scholars of and from the post-Yugoslav space, who, using personal experiences, analyze the dynamics of knowledge production in international relations (IR), especially regarding the post-Yugoslav space. Working in Global North academia but with lived experiences in the region we study, our research is often subjected to a particular gaze, seeped in assumptions about “ulterior” motives and expectations about writing and representation. Can those expected to be objects of knowledge ever become epistemic subjects? We argue that the rendering of the post-Yugoslav space as conflict-prone and as Europe's liminal semi-periphery in the discipline of IR cannot be decoupled from the rendering of the region and those seen as related to it as unable to produce knowledge that, in mainstream discussions, is seen as valuable and “objective.” The post-Yugoslav region and those seen as related to it being simultaneously postcolonial, postsocialist, and postwar, and characterized by marginalization, complicity, and privilege in global racialized hierarchies at the same time, can make visible specific forms of multiple colonialities, potentially creating space for anti- and/or decolonial alternatives. We further make the case for embracing a radical reflexivity that is active, collaborative, and rooted in feminist epistemologies and political commitments.
{"title":"Of Love and Frustration as Post-Yugoslav Women Scholars: Learning and Unlearning the Coloniality of IR in the Context of Global North Academia","authors":"Elena B. Stavrevska, Sladjana Lazić, Vjosa Musliu, D. Karabegović, J. Sardelić, Jelena Obradovic-Wochnik","doi":"10.1093/ips/olad008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olad008","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This collective discussion brings together six women scholars of and from the post-Yugoslav space, who, using personal experiences, analyze the dynamics of knowledge production in international relations (IR), especially regarding the post-Yugoslav space. Working in Global North academia but with lived experiences in the region we study, our research is often subjected to a particular gaze, seeped in assumptions about “ulterior” motives and expectations about writing and representation. Can those expected to be objects of knowledge ever become epistemic subjects? We argue that the rendering of the post-Yugoslav space as conflict-prone and as Europe's liminal semi-periphery in the discipline of IR cannot be decoupled from the rendering of the region and those seen as related to it as unable to produce knowledge that, in mainstream discussions, is seen as valuable and “objective.” The post-Yugoslav region and those seen as related to it being simultaneously postcolonial, postsocialist, and postwar, and characterized by marginalization, complicity, and privilege in global racialized hierarchies at the same time, can make visible specific forms of multiple colonialities, potentially creating space for anti- and/or decolonial alternatives. We further make the case for embracing a radical reflexivity that is active, collaborative, and rooted in feminist epistemologies and political commitments.","PeriodicalId":47361,"journal":{"name":"International Political Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41899184","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article offers a novel conceptual framework to enable empirical investigation and analysis of the different ways in which contemporary data practices are entangled with colonialism. Departing from recent theorizations of the politics and political economy of data and data-driven technologies, including the theory of so-called data colonialism, I argue for a historicized and differentiated account of the colonial processes of dispossession at stake in datafication and the proliferation of data-dependent technologies. By undertaking a broad engagement with decolonial thinking, I demonstrate the need to move beyond an examination of how everyday life is datafied to be extracted like a natural resource. I show that such analogies are inapt and occlude colonial relations reproduced through datafication. Our understanding of these processes would find a firmer footing not in historical analogy, but in our colonial present. I propose that the modality of data's power lies not in the extraction of value as such, but in the interaction of orders of knowledge with orders of value. This reordering both acts as a motor of further colonial epistemic violence and creates the conditions for a new apparatus of racialized dispossession. Giving examples from migration governance, I set out its targets, objects, and operations.
