Kalyvas, Stathis N. 2006. The Logic of Violence in Civil War. Cambridge University Press: New York.

lThis book is the product of a Doctoral project that blossomed into 10 years of sustained interest in the dynamics of violence in civil wars. As such, it can be extraordinarily technical and advances its argument in painstaking details, with a slew of examples provided for every point. However, the argument itself is quite interesting, and so is worth knowing and thinking about. The detailed summary of the argument appears on pages 11-14, so this will be abbreviated. Kalyvas begins by demonstrating the extremely high level of violence in civil wars, esp. for the civilian population. Multiple narratives have been developed for this phenomenon -- civil wars are like diseases or forces of nature (they erupt, for example) that reveal the true Hobbesian face of humanity. Or, alternatively, civil wars are an expression of a total political polarization of a society that subsumes all other differences and pits two sides against each other in a battle of annihilation. Or perhaps civil wars are incredibly violent because, in many cases, the challenge faced by the combatants is not how to destroy their enemies, but how to go about finding them in the first place. It is this last explanation that feels most plausible to Kalyvas, and it's where he builds his theory.

If the real difficulty in an insurgency is finding the enemy and its supporters, then both sides have a couple of options. They can use selective violence to kill or capture the other side's informants, collaborators, militias, and leadership. But this requires a robust intelligence network that provides inputs on who to target. Alternatively, they can employ indiscriminate violence, which virtually always fails because it only drives people to the other camp or causes them to suffer mutely (if there is no way to avoid the violence by, for instance, becoming an informer, then it doesn't make sense to incur the costs of doing so to no benefit.) So selective violence is the way to go, and most combatants generally come about to this approach. (It should be noted here that Kalyvas excludes genocide and ethnic cleansing from his model, because the complete destruction and NOT subjugation of a population is the goal in that case.)

Unfortunately, selective violence is very hard to pull off well, as it requires a lot of information, which in turn requires the freedom of movement or control required to gather that information. In areas completely controlled by one side, the level of violence is rather low, because identifying and eliminating enemy elements is much easier. However, as an area becomes contested, the level of violence spikes, because the two sides are engaged in a cycle of reprisal and counter-reprisal aimed at the destruction of informer networks and the cooperation of the population. However, as the two sides reach parity, the level of violence against civilians decreases, as both sides are unwilling to alienate the population (and thus potentially lose the area) and the informer networks are mutually deterred.

That analysis adopts a pretty standard model for COIN -- there are actors, there is the population, the actors try to influence the population, and whoever can achieve both popular legitimacy and military supremacy wins. Where Kalyvas gets interesting is when he retells this story from the perspective of the individual non-combatant living in a civil war. Running against mythology, Kalyvas asserts that the overriding concern for each member of the population is to stay alive, and demonstrates the point by noting that control of the population militarily is an excellent indicator of its cooperativeness from a mind-bogglingly diverse set of locales. Because control and cooperation are related, he is then able to split the conflict into 5 levels of control (insurgent controlled, insurgent contested, contested, incumbent contested, incumbent controlled) and describe the decision-making procedures in each one.

What he finds is that rational actors in contested zones will use the combatants to settle local grievances and engage in reprisals against one another in a manner demonstrated by the two block quotes below.

Intimacy: "... intimate violence in civil war is, as I suggested, often related to interpersonal and local disputes (it is "right under our feet, so close to us ...") rather than impersonal abstract hatred. Yet this statement should be interpreted less as a mere endorsement of the Hobbesian view of human nature as fundamentally violent under conditions of insecurity, and more as an observation about the power of the practice of denunciation as spurred by interpersonal competition. For intimate violence signals less a process of politicization of individual life and more a process of pervasive privitization of politics; less a transgression of social ties and more their full, though pervasive, expression. The evidence of malicious denunciation in symmetric and concentrated environments further undermines the view of intimate violence as the exclusive outcome of deep divisions -- though such violence can eventually transform interpersonal hatreds into impersonal ones." (362-363)

Alliance: "Alliance entails a process of convergence of interests via a transaction between supralocal and local actors, whereby the former supply the latter with external muscle, thus allowing them to win decisive advantage over local rivals; in exchange, supralocal actors are able to tap into local networks and generate mobilization. A great deal of action in civil war is, therefore, simultaneously decentralized and linked to the wider conflict. Thus civil war is (also) a process that connects the collective actors' quest for power and the local actors' quest for local advantage. Put otherwise, violence can be a selective benefit that produces local mobilization via alliance." (383)

He then applies the theoretical model to an incredibly detailed micro-analysis of a specific area of Greece and catalogs the local experience with violence during the Greek Civil War using detailed judicial archives, personal interviews, and military records. It's really quite amazing, and, of course, the findings validate the theory. In fact, looking at the model provides a really useful way to approach aggregation of local inputs in COIN, and should be thought about carefully, as many theories sound very good on paper, but are difficult, if not impossible, to put into practice.

SEE ALSO: Wickham-Crowley (1992) pg. 260-261, for a how this process proceeded in Latin American revolution/counter-revolutionary contexts.

Hickey, Samuel and Giles Mohan, eds. 2004. Participation: From Tyranny to Transformation? Zed Books: London.

This book is an edited volume that replies to Participation: The New Tyranny? by Bill Cooke and Uma Kothari. It is not as strong as the work it responds to, but does take the tyranny critique seriously and looks for ways to undertake a democratic, locally-designed development plan.

"The collection is divided into six sections, the first of which reviews how contemporary debates and thematic challenges surrounding debates over how participation might be (re)established as a transformative approach to development, while also offering a scepitcal note on the dangers of continuing with any participatory project. The second section seeks to rethink the concept of participation through theoretical engagement with space, political capabilities and citizenship. The next three sections analyze case studies of different actors and processes engaged in participation. Section III continues the theoretical debates over participation in relation to the links between participation and popular agency as embedded practice, and focuses on the complexities of 'indigenous' decision-making. Part IV focuses on civil society and the local state and the synergies and conflicts between them while Part V examines participatory initiatives by international development donors. The final section comprises short reflections by key commenters based both on a selection of chapters from the collection and wider debates on participation.

As will become clear, an underlying theme in all the contributions is that 'politics matters' within international development. We believe, and most contributors confirm, that understanding the ways in which participation relates to existing power structures and political systems provides the basis for moving towards a more transformatory approach to development; one which is rooted in the exercise of broadly defined citizenship." (4-5)

Cause this book didn't particularly flip my skirt, I'm going to provide the bibliographic data for the essays, and then follow with an annotation of the ones I liked.

Section 1: From tyranny to transformation?

Hickey, Sam and Giles Mohan. "Towards participation as transformation: critical themes and challenges."

Gaventa, John. "Towards participatory governance: assessing the transformative possibilities."

Cooke, Bill. "Rules of thumb for participatory change agents."

Section 2: Rethinking participation

Mohan, Giles and Sam Hickey. "Relocating participation within a radical politics of development: critical modernism and citizenship."

Cornwall, Andrea. "Spaces for transformation? reflections on issues of power and difference in participation in development."

Williams, Glyn. "Towards a repoliticization of participatory development: political capabilities and spaces of empowerment."

Section 3: Participation as popular agency: reconnecting with underlying processes of development.

Vincent, Susan. "Participation, resistance and problems with the 'local' in Peru: towards a new political contract?"

Masaki, Katsuhiko. "The 'transformative' unfolding of 'tyrannical' participation: the corvee tradition and ongoing local politics in Western Nepal."

Henry, Leroi. "Morality, citizenship and participatory development in an indigenous development association: the case of the GPSDO and the Sebat Bet Gurage of Ethopia."

Section Four: Realizing transformative participation in practice: state and civil responses.

Hickey, Sam and Giles Mohan. "Relocating participation within a radical politics of development: insights from political action and practice."

Mitlin, Diana. "Securing voice and transforming practice in local government: the role of federating in grassroots development."

Florisbello, Glauco Regis and Irene Guijt. "Participatory municipal development plans in Brazil: divergent partners constructing common futures."

Kelly, Ute. "Confrontations with power: moving beyond 'the tyranny of safety' in participation."

Waddington, Mark and Giles Mohan. "Failing forward: going beyond PRA and imposed forms of participation."

Section 5: Donors and participation: caught between tyranny and transformation.

Brown, David. "Participation in poverty reduction strategies: democracy strengthened or democracy undermined?"

