The
gist of the book is that state and anti-state actors or structures reinforce
each other, all for the benefit of the former. The latter could be early
eighteenth-century pirates, late-nineteenth-century anarchists, or early
twenty-first-century jihadists. In each example, Shirk takes, the state's
initial response is largely inadequate. Eventually, the state learns its lesson
through dynamics, which he calls: shattering and reinscribing. In exhausting
its resources, the state causes some dysfunctionalities, but it gradually
harnesses the courage to defeat the challenge. But the state neutralizes
threats once ingrained habits, those thought useful for bypassing the threat
are challenged. Only new and transboundary practices reinvigorate the state to
the point that the state itself is transformed, almost beyond recognition,
particularly for observers reared on entrenched practices. With each violent
crisis, Shirk illustrates three he deems pivotal. It is not exactly the concept
of the state but rather an outmoded understanding of its nature and role, which
must be left behind. In the end, "boundaries have always been shattered
and reinscribed; change is constant and the state [emerges] as a project, a
process." (p. 146)
In
"Change and Continuity in Political Order", the definition of state actors
has to accommodate what we currently call the private sector since the latter
operates in a state ecosystem. Because threats are transboundary, like with
three examples treated in the issuing three chapters, old theories (such as
geographical sovereignty and state competitions) are bypassed in understanding
the evolution of the concept of statehood in practice. In conclusion, we read that
borders are fluid (defined by surveillance, not by exclusion), and sovereignty
is almost ontological. It comes irrespective of territory or citizens'
acquiescence.
In
"The Golden Age of Piracy and the Creation of an Atlantic World",
readers find that from 1710 to 1730, piracy around the Caribbean Islands and
the costs of what is today the United States constituted a major threat to the
mercantile economy and the chances of European emerging capitalisms for
expansions. Only by relocating judicial power to the periphery (the colonies)
piracy was finally extinguished, and commerce resumed. Britain (not France or
Holland) emerged as the biggest winner, less through design and more by
accident.
In
"'Propaganda of the Deed,' Surveillance and the Labor Movement", we
read that by the end of the nineteenth century, radical socialists or
anarchists called for a stateless order. Their means to achieve such an
objective is the assassination of monarchs, heads of state, and lesser state
representatives. States' repressions followed, but efforts to quell anarchism
only succeeded when state legislators introduced the welfare state and the
eight-hour working day. The state funnelled the anarchists' energy into labour
movements.
In
"Al-Qaeda, the War on Terror, and the Boundaries of the Twenty-First
Century", Shirk observes that following 9/11, the policies the U.S. took,
such as the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, did not pay off. Such responses
were more expressive of anxiety and confusion than judicious countermeasures.
In the following decade, targeted killing by drones and data surveillance
succeeded in illuminating terrorists' threats. Data surveillance, in
particular, has irrecoverably transformed the state in the sense that liberal
democracy that guarantees the individual's (citizen and alien) privacy is
fundamentally challenged.
One
cannot agree more with Shirk's proposal. Topping the three illustrative
scenarios lies perhaps marron communities and Marronage as an anti-state
institution. Those slave escapees who established independent communities at
the top of mountains and other inaccessible localities and challenged empires
could only be destroyed once the technology became available. But what dictates
the transformation of the state is that situation where capital takes over from
the state because it no longer needs a state, at least the one that is
paternalistically understood.
Leaving
the issue of the teleological unfolding of the process of state transformation
to others, I choose to dwell on the book's approach. The practice theory
unveils itself as anti-historical. Instead of universal principles, we read
that "…it is situations that determine the meaning and outcome of the
event." (p. 139) Even when deploying three historical situations, Shirk's
proposition cancels historical destiny, that is, people's aspiration for
freedom from state orders, the way the pirates, the anarchists, or jihadists
dreamed of. So why deny that history has a sense, a universal principle called
emancipation? Shirk's argument can be confused as the trust that there is
neither right nor wrong outside space and time, but it is not. For him, that
which is working (not that which works) has to be right is an ideological
imposition, seeking to eradicate the subaltern's (the wretched of the world)
resolve to challenge the state because the latter is presumed to be too
invincible and as such cannot be successfully challenged.
Fouad
Mami
Université
d’Adrar (Algeria)
ORCID
iD https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1590-8524
fouad.mami@univ-adrar.edu.dz
