Abstract
Drawing on Norbert Elias’ concept of “figuration,” this article argues against treating armed groups as static, autonomous units (reification) and instead advocates for analyzing forms of political violence as shifting socio-spatial configurations. By analyzing political violence as a dynamic web of interdependencies between actors and their environments, this perspective offers three key advantages: it establishes a morphology based on recurring relational patterns, captures the fluid, processual nature of political violence, and bridges separate research fields. Two empirical episodes are used to illustrate how socio-spatial relations shift and evolve–and contribute to the transformation of the configuration of political violence over time and across space: the Provisional IRA (Irish Republican Army) in Northern Ireland, between 1969 and 1977, and al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya in Egypt, between 1980 and 1998.
Introduction
Norbert Elias has warned that the traditional, reifying way of forming concepts such as “groups” (or “families”) is misleading, as it suggests that these phenomena are “pieces of matter—objects of the same kind as rocks, trees or houses” (Elias, 1978, p. 13). What is needed, he argues, is a reorientation of sociological models and concepts. This becomes possible if we begin to see actors not as fully autonomous units but as semi-autonomous ones—dependent on, oriented toward, and bound to others in various ways (Elias, 1978, p. 175). By introducing the notion of “figurations” (or configurations), Elias proposes that such phenomena be understood as “groupings” or, closer to the German original Geflechte, as webs of social relations formed by interdependent actors (Elias, 1978, pp. 13, 123–128), which are continuously reproduced and transformed through interaction, constituting dynamic relational patterns within a fundamentally processual understanding of social life.
In this article, we argue that research on political violence can be advanced by applying this perspective not only to capture the internal (e.g., networked) structure of armed groups, but as a broader analytical shift: by exploring phenomena of political violence as socio-spatial configurations and examining how armed groups orient themselves toward, are tied to, interact with, and are defined by relations with their social and political environment. In other words, instead of conceiving of political violence primarily in terms of a particular violent actor, a specific ideology or organizational structure (e.g., a “terrorist group” or an underground cell), we suggest examining it as a particular socio-spatial configuration of violent political action, shaped by relations with a broad array of actors, individuals, and milieus. This perspective draws on—and integrates—various conceptual developments in social movement studies, research on (clandestine) political violence, as well as civil war studies. At its core, however, it builds on Charles Tilly’s understanding of contentious politics and political “performances” as essentially relational (McAdam et al., 2001; Tilly, 2003, 2008), seeking to decenter the analysis from movements or groups and focusing on how actions and actors are constituted by patterns of relations (Emirbayer, 1997).
As we see it, conceiving political violence as socio-spatial configurations offers three key advantages. First, by highlighting how different relational patterns shape these phenomena, this perspective not only situates them in context but also provides the basis for a meaningful morphology of political violence—one that captures the recurring socio-spatial configurations that produce particular patterns of conflict. Second, because relational ontologies are inherently processual (Bosi & Malthaner, forthcoming), this approach foregrounds the fluid and evolving nature of these socio-spatial configurations across time and space. As Elias argues, figurations are dynamic patterns of ties, dependencies, and power balances that are continuously reproduced and renegotiated through interaction (Elias, 1978, pp. 123–128). Third, by emphasizing transitions—and thus connections—between different patterns of political violence, it links phenomena and fields of research that have often been treated separately.
Socio-Spatial Configurations of Political Violence
Political conflicts develop in a non-linear fashion along a continuum of non-violent and violent patterns of contention, driven by dynamics of escalation and radicalization, but also skipping steps or “phases,” and shifting back and forth between different forms. Moreover, different “levels” of political violence can co-exist at certain times and in certain spaces. For this reason, analyzing political violence as part of broader processes is crucial for understanding the contingent, discontinuous and open-ended nature of political contention, rather than focusing on the onset of confrontations or on presumably linear patterns of emergence, escalation, and decline (Bosi & Malthaner, forthcoming).
However, analyzing these phenomena from a processual perspective requires an understanding of what we mean by “forms” of political violence—not as fixed types (and reified notions of “entities” or structures), but as a dynamic morphology that allows us to identify the transitions, changes, and boundaries between different phenomena. We suggest that conceptualizing forms of political violence as socio-spatial configurations can open a way toward developing this type of dynamic morphology.