Holland, Jeremy, Mary Ann Brocklesby, and Charles Abugre. "Beyond the technical fix? participation in donor approaches to rights-based development."

Section 6: Broader perspectives on 'from tyranny to transformation'

Cleaver, Francis. "The social embeddedness of agency and decision-making."

Bebbington, Anthony. "Theorizing participation and institutional change: ethnography and political economy."

So without question, my favorite article in this collection is Bill Cooke's. He remains deeply opposed to "participatory" methods, and sets out rules that do more to highlight the deficiencies of the method than they do to provide a roadmap for effective engagments (they entail, for instance, that international workers work at local rates, which, assuming the international workers are going to return to their country of origin is a recipe that guarantees noone would ever become a participatory developer, as doing so would be a recipe for pauperization later in life. But his first rule is classic, and is reproduced here in it's entirety (emphasis added by me).

"Rule I: Don't work for the World Bank.

Instrumentally, credible change agents are prinicipled change agents; and principled change agents know who they won't work for, and why. If not the Bank, then who? According to Schein, inventor of the idea of process consultation: 'any time we help someone we are in effect allying ourselves with the goals and values they represent. We cannot later abdicate responsibility for the help we have provided if that turns out to have had bad effects on other groups (Schein 1978a:127).

What follows is to state the obvious. Greater impact on people's empowerment -- in terms of, say, their right to life through healthcare, water and education -- is made by decisions taken by the Bank and the IMF on debt repayment than can be made by an infinity of face-to-face participatory events which have no power over debt. And, bluntly, one of the reasons why that debt accumulated was through loans to corrupt and criminal regimes kept in power to sustain a particular world order. Loans were also made by private sector banks to private sector organizations in the Third World. When these creditors defaulted, Third World governments were forced to take the debts on. In an otherwise neo-liberalizing world, private sector debt is nationalized and its repayment extorted from individual, poor, taxpayers (e.g. Chossudovsky 1997).

It is participatory development's institutional groupthink (Cooke 2001) that requires the restatement of these basic facts so baldly. Organizations such as the Bretton Woods Project (2003- ) produce rigorously researched account of the Bank's dysfunctional behavior, and Griffiths (2003) produces an insider accounts of its ideological infliction of famine; and the opposition of worldwide anti-globalization movements is widely reported. Yet the participation establishment seems to have no qualms (to put it mildly) and, at least in some cases, has supported the Bank's appropriation of participatory discourse and methods. More basic facts: the World Bank is an organization that sees more neo-liberalism as the remedy for the problems it has visited on the world's poor; and, to the point here, it uses participatory methodolgies and practitioners to enforce that agenda (see Brown, this volume). Those participatory practitioners are taking an ideological stance. And, to be fair, there are some practitioners who know this, and will not work for or with Bank.

Otherwise, though, why do practitioners who might be assumed to be liberal rather than neo-liberal continue to work for the Bank material interest aside (see Rule V)? Publicly espoused justifications are often along the lines that it is possible to make a difference through a specific Bank project, or more generally that there is the space for alternatives within the Bank, which is not a homogenous monolith.

A retort to the first of these is that given all the participatory interventions which might be made, why is so much effort dedicated to the Bank's. Moreover, it is breathtaking vanity for participatory practitioners to suggest that they can succeed in changing the Bank from within when others better qualified have not been able to do so, from Nobel prize-winning Joseph Stiglitz through to World Development Report author (or not) Ravi Kanbur (Pincus and Winters 2002). Perhaps, rather, participatory practitioners are allowed through the door precisely because there is no danger of them challenging neo-liberal hegemony, or, worse, because they sustain it.

The point about the Bank not being a monolith works the other way. There is enough in political and organizational theories to show that institutions present different faces to different people the better to incorporate them, to legitimize themselves in society, and to buy critics off (of which more in Rule II). Participatory development also does a more directly neo-liberalizing job for the Bank. A study by the World Development Movement (Marshall and Woodroffe 2001) of country Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) found that, pro-poor rhetoric aside, the actual changes they proposed, in every country, were neo-liberal prescriptions identical with both previously discredited Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs), and with one another. This monolithic homogeneity would be logically surprising if the clams for participation in their production held true, suggesting that participating poor people from countries as diverse as Ghana, Bolivia and Cambodia all chose privitization and user fees, but not redistribution, as the solution to their problems.

Perhaps participator practitioners are particularly prone to this form of vanity because of what controlling participatory processes does to their self-image. Studies of some of the earliest versions of organized participatory face-to-face groups, known as T(raining)-groups, from the 1950s onwards have shown how they generate euphoria in both participants and facilitates, so the latter sense they have in their gift some magical power capable of engendering profound personal transformation (Kleiner 1996). Addition to the sense of well-being that they are apparently able to create can lead practitioners to commit to the cause which permits their participatory practice, oblivious to what that cause it, its consequences, or to the fact that what they are doing is simply a matter of social-psychological technique." (43-45)

In Rule 2 "Remember: co-option, co-option, co-option", Cooke writes:

"Sadly, there is yet a third form of co-optation -- of radical participation by the orthodoxy (symbolized by even the World Bank [2003b] claiming to host an 'Empowerment Community of Practice') - which is perhaps the most problematic for the purposes of this book. In the work of participatory theoriest -- Friere (1972) par excellence -- for whom participation is about changing consciousness, emancipation rather than just empowerment has been around for some time. However, there is a longstanding analysis in organization studies which identifies a dynamic in which such radical ideas are co-opted, reduced to technique, and applied for non-emancipatory end. Ironically, the metaphorical term used to describe this process is 'colonization' (Prasad 2003). A specific example is the work of Saul Alinsky (Cooke 1998). Alinsky's model of participatory grassroots organizing, discussed in Reveille for Radicals (1948), was part of a programme which included bringing the means of production into the common ownership, and critiqued the US labour movement for racist collusion with monopoly capital. But his method (along with that of others) was appropriated, neutralized and transformed by Lippitt et al. (1958), in their standard work which produced a generic model of change interventions and, in passing, brought the term 'change agent' to prominence." (46-47)

This essay dovetails nicely with Duffield's "Global Governance and the New Wars", which suggests that development continually reinvents itself in order to obscure the underlying dynamics of powerful states maintaining their hegemony. Thus, "failure" is not a structural dynamic, but is just a problem of method.

To their credit, most of the authors in this volume "perceive inequality as a form of asymmetric conflict: a conflict that is located at the structural rather than the interpersonal level, and a conflict in which power is unevenly distributed." (213) And, given that political recognition, propose various radical schemes to challenge those power arrangments and build a more empowered citizen. However, as Cooke observes, the method of doing that called "participation" has been co-opted already, and perhaps the only way to prevent disempowering institutions from using it as cover is to begin the cycle anew and develop a new vocabulary for collective consciousness raising.

Cooke, Bill and Uma Kothari, eds. 2001. Participation: The New Tyranny? Zed Books: London.

Participatory development is the new thing in humanitarian and development circles. The idea is that previous development paradigms failed because they imposed solutions on communities that were inappropriate in the local context. To ameliorate that problem, aid workers, World Bank employees, etc, would go to the affected communities and engage in group discussions about the proposed projects and come up with more effective aid interventions. This volume critiques that approach by arguing that participatory methods merely apply a patina of local involvement to what remains an externally driven, top-down planning process.

(Also, for this annotation, I'm just going to crib the Introductory summary of the essays contained in the volume, cause I lack the time/ambition to look at them all again right now.)

Cooke, Bill and Uma Kothari. "The Case for Participation as Tyranny."

"Taken together, these themes (there are other, which readers may identify) point to what for us is the fundamental concern. It becomes clear from a reading of the chapters in this book that the proponents of participatory development have generally been naive about the complexities of power and power relations. This is the case not only 'on the ground' between 'facilitators' and 'participants', between 'participants' and more widely between 'donors' and 'beneficiaries', but also historically and discursively in the construction of what constitutes knowledge and social norms. While analyses of power in participation are not new, what is evident here is that there are multiple and diverse ways in which this power is expressed; furthermore, articulations of power are very often less visible, being as they are embedded in social and cultural practices. Thus this book identifies a more nuanced set of understandings of the workings of power as being necessary, in order to uncover its varied and subtle manifestations in the very discourse of participation.

