Tag: infrastructural violence

The plant that kills. Glyphosate as a security infrastructure

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Dónde se concentran los cultivos de coca en Colombia
Source: Revista Semana (2019) “El 62 por ciento de la coca está sembrada en el 5 por ciento del país”. Available in the link: https://www.semana.com/nacion/articulo/donde-se-concentran-los-cultivos-de-coca-en-colombia/626644

How does glyphosate is used as a security infrastructure in Colombia?

“Introduced as the active ingredient in Roundup in the 1970s, glyphosate is a non-selective herbicide, which means that it can eliminate almost any type of plant to which it is applied – even desirable plants.” (Bayer Global)[1]. With US interventions and alliances, Colombia has used glyphosate as one of the main tools to address the “war against drugs”[2]. Plan Colombia, an agreement between the US and Colombia’s government, financed the use of glyphosate to attack two of the main “hazards” for citizenship: the internal armed conflict and drug trafficking. Using fumigation airplanes, the State bathes the soil with glyphosate, and kills any trace of non-human life over coca leaves crops.

The Constitutional Court[3] sentenced that the aerial spraying of glyphosate could not be used again until there was a 100% proof that this herbicide makes no harm to humans’ health, but the current government is trying to implement it again.

Aviones fumigando
Source: BBC News (2015) ” OMS defiende clasificación del glifosato como posible cancerígeno”. Available in the link: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/ultimas_noticias/2015/03/150327_ultnot_glifosato_cancerigeno_monsanto_oms_polemica_aw

If we consider the definition of structural violence given by Rodgers and O’Neill (2012), we could think about glyphosate as the material – and ignored – side of structural violence against “cocaleros”. Most of these farmers are disjointed from the national economy, are victims from the armed conflicted, and/or find no other alternative to have a decent income (Cruz, 2019)[4]. The State, in these remote areas of Colombia’s territory, makes presence in the toxic materiality of glyphosate.

Collier and Lakoff (2008) talk about how the US government characterized terrorism as a non-deterrable threat, which meant that it was impossible to point at a specific actor that could be treated as a hazard or an enemy. Given the enormous network involved in drug trafficking, that goes from cultivating coca leaves crops, to corrupted relationships with the military and the government, and ending in the consumption of cocaine even beyond Colombia’s frontiers, it is also a context in which it is almost impossible to blame a specific enemy. Therefore, the coca leaves crops become the most tangible target.

In this sense, the State treats coca leaves crops as being the exact same thing as cocaine, ignoring all the different dynamics, contexts and actors involved in each stage of transformation of the coca leaves. There was a national campaign in 2008 that said: “do not cultivate the plant that kills”. Even though it was withdrawn in 2010[5], the campaign shows the modus operandi of the government: criminalizing cocaleros as a way of finding someone to blame in an enormous and complex conflict. Then, coca leave crops are objectivized as the threat (Amoore, 2006), they become a category that must be eradicated.

Source: La Silla Vacía (2009) “Logo campaña la mata que mata”. Available in the link: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lasillavacia/3995960508

To finish, I would like to ask, how, in terms of Foucault analysis, could we problematize our notion of security? Is persecuting production of coca leaves crops an actual solution? Shouldn’t legalization of crops could be consider as a more accurate strategy?

References:

Amoore, L. (2006). “Biometric borders: Governing Mobilities in the war on terror”. Political Geography25 (3), 336-351.

Collier S. & A. Lakoff (2008). The Vulnerability of Vital Systems: How ‘Critical Infrastructure’ became a security problem. In The Politics of Securing the Homeland: Critical Infrastructure, Risk and Securitisation  London: Routledge.
http://anthropos-lab.net/wp/publications/2008/01/collier-and-lakoff.pdf

Rodgers, D & B. O’Neill (2012). “Infrastructural violence: Introduction to the special issue”, Ethnography 13(4):401-412.

[1] Bayer (n.d.) “Glyphosate-based herbicides and modern faming practices”. Available in the link: https://www.bayer.com/en/about-glyphosate-based-herbicides-and-their-role-in-agriculture.aspx

[2] Cosoy, Natalia (2016) “Has Plan Colombia really worked? BBC News, Colombia. Available in the link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-35491504

[3] Kongevinas, Manolis (2019) “Probable carcinogenicity of glyphosate”. The BMJ. Available in the link: https://www.bmj.com/content/365/bmj.l1613

[4] Cruz, Felipe (2019) “Las marchas cocaleras, una expresión del derecho a pedir derechos”. DeJusticia. Available in the link: https://www.dejusticia.org/column/las-marchas-cocaleras-una-expresion-del-derecho-a-pedir-derechos/

[5] Revista Semana (2010) “Corte ordena retirar campaña publicitaria ‘la mata que mata'”. Available in the link: https://www.semana.com/nacion/articulo/corte-ordena-retirar-campana-publicitaria-la-mata-mata/126042-3

Unplugging Freedom: Insecurity and Internet Blackouts

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Source: Reuters

In June this year, people across areas of Sudan found their internet access severely restricted amidst political protests based in the country’s capital, Khartoum. This is not, however, the first time that people in Sudan had experienced limitations on internet access: in 2018, social media access was blocked for 68 consecutive days coinciding with political instability during Omar al-Bashir’s presidency.

This is just one example of a growing trend of internet blackouts used by governments in moments of political crisis, in which the internet is a vital channel of communication for discontent to spread and opposition to mobilise (Gohdes, 2015, p.355). Rights group, AccessNow, defines an internet blackout as the ‘intentional disruption of internet or electronic communications, rendering them inaccessible or effectively unusable, for a specific population or within a location, often to exert control over the flow of information’. In 2018, there were 196 internet blackouts, and the number continues to rise in 2019 (Selva, 2019, p.20).

