Critique internationale - Content
[The Ministry of Crisis or the Art of Governing in Iran]
Giorgio Agamben argues that in contemporary governance the use of ‘emergency’ is no longer provisional, but ‘constitutes a permanent technology of government’ and has produced the extrajudicial notion of crisis. These ‘zones of indistinction’ between the law and its practice are what Agamben calls the ‘state of exception’. This article adopts the notion enunciated by Agamben and revisits it in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a country regarded as authoritarian and at odds with Western polities. In Iran, crisis has been given, firstly, a juridical status through the institution of maslahat, ‘expediency’, interpreted in a secular encounter between Shi‘a theological exegesis and modern statecraft. Secondly, crisis has not led to a formal production of a ‘state of exception’ as Agamben argues. Instead, since the late 1980s, a sui generis institution, the Expediency Council, has presided over matters of crisis. Instead of leaving blind spots in the production of legislative power –in state formation and the law –, the Expediency Council takes charges of those spheres of ambiguity where the ‘normal’ – and normative – means of the law would have otherwise failed to deliver. This is no minor event, if one bears in mind that so-called illiberal states such as Iran are often recorded as producing states of exceptions where individual and collective rights are abrogated. Through the deconstruction and theorization of crisis politics/policy the article provides a first study of this institution and of the notion of ‘crisis’ in Iran.
[Armed Mobilizations in the Eastern Regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo Seen from Below]
While there have been many studies of conflict dynamics in the Democratic Republic of Congo, few have considered those doing the fighting. By examining the trajectories of past and present Mai-Mai fighters, I will show that armed mobilizations in eastern RDC are also explained by reference to the fact that the combatants see their participation in the struggle as an ordinary, informal social practice. Mai-Mai groups are flexible structures with fluid boundaries in which entry and exit costs are relatively low. In an everyday context characterized by uncertainty, the use of weapons in eastern RDC is thus part of a moving and endlessly reinvented repertoire of resourcefulness and survival. The ability of these groups to adapt to an evolving political context, frequently and rapidly reorganize and, in some cases, reproduce demonstrates that, in this region, armed mobilization is driven as much by on-the-ground dynamics as it is initiated by elites.
[Interacting Scales of Collective Action: Local Activism and International Solidarity in the Colombian Countryside]
In recent years, much has been written in the fields of international activism studies and the sociology of international solidarity. By considering the relations of solidarity cultivated among local activists, the present article seeks to put those works under discussion. Since the late 1990s, the Colombian peasant organizations studied here – one consisting of landless small farmers and the other of Afro-descendant communities – have sought to draw attention to their situation and denounce inequalities in the distribution of land and violations of human rights. On the basis of an empirical study of these two organizations, I offer an account of the twofold movement by which they have internationalized their cause and brought international solidarity to focus on the countryside. I initially show how local actors drew upon activist legacies and available networks to internationalize themselves. By setting the actors in their activist context (that of their experiences), I then show how they re-appropriated these North-South relations of solidarity and put them to differentiated use. In so doing, I emphasize the interaction of the various scales at work and present several different vantage points for understanding them.
[Domesticating Norms, Rethinking the Struggle: Internationalizing the Cause of the “Disappeared” of Francoism in Spain]
Over the course of the 2000s in Spain, the cause of the “victims of Francoism” was the object of many activist initiatives. Local histories and symbols informed the causes that were promoted in this space of mobilization. At the same time, however, this struggle was just as much imbued with the vocabularies and practices of the world of international human rights and “post-conflict” mobilizations. Drawing upon a sociology of mobilizations approach attentive to the dynamics of the international circulation of ideas and practices, this article considers the specific ways in which international references were diffused and appropriated. I take as my example the construction of a now-emblematic cause, that of the victims of “forced disappearance”, giving particular attention to the principles that guided the international-level appropriation of forensic investigative and therapeutic-reparative practices. In so doing, I show that the reorganization of demands and the work of memory did not result from mechanically aligning the latter with pre-established frameworks. To the contrary, describing the positions, resources and competencies of importers reveals very significant social predispositions in favor of domesticating and drawing out the norms and practices being promoted. In this respect, my discussion allows one to understand how the appropriation of practices usually associated with expert techniques of depoliticization vastly increased the arsenal available to mobilized collectives.