The genealogies and histories of development in general, and participatory practices in particular, that are found in some of these chapters further explicate how a misunderstanding of power underpins much of the participatory discourse. The identification of the (mis)interpretations of how and where power is expressed within participation compels us to reconsider the notion of empowerment, and the claims to empowerment made by many participatory practitioners. Since an understanding of the concept of 'empowerment' is based on particular realizations of its root concept, 'power', and since this, as some of the chapters in this book argue, has been simplified in the theory and practice of participation, the meanings ascribed to the condition of empowerment and the claims made for its attainment for those who have been marginalized must also be subjected to further scrutiny.

This confirms, for us, that we were right to discuss participation in terms of its tyrannical potential, remembering that tyranny is precisely about the illegitimate and/or unjust uses of power. The question we will not answer here, however, is whether this potential can be overcome. What we do suggest, however, is a starting point for those who might try to redeem it. This is to build a more sophisticated and genuinely reflexive understanding of power and its manifestations and dynamics. Written into this understanding must be a recognition that participatory development does not have a reified existence 'out there', but is constructed by a cadre of development professionals, be they academics, practitioners or policy-makers, whose ability to create or sustain this discourse is indicative of the power they possess. This must be accompanied by an acknowledgment that questions such as 'Whose reality counts?' (Chambers 1997), which suggest that there are contrasting versions of reality, mask the extent to which these development professionals, in their applications of the ideas of participatory development, are actually still engaged in the construction of a particular reality -- one that at root is amenable to, and justifies, their existence and intervention within it.

What we are calling for as a first step, therefore, is a genuine and rigorous reflexivity, one that acknowledges the processes and consequences of these constructions. This means going beyond the evident narrowness (verging on narcissism) of the existing self-acclaimed 'self-critical epistemological awareness' (Chambers 1997: 32) to draw on a deeper and more wide-ranging set of analyses than has hitherto been the case. This book has provided some of these analyses and, we hope, initiated this reflexivity. Ironically, though, authentic reflexivity requires a level of open-mindedness that accepts that participatory development may inevitably be tyrannical, and preparedness to abandon it if this is the case. Thus any meaningful attempt to save participatory development requires a sincere acceptance of the possibility that it should not be saved." (14-15)

Mosse, David. "'People's Knowledge', Participation and Patronage: Operations and Representations in Rural Development"

"David Mosse in Chapter 2 challenges the populist assumption that attention to 'local knowledge' through participatory learning will redefine the relationship between local communities and development organizations. Using project-based illustrations, he shows that 'local knowledge', far from determining planning processes and outcomes, is often structured by them. For example, what in one case was expressed as a 'local need' was actually shaped by local perceptions of what the agency in question could legitimately and realistically be expected to deliver. Indeed, 'participatory planning' may, more accurately, be view as the acquistion and manipulation of a new 'planning knowledge' rather than the incorporation of 'people's knowledge' by projects.

Mosse then shows how participatory ideals are often operationally constrained by institutional contexts that require formal and informal bureaucratic goals to be met. Participation nevertheless remains important as part of a projects as a 'system of representations'. As such, ideas of participation are oriented towards concerns that are external to project locations. There representations do not necessarily speak directly to local practice and provide little by way of guidance on project implementation, but they are important in negotiating relationships with donors, and more widely in underpinning positions withing development policy debates." (8)

Cleaver, Frances. "Institutions, Agency and the Limitations of Participatory Approaches to Development."

"In Chapter 3 Frances Cleaver also makes use of case studies, here in relation to water resource usage. The chapter begins by questioning 'the heroic claims made for development', and by presenting the case for understanding the role of social structure and of individual agency in shaping participation. Participatory development, Cleaver suggests, tends to conflate social structures with institutions, most commonly conceptualized as organizations, not least because such institutions apparently make social structures 'legible'. However, participatory development bureaucracies have preferences for institutional arrangements that may not correspond with those of 'participants'. Problems identified include and espousal of the importance of informal institutions while actual concentration is on the formal; the varying forms of participation that different institutional types require; the questionable assumptions about 'community' upon which participatory institution-building is based; and the tendency towards foundationalism about local communities.

The chapter goes on to consider the inadequacy of participatory approaches' models of individual agency and the links between these and social structures. The argument presented here is that understandings of the motivations of individuals to participate, or not, are vague, and simplistic assumptions are made about the rationality inherent in participating, and the irresponsibility of not doing so. Furthermore, participatory approaches fail to recognize how different, changing and multiple identities of individuals impact upon their choices about whether and how to participate, and overlook the potential links between inclusion in participatory processes and subordination." (8-9)

Hildyard, Nicholas, Pandurang Hedge, Paul Wolvekamp, and Somasekhare Reddy. "Pluralism, Participation and Power: Joint Forest Management in India."

Chapter 4, by [all those people above], examines, in light of the increasing fashion for participatory forest management, conflicts over the meanings of 'participation' and 'forests'. It begins by suggesting that the failure by donors to implement policies on participation is institutionally deep-seated and structural, and that through participatory is institutionally deep-seated and structural, and that through participatory development grassroots organizations are in danger of becoming 'the human software through which investments cn be made with least local opposition'. It then shows that while participatory Joint Forest Management project in which the chapter authors were involved as local activists of Northern-based solidarity groups. The authors conclude by arguing that unless participatory processes take into account the relative bargaining power of so-called stakeholders they are in danger of merely providing opportunities for the more powerful." (9)

Francis, Paul. "Participatory Development at the World Bank: the Primacy of Process."

"In Chapter 5 Paul Francis begins by summarizing the three main approaches to participation employed by the World Bank -- Beneficiary Assessment, Social Analysis, and PRA -- before going on to focus on the last of these. Initially the chapter sets out PRA's methodological and epistemological bases before questioning the relationship between 'the community' and 'the professional', suggesting inter alia that the importance of charismatic specialists, who claim a moral position combined with an inner-directedness and the symbolism of 'reversal', recalls the role of the shaman. Francis suggests that PRA is rite of communion, the performance of which 'enacts an exorcism, of sorts, of the phantoms of "conventional" development practice', and analyses the World Bank Participation Sourcebook as 'part self-improvement manual and part mythical text. At the same time, though, the reductionist simplifications of PRA techniques are noted. Next Francis considers the uptake of participatory approaches at the Bank within the context of the new emphasis on 'the social' in terms of process, consultation and partnership. He argues that underlying structural determinants of well-being are given little attention and that this is reinforced by the individualist nature of PRA, and the absence of any real alternative vision of development leaves it vulnerable to opportunism and co-option." (10)

Hailey, John. "Beyond the Formulaic: Process and Practice in South Asian NGOs."

"In Chapter 6 John Hailey draws on a range of ideas to question the formulaic approaches to participatory decision-making promoted and even imposed by donors and other development actors. These include Hoftstede's work on cross-cultural management, a Foucaldian analysis of power and the discourse of participation, and a recognition of the Cold War uses of community participation. Hailey begins by reviewing recent research into the development and growth of successful South Asian NGOs that suggested that NGO success resulted from the understandings of, and responses to, the needs of the local communities where they worked. However, research showed that this closeness to communities arose not from the application of the well-known formulaic approaches to participation -- indeed, they were conspicuous by their absence. Rather, as case examples in the chapter illustrate, success was achieved by a long-term effort by NGO leaders to build close personal relations with individuals and groups in the communities with which they worked, and with NGO staff. The chapter then offers three explanations for the absence of formulaic approaches to participation. The first is that they have real operational limitations, the second is that they are culturally inappropriate, and the third is that their history and the reality of the practice indicate that they might (legitimately) be seen as a means of imposing external control." (10)

Cooke, Bill. "The Social Psychological Limits of Participation?"

In Chapter 7, Bill Cooke uses four concepts from social psychology (risky shift, the Abilene paradox, groupthink, and coercive persuasion) to demonstrate how individuals' thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the presence -- real, imagined or implied -- of others. These concepts suggest that problems can arise as a consequence of the face-to-face interactions that are a defining feature of participatory development. Taken together the four concepts suggest that participatory process can lead people to take, first, collective decisions that are more risky than those they would have taken individually (i.e. risky shift). Second, they can lead to people taking a decision that participants have second-guessed is what everyone else wants, when the opposite is the case (the Abilene paradox). Third, particular dynamics, the symptoms of which include a belief in the inherent morality of what is being done, self-censorship, and the existence of 'mindguards', can lead to evidently wrong decisions, which can be harmful to 'outgroup' members (groupthink). Fourth, the manipulation of group processes can lead to malign changes in ideological beliefs, or consciousness (coercive persuasion). All four challenge participatory development's claims for effectiveness and empowerment, and suggest a disciplinary bias that permits the use of technology on the world's poor without the safeguards the rich would expect." (10-11)

Taylor, Harry. "Insights into Participation from Critical Management and Labour Process Perspectives."