The notion of socio-spatial configurations to some extent dissolves the distinction between an armed group’s “internal” organizational makeup and “external” relations with its social environment. It also bridges the divide between actors and actions, while, at the same time, integrating all of these aspects. Configurations, in this sense, refer to patterns of relationships among participants (or members) within an armed group, as well as ties to external actors and milieus—supporters, constituencies, audiences, target groups, and opponents. Together, these relationships shape an armed group’s structure, identity, boundaries, resources, dependencies, and constraints. They also encompass patterns of political action and practice, which reproduce these social relations and are, at the same time, shaped by them. Moreover, we argue that such relational configurations of political violence are inherently spatial. Activist networks are embedded in specific spatial settings—such as safe spaces, strongholds, or the “underground”—while violent political performances are staged in public arenas, including streets, symbolic sites, media, and online spaces. Challenges to political power, in turn, often take the form of symbolic or material contests over the state’s control of territory.
A substantial body of literature across multiple fields (see Table 1) addresses aspects and dimensions of these relations, providing a foundation for this approach and resources for further developing the concept of socio-spatial configurations:
Elements of the Socio-Spatial Configuration of Political Violence, with Reference to Existing Conceptual Literature.
The aim of this article is not to present a fully developed conceptual framework, but to demonstrate the analytical value of this perspective and to chart first steps toward specifying how it can be applied. To this end, we (re-)conceptualize three common forms of political violence across socio-spatial configurations—(1) clandestine political violence, (2) semi-clandestine political violence, and (3) territorially based political violence—before we trace in two case-studies how they emerge and shift over time and space, how different configurations are linked, and how they shape the logics, trajectories, and dynamics of (non-violent and violent) political violence. This is not intended as a definite typology, but as a provisional conceptual framework to explore the potential of figurational process analysis, in the tradition of Elias, as applied to political violence.
Clandestine political violence refers to a socio-spatial configuration of small, closely knit armed groups operating underground, often largely disconnected from the broader movements and constituencies from which they emerged as well as from their local social environment. In this pattern of political violence, socio-spatial embeddedness is typically limited to hidden support networks, which are based on personal ties or consist of secondary radical milieus formed around issues such as the liberation of imprisoned members. Operating “clandestinely” does, in fact, mean using the cover of anonymity in modern, urban societies, relying on false documents and covert safe houses. The violent strategy in this socio-spatial configuration uses deadly but, in its scale, limited political violence and “spectacular” attacks, directed at generating attention and influencing an abstract (media-)audience by violent “propaganda of the deed” and via manifests or claims of responsibility provided to the press. This socio-spatial configuration of political violence is only weakly embedded in local spatial and social environments.
Semi-clandestine political violence, similarly to clandestine forms, is limited in the scale of violence, but more closely embedded in local social environments and supportive milieus. Also, this form of political violence often has a territorial component. Violent contention may revolve around places and territories connected to the armed groups and their constituencies, either because these territories are central to the respective community’s identity—and claimed as their land and home ground that has to be defended or liberated—or because certain areas serve as safe spaces for mobilization and are the subject of government attempts to control them. Movements and armed groups, in this socio-spatial configuration, while not necessarily visible to outsiders, are linked to their social environments via pre-existing social networks (family/kinship-ties, friendships, communal networks) and/or political supportive milieus (movement networks). Moreover, relationships with local communities can involve the provision of services (e.g., welfare services, medical care) or policing crime, and thus can involve a degree of authority and control. Semi-clandestine political violence means that armed groups are protected from government persecution not by secrecy and anonymity alone, but by the “social cover” of local communities, hiding among a population and in spaces where many are aware of their presence. This socio-spatial configuration changes the strategic logic of political violence, creating mutual dependencies and requiring armed groups to maintain legitimacy and support within their local constituencies as well as to control this social and spatial environment and prevent collaboration with security forces. Thus, semi-clandestine political violence challenges the state’s control over certain areas. Yet, in contrast to larger-scale territorially based political violence (armed groups in civil wars with territorial control, see below), the police and military have the ability to enter and move within the respective areas, even if their authority and political influence are limited.
