Deniz Yonucu | Newcastle University, School of Geography, Politics and Sociology

Rodrigo Meneses | Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, Mexico

Sandra Araujo | University of Lisbon, Institute of Social Science

Zoha Waseem | University of Warwick, Department of Sociology

Erella Grassiani | University of Amsterdam, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences

Abstracts:

Policing as the Generation of Disorder and Abolition in Practice- Deniz Yonucu

Drawing on my recent book Police, Provocation, Politics: Counterinsurgency in Istanbul, in this presentation I will a) discuss how policing is not merely limited to providing and maintaining order but also entails the generation of disorder and b) illustrate already existing abolitionist practices on the ground. Situating Turkish policing within a global context, in the first half of the presentation I will elaborate on the complex and mutually constitutive relationship between the maintenance of the social order and, in defense of that social order, the creation of the conditions for perpetual conflict, disorder, and criminal activity by the state security apparatus. I suggest that in the places where racialized and dissident populations live, provocations of counterviolence and conflict by state security agents as well as their containment of both cannot be considered disruptions of social order. Instead, they can only be conceptualized as forms of governance and policing designed to manage actual or potential rebellious populations. The second half of the presentation will focus on the long enduring abolitionist practices among Turkey’s racialised working-classes. I will show how the distrust in the state and its security apparatus has paved the way for alternative justice strategies some of which can be considered as abolitionist practices.

Policing social change: Patterns, practices and hypothesis on postrevolutionary Mexico City (1920-1950)- Rodrigo Meneses

During the last century, different societies around the globe experience revolutionary movements. From Mexico to China, the revolutionary process had a big impact on the World System and significantly changed its entire configuration. Revolutions created Communist states, dismembered colonial empires and reconfigurate the class structures. There are many studies on the revolutions of the 20th century. However, the question of how and why have police forces return to the institutional forefront of societies once revolutionary movements conclude? Remains underexplored. In this presentation, I develop three arguments to solve this historical and political puzzle. First, no revolutionary movement abolished the state, neither the rule of law and its enforcement. Political systems derivated from revolutions organized itself among constitutional texts and legislation. Second, policing is a consequence of this process in two different but interrelated ways. On one hand, as an institutional device for sensoring the margins of the new order and; on the other, as a means to enforce the new legal order. Third, within this process, police forces appear not just as an armed force in the hands of the state to promote a particular social order, but mostly as an institutional body of experienced bureacrats aclimatized to work within the legal field. I illustrate these arguments taken the case of the cover police of postrevolutionary Mexico City (1920-1950) as context.

Spying on Muslims in Colonial Mozambique: Shortcomings of Counterinsurgent Surveillance- Sandra Araujo

This paper delves into the sources, methods, and practices the Portuguese colonial intelligence services deployed to gather strategic intelligence on Muslim populations during Mozambique’s liberation war (1964-74). It evaluates the efficacy of such undertakings in establishing a tightly woven surveillance web to monitor Muslims’ engagement with FRELIMO (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique) and extracting authentically transparent data to inform counterinsurgent strategies. In addition, the paper discusses the Portuguese colonial intelligence apparatus’s shortcomings, ultimately rendering counterinsurgency spying methods largely ineffective. It does so to argue that the crux rested in the capacity to gather reliable and actionable intelligence, realistically evaluate security threats, and timely devise effective colonial security strategies directed at Muslim communities - other than sheer repression - during Mozambique’s last colonial war. The paper relies on assorted primary sources for its analysis, including the following: fragmentary track records left by informers and intelligence officers when on field missions and qualitative and quantitative examination of the data compiled through SCCIM’s Confidential Questionnaire on Islam, involving 708 Sunni Muslim dignitaries.

Security Narratives: the Seductive Politics of the Israeli Security Industry, Erella Grassiani

In this presentation I will discuss the way Israeli security actors sell their products and spread their knowledge through what I call security narratives. I’m interested in analyzing the Israeli security industry as both a tool and a product of seduction. I will explore the deliberate and less explicit or conscious strategies, socializations and processes that lie at the heart of the existence and workings of this industry. I ask what messages it conveys, what its silences are, and how actors who are part of it and (politically) utilize it frame the industry. I further investigate how processes of translation are part of this ‘seduction’, as it translates violence into security, Human Rights violations in protection, traumatized soldiers into heroes and a people under occupation or civilian non-violent protestors as a (terror) threat. As a case I will discuss the security fairs where security is sold accompanied by politically colored “stories”, performances and activities, sharing messages about the historical and potential future use of these products and their necessity and importance for the defense of Israel.

Safe assistance? Cultivating imperial entanglements of (g)localised police reform, Zoha Waseem

What drives international assistance and aid from northern states to local law enforcement agencies in the global South? How do the interests of these international actors align, converge, or contradict with local elites’ preferences in recipient countries? And, furthermore, what are the potential impacts of such north-south “imperial entanglements” in the facilitation or restriction of imperial legacies of policing and counterinsurgency? In this paper, I explore these questions using the case of Pakistan. Specifically, I analyse three initiatives or programmes through which northern states, actors, and interests have engaged with local law enforcement, penal, and police reform delivery in Pakistan, to show how imperial legacies are sustained and new modes of neo-colonial interventions into the global South are constructed, incentivised, and even welcomed. I suggest that western-led reform efforts focused on the capacity building and counterinsurgency strengths of security institutions in countries such as Pakistan, especially in the aftermath of the global war on terrorism, have inadequately considered how these efforts will be appropriated by local elites, or how these will affect local and marginalised communities. Furthermore, I demonstrate how the international and the domestic work in tandem within relational networks of police and security sector reform to ensure that daily, local, and mundane aspects of public policing in the global South remain intimately entangled with global counterinsurgency objectives, reproducing imperial frameworks and structures, and cultivating “neo-colonial penality.”

This seminar explores the everyday interactions of prisoners and prison officers. What tensions did managerialism, austerity and the COVID-19 pandemic generate for those who work and live in prisons? How are prison officer culture and neoliberal agendas affecting staff and prisoners? What are the possibilities of emerging initiatives that promise increased prisoner involvement in the running of the institution?

Speakers:

· Dr Jamie Bennett (Youth Justice Board and former prison governor)

· Brendan Doyle and Sean Campbell (User Voice)

This is an in-person & hybrid event open to all. To register for in-person or remote attendance, please email Dr. Tawfic: Simon.Tawfic@Warwick.ac.ukLink opens in a new window.

Lunch will be served before the seminar. To RSVP for lunch, email Simon.Tawfic@Warwick.ac.uk.

This event is part of the Vulnerable StateLink opens in a new window seminar series, fostering dialogue between frontline officials and those who study them.