Destroy, Build, Secure: Readings on Pacification

Pacification is often thought of as a military strategy or a metaphor for social control. Destroy, Build, Secure goes beyond this common usage of the word and instead focuses on pacification as a category of analysis. The contributors demonstrate how pacification is simultaneously a repressive and productive strategy, mobilizing the concept to problematize the liberal boundaries of war and peace, military and civil spheres, as well as police and military operations across time and geography. From the nineteenth century to our current conjuncture, from North America to Europe, North Africa and on to Turkey, the contributors show how through mobilizing violence pacification is fundamental to strategies of securing relations of accumulation and domination both at home and abroad. Destroy, Build, Secure argues that pacification has been essential to the survival of imperialist capitalism and that critical theory needs to take the concept seriously.

Endorsement

"This cutting edge volume is a vital contribution to recent explorations on the concept and practice of pacifi cation. The chapters in the book show how pacification is embedded in the evolution of capitalist accumulation. Together, they connect a number of state practices – from the history of Europeanc colonialism, to the re-emergence of counterinsurgency strategies among Western states and the “law and order” techniques of control turned inward on domestic populations. Pacifi cation, we learn, does not always reply on straightforward expressions of violence, but is often coded as “re-construction,” “humanitarianism” or “peace”. With a view to the uniquely spatial and productive practices at the heart of pacifi cation, this book is a thoughtful examination of the incredible eff ort expended upon managing, repressing, and re-constituting resistance to imperialism and capitalism."

– Colleen Bell, Department of Political Studies, University of Saskatchewan