Thriving Economies amidst Armed Violence

While stability, predictability, and legal certainty are commonly seen as indispensable to economic development, agro-industrial, extractive, manufacturing, and service sectors nevertheless thrive in contexts of armed violence, attracting tens of billions of dollars in international investment every year.

From the petrochemical corridor of Altamira in Mexico to Karachi’s textile and pharmaceutical plants in Pakistan; from the extraction of raw materials essential to AI in eastern DRC to banana and palm-oil plantations in Colombia’s northern Magdalena region, many leading sectors of contemporary capitalism—often presented as flagships of the formal economy—are expanding in environments marked by the daily experience of uncertainty and the presence of armed groups.

This conference examines how economic accumulation unfolds within such environments. Moving beyond narrow distinctions between legal and illegal sectors, participants will explore:

• Protection and brokerage arrangements linking firms, armed actors, and local intermediaries
• The integration of violent contexts into global supply chains
• The uneven distribution of profits, risks, and environmental costs
• The lived experience of working and residing in zones of economic expansion and insecurity

Rather than focusing solely on drug trafficking, smuggling, or conflict minerals, this conference investigates the integration of legal and illegal activities within contexts of violence, an evolving reality that has profoundly affected many societies for decades.

Bringing together scholars from diverse regional and disciplinary traditions, the conference also launches a longer-term collaborative agenda between Columbia University’s Social Study of Disappearance Lab, CERI–Sciences Po, and LAP–EHESS.

Schedule

Breakfast: 8:30–9:00

Welcome & Introduction: 9:00–9:15

Panel 1: Productive Regimes Under Threat

9:15–11:00

Discussant: Suzanna Narotzky (Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Barcelona)

• Claudio Lomnitz: “Migrant Remittances and Economies of Extortion (Mexico)”
• Laurent Gayer: “Making Economic Order Out of Disorder: Karachi's Gunpoint Capitalism”
• Adèle Blazquez and Adam Baczko: “The Profits of Uncertainty: The Rise of Altamira’s Petrochemical Corridor amid Violence (Mexico)”

Coffee Break: 11:00–11:30

Panel 2: Infrastructures of (Il)legal Accumulation

11:30–13:15

Discussant: Maud Simonet

• Martin Lamotte: “A tale about High-voltage lines, Concrete and Fuel. Supply chains between a war zone and a scam city in Myanmar.”
• Natalia Mendoza: “How an LNG pipeline makes its way through the US-Mexico borderlands”
• Fernando Montero: “Supply-Side Harm Reduction: Purposefully Reshaping Relations between Drug Sellers, Public Health, and Criminal-Legal Institutions in Philadelphia”

Lunch: 13:15–14:15

Panel 3: Turning War into Value

14:15–16:00

Discussant: Nadia Abu El-Haj

• Michel Naepels: “Capitalizing on War in Pweto and Kilwa (Katanga, Democratic Republic of the Congo). A Great Man and a Massacre.”
• Taras Fedirko: “Value and violence in the making of Ukraine’s war economy”
• Jacobo Grajales: “agroindustrial extractive capitalism in post-conflict settings in Liberia”

Break: 16:00–16:30

Panel 4: Forging Norms Amid Uncertainty

16:30–18:15

Discussant: Gilles Dorronsoro

• David Picherit: “Cultivating Uncertainty: Law and Violence in the Political Economy of Wood Smuggling in South India”
• Rosalind Morris: “No Rush: The Underground Economy in Southern Africa”
• Naor Ben-Yehoyada: “Lords of the Trapanese Littoral: the performance of the morality of violence by Statepersons in 2000s Sicily.”

Evening Reception from 18:15