[The Subjects of the Indigenous Autonomy: Self-government and Cosmopolitics in the Bolivian Andes]
With adoption of its new constitution in 2009, formerly republican Bolivia became a plurinational state. As a result, the country’s indigenous peoples were granted the right to adopt a self-governing regime: Native Indigenous Peasant Autonomy (AIOC). To enjoy this right, the populations must draft a statute of autonomy defining their ties to a particular land, history and culture. In the Tarabuco municipality, the drafting of this document provoked conflicts between the territory’s three social organizations: the peasant union, the representatives of the ayllus communities and those of town-dwellers. Seeking to appropriate the definition of this new legal subject, each group promoted its own vision of the tarabuqueño ethos. At a time marked by the plurinational state’s promotion of decolonization, the AIOC nevertheless urged a clearly identifiable culture and nature to be objectivized, favoring forms of modern subjectivation. In the more discreet spaces of everyday life, however, this self-definition and specific subjectivation gave way to a world in which the principles of redistribution and reciprocity between humans and non-humans are of continued relevance for the inhabitants of Tarabuco, no matter the organization to which they belong. Based on ethnographic data, this study shows how, in the framework of a dispositive of power (the AIOC) falling under the broader paradigm of neoliberal governmentality, the self is forged from various legal constraints and universes of meaning and in response to contradictory demands.
[Merit and Kindness: Making a Career in the Legal Administration of Chili (1974-2016)]
There are few studies of the public administration in Chili. The present article examines the court employees who oversaw investigations in the Chilean judicial system between the 1970s and the 2000s, with particular attention given the illegal but at the time very widespread practice of delegating authority. Indeed, these agents, who only entered the institution by cooptation, often took the place of a judge. I consider the informal economy of social relations and its relationship to the recruitment and promotion of officials in trial courts, where the proceedings exclusively took place in writing and were shielded from the public gaze. Legal professionals sometimes played only a secondary role in these proceedings, particularly in criminal cases. If one is to understand the concrete ways in which legal proceedings took place and the issues at stake in the reforms implemented in the early 2000s, one must thus consider the role played by these “little” officials. Examining the careers of these employees supports the argument that the Chilean legal administration lacked any institutional and socially prestigious model of professional skill and probity in the period under consideration.
[The Regulation of Unsecured Loans in Japan and Indebtedness as a Public Problem]
Until just a few years ago, the personal loan market in Japan was largely unregulated. In fact, this sector was characterized by the existence of non-bank lenders whose considerable growth was made possible by the continued existence of a largely unrestrictive legal framework. However, with the adoption of a reform of the consumer and small business credit market in 2006, the balance of power was inversed in favor of borrowers. This law, like the decisions of the Supreme Court decisions (2003-2005) that sought to protect defaulting borrowers, was the outcome of a long effort to defend borrowers’ rights vis-à-vis non-bank lending establishments. This movement was led by lawyers and supported both by the opposition parties and the reformist faction of the ruling party (Liberal Democratic Party). I examine the way in which these legal professionals succeeded in publicizing a problematical situation – excessive indebtedness – in order to bring about changes to the legal order, ultimately leading to the law’s modification.
Cesare Mattina, Frédéric Monier, Olivier Dard, Jens Ivo Engels (dir.), Dénoncer la corruption : chevaliers blancs, pamphlétaires et promoteurs de la transparence à l’époque contemporaine, Paris, Demopolis, 2018, 382 pages
Jean-Vincent Holeindre, La ruse et la force. Une autre histoire de la stratégie, Paris, Perrin, 2017, 528 page
Ioana Cîrstocea, Delphine Lacombe, Élisabeth Marteu (dir.), La globalisation du genre. Mobilisations, cadres d’actions, savoirs, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2018, 290 pages
Gabriel Vommaro, La larga marcha de Cambiemos. La construcción silenciosa de un proyecto de poder, Buenos Aires, Siglo XXI Editores, 2017, 363 pages
