- Saskatoon, SK, Canada
Colleen Bell
University of Saskatchewan, Political Studies, Faculty Member
- Political Studies, International Relations, Critical Theory, Political Theory, Surveillance and Strategic Population Data, Critical War Studies, and 11 moreColonialism, Imperialism, Empire, Terrorism and Counterterrorism, Insurgency and counterinsurgency, Insurgency/Counterinsurgency(COIN), Political Violence and Terrorism, Critical Security Studies, International political sociology, War Studies, and Critical Terrorism Studiesedit
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This article examines the public profile of a number of American defence intellectuals involved in the re-emergence of counterinsurgency strategy in US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Although there has been attention to the rise of... more
This article examines the public profile of a number of American defence intellectuals involved in the re-emergence of counterinsurgency strategy in US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Although there has been attention to the rise of soft knowledges and new communication strategies in Western warfare, the recent foray of war experts into the glossy world of celebrity infotainment – that is, media venues that are designed to both inform and entertain – has not been explored. I argue that the fanfare that has sprouted up around these experts is an expression of the interconnections between war and public relations in which the legitimacy of US wars has always rested on how wars are packaged and sold to domestic publics. Furthermore, the presence of defence experts in popular media is an outgrowth of counterinsurgency techniques wherein the distinction between domestic and foreign publics is blurred, and mingling (virtually or otherwise) with ‘the people’ in their daily lives is part of the campaign itself.
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""This article offers an initial exploration of the biometric documentation of civilians by coalition forces in the battle zones of the “war on terror.” Mission setbacks in the US-led interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to a... more
""This article offers an initial exploration of the biometric documentation of civilians by coalition forces in the battle zones of the “war on terror.” Mission setbacks in the US-led interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to a growth in population-centric operations. There has, for example, been a notable emphasis on understanding the dynamics of culture among local peoples exemplified by the launch of the human terrain program in 2007. Yet, though cultural programming has received critical attention (Kelly et.al. 2010; Gonzales 2007; 2009, Ansorge 2010), less has been said about US efforts to capture the biological identities of Iraqi and Afghan peoples. It turns out that harvesting body data is a key dimension of efforts to divide the population between civilians and insurgents, while also serving as a general strategy of population management over life perceived to be potentially dangerous. The article examines how these dividing and governance tactics intersect with strategies of racialization and racism at the global level.
The article first discusses some aspects of biometric security operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Second, it reviews the ways in which biometric science is shaped by biological essentialism, racial stereotypes and patterned profiling. Yet, somewhat ironically, the technology also struggles to account for bodies that are non-white and to function in environments that are “uncontrollable.” Third, the discussion connects biometric operations to dynamics of the colonial present to illustrate the way in which biometric technology accentuates global inequality and contributes to currents of racism that animate Western interventionism. These dynamics are taken one step further in the fourth section where I place the experimental status of wartime biometrics within the legacy of the colonial laboratory. I conclude that despite the remarkable investment and growth of the biometric industry, it is not without its failures and weakness. In particular, wartime biometrics treats whole populations as suspect and expresses radical fear and estrangement from the very people that counterinsurgency claims to protect. """
The article first discusses some aspects of biometric security operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Second, it reviews the ways in which biometric science is shaped by biological essentialism, racial stereotypes and patterned profiling. Yet, somewhat ironically, the technology also struggles to account for bodies that are non-white and to function in environments that are “uncontrollable.” Third, the discussion connects biometric operations to dynamics of the colonial present to illustrate the way in which biometric technology accentuates global inequality and contributes to currents of racism that animate Western interventionism. These dynamics are taken one step further in the fourth section where I place the experimental status of wartime biometrics within the legacy of the colonial laboratory. I conclude that despite the remarkable investment and growth of the biometric industry, it is not without its failures and weakness. In particular, wartime biometrics treats whole populations as suspect and expresses radical fear and estrangement from the very people that counterinsurgency claims to protect. """
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From the era of post-Cold War humanitarian intervention to the long-term interventions launched in the name of the Global War on Terror, the aftermaths of large-scale violence are commonly referred to as... more
From the era of post-Cold War humanitarian intervention to the long-term interventions launched in the name of the Global War on Terror, the aftermaths of large-scale violence are commonly referred to as 'post-conflict'environments. Following this script, prevailing ...
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This article examines developments in the Global War on Terror in terms of a shift in focus from terrorism to insurgency. We argue that the recent focus on the problematic of insurgency involves understanding the threat of terrorism as a... more
This article examines developments in the Global War on Terror in terms of a shift in focus from terrorism to insurgency. We argue that the recent focus on the problematic of insurgency involves understanding the threat of terrorism as a matter of low-intensity conflict that can best be addressed through technologies of conflict management and peace-building. The article is composed of five sections. It begins with a discussion of the shifting terrain of ‘threat’ to encode a wider logic of security tied to the governance of life. It then examines the distinction between terrorism and insurgency as a shift from an exterminatory logic poised to excise ‘enemies’ towards a focus on whole populations as besieged by underdevelopment and illiberal forms of social organisation to are to be ‘corrected’. The third section maps the shift from the preoccupation with terrorism as a form of incalculable danger to insurgency as calculable and thus rooted in socio-economic probabilities that are said to contribute to conflict within host societies. Section four investigates the spatio-temporal dimensions attached to the problematic of insurgency as signifying a movement from a terminal exceptionalism to the field of complex emergency involving the incorporation of life into technologies of international management. The article concludes by arguing that the conceptualization of insurgency signifies yet another regeneration of life wars which rearticulates and deepens the division of humanity into qualitatively distinct forms of life, contributing to the dramatic materialization of global civil war at the level of life itself.