"In Chapter 8 Harry Taylor challenges Robert Chambers' positive spin on the parallels between participatory development and participatory management. Taylor argues that participation in both cases is part of a wider attempt to influence power relations between elite groups and the less powerful -- be they individual project beneficiaries or the employees of organizations in the developing world. He makes his case by first drawing parallels between project beneficiaries and employees within organizations in terms of their relative dependancy and powerlessness. Moving on to consider arguments for participation from mainstream management, he suggests that even on its own terms doubts about its feasibility and desirability exist. From a more critical management perspective he then draw on Foucaldian and labour process critiques, which suggest that participation is always constrained, and hides and at the same time perpetuates certain sets of power relations. Taylore rounds off his chapter by suggesting why there is disillusionment with participation in both development and management arenas, and by speculating on the prospects for 'genuine' participation." (11)

Kothari, Uma. "Power, Knowledge and Social Control in Participatory Development."

"In Chapter 9 Uma Kothari challenges the truth claims made be participatory development. Like Harry Taylor and John Hailey she proposes a Foucauldian approach to the understanding of power, as something which circulates, rather than as something divided between those who have it and those who do not. This latter dichotomous approach typifies participatory development, and leads to practices based in conventional stratifications of power. These serve both to conceal daily oppressions in people's lives that run through every aspect of everyday life and to ensure that participants remain the subject of development surveillance. Although PRA seeks to reveal the realities of everyday life, paradoxically its public nature means that the more participatory it is, the more the power structure of the local community will be masked. The chapter concludes by drawing on the work of Goffman to consider how the ritual practices of PRA actually serve to subvert it, by producing front stage performances that conceal both the 'real' reality of the back stage, and come to be taken for that reality." (11-12)

Mohan, Giles. "Beyond Participation: Strategies for Deeper Empowerment."

"In Chapter 10 Giles Mohan has two major aims. The first is to critique participatory practices, in particular the ways in which local knowledge is supposedly produced as a reversal of 'top-down' approaches. This critique is made using the ideas associated with post-colonial studies and argues that a subtle Eurocentrism pervade the interventions of non-local development workers. By supposedly focusing on the personal and the local as the sites of empowerment and knowledge, participatory approaches minimize the importance of the other places where power and knowledge are located, for example with 'us' in the Western development community and with the state. The chapter then addresses its second aim, which is to explore the possibility of moving beyond these pitfalls, weaving theoretical observations with a discussion of the work of Village Aid. Mohan calls for a radicalized hybridity, beyond bounded notions of self/other and insider/outsider; and a scaling up of local interventions, linking them to the complex processes of democratization, anti-imperialism and feminism." (12)

Henkel, Heiko and Roderick Stirrat. "Participation as Spiritual Duty; Empowerment as Secular Subjection."

"Heiko Henkel and Roderick Stirrat's Chapter 11 takes an anthropological approach. They are concerned with the practices, ideas and cosmologies of those who plan and practise 'development projects'. They begin by looking at genealogies of participation, which they identify as being primarily religious, noting that participation was a moral imperative of the Reformation, and tracing this imperative through nineteenth-century British non-conformism to the founding of British development NGOs. The chapter, like Chapter 5, then considers participation as a religious experience, but sees different parallels, particularly in the reversal of binary oppositions that characterize the work of both Robert Chambers and Christian traditions of 'the world turned upside down'. Henkel and Stirrat go on to address the notion of 'empowerment', which they claim may not be as liberating as the new orthodoxy suggests. The question that should be asked, they argue, is not how much people are empowered, but for what. Their own answer to this question is that participatory approaches shape individual identities, 'empowering' participants 'to take part in the modern sector of developing societies'. This empowerment is therefore tantamount, in Foucauldian terms, to subjection." (12-13)

I really need to learn to type faster ...

Palmer, David Scott, ed. 1994. Shining Path of Peru. St. Martin's Press: New York.

This is collection of essays about Sendero Luminoso (The Shining Path) written just after the collapse of the movement after its leader was arrested in Lima. The book is important both for its discussion of Peruvian history and politics, and for its truly multiperspectival look at SL, with articles from researchers from different regions and different subject positions.

Palmer, David Scott. "Introduction: History, Politics, and Shining Path in Peru." The volume's introductory essay, but also a very good overview of Peruvian political dynamics, which have been incredibly volatile and not particularly democratic for most of the country's history.

Smith, Michael L. "Taking the High Ground: Shining Path and the Andes." Offers 7 propositions to explain Sendero, and since I'm a sucker for numbered lists, they are as follows:

1. Sendero bases its strategy on an understanding of the interplay between Andean society, politics, geography, and ecology.

2. In practical terms, Sendero's frame of reference works within a local or regional setting.

3. Sendero plays off the friction within the interface between urban and rural worlds.

4. Sendero's fetish for violence serves as a compass in navigating the waters of Andean ecopolitics.

5. Sendero's aim is to disorganize politics.

6. Sendero fills the vacuum it has created with three elements: a militarized party apparatus, armed violence, and an iron-clad ideology.

7. Sendero's pedagogical roots and experience give its ideology and praxis a utilitarian, didactic approach that belies its dogmatism.

Degregori, Carlos Ivan. "Return to the Past." Argues that Sendero is best understood in the context of Peruvian political history, especially the importance of education, authoritarianism, and indigenous narratives.

de Wit, Ton and Vera Gianotten. "The Center's Multiple Failures." "The underlying context for Peru's violence is a weak civil society and a weak state -- a society made up of disarticulated groups that are seldom mutually involved and a state unable to process effectively and respond appropriately to the demands of it population. Given this context, state coercion is the mechanism often used to maintain order and putative national unity." (73)

Isbell, Billie Jean. "Shining Path and Peasant Responses in Rural Ayacucho." A discussion of Sendero in Chuschi, which was where they initially launched their military campaign. Initially, the local population was very receptive, because Sendero promised both education and eradication of commonly accepted "public enemies" like cattle theives. However, the Sendero campaign of violence quickly turned the population, who redefined them as naqas, "flesh-eating beings feeding off a population with no more fat to give", and requested that the government station security forces in the town. (93)

Berg, Ronald H. "Peasant Responses to Shining Path in Andahuaylas." Another case study of Sendero history in a highland province. An excerpt:

"Our case study of Andahuaylas has focused on the specific economic and social processes in the region, particularly since the agrarian reform beginning in 1969. The state thwarted a radical, grass-roots movement for land reform and imposed its own bureaucratic cooperative structure. The cooperatives lacked accountability and functioned in many repects as the haciendas had. [See also Elisabeth Jean Wood's discussion of Salvadoran government cooperatives] Because their very creation ended the possibility of large-scale land redistribution, the cooperatives became foci of resentment by the peasants.

During this same period the economy became increasingly polarized and social tensions mounted. And entrepreneurial class filled the commercial vacuum left by the departure of the landlords, and these entrepreneurs prospered with the help of loans for commercial agriculture. At the same time, the downturn of the Peruvian economy led to depressed wages and unemployment for the rest of the population.

The emergence of Shining Path should not be seen simply as a reflection of poverty [see also Lichbach] but rather in terms of these specific circumstances. Sendero has been adroit at taking advantage of this situation, recruiting a core of devoted followers, organizing over a period of years, and attacking the objects of popular resentment -- upwardly mobile peasants and state-sponsored cooperatives.

The specific character of this peasant economy conditions the form of the rebellion. A majority of households depend on wage labor, both locally and in the cities, and the increasing dependence on wage labor makes peasants especially vulnerably to economic fluctuations. At the same time, Andahuaylas remains a region of small-holding peasants whose desire for land is intense. As peasant-workers, the agriculturalists of Andahuaylas rely on wages for a portion of their income, but they retain landholdings as a source of economic security. They also depend on forms of economic reciprocity as a central element in the agricultural economy. Peasant economy and society still are central to an understanding of Shining Path's growth in these areas.

