Destroy, Build, Secure: Readings on Pacification

by Tyler Wall (Editor), Parastou Saberi (Editor), Will Jackson (Editor)

Pacification is often thought of as a military strategy or a metaphor for social control. Destroy, Build, Secure goes beyond this common usage of the word and instead focuses on pacification as a category of analysis. The contributors demonstrate how pacification is simultaneously a repressive and productive strategy, mobilizing the concept to problematize the liberal boundaries of war and peace, military and civil spheres, as well as police and military operations across time and geography. From the nineteenth century to our current conjuncture, from North America to Europe, North Africa and on to Turkey, the contributors show how through mobilizing violence pacification is fundamental to strategies of securing relations of accumulation and domination both at home and abroad. Destroy, Build, Secure argues that pacification has been essential to the survival of imperialist capitalism and that critical theory needs to take the concept seriously.

240 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2017

Reviews

[Eren Buğlalılar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Theory of pacification is an excellent framework that brings law, economy politics and social psychology together to explain how capitalism rules over the populations. Its basics are laid in Neocleus's books which are highly readable and interesting and I agree with most of his claims. The theory itself, however, still needs some historical flesh and bones, case studies and interbreeding with some other theories like Leninism and World-Systems Theory.

This book is a compilation of articles which take pacification theory as their basis. Though thought provoking here and there, I think pacification is still waiting for its grand theorist.