Criminality, political power and conflict: Critical perspectives (Social and Political Power)

Criminality, political power and conflict: Critical perspectives (Social and Political Power)

The departure point of this book is the understanding of politics and criminality as two historically differentiated domains of human activity that are different but interrelated, and often co-constitutive and overlapping. In everyday political and domestic life, distinguishing between what is political and what is criminal is achieved through different processes and at different territorial levels. These liminal and overlapping areas between the political and the criminal are highly contested spaces. This book argues against ahistorically drawing a separating line between political armed mobilisation and economic crimi­nality. Each chapter shows that not only insurgents, separatists and other political rebels but also the State and elites can, and generally must (because war waging is not cheap), engage in differ­ent forms of economic criminality as a result of their political status. In no longer separating criminality and politics, this book is able to offer new concepts with which to analyse civil war, political power and criminality. For the last three decades, the focus of civil war studies has shifted decisively to understanding ‘predatory’ behaviours and rent-seeking as the raison d’etre of contemporary conflict. This approach has been robustly criticised over the past fifteen years; however, in the process, there are unsuitable concepts to handle the complex overlaps and interactions between civil war, political power and criminality. This volume offers a fresh look at this topic, understanding politics and criminality as two historically differentiated but interrelated domains of human activity. Criminality, political power and conflict explores the interactions, connections and convergences of politics and criminality in conflict settings. Over the last few decades, entire communities have been criminalised due to their associations with different criminalised economic activities. This scale of illegalisation has opened a whole set of opportunities, resources and modalities of politicisation for armed actors, and in this process, the State is a central actor. This book does not focus solely on irregular actors but brings back the State and legal actors into this debate. The chapters visit and re-visit case studies in Colombia, Brazil, Ireland, Serbia, Perú, Venezuela and Burma, together with theoretical debates on the topic. Through qualitative methods and rich empirical data, the volume contributes to the understanding of politicisation and criminalisation as processes that are largely co-constitutive and, at the same time, grounded historically. As conflict again becomes a ‘hot topic’ because of globally and domestically changing environments, the book will appeal those with an interest in intractable conflicts where many actors intervene. José A. Gutiérrez is lecturer at the Centre for Applied Human Rights (CAHR) at the University of York. Francisco Gutiérrez-Sanín is lecturer at the Institute for Political Sudies and International Relations (IEPRI) at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá.