The world is a garden:Nomos, sovereignty, and the (contested) ordering of life

Abstract

Traditional approaches to questions aboutnomosin IR typically focus upon either its establishment and the formal structures that emerge through interaction within a clearly delineated spatial area, or an exploration of US hegemony in the post-2003 world. In this article I posit a different approach, building on the ideas of Giorgio Agamben, which groundsnomosas a spatialisation of the exception within conditions of neoliberal modernity. I suggest that within the globalnomosare more localisednomoi. These localisednomoiare a consequence of the spatialisation of the exception and a fundamental tension between localisation and ordering. I argue that while sovereign power has been a source of contemporary scholarship, such explorations have paid scant attention to the regulatory power of normative values and their capacity to create order within space. Such norms allow for a greater awareness of how sovereign power can be mobilised in and of itself as a form of contestation. Locating such debates in the Middle East, I explore the concept ofnomosto understand how struggle over the localisation and ordering of space helps us to better understand contemporary political life.

Four Questions about De-sectarianization

“…With this in mind, while religious identitiesand others-are important, they must be contextualized within spatial factors, socioeconomic forces, political environments, and geopolitical currents, which all facilitate more nuanced understanding and conceptualization of processes of de-sectarianization. Beyond this, other types of approaches have the capacity to shed light on a range of other factors, including political science (Hashemi and Postel 2017), political theory (Mabon 2019a; Dodge), historical (Makdisi 2008; AlShehabi 2019), datadriven (Gengler), ethnographic (Nucho, Fibiger), or perhaps even more discursive approaches (Haddad, Mabon, Valbjorn). Reflecting on what is involved in this process also raises important questions about how we study de-sectarianization or make claims to knowledge about such issues.…”

“…Dialogue between members of different communities is therefore restricted to rights based or issue-based agendas, yet these operate within the contours of a political system designed to prevent such inter-communal collaboration. Moreover, this is reinforced by the informal-or invisible-structures that order life (Mabon 2019a). This plays out within the formal powersharing mechanisms and also the elite bargaining that characterizes consociational systems and reinforces communal identities, empowering elites in the process (Nucho 2016;Cammet 2014).…”

“…While de-sectarianization is predominantly focused upon agency and how actors re-imagine their positions in contemporary life, this is conditioned by an array of structural forces that regulate and organize political life. De-sectarianization efforts require groups to operate within and across structural orderings which are not necessarily restricted to state borders (Mabon 2019a), yet there are very clear domestic demands which may differ, depending upon the context.…”

The politics of sovereignty and space

“…The concept of nomos helps us to understand membership of this type of community, not necessarily territorially grounded, but underpinned by a set of normative beliefs that regulates life and shapes political behaviour, closing off a metaphysical inside against an outside with implications for the spatialised nomos. 88 A final observation must be made about the impact of closing off an inside against an outside on the construction of citizenship and the ordering of space. Fundamentally, nomos cannot include without excluding and while this predominantly takes place against other communities, it can also concern individuals who are displaced from the inside.…”