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Politics of Displacement in Guatemala
Author(s) -
Stepputat Finn
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
journal of historical sociology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.186
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1467-6443
pISSN - 0952-1909
DOI - 10.1111/1467-6443.00080
Subject(s) - displacement (psychology) , politics , state (computer science) , power (physics) , wilderness , sociology , body politic , space (punctuation) , officer , population , political science , armed conflict , political economy , gender studies , law , demography , psychoanalysis , philosophy , psychology , ecology , linguistics , physics , algorithm , quantum mechanics , computer science , biology
This article examines the processes and effects of displacement during the armed conflict in Guatemala. The analytical approach emphasizes the relations between space, power and culture and draws upon writers like Henry Lefebvre, Michel Foucault, de Certeau and the French army officer, Roger Trinquier. The article argues that the army, through the massive displacement of population and the organization of civil patrols, produced a dichotomous space of “villages” and “wilderness,” and that the reorganization of space enabled the army to control the conflict. The spatial reorganization increased the state's capacity for surveillance, but the article also shows how displacement and the struggles over modes of reinclusion of the displaced population had wider effects on the body politic and produced new political subjects in Guatemala.