{"title":"More than Extraction: Rethinking Data's Colonial Political Economy","authors":"Catriona Gray","doi":"10.1093/ips/olad007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olad007","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article offers a novel conceptual framework to enable empirical investigation and analysis of the different ways in which contemporary data practices are entangled with colonialism. Departing from recent theorizations of the politics and political economy of data and data-driven technologies, including the theory of so-called data colonialism, I argue for a historicized and differentiated account of the colonial processes of dispossession at stake in datafication and the proliferation of data-dependent technologies. By undertaking a broad engagement with decolonial thinking, I demonstrate the need to move beyond an examination of how everyday life is datafied to be extracted like a natural resource. I show that such analogies are inapt and occlude colonial relations reproduced through datafication. Our understanding of these processes would find a firmer footing not in historical analogy, but in our colonial present. I propose that the modality of data's power lies not in the extraction of value as such, but in the interaction of orders of knowledge with orders of value. This reordering both acts as a motor of further colonial epistemic violence and creates the conditions for a new apparatus of racialized dispossession. Giving examples from migration governance, I set out its targets, objects, and operations.","PeriodicalId":47361,"journal":{"name":"International Political Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44049271","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
There has been a profusion of institutionalized practices of confiscation and destruction of migrants’ belongings during European bordering operations conducted by the police and border authorities. Clothes, shoes, money, food, mobile phones, and even water have been among the items seized by authorities, a practice that exposes migrants to multiple risks. That said, despite the pervasiveness of current (dis)possessive methods, scholars have not yet sufficiently theorized the historical and current links between property, race, and borders. This article argues that such (dis)possessive practices at Europe's borders are not simply another method of governance that emerges at Europe's borderzones. Rather, (dis)possession is seen here as central to the very (post)colonial functioning of the border itself. The argument is, on the one hand, that Europe's borders have been embedded within a (post)colonial and racial capitalist global order predicated upon multifaceted forms of (dis)possession. And, on the other hand, it is claimed that borders themselves have been sites of continual forms of colonial and racial (dis)possession. In so doing, the article shows how (dis)possession has historically allowed Europe to demarcate, reinforce, and police the status of racialized bodies as less than human and property-like, that is, as bodies available for colonial and capitalist consumption.
{"title":"(Dis)possessive Borders, (Dis)possessed Bodies: Race and Property at the Postcolonial European Borders","authors":"T. Brito","doi":"10.1093/ips/olad009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olad009","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 There has been a profusion of institutionalized practices of confiscation and destruction of migrants’ belongings during European bordering operations conducted by the police and border authorities. Clothes, shoes, money, food, mobile phones, and even water have been among the items seized by authorities, a practice that exposes migrants to multiple risks. That said, despite the pervasiveness of current (dis)possessive methods, scholars have not yet sufficiently theorized the historical and current links between property, race, and borders. This article argues that such (dis)possessive practices at Europe's borders are not simply another method of governance that emerges at Europe's borderzones. Rather, (dis)possession is seen here as central to the very (post)colonial functioning of the border itself. The argument is, on the one hand, that Europe's borders have been embedded within a (post)colonial and racial capitalist global order predicated upon multifaceted forms of (dis)possession. And, on the other hand, it is claimed that borders themselves have been sites of continual forms of colonial and racial (dis)possession. In so doing, the article shows how (dis)possession has historically allowed Europe to demarcate, reinforce, and police the status of racialized bodies as less than human and property-like, that is, as bodies available for colonial and capitalist consumption.","PeriodicalId":47361,"journal":{"name":"International Political Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44832690","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article opens up the blackbox through which evidence is selected and assessed in the making of guidelines and recommendations in global governance, through an exploration of “methods regimes.” Methods regimes are a special kind of sociomaterial arrangement, which govern the production and validation of knowledge, by establishing a clear hierachy between alternative forms of research designs. When such regimes become inscribed in processes of global governance, they shape and control what knowledge is deemed valid and thus relevant for policy. We shed light that through a mode of operation that relies on a discourse of procedurality, a dispersed but powerful network of epistemic operators, and a dense web of infrastructures, methods regimes constitute and police the making of “policy-relevant knowledge” in global governance. Through an examination of the case of “GRADE” (Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation), a standardized system that evaluates and grades the quality of evidence in global health, we show that its dominance has worked to the effect of empowering a new cast of methodologists, seen as more objective and portable across domains, sidelining certain forms of evidence that do not conform with its own methodological criteria of scientificity, and “clinicalizing” research in medicine and beyond.
