Decolonial praxis requires an awareness of colonial praxis: here, I show that the process of unseeing crime is central to the colonial enterprise in Palestine and significant to understanding the victimizer’s ethos, which in turn may help reframe strategically the victim’s options. First, I introduce the blindness epidemic in José Saramago’s dystopian novel, an epidemic which I later use as an allegory for the structural unseeing which has come to define the Zionist project. This is followed by a brief introduction to how my identity as a (half) Palestinian shapes my relation to the physical, structural, and epistemic violence I have lived or witnessed. I begin my analysis of colonial violence in Israel/Palestine by tracking the shifting interpretations of the impasse, and how these relate to decolonial conceptions of justice, repair, and healing. Next, I illustrate grassroots perspectives on how colonialism is unseen or invisiblized, drawing on my fieldwork data: interviews with leading Palestinian and Israeli activists. Here, the agents and beneficiaries of colonialism become incapable of seeing and “seeing” the criminality before and within them. It is a sinister, omnipresent process. I then discuss some psychosocial aspects of this “blindness epidemic,” showing the complexity here of both seeing and unseeing, which are simultaneously deliberate and automatic processes. After analyzing the structures and processes activating invisibility or unseeing in this colonial site, I show that the few Israeli Jews—some, my interviewees and others, my friends—choosing to exit the “blindness epidemic” become agents of coresistance (as opposed to “coexistence,” misleading mantra of peacebuilding) and of healing. Coresistance here is premised on seeing (and countering) the socially mandated unseeing.
Reviewed by Rimona AfanaOver the past two decades drone warfare has been normalized as an effective and necessary mode of military engagement; violence delivered remotely is now pervasive, routine, seemingly irreversible. The normalization of drone warfare seems congruent with the expansion, in many other sectors, of state-corporate crime. The sinister necropolitics agendas of states and corporations coalesce to intensify violence and enhance distance. This expansion of violence has been accompanied by efforts to understand and resist it: critical studies on the crimes of drone warfare and activism against the military-industrial complex.Remote Warfare explores how people have imagined, experienced, and resisted remote warfare. The content is structured in three sections: "Visions" (conceptualizing remote warfare), "Intimacies" (ties created or redefined by remote warfare), and "Reconfigurations" (reframing and resisting remote warfare). Each part includes four chapters navigating emerging forms of violence, the ideologies and technologies creating or facilitating violence, and nascent forms of popular resistance. Editors Rebecca A. Adelman and David Kieran note that remote warfare has become "central to modern state-sponsored violence" (p. 3) and its ramifications continue to be debated by politicians, policymakers, scholars, and activists.These debates, we are shown, have primarily revolved around three areas: the strategic and tactical efficacy of remote warfare; the experience of remote warfare for combatants and civilians; the ethics of remote warfare. While within each category some have legitimized drone warfare, Grégoire Chamayou and other scholars and activists find drones indefensible on all grounds: strategically, politically, ethically (p. 8). To transcend reductionist pro/con debates, the book's contributors unveil "the cultural entanglements, imprints and consequences of remote warfare" (p. 10). The book seeks a more nuanced contextualization of remote warfare, zooming both in and out to understand not just the phenomenon as it currently unfolds, but its precursors, the bidirectional influences between culture and warfare, its embodied (rather than disembodied) nature, its nonlinearities technically and ethically, and its potential future ramifications.Remote warfare is not a new phenomenon. Various modes of remote warfare have been developed and perfected over time: from archery in the medieval times to pilotless vehicles developed during the First World War or reconnaissance
Reviewed by Rimona AfanaGuiding Ragnhild Sollund's engagement with wildlife trafficking (WLT) are several significant distinctions or contrasts recurrent throughout the book: her seeing animals as free-born sovereigns vs. personal property or common good, which is alas still the norm in most societies; her concern for the suffering of animals as sentient individuals and not just as species and ecosystems worthy (or not) of conservation efforts; her embracing a critical victimology angle vs. traditional criminological approaches: animal victims become the centrepiece of research, not the offenders, the judicial system or process; her emphasis on the chasm between crimes and harms: criminalization remains narrow and skewed by anthropocentrism, legal trafficking is not necessarily ethical, hence her concern for harms against free-born animals, not just crimes. This vision materializes not only in Sollund's interpretation of theory and empirical data, but also in her emancipatory language: using "who" instead of "which", "she/he" not "it", "abduction" not "poaching", "free-born animals" not "wildlife", and other choices also preferred by some green criminologists to counter the semantic laundering accompanying the (ab)use of animals.Two case studies anchor the analysis: Norway, mostly a destination country when it comes to wildlife trafficking, and Colombia, which due to its biodiversity is mostly a source country. The book navigates the harms of WLT across 14 chapters, drawing on criminological literature, court records, police files, customs statistics, interviews with experts, as well as with offenders. The first two chapters introduce us to the abduction, trafficking, killing of (endangered) animals, and to the ecofeminist vision guiding the research. Chapters 3-8 discuss different facets of WLT in Norway, including the types of animals and animal products trafficked, the varied nature of abuse and its limited criminalization, the different suppliers and beneficiaries involved, the deficient enforcement of WLT legislation, and the dynamics within and between different national and local agencies dealing with wildlife. Chapters 9-11 examine WLT in Colombia, tracking some of the same aspects discussed in the Norway case: animal victims, forms of abuse, motives and incentive structures, stakeholders, and (non-)enforcement. Chapters 12-14 reflect on the (lack of) effectiveness and ethics of current WLT legislation, the specifics of animal victimization, concluding with philosophical and practical alternatives.The legal framework examined is the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), a multilateral treaty drafted
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.