Source: NetBlocks

The anthropological questions raised by internet blackouts, and the contexts in which they arise, are questions of freedom, security, and violence.

In 2018, governments used reasons of ‘national security’ to justify 40 of the 196 internet blackouts, and ‘public safety’ to justify another 91 (Selva, p.20). But what does it mean to justify something as a matter of ‘national security’ or ‘public safety’? When an issue is framed as such, it appears to lend weight to a government’s justification for restricting access to the internet and, to some extent, obfuscate the violations of human rights which certain activist groups have highlighted.

Furthermore, the term ‘national security’ leaves little room for the potential insecurities created by internet blackouts for those who experience them. An article published in the British Medical Journal argues that many were put at risk during internet blackouts in Kashmir this year due to inabilities to access online medication. Internet blackouts, however, also raise issues surrounding the insecurity of democracy, a concept thrown into question when freedoms such as internet access are restricted. Here, insecurity lies in the fragility of the internet as an infrastructure embedded in complex power structures, where public access can be easily cut off.

Another question to consider, therefore, is whether we can describe internet blackouts as a form of infrastructural violence, either ‘passive’ in which ‘socially harmful effects derive from infrastructure’s limitations and omissions’, or ‘active’ referring to ‘articulations of infrastructure which are designed to be violent’ (Rodgers and O’Neill, 2012, pp.406-407).

The answer to this question, however, is not straightforward; instead, we must be open to questions of agency and design and their interaction with the internet as an infrastructure, and how at the intersection of these ideas we might see the potential for violence.  

Source: Twitter

The internet – specifically social media – is a powerful medium for activism and solidarity, as demonstrated by the #blueforsudan movement. But it is this same capacity which makes it a prime target for governments trying to limit unrest, who know all too well the powers of the internet (Selva, p.21).

References

Gohdes, A. (2015). Pulling the plug. Journal of Peace Research, 52(3), pp.352-367.

Rodgers, D. and O’Neill, B. (2012). Infrastructural violence: Introduction to the special issue. Ethnography, 13(4), pp.401-412.

Selva, M. (2019). Reaching for the off switch: Internet shutdowns are growing as nations seek to control public access to information. Index on Censorship, 48(3), pp.19-22.

Linked Resources

Access Now. (2019). Available at: https://www.accessnow.org/keepiton/#problem [Accessed 3 Nov. 2019].

Bendimerad, R. and Faisal, N. (2019). #BlueforSudan: Why is social media turning blue for Sudan? Al Jazeera. Available at: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/06/blueforsudan-social-media-turning-blue-sudan-190613132528243.html [Accessed 3 Nov. 2019].

Mahase, E. (2019). Kashmir communications blackout is putting patients at risk, doctors warn. The British Medical Journal. Available at: https://www.bmj.com/content/366/bmj.l5204 [Accessed 3 Nov. 2019].

NetBlocks. (2019). Sudan internet shows signs of recovery after month-long shutdown. Available at: https://netblocks.org/reports/sudan-internet-recovery-after-month-long-shutdown-98aZpOAo [Accessed 3 Nov. 2019].

The Tale of Going Cashless a.k.a The Untold Story of Infrastructural Violence

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Business Insider

During a taxi ride two years ago in Northern China, my middle-aged driver told me to download a new ride-hailing app and to get a free ride as part of a broader promotional campaign. I remained silent – because unfortunately and paradoxically, as a “foreigner” (while Hong Kong officially remains part of China), I didn’t have a local bank account required to open a mobile wallet – a prerequisite to use any ride-hailing app. Eager to share his wisdom, the driver shrugged and said: “You must be worried about the whole non-nonsensical privacy thing. Just enjoy the free stuff young man”.

The marriage of the mobile phone and payment reflected in this encounter is a vivid example of what Star and Ruhleder (1996) considered to be an infrastructure – something that we take for granted (we only remember its existence when it breaks down) that is also seamlessly entangled with other infrastructures (bank, transportation) and conventions (to use the app, you must have mobile payment set up).

Alexandra Staub

A focal point in the Anthropological study of physical infrastructures has long been the tension between promises and our actual, daily experience (Harvey and Know, 2015). What of digital infrastructure? The development of “Cashless Society” is either feverishly endorsed through a language of economic efficiency and technological competition (The Economist, 2019), or demonised as yet another dystopian, institutional scheme to layout workers and harvest data. (Scott, 2018). However, neither offer an explanation of my experience of exclusion. An answer may be found if we turn examine to how structural violence, namely systemic exclusion, has historically materialised in physical infrastructure (Rodgers and O’Neill, 2012). A classic example of infrastructural violence was the exclusion of less privileged people, who relied on public transport, from Long Island through the deliberate design of low bridges in the area to keep buses away (Pfaffenberger, 1992).

Zhifeng Ou

What may be the digital equivalent of the low bridge? WeChat – a poster child for China’s innovative prowess, is an integrated platform combining mobile payment, instant messaging, and social media, with a monthly user base of more than 1 billion people (Kharpal, 2019). The all-encompassing reach of this “infrastructure of infrastructures” makes the app essential for everyday life and extremely difficult for users to opt-out. My mundane experience of structural exclusion only leads to more questions for a country that boasts to be a pioneer in “going cashless” (Morris, 2019):who might be excluded from this digitised system of transaction? More importantly, how might marginalisation and exclusion extend to other features afforded by the platform? The reputation of WeChat is characterised by admiration of growth as much as controversies around censorship. Politically sensitive keywords, images, and links are blocked automatically in chats and posts alike (Ruan et al, 2016). How should users balance between the need for daily transactions, communication, and also privacy concerns (and by extension access to information)? I must be worrying too much again, let’s just enjoy the free stuff, no?

The Citizen Lab

References