Requiem for Risk: Non-knowledge and Domination in the Governance of Weapons Circulation. Issue 3 (16th December 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Stavrianakis, Anna
• Is Part Of: International political sociology. Volume 14:Issue 3(2020)
• Page Start: 233
• Page End: 251
• Publication Date: 2019-12-16
• Subjects: Political sociology -- Periodicals; International relations -- Periodicals; Political science -- Periodicals; Sociology -- Periodicals; 306.2
• DOI: 10.1093/ips/olz030
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1749-5679

Abstract

Abstract: Analyses of risk in international political sociology and critical security studies have unpicked its operation as a preventive and preemptive political technology. This article examines the countercase of the governance of weapons circulation, in which risk has been mobilized as a permissive technology. Examining UK arms exports to Saudi Arabia and the war in Yemen, I demonstrate how risk assessment constitutes a regime of recklessness in which risk is made not to matter in three main ways: systematic not-knowing about international humanitarian law violations; claims of unintentional harm and practices of reputation management; and future-proofing the inherent temporality of risk. I argue that risk has served to facilitate arms exports despite the potential for harm: it has been mobilized as a mode of domination. This does not suggest a failure of risk as a governance strategy or a contradiction in its operation, however. Rather, it illustrates the generative character of risk as a regulatory technology in contexts marked by asymmetrical power dynamics. If the potential for domination is built into the operation of risk, we need a requiem for risk and a search for alternative grounds of repoliticization that can generate more adequate modes of regulation and accountability.