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Beyond Bricks and Mortar: Peace-Building in a Permanent State of Adaptation

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The Biopolitics of Development

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Abstract

Contemporary peace-building is directed at tackling what is considered to be the root cause of conflict, namely, underdevelopment, or lack of ‘human security’. The human security approach to peace-building calls into being two different types of subjectivities: Homo juridicus is the subject that correlates with the aim to establish a democratic political system that enforces the rule of law and protects human rights. Homo oeconomicus is the subject that correlates with the endeavour to build peace by eradicating poverty through entrepreneurial activity. Contemporary biopolitics of development relies on the depoliticization of these subjectivities through what is here called ‘a permanent state of adaptation’.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Foucault’s writings on the Iranian revolution may be considered an exception to his lacking reference to sites of colonial power and resistance to it. See Foucault (2012 [1979]), 2005a, b) and also Jabri (2007). Robert Young (2001: 397) argues, furthermore, that even though Foucault did not explicitly address colonialism in his academic work, his residence in postcolonial Tunisia in the late 1960s was crucial both for his development of an account of alterity that does not reduce the other to silence or separated existence and for his more politically engaged writings that were to follow.

  2. 2.

    An overview of the dominant human security debates can be found in Tadjbakhsh and Chenoy (2009). More critical perspectives are presented in Chandler and Hynek (2010).

  3. 3.

    Currently, Finnish officials participate in civilian crisis management in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Haiti, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Chad and the Central African Republic and the Palestinian territories (CMC 2011).

  4. 4.

    See Alt (2010), Duffield (2005, 2007, 2010), Grayson (2010), Hynek (2010), De Larrinaga and Doucet (2008), Duffield and Waddell (2006).

  5. 5.

    Based on its expertise and contacts, the Finnish Crisis Management Centre, for example, provides matchmaking services for Finnish companies to invest and market products and services in post-conflict areas (CMC 2010b).

  6. 6.

    This formulation echoes but is crucially distinct from Giorgio Agamben’s (1998) account of biopolitical power being modelled as a permanent state of exception. While Agamben’s ‘bare life’ is continuously subjected to the possibility of sovereign violence, life in a permanent state of adaptation is rather subjected to the necessity of being infinitely malleable, yet active in regard to one’s own adaptation. Whereas bare life is included in the political system through its exclusion, through being refused political status but thereby also exposing the violence of the sovereign, subjects in a permanent state of adaptation are included in the – more or less meaningless – political system so long as they conform to the continuous need to adapt. Those who refuse to adapt may, however, risk becoming bare life. Yet that refusal is necessary for political subjectivity to emerge within the permanent state of adaptation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland

    Suvi Alt

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  1. Suvi Alt
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  1. DIPARTIMENTO DI POLITICA ISTITUZIONI, STORIA, University of Bologna, Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Sandro Mezzadra

  2. Professor of International Relations, University of Lapland, Lapland, Finland

    Julian Reid

  3. Director, Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, Kolkata, West Bengal, India

    Ranabir Samaddar

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Alt, S. (2013). Beyond Bricks and Mortar: Peace-Building in a Permanent State of Adaptation. In: Mezzadra, S., Reid, J., Samaddar, R. (eds) The Biopolitics of Development. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-1596-7_6

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