Many peasants sympathize with Sendero because the movement reflects their longstanding aspirations for local control and for the ownership of plots of land. The movement attacks elements in rural society that are perceived as unjust and as in conflict with these fundamental goals. In this sense, support for SL fits a pattern of peasant rebellions against haciendas and the state since the end of the nineteenth century. For Sendero sets itself up as a moral authority and as a voice for peasants' grievances, playing upon cultural principles including notions of folk justice and opposition to mistis. Although many of Sendero's active supporters are young, mobile people with urban experience, their aspirations and values are shaped by their peasants background.

In spite of its ability to attract sympathy and support among parts of the peasantry, it is highly unlikely that Sendero will be able to capture state power or even to control large areas of the Andes for long periods of time. Sendero's secretive cell organization leads to effective small-scale guerrilla harassing operations, but not to the mobilizations of mass support. Its ideology is foreign to the peasants and at odds with many of their fundamental beliefs. It remains a highly destructive organization, offering the illusion of the resurrection of the Andean community but the reality of short-lived revenge against some of the objects of popular resentment." (120-121)

Gonzales, Jose E. "Guerrillas and Coca in the Upper Huallaga Valley." Sendero taxed coca production to fund its organization and UHV produces a lot of coca leaf. Of note in this article is a discussion of the successful counterinsurgency waged there by a maverick general who agreed to ignore the coca growers if they would help him fight SL. (130-133) The article concludes that when the Army ignores coca and focuses on SL, the growers flourish and SL wanes, but when police and DEA really focus on drug production, then the opposite is true.

Smith, Michael L. "Shining Path's Urban Strategy: Ate Vitarte." Ate Vitarte is poor district in Lima, and was the base from which Sendero launched its campaign of urban violence within Lima proper.

"A snapshot of the situation in mid-1990 shows that Sendero had secured its beachhead on the Central Highway and in Lima. Through infiltration, it paralyzed many of the grass-roots organizations along the Central Highway. Its hyperactive curiosity and hunger for intelligence led its activists to penetrate a whole range of local groups (soup kitchens, school milk programs, evangelical groups, temporary emergency work programs, and political parties). It meant there were no free forums where the local community could debate resistance without being fingered by spies and sympathizers ...

Across the range of its activities Sendero shows some consistent patterns. It uses the local conflicts to push for polarization and armed violence. It harnesses the processes of decline or anarchy, Peru's self-destructive tendencies, to the goals of the revolution. Prisons and courts, universities and secondary schools, striking trade unions and squatter settlements are foci of radicalization. By this approach, SL hopes to break down the organizations already in place and pick up those pieces that it may be able to turn to armed revolt. Frequently the government and its security services do Sendero a service by increasing pressure on these same foci. This tactic allows Sendero to concentrate its efforts on key leverage points within Peruvian society. Such a focusing of forces means that SL magnifies its presence and impact on grass-roots organizations well beyond its number of activists ...

As separate parts, Sendero's urban presence may seem insignificant. These parts, however, are integral to an overall strategy that augments its impact over time. With carefully laid plans, centralized command, organizational discipline, and meticulous care for detail, Guzman's followers have strategic and tactical advantages over their political adversaries. While mainstream parties, trade union federations, and the government mustered forces to meet peak moments (the November 1989 March for Peace, for instance), they could not sustain a coherent policy over the medium term.

Throughout the period under review, Sendero found itself aided and abetted in Lima by a breakdown in the presence of the state, just as was occurring in the countryside. Not only could the state not expand its services and authority into areas of need, but it lost control over neighborhoods and services that it already had in place. Schoolteachers no longer had adequate monitoring, police no longer patrolled the streets, and corruption became the currency to make things works. Those political and social forces that wanted to work through the system found themselves frustrated. Sendero and others who worked outside the established order found a more open track.

Finally, a host of individuals and institutions, from the presidency down to organizations that claimed to back Lima's poor and marginalized, failed to grasp Sendero's changing scope and thrust in urban areas. Although evidence began to pile up after the 1986 prison mutiny and intensified in mid-1988, Peru's elites put little effective effort and resources into confronting this threat. It was as if the lessons of Ayacucho and the Andes had been in vain." (162-163)

Gorriti, Gustavo. "Shining Path's Stalin and Trotsky." Key lesson: Do not have a threesome involving the girlfriend of the leader of a violent revolutionary organization. And, if you do, ensure you lock the door. Abimael Guzman Reynoso (aka Comrade Gonzalo) was the 'Stalin' of SL, and in the rise of the organization worked closely with the more charismatic and charming Luis Kawata Makabe (aka Kabo) who was insturmental in the early (nonviolent) phase of the organizations formation. Then Gonzola caught Kabo in flagrante delicto and life for Kabo quickly went downhill. By 1987 "[h]e had only a few of his teeth left and his skin was all dried out and stretched over his fragile face. His worn clothes also accurately displayed his misfortunes and current situation ... He told his friends that he had asked for an explanation for his expulsion from the party to which he had dedicated the best years of his life. 'I don't understand what's going on' he said. 'Let them explain things to me or let them kill me,' he observed, and then added with a toothless smile, 'Cheers!' ... Instead of seeking out his Trotsky to kill him, Guzman systematically broke his will to resist instead and then used what remained for whatever purpose suited him. As Guzman's Trotsky, Kawata lives and serves, and example to all who might resist the discipline and the orthodoxy of the party that their only course is to march onward in lock step for the cause of Marx, Lenin, Mao, and Gonzalo." (185-187) So a note to all would-be revolutionaries -- hands off the boss' wife, mistresses, girlfriends, and assorted other consorts!

Tarazona-Sevillano, Gabriela. "The Organization of Shining Path." An excellent overview of how SL is set up, how people advance within the organization, the role of women, etc.

Marks, Tom. "Making Revolution with Shining Path." A short article that applies a theoretical framework to Sendero as an insurgency in order to explain the utility of terror as an insurgent tactic.

Woy-Hazelton, Sandra and William A. Hazelton. "Shining Path and the Marxist Left." A discussion of the relationship between legal parties and Sendero -- in short, Sendero's pursuit of violent revolution put the leftist parties in quite a pickle, because they were forced to ask to what extent they were contributing to the advent of world, or even Peruvian, social revolution. The answer split the leftwing parties and prevented the formation of an effective electoral coalition.

McClintock, Cynthia. "Theories of Revolution and the Case of Peru." Another application of theories of revolution to the specifics of the Peruvian case.

Palmer, David Scott. "Conclusion: The View from the Windows." This essay is really amazing and summarizes the rest of the book. Really, any questions about Sendero Luminoso should start here, then reference the rest of the book as necessary. It's another bulleted list, but has 18 items and requires explanation of each point, and I don't really feel like retyping the whole chapter.

Cilliers, Jakkie and Christian Dietrich, eds. 2000. Angola's War Economy: The Role of Oil and Diamonds. Institute for Security Studies: Pretoria.

This is an edited volume that is an in-depth analysis of the oil and diamond trade in Angola. This annotation just provides the article titles and a brief topical summary, so individual articles can be referenced as needed.

Cilliers, Jakkie. "Resource wars -- a new type of insurgency" Introduces the volume and articulates Collier's thesis about Resource Wars (put simply, the best indication of a country's propensity for civil conflict is the size and proportion of the economy that is based on the export of primary resources, like oil, diamonds, and the like.)

Le Billion, Philippe. "The political economy of resource wars" Just like what it sounds like. A further exploration of this type of conflict, where control of a particular area and its minerals is more important than popular support.

Cornwell, Richard. "The war for independence" A great introduction to the modern history of Angola for people who, like me, haven't the foggiest notion why UNITA and the MPLA don't get along.

de Beer, Hannalie and Virginia Gamba. "The arms dilemma: resources for arms or arms for resources?" This article explores the relationship between resource control and combat power, and how that structure shifted with the end of the Cold War and the withdrawal of external politically motivated military aid impacted the conflict.

Malaquias, Assis. "Ethnicity and conflict in Angola: prospects for reconciliation" So in addition to (or perhaps, superceding) their political differences the MPLA and UNITA are also split along ethnic lines (and, within the movements, along clan / sub-tribal lines). While in colonial times, ethnic differences were used to maintain control, the end of the colonial era did not signal an end to ethnic competition for state patronage networks. The author argues for a post-colonial state that embraces ethnic identity but allows citizens to fully effective as both citizens and ethnic group members.

Ostheimer, Andrea E. "Aid agencies: providers of essential resources?" A short article that is an illustration of Fiona Terry's point in Condemned to Repeat. Not the same sort of problem as elsewhere, because aid is not a necessary or sufficient condition to continue the conflict, even if it is coopted a bit and contributes.


