Skip to main content
Springer Nature Link
Log in

War on Terror, work in progress: security, surveillance and the configuration of the US workfare state

  • Published:
GeoJournal Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This paper evaluates the impact of recent shifts in the geopolitical outlook of the United States—specifically the ‘Global War on Terror’ and its domestic ramifications—on the prior project of reconfiguring the US state to an after-Fordist ‘workfare’ paradigm. In particular, the paper attempts to situate recent developments in the reconfiguration of the American welfare state within the context of debates over the ‘exceptional’ nature of US politics post-9/11. The extent to which this has had a bearing on work practices, welfare provision and workfarism is investigated, citing examples from the post-9/11 era. On the basis of such examples it has been suggested that the project of reconfiguring the US welfare state and labour relations does overlap and intersect with the emergency practices that the US state has instituted domestically as part of the War on Terror. However, the reconfiguration of the US welfare state towards a neoliberal or workfarist paradigm is, we argue, largely part of the ‘normal’ (as opposed to exceptional) fabric of US politics. The project of reconfiguring the US welfare state is ongoing and largely autonomous (although not entirely removed) from the use of exceptional practices in relation to the US security state. Investigation of this relationship, we assert, provides a potentially fruitful ‘new direction’ for both critical geopolitics and political economic geography, and grounds for interaction between the two.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+
from $39.99 /Month
  • Starting from 10 chapters or articles per month
  • Access and download chapters and articles from more than 300k books and 2,500 journals
  • Cancel anytime
View plans

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Explore related subjects

Discover the latest articles and news from researchers in related subjects, suggested using machine learning.

References

  • Adey, P. (2004). Secured and sorted mobilities: Examples from the airport. Surveillance and Society, 1(4), 500–519.

    Google Scholar 

  • Agamben, G. (1998). Homo sacer: Sovereign power and bare life. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Agamben, G. (2005). State of exception. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Agnew, J. (2003). American hegemony into American empire? Lessons from the invasion of Iraq. Antipode, 35(5), 871–885.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Amoore, L. (2006). Biometric borders: Governing mobilities in the War on Terror. Political Geography, 25(3), 336–351.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bacon, D. (2002). Unions fear “War on Terror” will overcome right to strike. Inter Press Service. Available from http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0810-02.htm. Accessed 18/03/08.

  • Bernard, S. (2006, December 15). US army might break goodyear strike. Financial Times, 1.

  • Brown, W. (2003). Neoliberalism and the end of liberal democracy. Theory and Event, 7(1). Available from http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_&_event/. Accessed 18/3/08.

  • Brown, W. (2006). American nightmare: Neoliberalism, neoconservativism and de-democratization. Political Theory, 34(6), 690–714.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Caffentzis, G. (2003). The War on Terrorism and the US working class. Available from http://www.radicalpolytics.org/caffentzis/11-war_on_terrorism_us_working_class.pdf. Accessed 18/03/08.

  • Campbell, D. (1992). Writing security: United States foreign policy and the politics of identity. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Coleman, M. (2004). The naming of ‘Terrorism’ and evil ‘Outlaws’: Geopolitical place-making after 11 September. In S. D. Brunn (Ed.), 11 September and its aftermath: The geopolitics of terror. London: Frank Cass.

    Google Scholar 

  • Coleman, M. (2007). Immigration geopolitics: Beyond the Mexico–US border. Antipode, 39(1), 54–76.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cowen, D. (2007). Struggling with “security”: National security and labour in the ports. Just Labour: A Canadian Journal of Work and Society, 10, 30–44.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cowen, D. (2008). Military workfare: The soldier and social citizenship in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cowen, D., & Gilbert, E. (Eds.). (2008). War, citizenship, territory. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cresswell, T. (1993). In place/out of place: Geography, ideology and transgression. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Doel, M., & Clarke, D. (1997). Transpolitical urbanism: Suburban anomaly and ambient fear. Space and Culture, 1(2), 13–36.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eick, V. (2003). Social sorting in the early 21st century: Video surveillance and governance in Sarai Reader 03: Shaping Technologies (pp. 321–331). http://www.sarai.net/publications/readers/03-shaping-technologies. Accessed 12/03/08.

  • Elden, S. (2007). Terror and territory. Antipode, 39(5), 821–845.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. (2004). Security, territory, population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–78, translated by Graham Burchell. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillian.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gifford, B. (2006). The camouflaged safety net: The US armed forces as Welfare State Institution. Social Politics, 13(3), 372–399.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gilmore, R. W. (2006). Golden gulag: Prisons, surplus, crisis and opposition in globalising California. Berkley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Giroux, H. (2004). War talk the death of the social, and disappearing children: Remembering the other war. Cultural Studies, Critical Methodologies, 4(2), 206–211.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gould, J. B. (2002). Playing with fire: The civil liberties implications of September 11th. Public Administration Review, 62(1), 74–79.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Greider, W. (2004). Under the banner of the “War” on terror. The Nation, June 1–5.

  • Haggerty, K., & Richard, E. (2000). The surveillant assemblage. British Journal of Sociology, 51(4), 605–622.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hannah, M. (2008). Spaces of exception and unexceptionability. In D. Cowen & E. Gilbert (Eds.), War, citizenship, territory (pp. 57–73). London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heir, S. (2003). Probing the surveillant assemblage: On the dialectics of surveillance practices as processes of social control. Surveillance and Society, 1(3), 399–411.

