Tidy, J. orcid.org/0000-0002-9723-0819 (Accepted: 2024) "100 Large Fruit Trees Cut Down by ISAF": land, infrastructure, and military violence. European Journal of International Relations. ISSN 1354-0661 (In Press)
Abstract
This article examines the military violence of land use and infrastructure. The analysis discusses the case of the British Army's Royal Corps of Engineers in 1860s British Columbia and in Helmand, Afghanistan following the post-2001 invasion. It charts how across British colonial and liberal military projects, military infrastructure activities have mobilised towards the goal of capitalist development. Drawing analytic lines between the Royal Engineers' activities establishing the settler colony and colonial capitalism in British Columbia and their role in imposing liberal social, political and economic norms in Helmand, the article puts forward an account of why, how, and with what effect military violence can include things such as the felling of trees, the issuing of private land title, the use of topsoil for road fill, or prohibiting local farmers from growing tall crops near a roadway. The central argument of this article is that we should conceptualise and understand military activities such as these as violence. This analysis develops understandings of violence within scholarship addressing coloniality, liberal war, settler colonialism, and land, territory, and infrastructure. Beyond the immediate analysis of specifically military violence, this discussion has broader implications for understanding the nexus of infrastructure, land, and violence.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: | |
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 The Author(s). This is an author-produced version of a paper accepted for publication in European Journal of International Relations. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. Article available under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Politics and International Relations (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 19 Apr 2024 08:31 |
Last Modified: | 19 Apr 2024 08:31 |
Status: | In Press |
Publisher: | SAGE Publications |
Refereed: | Yes |