Dietrich, Christian. "Inventory of formal diamond mining in Angola" Everything you ever wanted to know about diamond concessions and corporations in Angola, but were afraid to ask.

Dietrich, Christian. "Power struggles in the diamond fields." This article addresses the Angolan informal diamond mining industry, the relationship between mining and military capacity, and the attempts by the central government to gain control of the industry from the generals in the area.

Clarke, Duncan. "Petroleum prospects and political power." Everything you ever wanted to know about offshore oil in Angola but were afraid to ask PLUS an explanation of how oil is more amenable to exploitation by very narrow patronage networks (the oil is offshore, few indigenous workers are required, assets flow from MNCs to political elites directly).

Reno, William. "The real (war) economy of Angola." An short but interesting article in which Reno argues that the Angolan illicit economy is similar to 19th-century colonial structures, insofar as both employed a corporatized security element to secure economically vital areas while tolerating insecurity elsewhere in the country. To use De Waal's formulation, the elites are externally rather than internally focused.

Dietrich, H Richard. "Ethical considerations for multinationals in Angola." After arguing for the importance of corporate ethics, suggests guidelines for the oil, banking, and diamond sectors.

Potgieter, Jakkie. "'Taking aid from the devil himself' -- UNITA's support structures." A historical review of how UNITA developed and implemented a strategy of self-reliance that has enabled the organization to survive the loss of multiple patrons over the years, and suggestions of how the international community could disrupt UNITA's supply chain.

Dietrich, Christian. "UNITA's diamond mining and exporting capacity." A review of the specific fields UNITA controls and how they move diamonds onto the international market.

Peleman, Johan. "The logistics of sanctions busting: the airborne component." A very interesting article on how UNITA sustains itself through off-the-books flights into the combat zone. Of additional interest is how these flights are private commercial endeavors and are not organic to UNITA.

Dietrich, Christian. "Porous borders and diamonds." Explains how diamonds get from Angola to Zales and estimates the trade along all available routes. Includes case studies.

Cilliers, Jakkie. "Beyond the stalemate?" As the war had not ended by the time this book was published, this article takes a pessimistic view and offers some suggestions. Might be interesting to compare Cillier's predictions with an actual history of the peace agreement as it occurred.

Nordstrom, Carolyn. 2007. Global Outlaws: Crime, Money, and Power in the Comtemporary World. University of California Press: Berkeley.

Best book EVAR!!! In this book, Carolyn Nordstrom embarks on a global journey to explore the nexus of goods, money, and power as they flow through contemporary conflict zones. She finds that the traditional demarcations of borders, laws, contrabond, il/legal trade are collective fictions that have little explanatory power of the world as it is. Instead, huge quantities of trade take place "off the books" and are fully integrated into the global economy. "[E]xtra-legal networks constitute a series of power grids that shape the fundamental econo-political dynamics of the world today." (xvii)

Nordstrom works from small to large, and so begins her exploration with an orphan selling cigarettes in Angola. This is actually a remarkably important thing to do, because it highlights the reality that a network-based approach means that having tools for approaching the subject position of any member of the network is key to understanding the network as a whole. Contrast this with a hierarchical approach, which would imply that trade can be understood through aggregate data and analysis of elite interactions. In the next step back, we contemplate where the child gets cigarettes:

"The man who fronts cigarettes to street children -- from Africa through Asia to the Americas -- is a lynchpin in the intersections of extra-legal transactions, business development, and political power. In a town like Muleque, Kadonga stands as an interesting nexus of linkages to international networks, informal economies, and formal state systems. With financial and business success, and with all their attendant alliances, this man, and those like him, can enjoy political power. As this book will show, he can back politicians, formulate policy through major state institutions, or stand for office directly. He can also work for international non-governmental organizations (INGOs), become a UN representative, sit on multilateral trade boards, or attend forums on international law. He isn't likely to give up his extra-legal alliances when he enters a formal state role. Why would he want to? As the young street child cigarette vendor reminded me: it's where he acquired money and power in the first place." (17)

The journey continues outward to the Gov'nor and his red tractors (supplied by an INGO and use to enrich the entrepreneurial warlord, and addresses the larger phenomenon of military participation in war economies:

"The number of trucks and planes traveling the country with everyday necessities like food, fuel, clothing, and medicines -- selling in city stores and village shops, at the sides of roadways and unregulated markets -- stretched out in my mind's eye. It linked with what must have been hundreds of thousands of local markets selling to the country's population. To millions of people. Daily. The sum total of revenues generated from the untaxed goods that changed economic hands daily had to be staggering. When all the unregulated extra-state daily transactions of life's necessities are totaled in, the figure of $1 million a day in illicit diamond sales pales by comparison. As Christian Dietrich said to me: "In the final tally: are you really making profits from diamonds or from all the soap and petrol and food and essentials that people need"

Such commodity networks are lifelines for a country. They anchor the complex interplay of economic development and profiteering: that kind of money can buy soldiers, sway politicians, even undermine governments; it can shape the course of development and of national policy. What military, what government, would allow anyone who was not fully allied with them such access? In the hands of the opposition, it could threaten the ruling party itself. At the same time, why would the government and the military allow access to allies without some kind of meaningful return? Return in monetary compensation, in support, in loyalty. Tight control over access to national infrastructure -- where right of entry is reserved for an exclusive in-group -- isn't (merely) about militaries controlling war, nor protecting national security.

This is the creation of empires. Subtle, international, unconditionally twenty-first century systems of wealth and authority ... but empires nonetheless" (40-41)

This analysis fits well within a lot of the Africanist literature: Reno's Warlord Politics, Chabal and Daloz's Criminalization of the State in Africa, for example. But this isn't war as pillage -- it's war as business, which has an important implication Nordstrom identifies:

"By reading the patterns of alliances, trade, and profiteering (in light of the more intangible dynamics of identity and ethos), I have had success predicting whether political violence in a country will worsen or abate. My predictions are generally 180 degrees opposite to those made by political scientists, diplomats, and INGO specialists. At the height of the most recent bout of severe warring in Angola, most analysts were pessimistic: they cited the massive gains leaders on all sides could enjoy in war -- gains that could easily disappear with peace. But the patterns of social relationships and extra/state activities made me optimistic. At the height of the war, I read its demise. Five months later, a peace accord was signed, and it has held for some years now. This kind of analysis isn’t unique. During severe days of war in 2001, I spoke with a European ambassador widely recognized as one of the brightest in the country. She told me she would give her frank opinion off the record ...

The ambassador and I were in agreement: in war, the leaders could divide up a country. But the very instability that can produce such gains, once industry begins to develop, becomes detrimental in the long term. To bring such gains to fruition, stable bases of politics, trade, and internationalization become desirable. At the break-even point, peace becomes a resource more useful that war. The robber barons are in place." (66-67)

The next section explores how national "shadow" economies are linked to international trade. Because, as described above millions of dollars in goods and capital flow through the country. But the idea of a major trade nexus situated in a remote warzone is nonsensical in the Kaplanesque construct of "The Coming Anarchy" that dominates Western discourse. Nonetheless, Nordstrom travels to the Truck Stop, a cross-border trading post in Angola.

"Today, Truck Stop boasts a hotel, scores of immense warehouses, tiny beer joints, and "supermarkets" that sell everything from food to toilets -- all lining a single main road running right up to the border post. Hundreds of trucks of every conceivable size and make are parked along the road, in front of bars and warehouses, beside supermarkets, and in front of the only hotel. The town seemed to consist of truckers in blue jeans, young women, and buisnesspeople from every continent. Beyond the town's perimeter, empty savanna bush stretches in every direction. A gigantic truck stop warehouse in a sea of sand and bush. A single thread of commerce connecting the riches made and lost in war and politics from all points of the world.

Along this thread of commerce flows millions of dollars. Daily. Truck Stop isn't a remote point on the world's financial maps; it's a geyser. Here, the term dollars isn't used figuratively. Business is done in dollars. The local currency isn't accepted, nor is Angola's kwanza. To stimulate trade, many of the warehouses are duty free, and a duty-free manufacturing zone ostensibly exists, though it appears to be more of a warehouse jobber -- moving goods internationally rather than engaging in manufacturing ...

This simple conversation points out a core dynamic in commerce and nation building. Neither of the two countries at this border post has a currency that exchanges on international markets. Neither can use the fruits of its own economy to get dollars. To obtain the international goods they need to survive, they have to find something that people with dollars are willing to give up dollars for. By hook, by genius, by hard work, or by crook.

