Security and Development? A Story about Petty Crime, the Petty State and its Petty Law
| Autor | Luis Eslava - Lina Buchely |
| Cargo | PhD. Senior Lecturer in International Law and Co-Director of the Centre for Critical International Law (CeCIL), Kent Law School, University of Kent (United Kingdom) - PhD. Assistant Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, School of Law, Universidad Icesi (Colombia) |
| Páginas | 40-55 |
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Security and Development? A Story about Petty Crime, the Petty
State and its Petty Law1*
Luis Eslava** – Lina Buchely***
Received date: April 15, 2018 · Acceptance date: June 28, 2018 · Modication date: July 31, 2018
https://doi.org/10.7440/res67.2019.04
How to cite: Eslava, Luis and Lina Buchely. 2019. “Security and Development? A Story about Petty Crime, the Petty State and its
Petty Law”. Revista de Estudios Sociales 67: 40-55. https://doi.org/10.7440/res67.2019.04
ABSTRACT | In this article we engage with the promises and limits of the “Security and Development”
discourse. Using Cali (Colombia) as our case study, we show how initiatives associated with this discourse,
instead of helping States move beyond insecurity, exclusion and low levels of development by strengthening
social relations, ocial institutions and legal frameworks, end up producing, instead, a particular set of
precarious institutional and human arrangements. We characterise this precarity as moving in the realm
of “pettiness:” a characterisation that for us suggests both the marginal kinds of solutions that ultimately
form the core of Security and Development, and the imsiness that has come to mark those institutional
and human arrangements resulting from it. The result is a resilient liminality across the board and the
continuation of insecurity.
KEYWORDS | Thesaurus: crime; State. Author: citizenship security; insecurity; petty crime; security and
development
¿Seguridad y desarrollo? Una historia sobre los pequeños crímenes, el pequeño Estado y sus pequeñas leyes
RESUMEN | En este artículo discutimos las promesas y los límites del discurso de “Seguridad y Desarrollo”.
Usando Cali (Colombia) como nuestro estudio de caso, mostramos cómo las iniciativas asociadas con este
discurso terminan produciendo un conjunto de arreglos institucionales y humanos precarios, en vez de ayudar
a los Estados a superar la inseguridad, la exclusión y los bajos niveles de desarrollo. En este artículo caracteri-
zamos esta precariedad en términos de “pequeñez”: una caracterización que para nosotros sugiere la limitación
de los tipos marginales de soluciones que en última instancia forman el núcleo de la Seguridad y el Desarrollo,
así como de la fragilidad que han marcado los arreglos institucionales y humanos que él mismo construye. El
resultado nal es una permanente liminalidad del Estado y una continuación de la inseguridad.
PALABRAS CLAVE | Thesaurus: crimen; Estado. Autor: delito menor; inseguridad; seguridad ciudadana;
seguridad y desarrollo
* This project was born as part of the Kent/UFMG Inclusionary Practices Collaboration supported by the British Academy Interna-
tional Partnership and Mobility Award (PM150186).
** PhD. Senior Lecturer in International Law and Co-Director of the Centre for Critical International Law (CeCIL), Kent Law School,
University of Kent (United Kingdom) and Senior Fellow, Melbourne Law School (Australia). Latest publications include: “Dense
Struggle: On Ghosts, Law and the Global Order.” In Routledge Research Handbook on Law & Theory, edited by Andreas Philippopou-
los-Mihalopoulos, 15-48. Abingdon: Routledge, 2018; “The Moving Location of Empire: Indirect Rule, International Law, and the
Bantu Educational Kinema Experiment.” Leiden Journal of International Law 31 (3): 539–567, 2018. * L.Eslava@kent.ac.uk
*** PhD. Assistant Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, School of Law, Universidad Icesi (Colombia). Latest publications: “The
Affective State and Precarious Citizenship: Conflict, Historical Memory, and Forgiveness in Bojayá, Colombia.” Contemporary
Readings in Law and Social Justice 10 (1): 7–34, 2018; “Las distancias de la paz.” In Cómo mejorar a Colombia: 25 ideas para reparar el
futuro, edited by Mauricio García Villegas, 135-155. Bogotá: Ariel – IEPRI, 2018. * lfbuchely@icesi.edu.co
1 We would like to t hank Ga briela Reca lde for her assi stance wit h our resea rch; Jeni fer Evan s for her editori al suppor t; James
Ferguson a nd David Ken nedy for invit ing us to th ink in term s of “predica ments” and “peri pheries;” and ou r anonymou s reviewers
for their gener ous suggestions. We would a lso like to tha nk everyone in Ca li who opened up their k itchens, homes, oces a nd
workplaces to u s for our eldwork. We hav e altered the photos to dep ersonaliz e them, and to str ess the broader real ity of which
they spea k. All na mes have been cha nged. All tr anslations f rom Spanish a re ours unle ss otherwis e indicated.
