Dr Athina Karatzogianni, Hull U, UK.

1. Networks, Resistance, and Lines of Flight in the Global Periphery The Conflict Research Society and The Conflict Analysis Research Centre Conference onConflict and ComplexityTuesday 2nd - Wednesday 3rd September 2008University of Kent, Canterbury, UK Dr Athina Karatzogianni, Hull U, UK.

2. Power, Conflict and Resistance • This paper introduces our work with Andrew Robinson Power, Conflict and Resistance in the Contemporary World: Social Movements, Networks and Hierarchies (Routledge Advanced IR series, forthcoming). The book • engages with different types of networked conflicts. • overviews the literature on world power and resistance from different ideological perspectives (e.g. Hardt and Negri, Arquilla and Ronfeldt, Deleuze and Guattari, Zizek and Laclau) and situates us in these debates and critiques. • examines World Systems Theory, in an attempt to enable it to engage with contemporary under-reported conflicts, and to engage with forms of power based on patronage networks (e.g Zimbabwe and Sudan). It does that by injecting into WST, network and rizhome theory. • deals with those involving the use of technology (e.g the anti-globalisation movement and sociopolitical cyberconflicts in general) and in another chapter those that cannot afford the use of technology at all, as they are marginalised and unreported in the mainstream media (e.g. Papua, Manipur, Algeria). • presents positive examples of emancipatory politics (e.g. the open source movement) based on lines of flight and network forms of social action as ways to break down hierarchies, and • discusses the ways in which the substitution of networks for hierarchic forms undermines logics of closure, fixity and constitutive antagonism and thus enables conflict-resolution and non-oppressive social relations.

3. Ch 1 Changes in World Power and Resistance • introduces the concepts of network and hierarchy and explicate their political importance and their role in our later arguments. Types of networks – netwars, global cities, capitalist networks • Theorising social movements (identity, resource mobilisation, hegemony, rhizome) • engages with existing deployments of these concepts. • introduces Deleuze and Guattari’s conceptualisation of networks and rhizomes • responds to criticisms of this conception as complicit in capitalism (e.g. by Slavoj Zizek) or as unable to deal with politics (e.g. by Ernesto Laclau). • critically examines existing appropriations of these concepts by authors such as Arquilla and Ronfeldt, Alain Joxe and Hardt and Negri • introduces the contemporary importance of the issue in relation to the ‘war on terror’, examining Baudrillard’s concept of ‘non-war’ in terms of the relationship of deterrence to system-integration and the resultant emergence of a type of (non-)warfare directed at keeping the periphery within the system.

4. Ch 2 The breakdown of the integration of the world system • World Systems Analysis and its limits. Models of the world system and its phases – WST; neo-Gramscianism (Cox); early Negri; Sassen; Harvey; Hardt and Negri; Panitch and Gindin/Teschke/Lacher • WST similarities with Foucault, Deleuze (global panopticon - Gill); theorising world system as arborescence, resistance as rhizome • Articulating WST and post colonial theory • US “democratisation” and backing for dictators as imposition of state-form (WRobinson and the transnational capitalist state) • (non-)war as system maintenance – Chomsky’s “threat of a good example” (system as entropic? Tendency of localities to deterritorialise system via survival?) • One system or many? States system (geopolitical), knowledge system (geoculture), economic system (WST) – linked but distinct; may involve different “politico-military” entities but part of single “hegemony” (ethico-political perspective/frame) • Why delinking isn’t enough – “anti-imperialist” states and patronage (Sudan, Zimbabwe); excursus on China • Current situation • in particular, it will be maintained, the integration of the periphery is undermined by the withdrawal of the socioeconomic basis for patronage and syncretism and the tightening of economic control, producing a situation where the periphery slips through the tightening grip of the core. • Currently in a period of decline/restructuring of world system (Arrighi, Harvey etc) • Collapse of US hegemony (Todd Mann Joxe Arrighi) • Neoliberalism to US empire (Pieterse); failure of SAP, decline of neoliberalism • Neoliberalism and decay of patronage insertion; rise of shadow state • Split of state from civil society (Harrison) • The new global exclusion(Bonanno; social exclusion; flexibility and employability; Amin – “pauperisation”) • Baudrillard (Mirror of Production) and early Negri on capitalism; formal and real subsumption; • Reconstruction of outside as periphery – Frank on Guatemala (gearing of connections to trunk – arborescent not transversal) • Exclusion replacing exploitation as flashpoint - African “youth” – the excluded as radical force