    Google Scholar 

  • Huysmans, J. (2004). Minding exceptions: The politics of insecurity and liberal democracy. Contemporary Political Theory, 3, 321–341.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Klein, N. (2007). The shock doctrine: The rise of disaster capitalism. New York: Allen Lane.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lafer, G. (2004). Neoliberalism by other means: The “War on Terror” at home and abroad. New Political Science, 26(3), 323–346.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lee, J. (2007). Bringing the war on terrorism home: Congress considers how to “Disrupt” radical movements in the United States. Global Research. Available from http://www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=7439. Accessed 12/01/08.

  • Little, M. (1999). ‘The pecker detectors are back’: Regulation of the family form in Ontario welfare policy. Journal of Canadian Studies, 34(2), 110–136.

    Google Scholar 

  • Little, M. (2001). A litmus test for democracy: The impact of Ontario welfare changes on single mothers. Studies in Political Economy, 66, 9–36.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lyon, D. (2003). Surveillance after September 11. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Massumi, B. (2005). Fear (the spectrum said). Positions, 13(1), 31–48.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Massumi, B. (2007). Potential politics and the primacy of preemption. Theory and Event, 10(2). Available from http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_&_event/. Accessed 23/6/08.

  • Minca, C. (2006). Giorgio Agamben and the new biopolitical Nomos. Geographiska Annaler, Series B: Human Geography, 88(4), 387–400.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nederveen Pieterse, J. (2004). Neoliberal empire. Theory, Culture and Society, 21(3), 119–140.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Neocleous, M. (2006). From social to national security: On the fabrication of economic order. Security Dialogue, 37(3), 363–384.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Neumann, F. L. (1996 [1937]). The change in the function of the law in modern society. In W. E. Scheurmann (Ed.), The rule of law under siege: Selected essays of Franz L. Neumann and Otto Kircheimer. Berkeley: University of California Press.

  • Peck, J. (2001). Workfare states. New York: Guilford Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peck, J. (2003). Government and public policy: Mapping the penal state. Progress in Human Geography, 27(2), 222–232.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Prashad, V. (2003). Keeping up with the Dow Jones: Debt, prison, workfare. Cambridge: South End Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reid-Henry, S. (2007). Exceptional Sovereignty Guantanamo Bay and the re-colonial present. Antipode, 39(4), 627–648.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roberts, S., Secor, A., & Sparke, M. (2003). Neoliberal geopolitics. Antipode, 35(5), 886–897.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Salter, M. (2003). Rights of passage: The passport in international relations. Boulder: Lynne Rienner.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schmitt, C. (1985 [1922]). Political theology: four chapters on the concept of sovereignty. London: MIT Press.

  • Schmitt, C. (1996 [1932]). The concept of the political. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

  • Seccombe, K., James, D., & Battle Walters, K. (1998). ‘They think you ain’t much of nothing’: The social construction of the welfare mother. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 60(4), 849–865.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sibley, D. (1995). Geographies of exclusion: Society and difference in the west. London: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Sidaway, J. D. (2003). Intervention. Banal geopolitics resumed. Antipode, 33(4), 645–651.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sidaway, J. D. (2008). The dissemination of banal geopolitics: Webs of extremism and insecurity. Antipode, 40(1), 2–8.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Skocpol, T. (1992). Protecting soldiers and mothers: The political origins of social policy in the United States. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, A., & Rochovská, A. (2007). Domesticating neo-liberalism: everyday lives and the geographies of post-socialist transformations. Geoforum, 38(6), 1163–1178.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, N. (2005). The endgame of globalization. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, N. (2008). Afterword. In D. Cowen & E. Gilbert (Eds.), War, citizenship, territory (pp. 385–392). London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sparke, M. (2005). In the space of theory: Postfoundational geographies of the nation-state. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sparke, M. (2006). A neoliberal nexus: Economy, security and the biopolitics of citizenship on the border. Political Geography, 25, 151–180.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Steinmetz, G. (2003). The state of emergency and the revival of American imperialism: Toward an authoritarian post-fordism. Public Culture, 15(2), 323–345.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vidstrad, A. (2002). Bush extends “War on Terror” to labor. Frontlines: Newspaper of the Left. Available from http://www.sf-frontlines.com/print.php?sid=31&POSTNUKESID=e662e. Accessed 18/03/08.

  • Wacquant, L. (1999). The new “Peculiar Institution”: On the prison as surrogate ghetto. Theoretical Criminology, 4, 377–389.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Whitehead, J. W., & Aden, S. H. (2002). Forfeiting “Enduring Freedon” for “Homeland Security”: A constitutional analysis of the USA PATRIOT ACT and the justice department’s anti-terrorism initiatives. American University Law Review, 51(6), 1081–1134.

    Google Scholar 

  • Williams, M. C. (2005). What is the national interest? The neoconservative challenge in IR theory. European Journal of International Relations, 11(3), 307–337.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Laura Jones and Daniel Sage for editorial guidance and three anonymous referees for their comments on an earlier version of this article.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, University Road, Bristol, BS8 1SS, UK

    Julie MacLeavy

  2. Department of Politics, University of Bristol, 10 Priory Road, Bristol, BS8 1TU, UK

    Columba Peoples

Authors
  1. Julie MacLeavy
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Columba Peoples
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Julie MacLeavy.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

MacLeavy, J., Peoples, C. War on Terror, work in progress: security, surveillance and the configuration of the US workfare state. GeoJournal 75, 339–346 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-008-9254-5

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-008-9254-5

Keywords