For the purpose of this article, and the case studies analyzed below, territorially based political violence constitutes a liminal case and can here only be sketched in its outlines. This socio-spatial configuration represents a scale-shift insofar as it suggests a significantly greater military strength of oppositional groups, who develop a degree of actual military control of a territory, able to deny access to government forces, with insurgents typically patrolling the area wearing uniforms and carrying arms openly. This configuration entails “government” by militant groups over certain areas, who often also dispose of extensive political and social organizations that penetrate local societies, providing them with a greater degree of effective surveillance, socio-economic control, and coercive control. Violent strategies often evolve toward more symmetric patterns, such as small-scale battles, assaults on enemy bases, etc. Yet, in many cases, obviously, territorial control is limited to remote areas and combined with semi-clandestine or other forms of political violence in other parts of the country. Research on “rebel governance” in civil wars has examined this type of relation between armed groups and the local population extensively (see Table 1). It represents the extreme end of the spectrum of phenomena of political violence examined in this article, which primarily focuses on lower-level processes of political violence (Table 2).
Re-conceptualizing Forms of Political Violence as Socio-Spatial Configurations.
To reiterate, these socio-spatial configurations are dynamic and evolve across time and space. Rather than constituting fixed types, they are best understood as moments within a continuous, non-linear process. Over the course of armed conflict, socio-spatial configurations are (re)produced and renegotiated as sites of political contention through interactions among armed groups, local actors, and institutions. Crucially, in shaping patterns of relations, practices, and interactions, these configurations generate the very dynamics through which they are transformed.
The relationship between armed groups and local constituencies is shaped by a triangular dynamic involving the state. Security forces actively work to break these ties by incentivizing collaboration or using coercion. When counterterrorist policies manage to delegitimize the armed group in front of its local constituency, they can weaken relations, but when counterterrorism is perceived as illegitimate, it may also reinforce social ties between the armed group and local constituencies. At the same time, the prolonged use of coercive control by armed groups on its local constituency might reshape semi-clandestine socio-spatial configuration in the long run, distancing the armed group from the local constituency, shifting the socio-spatial configuration toward a clandestine pattern.
Shifting Forms of Political Violence
This section provides two empirical episodes of shifting forms of political violence based on empirical research, which illustrate and further develop this approach. The episodes we present are neither exhaustive nor universal, but they serve to support the relevance of our approach.
The Provisional Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland
At the end of the 1960s, political contention emerged in Northern Ireland over the civil rights movement’s opposition to discrimination, a claim which the Unionist establishment and the Loyalist counter-movement resisted with harsh state repression and open violent confrontation, respectively. This socio-political crisis in the region opened up a space: first, for extreme communal violence during the summer of 1969, where many nationalists were burnt out; second, for the British deployment of the army in the Northern Ireland streets to restore law and order, since the regional policing broke down; third, for the emergence of the Provisional IRA at the end of 1969, as an answer to Loyalist mobs and to the deterioration in relations between the British Army and the nationalist residents in the working-class neighborhoods. 1
The PIRA (Provisional Irish Republican Army) emerged in 1969 in small tight-knit local political networks: in Belfast, the Markets, Falls, Ardoyne, Bone, New Lodge, Unity Flats, Ladybrook, Lenadoon, and Twinbrook estates; in Derry, the Bogside, Creggan and Shantallow estates; in South Armagh, South County Derry, East Tyrone, Strabane, and Fermanagh. From these nationalist enclaves, it engaged directly with the local constituencies, fostering an image of these as “resisting communities” closely tied to the republicans’ armed campaign (Bean, 2007). This localized nature of the early days is clearly summed up in one former PIRA respondent’s words: “people nowadays see this as a single campaign, but in the early times it was a multiple of local communities in struggle” (Interview no. 3). Through local intelligence, barricades, organized riots, armed check points, ambushing security services patrolling and sniper attacks, all open strategies of territorial control, the PIRA built its legitimacy among those nationalist enclaves where it became the main defensive force against the threat of external attacks, both from Loyalist violence and from aggressive actions of the British Army (Burton, 1978; De Baróid, 1990; Feldman, 1991; O’Dochartaigh, 2013; Sluka, 1986). For example, early militants, as our respondents have repeatedly suggested, were employed in local intelligence, checking which vehicles and at what time these were entering and leaving their areas. During this phase, through a combination of strategies of open territorial control, the PIRA operating semi-clandestinely was able to challenge the local monopoly of force, since the British Army could only patrol these areas with heavily armed vehicles and was unable to root out the PIRA presence from these nationalist enclaves, for example, receiving information regarding the insurgents. Thanks to this degree of territorial challenging, the PIRA was able to significantly alter the social-spatial configurations and social practices in those territories, integrating itself even more within the nationalist enclaves and establishing direct and close ties with the local constituencies