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Abstract
Piracy is far from a new phenomenon (with records of piracy dating back to the 1600s), yet over the course of the past decade, it has become a focus of the international political community. Drawing from Foucault and Gramsci, we suggest that the ‘problem’ of piracy today, in particular off the coast of Somalia, is framed in a discourse to reify and support a broader ‘regime of truth’ embedded in global state-corporate economic interests. We further suggest that equating the Somalia piracy to terrorism and as a global threat to peace and maritime security serves as the political discourse designed to legitimate militarized policy responses rather than addressing the underlying conditions in Somalia that are facilitating the instances of piracy. While piracy was once a state-organized crime committed for the purposes of capital accumulation, the current framing and overly militarized responses are based on protecting states’ capital interests rather than addressing the root of the problem at hand, inadvertently providing a venue under which the conditions and ongoing deterioration of the Somalia state not only continue but remain marginalized and unaddressed.
Notes
1. See UN UN Chronicles (Citation1993, June).
2. See United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations (Citation2003).
3. See United Nations (Citation1996).
4. See Nadeau (Citation2009, January 21).
5. See World Bank (Citation2005).
6. United Nations News Centre (2010). Somali violence uproots 80,000 civilians in January alone, reports UN agency. UN News Service. Retrieved from http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=33646#
7. This has been noted most recently with the case of Iraq and the increase in opportunistic street criminality (Green & Ward, Citation2009; le Billon, Citation2001; Ross, Citation2004; Rothe & Ross, Citation2010).
8. See Hari (Citation2009, January 5).
9. For a more detailed discussion see Vico (Citation1948).
10. Beginning in 1998, however, the International Chamber of Shipping and the Seamen’s Church Institute, two very influential ‘lobbyist groups,’ called for the UN to begin addressing piracy and for the IMO to push for ‘new mechanisms to eradicate piracy, and for the issue to be kept prominently on the agenda of the United Nations’ (United Nations Secretary General Report to the General Assembly, Citation1998). It is at this point, in request and response to private shipping companies that a shift in framing and an increase in political attention begin.
11. Historically, international law restricted militarized responses by outside powers; the resolutions broke precedent and authorized the use of military force within sovereign waters and territory.
12. The trial was carried out in Rotterdam, Dutch for the case that occurred in January 2009 with a Dutch cargo ship registered in the Dutch Antilles in the Gulf of Aden.
13. Wright and Decker (Citation1994). Burglars on the Job: Streetlife and Residential Break-ins. Boston: Northeastern University Press, and Wright and Decker (Citation1997). Armed Robbers in Action: Stick Ups and Street Culture. Boston: Northeastern University Press.
14. Sutherland (Citation1939). Principles of Criminology (3rd.ed.). Philadelphia: Lippincott. One cannot ignore the long controversy over the lack of Sutherland’s precise definition of what constitutes favorable or unfavorable definitions.