{"title":"Methods Regimes in Global Governance: The Politics of Evidence-Making in Global Health","authors":"Annabelle Littoz-Monnet, J. Uribe","doi":"10.1093/ips/olad005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olad005","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article opens up the blackbox through which evidence is selected and assessed in the making of guidelines and recommendations in global governance, through an exploration of “methods regimes.” Methods regimes are a special kind of sociomaterial arrangement, which govern the production and validation of knowledge, by establishing a clear hierachy between alternative forms of research designs. When such regimes become inscribed in processes of global governance, they shape and control what knowledge is deemed valid and thus relevant for policy. We shed light that through a mode of operation that relies on a discourse of procedurality, a dispersed but powerful network of epistemic operators, and a dense web of infrastructures, methods regimes constitute and police the making of “policy-relevant knowledge” in global governance. Through an examination of the case of “GRADE” (Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation), a standardized system that evaluates and grades the quality of evidence in global health, we show that its dominance has worked to the effect of empowering a new cast of methodologists, seen as more objective and portable across domains, sidelining certain forms of evidence that do not conform with its own methodological criteria of scientificity, and “clinicalizing” research in medicine and beyond.","PeriodicalId":47361,"journal":{"name":"International Political Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46875705","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
For decades, fraud-based denaturalization was hardly used in Norway. In the 2015–2016 “refugee crisis,” however, the right-wing government decided to reinforce efforts to expose “citizenship cheaters.” This article asks how this decision emerged, what arguments the government articulated to legitimize this decision, and how parliament responded. I examine the Norwegian case by reworking Schmitt and Agamben's perspectives on exceptionalism. The executive desire to reduce naturalized citizens to “bare life” illustrates Agamben's logic of exception: their potential exclusion is inscribed in law. Yet, the analysis shows that exceptionalism does not necessarily lead to “bare lives”: denaturalization was mediated through legal, administrative, and democratic procedures. The opposition submitted proposals to tame the executive's denaturalization powers. In responding to criticism, the government relied on three different arguments to legitimize the decision: (1) moralizing and (2) criminalizing fraud, while simultaneously (3) de-politicizing the decision through hyper-legalism. Such reasoning does not suggest the collapse of law and politics, as Agamben envisions, but rather that states formulate exclusionary politics based on formalistic interpretations of law. The article concludes by problematizing Agamben's claim that we are all equally disposed to sovereign violence. I urge to take seriously social categories of difference in developing a political sociology of exceptionalism.
{"title":"“Citizenship Cheaters” before the Law: Reading Fraud-Based Denaturalization in Norway through Lenses of Exceptionalism","authors":"Simon Roland Birkvad","doi":"10.1093/ips/olad006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olad006","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 For decades, fraud-based denaturalization was hardly used in Norway. In the 2015–2016 “refugee crisis,” however, the right-wing government decided to reinforce efforts to expose “citizenship cheaters.” This article asks how this decision emerged, what arguments the government articulated to legitimize this decision, and how parliament responded. I examine the Norwegian case by reworking Schmitt and Agamben's perspectives on exceptionalism. The executive desire to reduce naturalized citizens to “bare life” illustrates Agamben's logic of exception: their potential exclusion is inscribed in law. Yet, the analysis shows that exceptionalism does not necessarily lead to “bare lives”: denaturalization was mediated through legal, administrative, and democratic procedures. The opposition submitted proposals to tame the executive's denaturalization powers. In responding to criticism, the government relied on three different arguments to legitimize the decision: (1) moralizing and (2) criminalizing fraud, while simultaneously (3) de-politicizing the decision through hyper-legalism. Such reasoning does not suggest the collapse of law and politics, as Agamben envisions, but rather that states formulate exclusionary politics based on formalistic interpretations of law. The article concludes by problematizing Agamben's claim that we are all equally disposed to sovereign violence. I urge to take seriously social categories of difference in developing a political sociology of exceptionalism.","PeriodicalId":47361,"journal":{"name":"International Political Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2023-01-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48183397","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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