From Chi-Raq to Iraq: The retreat of the state and the rise of organized violent nonstate actors

Abstract

Spanish

French

Spike Lee’s latest film, Chi-Raq, draws upon a portmanteau coined by local rappers to describe the violence and chaos of Chicago’s South Side, home of some of the most violent neighborhoods in America. City leaders condemned the title as inflammatory and hyperbolic, but this article argues the comparison is not as far afield as they suggest. Drawing from the literatures on state legitimacy, American gang formation, and the emerging scholarship surrounding the Islamic State, it is argued the two locations and their organized violent nonstate actors exhibit a host of important similarities. In both situations, the absence of services and protection delivered through the legitimate government has left a vacuum of both material goods and legitimacy, which fuels the genesis, growth, and stability of these extralegal organizations.

Keywords

Chicago gangs Iraq Islamic State state legitimacy

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Alexander

(2012) The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: The New Press.

Al-Tikriti

(2008) US policy and the creation of a sectarian Iraq. Middle East Institute. Available at: www.mei.edu/content/us-policy-and-creation-sectarian-iraq (accessed 2 May 2018).

Aronowitz

(2002) Global shift: A new capitalist state? In: Aronowitz

Bratsis

(eds) Paradigm Lost: State Theory Reconsidered. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 268–286.

Braithwaite

Wardak

(2013) Crime and war in Afghanistan. British Journal of Criminology 53(2): 179–196.

Brotherton

(2007) Toward the gang as a social movement. In: Hagedorn

(ed.) Gangs in the Global City: Alternative to Traditional Criminology. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

Brotherton

(2015) Youth Street Gangs: A Critical Appraisal. New York: Routledge.

Byman

(2003) Constructing a democratic Iraq: Challenges and opportunities. International Security 28(1): 47–78.

Call

(2011) Beyond the ‘failed state’: Toward conceptual alternatives. European Journal of International Relations 17(2): 303–326.

Camabanis

(2014.) Sunni fighters gain as they battle 2 governments, and other rebels. The New York Times, 11 June. Available at: www.nytimes.com/2014/06/12/world/middleeast/the-militants-moving-in-on-syria-and-iraq.html (accessed 28 April 2017).

10.

Castells

(1998) End of Millennium. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

11.

Chulov

(2014) ISIS: The inside story. The Guardian, 11 December.

12.

Cockburn

(2014) The Jihadis Return: ISIS and the New Sunni Uprising. New York: OR Books.

13.

Colas

(2017) What does Dabiq do? ISIS hermeneutics and organizational fractures within Dabiq magazine. Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 40(3): 173–190.

14.

Collins

(2011) Patrimonial alliances and failures of state penetration: A historical dynamic of crime, corruption, gangs, and mafias. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 636(1): 16–31.

15.

Dodge

(2013) State and society in Iraq ten years after regime change: The rise of a new authoritarianism. International Affairs 89(2): 241–257.

16.

Fessenden

Park

(2016) Chicago’s murder problem. The New York Times, 27 May. Available at: www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/18/us/chicago-murder-problem.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

17.

Fraser

Hagedorn

(2018) Gangs and a global sociological imagination. Theoretical Criminology 22(1): 42–62.

18.

Glassman

(2005) The new imperialism? On continuity and change in US foreign policy. Environment and Planning 37(9): 1527–1544.

19.

Goldstone

(2002) States, terrorists, and the clash of civilizations. In: Calhoun

CPP

Timmer

(eds) Understanding September 11. New York: New Press.

20.

Goodwin

(2001) No Other Way Out: States and Revolutionary Moments, 1945–1991. New York: Cambridge University Press.

21.

Green

Ward

(2009) The transformation of violence in Iraq. The British Journal of Criminology 49(5): 609–627.

22.

Hagedorn

(2005) The global impact of gangs. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 21(2): 153–169.

23.

Hagedorn

(2006) Race not space: A revisionist history of gangs in Chicago. The Journal of African American History 91(2): 194–208.

24.

Hagedorn

(2007) Gangs in late modernity. In: Hagedorn

(ed.) Gangs in the Global City: Alternative to Traditional Criminology. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

25.

Hagedorn

(2008) A World of Gangs: Armed Young Men and Gangsta Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

26.

Hagedorn

Rauch

(2007) Housing, gangs, and homicide: What we can learn from Chicago. Urban Affairs 42(4): 435–456.

27.

Harris

(2014) The re-Baathification of Iraq. Foreign Policy. Available at: http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/08/21/the-re-baathification-of-iraq/ (accessed 6 May 2018).

28.

Hendey

Galster

Popkin

Hayes

(2015) Housing choice voucher holders and neighborhood crime: A dynamic panel analysis from Chicago. Urban Affairs Review 52(4): 471–500.

29.

Horowitz

Nakashima

Lowrey

(2015) Justice Department will investigate practices of Chicago Police. Washington Post, 6 December. Available at: www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/12/06/justice-department-will-launch-investigation-into-practices-of-chicago-police/?utm_term=.86a4cc103b61 (accessed 6 August 2017).