5. Ch 3 Rhizomes - Network resistances • Concentrating on empirical material, this chapter examines the emergence of new forms of networked social movements based largely on new technologies such as the Internet (see Karatzogianni, The Politics of Cyberconglict 2006). • concentrates in particular on two phenomena: the rise of the global anti-capitalist movement and its mobilisation around summit protests, social forums, and instant-time solidarity actions; • and the emergence of sociopolitical movements on the Internet and new forms of computer-mediated social association, such as the Open Source/Free Software movement. • the network form becomes an effective means of political resistance to hierarchical control while also prefiguring forms of social organisation which do not require hierarchy. • Other instances of dissidents in authoritarian and totalitarian regimes are discussed.

6. Ch 4 Rhizomes and affinity – network resistances at the periphery of the periphery low tech or no tech • looks at the the role of network social forms at the periphery and of the periphery. • While these movements often do not have the technological basis for networking which affects western anti-capitalism, they also tend towards the development of network forms, revealing the viability of these forms for protest and resistance among the peripheral, marginal and excluded. • We argue that the growth of social exclusion threatens system integration and leads to the constant emergence of opportunities for revolt and escape at the ‘periphery of the periphery’ – the most marginal geographical and social spaces in the world system. • The chapter examines existing research by authors such as Achille Mbembe, Partha Chatterjee and Hecht and Simone, to show that network forms are not new, but rather, emerge throughout the periphery as responses to the problems constructed by the hierarchies of the world system. • It also focuses on empirical examples including anti-neoliberal movements in Latin America (particularly the Argentinean piquetero movement and the 2001 uprising), and the Iraqi resistance • Also, under-reported conflicts such as the West Papuan resistance movement, the Berber uprising in Algeria, social protest movements in Manipur, with a view to establishing the vitality, importance and effectiveness of network-based forms of resistance.

7. Ch 5 Recuperating Networks • ETHNORELIGIOUS section: • Patronage and ethnicity – general introduction (Reno, Richards, Putnam, typology of patronage, etc); • Negative patronage (tonton macoutes, janjaweed, Zimbabwe); • Predatory identities (Appadurai) and identity theory (as based on exclusion – Laclau etc; Jabri, Khan, Campbell); • “Ethnoreligious identity is often the last-gasp survival strategy of hierarchies, because it is the form of hierarchical identity most compatible with the kinship/tribal relational forms which arise in a context of networked politics. ” • “War on terror” “global terror”, al-Qaeda • Iraq insurgency and war (“tribal” politics, Sunni-Shiite, etc); Afghan insurgency; Pakistani border regions/NWFP/Waziristan; • Political Islam more broadly (in Sudan for example); War on terror, crackdowns, attacks on civil rights (as striation…) • And separate from “war on terror”: • Ethnicity and indigenous rights (slippage between two poles of networks); • “Small” wars (Sierra Leone, Congo, Darfur etc); • “shadow state” in Africa (Harrison, Bayart etc); • Inscription of local networks at global level (Cold War proxies; IMF etc) • Manipur – socio-political vs ethnoreligious; two uprisings – Handsworth 80s and Lozells 00’s (and France today) Tamil Tigers?

8. Conclusion • draws the political implications of the earlier chapters, arguing for an emancipatory politics based on lines of flight and network forms of social action as ways to break down hierarchies. • introduces the Deleuzian concept of smooth space as pointing towards the possibility of a networked world in which hierarchies no longer operate, linking this conception to themes of affinity, desire and freedom in post-left anarchist thought. • The relationship of the hierarchy-network dualism to the Nietzschean/Deleuzian distinction between active and reactive desire will also be addressed, and Deleuze’s critique of Lacan will be interpreted to open the possibility of thinking of resistances irrecuperable by hierarchic identity-construction. • addresses how networked social movements which involve diverse groups (as in West Papua, and in the anti-capitalist movement) are able to handle difference without repressing it in a hierarchic construct • examines the possibilities for and for non-hierarchic ‘leadership’ which are prefigured by the Open Source/Free Software movement. • The problem of Cryptohierarchies and obstacles to the above