from which it was gaining important material (new recruits, funding, sheltering arms, and accommodations) and symbolic (trust, loyalty and duty) resources (Burton, 1978; Sluka, 1986). This is how a respondent has recalled “You couldn’t have fought without the people. The people of Bullymurphy feed us, the people put us up, the people put their fucking heads down when the situation was hard” (Interview no. 10). While the PIRA was not always liked by those who had to suffer from its military presence, in terms of going through armed checkpoints or suffering from the British Army retaliations in the aftermath of its operations, it was passively supported because of the efficacy with which it was seen to provide community defense, to conduct routine policing practices and procedures to anti-social behaviors, and to deliver community benefits while disrupting state services, a mixing of coercion and social control (O’Dochartaigh, 2022). At the same time these strong ties characterizing the relation between the PIRA and the nationalist enclaves were able to shape the armed group strategy (Burton, 1987). It is also significant to read what the PIRA’s training manual, the Green Book, was suggesting to the armed group militants: “[r]esistance must be channeled into active and passive support with an on-going process through our actions, our educational programs, our polices, of attempting to turn the passive supporter into a dump holder, a member of the movement, a paper-seller, etc., with the purpose of building protective support barriers between the enemy and ourselves, thus curbing the enemy’s attempted isolation policy. And of course, the more barriers there are, the harder it is for the enemy to get at us while at the same time we increase the potential for active support in its various forms” (1975). The “No Go areas” provided the PIRA with safe territories from where it could recruit and remain effectively immune from the security forces, but also mount operations as when in February 1971 it started its all-out armed campaign aimed at driving the British out of Ireland, while feeling safe in the nationalist enclaves. The new military campaign consisted of bombing primarily economic targets, but what characterized this first phase of the PIRA armed campaign was the full-scale gun battles between the same armed group and the British Army, which MacStiofain (1975, p. 166), the chief of staff of the PIRA at the time, has referred to as the “anti-personnel operations.” As our respondents recall, the PIRA set an initial target to kill as many British soldiers as possible in order to impose enough pressure on the British to oblige them to negotiate on the PIRA’s terms. A strategy that in the short term seemed to pay off, the PIRA was coming as close to political legitimacy as it ever would.
In early July 1972, PIRA representatives met secretly with the British establishment. But those talks did not provide any resolution to the conflict, which, instead, quickly further escalated. In their aftermath, the PIRA, as a way to reassert that its military power in the region was not in decline, intensified its bombing campaign. On July 21 alone, the PIRA planted 22 bombs in Belfast city center, killing nine people and injuring hundreds. “Bloody Friday,” as it became known, furnished the British Army with the pretext to remove the “No-Go” areas. On July 31, under the code name of “Operation Motorman,” the British Army took back the territorial control of the nationalist enclaves, which sheltered the PIRA for over 2 years. However, if it is fair to say that “No-Go” areas, in one form or another, persisted long after the barricades were removed, it is also true that with “Operation Motorman” slowly started through successful counterinsurgency measures a change of social-spatial configuration between the PIRA and its local constituencies in the nationalist enclaves, which lead to a permanent significant decrease in the military capacities of the armed group, to a change in the organization structure, and to a transformation of its armed campaign into a “long war” of attrition, through acts of
The year 1972 was the time that the PIRA reached its potentially most powerful position in the conflict, but at the same time lost it. Thereafter, the rate of violence continued to decline in absolute terms slowly over the next few years. In the aftermath of “Operation Motorman,” the British continued to build their intelligence base, making inroads in the nationalist enclaves, arresting many PIRA leaders and capturing huge quantities of military material. In reaction to these inroads, the PIRA started from the mid 1970s a huge change of organization aimed to increase its secrecy and security against informers, which was able to control its violence more carefully and became more efficient. Where in the early phase the PIRA organized itself locally in territorial brigades, with three types of militants: regulars, who were the main force within the armed group; auxiliaries, who were an almost ready reserve; and the local neighborhood defense committees, who had defensive responsibilities at the local level; by the mid “70s the PIRA adopted a cellular structure—Active Service Units—in order to limit the damage of hostile intelligence probes in case of infiltration. Although offering superior security, this new organizational structure drove the PIRA into clandestinity, disassembling it from its local constituencies in the nationalist enclaves. Fully aware of this shift, the leadership further aimed at strengthening its political wing in order to re-establish social relations with its constituency, this time not exclusively inside the nationalist enclaves. Furthermore, in reaction to the crack in its internal security, the PIRA enforced violent disciplinary actions (kneecapping, the use of an electronic drill, shooting, public humiliations, feathering) both inside the organization and within the nationalist enclaves. Strategically, it diminished its sniper activity against the security services and developed new bombing strategies: the incendiary bombing and the proxy bomber attack, so as to minimize possible militants lost in a time when it was reorganizing in the underground and strategically diminishing its size.
