Movement and the Ordering of Freedom: On Liberal Governances of Mobility

Perverse Modernities

by Hagar Kotef

We live within political systems that increasingly seek to control movement, organized around both the desire and ability to determine who is permitted to enter what sorts of spaces, from gated communities to nation-states. In Movement and the Ordering of Freedom , Hagar Kotef examines the roles of mobility and immobility in the history of political thought and the structuring of political spaces. Ranging from the writings of Locke, Hobbes, and Mill to the sophisticated technologies of control that circumscribe the lives of Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank, this book shows how concepts of freedom, security, and violence take form and find justification via “regimes of movement.” Kotef traces contemporary structures of global (im)mobility and resistance to the schism in liberal political theory, which embodied the idea of “liberty” in movement while simultaneously regulating mobility according to a racial, classed, and gendered matrix of exclusions.

Genres: Politics, Anthropology

248 pages, Paperback

First published March 6, 2015

Reviews

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was good but I preferred the more current chapters (Occupied Palestine) than the dive into the liberal canon (Hobbes, Locke). Those couple chapters were boring to me, but would probably be more enjoyable if you like the older stuff. I was kind of surprised though because I'm more interested in mobility in general than this specific case study (not that it's not interesting and important!!).

I started this before my reading list for this semester, but it inspired my theme. Glad to finish it now after a detour.