From 2022-2027 I'll be PI of the Academy of Finland Project "The Politics of Predation: An ecological framework for strategic violence (ECOPRED)"
War, conflict, state violence, and lethal force are becoming increasingly difficult to pin down. There is a need for a new nomenclature that can account for the porous and diffuse landscapes of contemporary violence. This project proposes a political-ecological framework of human predator-prey interactions as a new avenue for understanding and responding to contemporary strategies and relations of violence. Taking its departure in a literal understanding of human predation based on the biological definition of a flow of energy between organisms, this project seeks to learn from the complexity of the biological sciences to account for vast and diverse ecosystems of new practices, discourses, technologies, and targets of contemporary violence. The project is driven by an ethical concern with the uneven distribution of predatory violence in human communities, and how vulnerability, through predation, is being dealt and leveraged in novel, horrifying ways. Methodologically, the project will begin by historically excavating human predation from western political thought where it has been buried in efforts to separate the human from the animal. Next, the project will compare non-human predatorprey interactions as described in the biological sciences with predator-prey interactions in the human realm, for example in relation to tactics, systems, and effects. Thirdly, the project will combine the assembly of a broad archive of instances that comprise human ecologies of predation with specific examinations of how poison, technology, race, and gender characterize different predator-prey interactions. Introducing predation as a new concept to reckon with across IR and critical security studies, the project will initiate new ways of understanding (in)security, domination, control, risk, resistance, violence, war, and peace. Currently, a lot of human predatory conduct is carried out globally with relative impunity. The stakes are high, as forms of predatory conduct cause human suffering, insecurity and death, and its harmful effects are unequally distributed. By being able to notice and categorize predatory interactions, and thereby account for contemporary strategic violence, avenues for intervention arise which are currently out of sight. The project ultimately seeks to be able to leverage its framework of predatory politics in the formulation of new, progressive politics aimed at equality and justice.
The project is divided into six partially overlapping, consecutive work packages each lasting approximately one year. Combining a historical exploration with an assembly of a broad archive of instances that together comprise ecologies of predation as well as specific examinations of how elements such as poison, technology, race, and gender characterize different predator-prey interactions, the project provides intersecting synchronic and diachronic analytic avenues to ensure a rigorous and comprehensive conceptualization of the politics of predation.
ECOPRED is funded by the Academy of Finland.
War, conflict, state violence, and lethal force are becoming increasingly difficult to pin down. There is a need for a new nomenclature that can account for the porous and diffuse landscapes of contemporary violence. This project proposes a political-ecological framework of human predator-prey interactions as a new avenue for understanding and responding to contemporary strategies and relations of violence. Taking its departure in a literal understanding of human predation based on the biological definition of a flow of energy between organisms, this project seeks to learn from the complexity of the biological sciences to account for vast and diverse ecosystems of new practices, discourses, technologies, and targets of contemporary violence. The project is driven by an ethical concern with the uneven distribution of predatory violence in human communities, and how vulnerability, through predation, is being dealt and leveraged in novel, horrifying ways. Methodologically, the project will begin by historically excavating human predation from western political thought where it has been buried in efforts to separate the human from the animal. Next, the project will compare non-human predatorprey interactions as described in the biological sciences with predator-prey interactions in the human realm, for example in relation to tactics, systems, and effects. Thirdly, the project will combine the assembly of a broad archive of instances that comprise human ecologies of predation with specific examinations of how poison, technology, race, and gender characterize different predator-prey interactions. Introducing predation as a new concept to reckon with across IR and critical security studies, the project will initiate new ways of understanding (in)security, domination, control, risk, resistance, violence, war, and peace. Currently, a lot of human predatory conduct is carried out globally with relative impunity. The stakes are high, as forms of predatory conduct cause human suffering, insecurity and death, and its harmful effects are unequally distributed. By being able to notice and categorize predatory interactions, and thereby account for contemporary strategic violence, avenues for intervention arise which are currently out of sight. The project ultimately seeks to be able to leverage its framework of predatory politics in the formulation of new, progressive politics aimed at equality and justice.
The project is divided into six partially overlapping, consecutive work packages each lasting approximately one year. Combining a historical exploration with an assembly of a broad archive of instances that together comprise ecologies of predation as well as specific examinations of how elements such as poison, technology, race, and gender characterize different predator-prey interactions, the project provides intersecting synchronic and diachronic analytic avenues to ensure a rigorous and comprehensive conceptualization of the politics of predation.
ECOPRED is funded by the Academy of Finland.