The Geographies of Non-Lethal Weapons: Transformative Technologies and Political Violence

Abstract

Non-lethal weapons, like police batons, rubber bullets and tear gas, are increasingly deployed in interventions against a rising number of bodies in contested spaces. They are formed through notions of (in)security and an ethos of the use of force that makes such interventions appear to be ethical and humane. Yet, what is considered ethical or humane about weapons that are used with possible violent and injurious effects is bound to security discourses and practices in an interlocking globalized police-military-network. Transformations in security techniques and technologies engenders a subtle, yet vastly nefarious, “mission creep” where technologies of war are depoliticized as a sensationalization of (in)security drives a robust use of force continuum weaponizing the politics of non-lethality. Shifting articulations and practices of non-lethality in security underpins the increasing militarization and colonization of everyday life by security logics and norms broadening the social utility of disciplinary power. Geographic literature on the logics of security is vigorous, but less attention has been paid to the politics of non-lethality and its operation within contested spaces, contentious politics, and exercises of state disciplinary power. Acknowledgement and better understanding that non-lethality operates at different socio-spatial scales from orbital space right down to the individual body is crucial. Investigating non-lethal state interventionary power recognizes the reinvention of citizens as subjects, as potential sites of political violence and domination in contested spaces. Non-lethal weapons have transformative effects on spaces of governance within the growing international security environment as well as on bodies and the use of force. This project confronts wider programs of state security regarding the use of force, programs that connect violence to order, coercion to lethality and military power to civilian spaces.