[Tps] Question - How policy travels across time and space

[Ian Welsh]

Just a couple of little points that may be of use:-

Liberal democracies are velvet gloves containing iron fists - so the treatment of citizens moves
between these polarities so I agree with Les that looking at internal practices is also important.

In terms of the vivid pictures that emerged from Iraq some of the practices - e.g.  use of leashes
- are recorded as part of military training by embedded journalists.

On Ireland a Lancaster PhD by Steve Wright used Northern Ireland as a case study for the way in
which coutner insurgency technologies and techniques developed there before introduction onto the UK
mainland - and presumably more widely. I think he is currently working in Leeds Uni.

Ian Welsh


>>> "Les Levidow" <L.Levidow at open.ac.uk> 12/11/2007 20:23 >>>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: lk180 at columbia.edu [mailto:lk180 at columbia.edu] 
>Sent: maandag 12 november 2007 16:40
>To: Dvora Yanow
>Subject: Question re: how policy/travels across time and place
>
>I am working on a huge project in which I am tracing the geneology of US
>incarceration and detention practices in the "War on Terror" back across
>time and place. I am trying to see where some of the micropractices of
>detention have emerged and how they have changed over time.  I know there
>are certain specific "nodes" which are considered crucial in transmission
>of such practices: US in Vietnam and before that in Philippines; Britain
>in the Boer War and then Malaya, Kenya, Aden and Norther Ireland; France
>in Vietnam and then Algeria; and then Israel in Lebanon and Palestine.
>What connects them all is that they are all ostensibly liberal democracies
>with extremelly illiberal counterinsurgency practices, especially when it
>come to detention etc

Laleh

Probably Abu Ghraib etc. has colonial analogies, but we should also look closer
to home at the US 'civilian' prison system, along with the concept of an
internal colony. 
See the article by 
Avery Gordon, Abu Ghraib: imprisonment and the war on terror
Race and Class  Vol. 48(1): 42–59, 2006

Les