Amin Parsa
Affiliated researcher
From Uniforms to Monitors : Persuasive design and targeting in international law
Author
Summary, in English
US counterinsurgency, thanks to geographically unbounded reach of drones, is characterized by extending wartime violence from battlefield to the monitor. In this article, we claim that the significance of the ‘new technologies’ of looking and targeting lies in their capacity to negotiate laws of war into the material world, thus determining the legitimacy of their expansive violence. Such negotiations operate through a series of visual and design practices that produce and maintain a space of persuasion. Combining legal studies with design studies we examine the military uniform as law’s original visual marker mediating these spaces of persuasion between the parties involved. Once abandoned in insurgencies, other technologies of looking, drones in particular, emerge to provide the persuasiveness otherwise was provided by military uniform. Consequently, we conclude that the critical function of drone beyond its technological complexity is in its ability to maintain the continuity of this persuasive space of violence.
Department/s
- Department of Sociology of Law
Publishing year
2018-06-07
Language
English
Document type
Conference paper: abstract
Topic
- Law and Society
Conference name
Law and Society association
Conference date
2018-06-07 - 2018-06-10
Conference place
Toronto, Canada
Status
Unpublished