If the PIRA was restructuring itself in the aftermath of the successful British counterinsurgency, this was not happening in the South Armagh brigade. Here, the PIRA still kept its old territorial structure and was not willing to grant its local militants to the cellular units. The region’s closeness to the border with the Republic of Ireland and its large nationalist majority, made the South Armagh battalion capable of operating almost openly and of maintaining territorial control by forcing the presence of the British Army to fortified bases reachable only through helicopters. The PIRA’s South Armagh brigade was working rather differently from, for example, the units in Derry and Belfast. Where these progressively shifted toward clandestinity, the South Armagh unit, through its strong territorial control, was able to launch guerrilla-type attacks, with ambushes and so on.
In sum, from 1972, counterterrorist strategies pushed the PIRA to go underground, shifting its socio-spatial configuration with the nationalist enclaves from a direct and close type of relationship to a more abstract and distant one. From a pattern of semi-clandestine political violence that, while not in open territorial control, was shaped by relationships of support and influence in the nationalist enclaves, socio-spatial relations shifted toward more disembedded patterns, with PIRA cells hiding underground in the nationalist enclaves. At the same time, patterns of violence changed from attacks on security services toward the killing of alleged informants and a new bombing campaign. The episode, thus, illustrates some of the characteristic implications of semi-clandestine political violence and a typical pattern in which the socio-spatial configuration shifted over time and space.
Al-Jamaa Al-Islamiyya in Egypt
Al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya (literally, “The Islamic Group”) emerged in Egypt in the late 1970s from within a broader Islamist student-movement (Malthaner, 2011). 2 Whereas the movement in Cairo and the Nile-delta region remained non-militant and withdrew after a crackdown on student leaders and public protests, parts of the movement in Upper Egypt radicalized in confrontations with the police and formed a militant group. In October 1981, al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya joined forces with al-Jihad, a cluster of small, clandestine groups in Cairo, to assassinate Egyptian president Sadat, triggering a sweeping government crackdown on the Islamist movement. After reorganizing in the mid-1980s, al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya quickly regained influence in Upper Egypt and Cairo’s deprived suburbs. Another cycle of protest and violent repression followed, culminating in a prolonged violent conflict in the 1990s, with attacks against police officers, politicians, intellectuals, Christians, and foreign tourists, claiming, according to official numbers, more than 1,300 lives.
In contrast to al-Jihad, which had formed independently from the student movement and was organized as a secret underground-group, al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya followed a strategy of grassroots-mobilization and engaged directly—semi-clandestinely or openly—in relations with its social environment, cultivating a self-image as “popular” movement with strong support, as one former leader of the group emphasized: “The Dr. al-Zawahiri group [al-Jihad], they [were] believing in secret underground work. But al-Jamaa believed in public work; in the universities, in the towns, in the streets. [. . .] The public revolution. How can we move the public?!” 3 Convinced that the return to Islam had to start from bottom up, al-Jamaa’s initial agenda revolved around calling people to Islam and creating nuclei of an Islamic society at the local level (see also Haenni 2005).
Thereby, the local settings in which al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya operated as well as the patterns of socio-spatial relations in which the group engaged shifted over time, as a result of local interactions and the dynamics of violence. Al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya’s Islamist mobilization started within the confines of local movement-safe spaces—in this case, universities and mosques—from which it engaged in public protest events (public prayers, or marches). The movement’s subsequent radicalization, then, was shaped by two shifts in their socio-spatial setting. Firstly, the group’s leadership went underground, forming a clandestine organizational core. Secondly, government repression pushed Islamist activism out of the universities and the urban public space, toward peripheral areas, particularly poor suburbs of Cairo and Upper Egyptian towns such as Assiut and al-Minya. By the mid-1980s, al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya was active in many peripheral neighborhoods, preaching, teaching, and doing charitable work, and had gained a considerable degree of influence, if not control, in these areas. Thereby, whether al-Jamaa was able to operate openly or whether its presence was semi-clandestine varied between local settings. Neighborhoods such as Imbaba in Cairo were neglected by the state and police were effectively absent, and after pushing out armed competitors like drug traffickers or family-clans, al-Jamaa gained local dominance, based on a pious following, charitable activities, and social authority established by settling disputes and enforcing religious rules (Haenni, 2005), and local leaders had the audacity to publicly proclaim the “Islamic Republic of Imbaba” in a press conference in 1992. 4 In contrast, in suburbs like Ayn Shams in the north-east of Cairo, government authorities were present, but al-Jamaa had managed to form a local following around mosques and win support among local residents that gave them a considerable degree of (semi-clandestine) influence (Malthaner, 2011).