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Security and Development? A Story about Petty Crime, the Petty State and its Petty Law | Luis Eslava · Lina Buchely
DOSSIER
Segurança e desenvolvimento? Uma história sobre os pequenos crimes, o pequeno Estado e suas pequenas leis
RESUMO | Neste artigo, discutimos as promessas e os limites do discurso de “Segurança e Desenvolvimento”.
Usando a cidade de Cali (Colômbia) como nosso estudo de caso, mostramos como as iniciativas associadas a esse
discurso acabam produzindo um conjunto de acordos institucionais e humanos precários, em vez de ajudar os
Estados a superarem a insegurança, a exclusão e os baixos níveis de desenvolvimento. Neste artigo, caracter-
izamos essa precariedade em termos de “pequenez”: uma caracterização que, para nós, sugere a limitação dos
tipos marginais de soluções que, em última instância, formam o núcleo da Segurança e do Desenvolvimento,
assim como da fragilidade que vem marcando os acordos institucionais e humanos que ele constrói. O resultado
nal é uma permanente limitação do Estado e uma continuidade da insegurança.
PALAVRAS-CHAVE | Thesaurus: crime; Estado; insegurança. Autor: delito menor; segurança cidadã; segurança
e desenvolvimento
Ours, after all, is an epoch —if not the rst, then certainly the latest—
in which law-making, law-breaking and law-enforcement
are especially critical registers in which societies construct,
contest, and confront truths about themselves.
(Comaro and Comaro 2016, xiii)
Introduction
In this article, we explore the dramas underpinning and
unleashed by the current encounter between “securi-
ty” and “development” in the Global South. This is an
encounter that has come to be conceptualised under
the rubric of “Security and Development”: a powerful
and rapidly expanding set of discourses and practices
which, borrowing from decades of interpenetration
between security concerns and the international devel-
opment project during the Cold War years and later
during the international humanitarian interventions in
the 1990s, has come to occupy a crucial place in poli-
cy-making debates in our era of seemingly never-end-
ing war on terror. As former World Bank president
Robert Zoellick (2007–2012) put it in his foreword to the
2011 World Development Report: Conict, Security and
Development, the aim is to bring “security and develop-
ment together to put down roots deep enough to break
the cycles of fragility and conict” in countries such as
Afghanistan, Bosnia, Haiti, Southern Sudan, and many
“other lands of conict or broken States” (Zoellick 2011).
According to Zoellick, “recurrent cycles of weak gov-
ernance, poverty, and violence” have “plagued these
lands.” Security and Development discussions and poli-
cies have aimed, in this context, to replace “fragility and
conict” with stronger State institutions, lasting social
inclusion and long-term economic outcomes —in Zoel-
lick’s words, “to move beyond conict and fragility and
secure development.”2
2 On the mergi ng of “securit y” and “de velopment,” see Due ld
(2014).
In this article we engage with the tensions that have
accompanied this project and show how, instead of
“moving beyond” insecurity, exclusion and low devel-
opment levels by strengthening social relations, ocial
institutions and legal frameworks, discussions and
associated technologies of Security and Development
produce a particular set of precarious institutional and
human arrangements. We characterise this precarity
as moving in the realm of “pettiness” —in the sense of
“triviality” and “smallness,” rather than of “pickiness” or
“nastiness.” Pettiness suggests both the marginal kinds
of solutions that ultimately form the core of Security
and Development, and the smallness or imsiness that
has come to mark the institutional and human arrange-
ments resulting from it. Pettiness, in other words, sig-
nals the manner in which Security and Development
has ended up supporting second-class xes which pro-
duce second-class subjects and second-class visions of
the State and law. What it does not support are struc-
tural solutions to global problems related to human and
institutional instability, as expressed, for example, in
urban violence. We are deeply concerned about these
“petty” arrangements because they are deployed in
contexts that have already suered countless waves of
failed developmental interventions (places that have
been systematically “underdeveloped” to use the lan-
guage of Andre Gunter Frank (1966) and Walter Rodney
(1972)), and because they are expanding, as a result, a
world already organised around the late liberal man-
agement of vulnerability. As Povinelli has argued, today
vulnerability is not seen as something that necessarily
needs to be solved but rather as something to be admin-
istered. In this context, social relations are pacied via
exercises of inclusion without proper entitlements, and
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