Commerce went one way in this town: dollars came across the border, and goods went back. Goods accumulated at this border from all the world's continents. Dollars provided the government and businesspeople in this peacetime country with much-needed foreign exchange; goods kept the war-weary Angolan population from slipping off the UN quality-of-life charts completely.

Truckers kept the flow moving. Conversations, like goods, flowed around them as well. Information is one of the most important commodities in this line of work. Gina and I were sitting on the verandah of a beer joint talking with a group of truckers who had just come across the border with dollars to load up on supplies to take back to Angola ..." (72-73)

From this exploration, Nordstrom extracts 5 principles about the international economy: "Governments may allow business "irregularities" for the sake of national profits. Places like the border post accommodate this trade."; "The dollar-for-goods system is customized for speculation and profiteering."; "Extra-state speculation reaps far-reaching rewards."; "The fact that money is exchanged out of suburban houses or that trade takes place at exchanges in remote locales does not mean they are isolated in terms of global economies."; "The final point in this process is the somewhat radical notion that, in actual economies (those not reckoned solely in terms of formal legal exchanges but in terms of all exchange, regardless of legality), every location -- the proverbial everywhere -- simultaneously serves as offshore investment and local development." (87-88)

Nordstrom then moves into an analysis of global trade, considering fish poaching, drug smuggling, money laundering, port security, and law enforcement. The conclusion that keeps arising over and over again is that it is impossible to enforce anti-smuggling laws, because strict enforcement would require inspections that would bring the global logistics network to a grinding halt. The throughput of ports like Rotterdam and Los Angeles is staggering, and so only a tiny fraction of containers can be inspected. As a result an openly acknowledged system of graft and tax evasion operates -- I think the importance of this section, in addition to being profoundly interesting, is to demonstrate that the "shadow" economy is not just a function of attenuated state control in the world's hinterlands (to adopt a Western geography), but rather, is a natural tension between the state's ability to regulate and business' desire to make money. Thus, the "shadow" economy is a somewhat artificial differentiation -- il/licit and il/legal trade is a single entity that moves back and forth across boundaries, borders, customs, and conventions. To quote Nordstrom: "For most of the (hundreds of) people I spoke with for this research, the state is 'somewhat' important. They look out on a world of state bodies and extra-state networks -- variously disparate and intersecting as need dictates. Legality is a fluid concept." (207)

Nordstrom advocates a research agenda that focuses on "flow" and not "place" (207), which is to say a focus on the mutability and not the fixity of economic praxis. This, I think, is very similar to the project of constructing identity as contingent and contested -- if the nation-state is not central to earning a livelihood, then perhaps other Orientalist constructions of the post-colonial "other" deserve reexamination. And, more deeply, perhaps Western constructions of collective identity aren't so firm, either. If people are understood to be nodes on multiple overlapping networks of identity, kin, trade, politics, etc. then the process of engaging in development planning, counterinsurgency, or social advocacy begins to look very different.

And naturally, I can't wait to put into motion the secret plan that take me and my co-conspirator to the far flung reaches of the globe to search out these networks and write amazing things about them ...

Lichbach, Mark. 1998. The Rebel's Dilemma. University of Michigan Press: Ann Arbor.

So this book is incredibly important for understanding post-modern war. In a nutshell, it applies a rational actor model to the collective action problems inherent in public protest. The problem faced by would-be revolutionaries is that they are trying to motivate people to make a personal sacrifice in order to achieve a public good. Thus, potential followers all have compelling reasons to free-ride on the efforts of others, which, in turn, implies that everyone will individually choose to stay home and let others do the work and thus no collective dissent ought to ever occur. And, as the theory predicts, most of the time dissent DOESN'T occur; however, it is obvious that in reality sometimes people are able to overcome the collective action problem and mobilize an organization against the state. This book explores how that's possible.

The incredibly short version is that dissident entrepreneurs overcome CA problems by changing the incentive structure perceived by potential dissidents so that the believe the potential benefits of participation outweigh the costs. There are a LOT of solutions, which are used in a complex, continuously changing pattern as multiple entrepreneurs compete for support and respond to state counteractions. Fortunately, the book is laid out in an incredibly deliberate fashion, and can be used as a reference as well as a free-standing work. Bottom line -- if you're analyzing an insurgency and haven't thought about Lichbach, you're probably wrong.

Also relevant is Lichbach's critique of Deprivation models of revolution, which posit that when people are angry enough they spontaneously rebel and overthrow the state. This seems plausible enough, because revolutions don't seem to occur under the banner of "Everything is Generally OK". However, if discontent were sufficient to explain revolution, the pattern of revolutionary activity would be fairly predictable. What Lichbach posits, I think persuasively, is that there are ALWAYS grievances against the state, because the state cannot satisfy all its constituents. Revolution, however, only occurs when a dissident entrepreneur figures out how to mobilize people around a particular set of grievances and incentivize participation in such a way that the movement overcomes the collective action problem.

Dudley, Steven. 2006. Walking Ghosts: Murder and Guerrilla Politics in Colombia. Routledge Press: New York.

This book is an account of the life of Colombia’s Patriotic Union (UP) Party. Born out of peace negotiations between the FARC and the Colombian government in 1982-83 (26-27), it quickly grew in popularity as Colombians embraced the chance to end their decades long civil war between Communist organizations (FARC [Marxist], ELN [Maoist], M-19 [urban Marxist] (87-88). Tragically, it inspired the creation of the para-military organizations that eventually became the AUC, and its members were systematically killed en masse (130). The organization struggled to distinguish itself from the FARC and reject the doctrine of struggle by all available means (legal and illegal), but to no avail – its members were abandoned by the FARC, who used the party both as an opportunity to expand its army and a martyr for future combat and were relentlessly persecuted by the military and the AUC. With the demise of the leading candidates of the Socialist Left the party disintegrated (165-166), although the shell of the organization carried on, still under constant threat, until the government electoral commission concluded that it lacked support and struck it from the rolls (230).

The book itself is well-written, as Dudley is a journalist by trade, and so writes with a story-tellers flair. At times he repeats information, and the editors let more typos slip by than they should have, but it’s a quick and worthwhile read. For me, it highlights a couple of interesting (and sad) phenomena. First, it confirms my belief that, given the relatively low cost of weapons, any organization with a solid income base can maintain a capacity for violence perpetually. So the FARC was not brought to heel by the government, but it also lacked the popularity (or the government lacked the brittleness) to completely take over the Colombian state. So a bloody conflict persists wherein both sides are locked in a stalemate. Second, it provides additional evidence for my fear that “peace-makers” tend to get killed at alarming rates in these conflicts. The UP became a lightning rod for both intellectuals and activists tired of violence and for anti-Communist sentiment. And so when the UP tried to reject violence and fully embrace the political process, it was ruthlessly destroyed, because, while it had supporters, it had no army. And the track record of good-will vs. bullets is uninspiring. These two facts then make me continue to ponder the difficulties in created peaceful settlements between warring parties – cause creating alternatives seems to be a good way to get the pacific leaders in society killed, but speaking only to the parties in conflict reinforces their identity claims. It’s all very difficult. And a touch depressing.

In summary – good book, should be read for factual background and not as theory or a general study of the conflict, but can be read quickly and easily.

Shayne, Julie. 2004. The Revolution Question: Feminisms in El Salvador, Chile, and Cuba. Rutgers University Press: New Jersey.

So here’s a book that demonstrates that if you’re ballsy enough, you can slip anything past your Dissertation Committee. To wit, Shayne conducts a series of interviews to demonstrate that revolutions can give rise to feminist consciousness in post-revolutionary society. What her data indicates is that in post-Pinochet Chile and post-Batista Cuba, there is no mass feminist consciousness, and in fact the term is actively reviled. To many people, providing about 100 pages of evidence that refutes ones thesis would be enough to scrap the project. But Shayne isn’t most people. Shayne is a doctoral student, and so she does what she must. [It should be noted that this is pure conjecture on my part – I’m only postulating that this is a Doctoral Dissertation because it reads like one and I hope to Christ it wasn’t a serious professional academic effort.] Anyway, let’s see what happens in the text.