When al-Jamaa’s local influence became visible and openly challenged the government’s territorial sovereignty, state security forces started large-scale operations to reassert control, such as in Imbaba in 1992, where the police managed to oust the Islamists relatively quickly, demonstrating that the suburbs were areas previously neglected by the state rather than areas entirely outside the state’s control. After the loss of their strongholds in Cairo, the group shifted to clandestine forms of political violence in the city, carrying out a series of bomb attacks (Haenni, 2005), as well as starting a violent insurgency in Upper Egypt, where it was able to operate semi-clandestinely, attacking police posts and the tourism industry while hiding in local communities. Yet, in Upper Egypt, too, patterns of socio-spatial relations were not stable (and not very resilient), and between 1992 and mid-1994 al-Jamiyya was displaced from Assiut, shifting activities to the neighboring governorate of al-Minya, followed by a shift to a more dispersed (and displaced) pattern of activities in 1996 (Malthaner, 2011). These geographical shifts were accompanied by a change in the configuration of the movement, from semi-clandestine forms of political violence toward more disembedded forms of violent operations, with militants eventually hiding in caves or dry irrigation ditches, and increasingly focusing their attacks on killing alleged informants and punishing disloyal village communities.
In sum, in the case of al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya, forms of violence were shaped by consecutive shifts in socio-spatial relations. In contrast to clandestine political violence, semi-clandestine political violence has a spatial dimension and directly engages with broader milieus of followers and populations in local settings, which it seeks to mobilize but also to control. Unable to establish open military control over their “strongholds,” al-Jamaa al-Islamiyya exerted control via social relationships, opportunistic support, and coercion. This pattern led to a dynamic of violence and estrangement, instable relationships, and constantly shifting settings and forms of violence. When hiding among the local population, the militants sought to use their local influence to prevent betrayal. At the same time, the population came under strain from government forces, who maintained formal military control over the area. Exacerbated by the group’s attempts to impose rigid Islamist rules (acting as a “religious police”), this process led to a downward spiral of increasing resistance by the population, violent coercion by the militants, an erosion of support relationships, the group’s displacement from its former strongholds, and a shift toward clandestine forms of operation.
Conclusions
We believe that this article offers several insights that can inform future research on political violence and contentious politics more broadly.
First, and most fundamentally, it introduces a perspective on political violence that de-centers the analysis from armed groups as actors (or “entities”), conceiving patterns of violence, instead, as dynamic relational configurations, formed by interdependent actors, which are continuously reproduced and transformed through interaction (Elias, 1978). This perspective re-conceptualizes actors—and structure—within a process-ontology, as structure-in-process, in order to capture the way relational configurations shape violent interactions and, at the same time, how they are transformed in the process.
Second, our article shows that the strategy of collective actors (specifically armed groups) is shaped by socio-spatial configurations, which are neither pregiven nor fixed, but configurations that emerge and transform in particular contexts and over time. From this perspective, strategy is conceived as a contingent product of the transaction between agency and structure, continuously negotiated through socio-spatial configurations, rather than decided upon in a cost-benefit calculation. Emphasizing the relevance of socio-spatial configurations does not imply giving priority to structure over agency, but rather highlights the dynamic tension in which both are intertwined, recognizing the socio-spatial relational nature of political processes.
Third, we argue that locating forms of political violence in socio-spatial configurations allows us to expand our understanding of recurrent patterns (and forms) as well as variations and heterogeneity within processes of political violence, as they are embedded in space and time. Social movement scholars have so far looked at the shift from non-violent forms of contentious politics to violent ones. In this article, we build upon their work and seek to contribute to this debate by introducing a perspective that allows us to distinguish different forms of political violence and, at the same time, captures how these forms are interlinked and shift across time and space—and how they are linked to broader processes of political mobilization. In other words, our contribution is conceptual differentiation that is analytically integrating.
Footnotes
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.