30.

Ingram

(2015) The strategic logic of Islamic State information operations. Australian Journal of International Affairs 69(6): 729–752.

31.

Klein

(2007) The Shock Doctrine. New York: Picador.

32.

Lowe

Galea

Uddin

Koenen

(2014) Trajectories of posttraumatic stress among urban residents. American Journal of Community Psychology 53(1–2): 159–172.

33.

Mahmood

(2015) Life in Mosul one year on: ‘Isis with all its brutality is more honest than the Shia government’. The Guardian, 10 June. Available at: www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/10/mosul-residents-one-year-on-isis-brutality (accessed 28 April 2017).

34.

Manza

Uggen

(2008) Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy. New York: Oxford University Press.

35.

Muttitt

(2012) Fuel on the Fire: Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq. New York: The New Press.

36.

Nascimento

(2011) The (in)visibilities of war and peace: A critical analysis of dominant conflict prevention and peacebuilding strategies in the case of Sudan. International Journal of Peace Studies 16(2): 43–57.

37.

NDI (National Democratic Institute) (2015) Iraq survey: Lack of responsiveness impairs public mood. Available at: www.ndi.org/sites/default/files/August%202015%20Survey_NDI%20Website.pdf (accessed 20 April 2017).

38.

Owen

(2004) State, Power, and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East, 3rd edn. New York: Routledge.

39.

Özerdem

(2010) Insurgency, Militias, and DDR as part of security sector reconstruction in Iraq: How not to do it. Disasters 34: 40–59.

40.

Price

Milton

al-Ubaydi

Lahoud

(2014) The Group That Calls Itself a State. West Point, NY: Combating Terrorism Center.

41.

Rubin

(2006) Peace building and state-building in Afghanistan: Constructing sovereignty for whose security? Third World Quarterly 27(1): 175–185.

42.

Sanchez-Jankowski

(1991) Islands in the Street: Gangs and Urban American Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.

43.

Sanchez-Jankowski

(2003) Gangs and social change. Theoretical Criminology 7(2): 191–216.

44.

Schnell

Braga

Piza

(2017) The influence of community areas, neighborhood clusters, and street segments on the spatial variability of violent crime in Chicago. Journal of Quantitative Criminology 33(3): 469–496.

45.

Schroedter

(2016) Chicago tops in fatal police shootings among big U.S. Cities. Chicago Sun Times, 24 June. Available at: https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/chicago-tops-in-fatal-police-shootings-among-big-u-s-cities/

46.

Schwartz

(2008) War Without End. Chicago: Haymarket.

47.

Scott

(1998) Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

48.

Siebert

von Winterfeldt

John

(2015) Identifying and structuring the objectives of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and its followers. Decision Analysis 13(1): 26–50.

49.

Silva

MA de M

(2010) The limitations of the transnationalised state thesis in neo-Gramscian IR: The grounds for a strategic-relational approach. Universitas Relacoes Internacionais 8(1): 39–72.

50.

Simon

(2008) The price of surge: How US strategy is hastening Iraq’s demise. Foreign Affairs 87(3): 57–76.

51.

Skaperdas

Syropoulos

(1995) Gangs as primitive states. In: Fiorentini

Peltzman

(eds) The Economics of Organized Crime. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

52.

Smith

(2015) Spike Lee sounds off on Chi-Raq, gun violence, and Rahm. Chicago Magazine. Available at: www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/December-2015/Spike-Lee-Chiraq/?utm_source=Article%share&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Email%20share%20Oct%2023%202015%2023:42 (accessed 20 April 2017).

53.

Sobel

Osoba

(2009) Youth gangs as pseudo-governments: Implication for violent crime. Southern Economic Journal 75(4): 996–1018.

54.

Wacquant

(2002) From slavery to mass incarceration: Rethinking the ‘race question’ in the US. New Left Review 13: 41–60.

55.

Wennmann

(2009) Getting armed groups to the table: Peace processes, the political economy of conflict and the mediated state. Third World Quarterly 30(6): 1123–1138.

56.

Wiatrowski

Goldstone

(2010) The ballot and the badge: Democratic policing. Journal of Democracy 21(2): 79–92.

57.

Wood

(2015) ‘What ISIS really wants’: The response. The Atlantic, 24 February. Available at: www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/what-isis-really-wants-reader-response-atlantic/385710/

58.

Wozniak

(2017a) ‘We are going to prove that we are a civil and developed country’: The cultural performance of police legitimacy and empire in the Iraqi state. The British Journal of Criminology 57(4): 906–923.

59.

Wozniak

(2017b) Iraq and the material basis of post-conflict police reconstruction. The Journal of Peace Research 54(6): 806–818.

60.

Wozniak

Woods

King

(2018) Chaos and civilization: The organizational impression management of the Islamic State in Dabiq magazine. Social Science Quarterly. Forthcoming.

61.

Yousif

(2006) Coalition economic policies in Iraq: Motivations and outcomes. Third World Quarterly 27(3): 491–505.