Shayne starts off strong talking about El Salvador. Women’s participation in the FMLN was extremely high (30% of combatants and between 27 and 34 percent of the total). (35) In addition, there were public women’s protest organizations and women were mobilizing at all levels both within and outside of the FMLN. However, in the aftermath of the war, women’s issues were shoved aside by the FMLN, leading to the rise of alternative organizations that spanned political boundaries. The organizations have been successful in adjusting Salvadoran policy to be more feminist in some important respects. So far so good.

Where her argument falls apart is when she moves to Chile, which currently has, according to “[n]early all the women I interviewed in 1999 … no women’s movement”. (105) That’s a pretty big damn problem, if you are contending that mass women’s mobilization ought to increase feminist consciousness in post-revolutionary society. So Shayne employs a slight of hand. The revolutionary mobilization did NOT occur during the decades of opposition to Pinochet and the eventual return to democratic rule – it occurred PRIOR. So the revolution occurred with the election of Allende, and the revolutionary mobilizations consisted of socialist “Mother’s Centers” that put women in contact. The consciousness created by the Allende “revolution” then became manifest in the Pinochet era, and contemporary Chile doesn’t count because it’s post-post-revolutionary and the theory only applies during the initial revolution. Or something. The problems don’t get much better in Cuba, which also doesn’t have anything resembling an active feminist movement. Here though, the argument is honest, and observes that the state effectively coopted the grounds for a feminism to develop by implementing gender reforms and creating an “NGO” that is closely related to the state. Thus the conditions for post-revolutionary feminisms are unmet, and therefore one doesn’t occur. So that’s why the book’s argument basically sucks.

There are, however, some really bright spots. The first is her fivefold conditions for post-revolutionary feminism: (1) gender-bending, where women perform dangerous work in support of the revolution and in defiance of social norms (2) logistical and political training (3) sociopolitical cleavages in post-revolutionary society that create the organizational and ideological space for mobilization (4) a sense that, for women, the revolution is incomplete, and (5) the development of a collective feminist conciousness. (10) These criterias yield dependant variables of (1) a politically autonomous movement, (2) a movement significantly empowered to bring about measurable sociopolitical change, and (3) a movement structured in a pluralistic fashion. (10) The second is the concept of “gendered revolutionary bridges” (43). In short, this concept refers to the ways that women can leverage cultural expectations of femininity in service of a revolution – whether by challenging the states’ right to recourse to violence by protesting AS mothers, or transporting weapons, or by sharing the revolutions message with unincorporated citizens. This is an excellent summary of an important concept that needs to be carefully considered by any theory of insurgency or counterinsurgency – specifically, how do cultural expectations both create and limit tactical and strategic options?

In the end, this is an ambitious book that falls short of the mark. It may be the case that the 5 conditions occur incredibly rarely, and so relatively few movements will occur. It’s impossible to know, given that only 1 case in 3 worked out according to the model, and extrapolating from such limited data seems foolhardy. Nonetheless, a good second to third tier book to have around to reference both the criteria and the “gendered revolutionary bridge” concept.

Wood, Elisabeth Jean. 2003. Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador. Cambridge University Press: New York.

In this book, Wood uses an comparative ethnography of different regions in El Salvador to challenge purely economic rational actor models of insurgent mobilization. Put simply, the economic model is beset by a problem: if someone can enjoy the benefits of an insurgency (change of regime) without accepting the risks of participating in the movement, why would anyone sign up? The “free rider” problem is a significant obstacle to models that seek to explain how popular discontent coalesces into organized resistance. Wood finds that non-economic factors, such as pride, agency, and the pleasure of resistance are relevant in explaining the pattern of insurgency in El Salvador.

The book is organized into a lit review / history, a detailed exploration of the organizations and dynamics of the Salvadoran insurgency, and the theoretical conclusions she draws. This annotation concentrates on the third component, because it is the most readily applicable across topics, but, if there is every a question about land reorganization in coastal Salvador during the civil war, this is certainly the place to look.

Wood identifies five factors that drove patterns of participation, three independent ones (participation, defiance, and pleasure in agency) and two “contingent, path-dependent” aspects (local past patterns of violence and proximity to insurgent forces). (231) (“By path-dependent outcomes, I mean persistent outcomes that might have been different if initial events had been different (in the language of economists, there are multiple equilibria)”) (232). Participation, for Wood, is a variable that indicates the reward for being a part of collective action in itself, without view as to the effectiveness of that action. In El Salvador, this reward had religious overtones – “to struggle for the realization of the reign of God was to live a life valuable to oneself and in the eyes of God despite its poverty, humiliations, and suffering … Under the influence of liberation theology, some campesinos came to believe that social justice is the will of God.” (232) Defiance is the quality of “supporting the insurgency despite the violence of the government, a refusal to acquiesce”. (233) Pleasure in agency is “the positive affect associated with self-determination, autonomy, self-esteem, efficacy, and pride that come from the successful assertion of intention.” (235) This, of course, is different from the preceding variables inasmuch as it requires something be accomplished – a sense that the insurgent is the author of a new chapter in the nation’s history. This agency might be particularly important for insurgencies by largely disenfranchised groups “the pleasure in agency was a strong motivation to participate partly because of the contrast it posed to the fatalism and subordination that dominated the campesino world view and life experience until the 1970s”. (236) These three factors are mediated by the path-dependent processes, which is to say that appropriate conditions were required to allow these underlying sentiments to become manifest. The precise dynamics are quite interesting and would require retyping several pages of text, which I am loath to do. So read Wood 237-243.

P.W. Singer. 2006. Children at War. University of California Press: Berkeley

This is Singer’s second book, the first being Corporate Warriors, a study of the rise of Private Military Corporations. Singer, an analyst at Brookings (I think), extends his reasoning about the changes in warfare that gave rise to PMCs to engage with the issue of child soldiers. This issue has gotten a fair amount of attention of late, with the popularization of both African conflicts (Blood Diamond, Darfur) and memoirs of former child soldiers. However, as Singer observes, that attention tends to lead to a particularized narrative about the specific conflict and parties involved. Singer’s book is a welcome departure from this mode of analysis, in that he steps back and addresses child soldiers as a global phenomenon, which is most assuredly is: “Of ongoing or recently ended conflicts, 68 percent (37 of 55) have children under eighteen serving as combatants. Eighty percent of these conflicts where children are present include fighters under the age of fifteen.” (29)

Since the phenomenon is global, Singer looks for global causes, and settles on three: “(1) social disruptions and failures of development caused by globalization, war, and disease have led not only to greater global conflict and instability, but also to generational disconnections that create a new pool of recruits; (2) technological improvements in small arms now permit these child recruits to be effective participants in warfare; and (3) there has been a rise in a new type of conflict that is far more brutal and criminalized.” (38) The last of these is the most interesting, as it employs a rational actor model to connect a human intentionality to the structural conditions described by the first two causes. Singer suggests that “The strategy of using children as an alternative source of fighters has proven appealing to many groups, not only because it is cheap and easy to implement, but also because the costs are outweighed by the benefits so far. It provides an easy means for organizations, even the most weak and unpopular, to generate significant amounts of force with almost no investment. On the other side of the equation, the costs of using children in this manner are considered quite low. Moral opprobrium is the only major risk to a group that uses child soldiers. However, any group that contemplates using children as fighters has already shown itself unwilling to be limited by prevailing moral codes. The lesson from this is that prohibitive norms are quite weak whenever they are not underscored by substantive penalties for violating them.” (52-53)

To combat this phenomenon, Singer calls for an explicit criminalization of the practice (153), so that leaders of organizations that employ child soldiers would be liable for their behavior (153, 156), states would be more easily pressured to cut ties to those groups (156), and would-be employers of child soldiers would be dissuaded (160). He also suggests that also advises that training for Western forces be expanded to include child combatants (165), as child soldier formations are especially vulnerable to shock tactics (rolling barrages or killing adult leaders) (172) but are still quite formidable, esp. as the children become older and the unit has been together for quite some time (175). He concludes with a chapter on the particular needs of child soldiers during demobilization, which have historically been neglected and may be sowing the seeds for future conflict.

Overall, this is another very effective, efficient piece of writing by Singer, and, of course, I like it cause it fits well with the way I arrange facts and think about the world. It is however, a really difficult thing to read, because the text is interspersed with the narratives of child soldiers, and their little 2-3 sentence snippets are a window into the darkest recesses of the human soul – I literally cannot think up more fucked-up, repugnant shit that one human being could do to another, and after 180 pages, it gets pretty emotionally draining.