Refugees, Prisoners and Camps

A Functional Analysis of the Phenomenon of Encampment

B. Møller

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137502797
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Peace & Global Development
• Index: Politics & International Relations

What do refugee and concentration camps, prisons, terrorist and guerrilla training camps and prisoner of war camps have in common? Arguably they have all followed an 'outsides inside' model, enforcing a dichotomy between perceived 'desirable' and 'undesirable' characteristics. This separation is the subject of Møller's multidisciplinary study.

1

Introduction: Methods, Concepts and Theories

Abstract: The introduction provides an overview of the subsequent analysis and a tentative classification of different types of camps, and an identification of the contributions of various academic disciplines to an understanding of camps. It also offers an explanation of the methodology, which is primarily functionalist, focusing on the functions of encampment, but also historical and dialectical in the sense of looking throughout at functional equivalents of encampment. It also introduces the theoretical concept of heteronomy, drawn from Michel Foucault.

Keywords: asylum; camps; concentration camps; Foucault; ghettos; Gulag; heteronomy; prisoners-of-war camps; prisons; refugee camps; refugees; training camps

Møller, Bjørn. Refugees, Prisoners and Camps: A Functional Analysis of the Phenomenon of Encampment. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. DOI: 10.1057/9781137502797.0005.

In the following chapters ‘camps’ will be used in a rather broad sense as places of separation, segregation or confinement of people which are usually, but not necessarily, marked off with a fence or an equivalent thereof. They are treated as what Michel Foucault called ‘heterotopias,’ that is, ‘places outside of all places’ or ‘outsides inside’ and thus as exceptions.

1.1History, functionalism and dialectics

The primary aim of this short monograph is to provide a functional analysis of camps, wherefore it distinguishes between various categories of camps according to the functions they are supposed to perform. In most cases the origins and historical development of each category are briefly outlined.

The analysis is also partly ‘dialectical,’ albeit admittedly in a rather loose sense, perhaps more akin to Immanuel Kant’s ‘antinomies’ than to G.W.F. Hegel’s ‘thesis-antithesis-synthesis’ mode of thinking.¹ Having identified camps as performing a (set of) function(s), it then proceeds to ‘represent, contest, and invert’ (in the words of Foucault, vide infra) these functions by identifying functional equivalents of camps, some of which may also be ‘places’ or ‘spaces,’ whereas others are not. A good example, to which we shall return in Chapter 2, is Jeremy Bentham’s famous blueprint of a prison known as the ‘Panopticon’ intended for correctional (as opposed to punitive) purposes. This has given rise to various other forms of surveillance, often lumped together as forms of ‘panopticism,’ which may take material form, for example, in the form of wiretapping and closed-circuit-TV surveillance, but the supposedly positive consequences of which may also be achieved by, for instance, certain religious belief sets. Whereas camps are thus spaces, their functional equivalents need not be.

However much we may like to extend the definition of camps, it would be unwise to go too far. For the concept to retain its analytical utility, camps must remain exceptions. We may well understand what Bob Dylan meant when he sang that ‘Sometimes I think this whole world is one big prison yard/Some of us are prisoners, some of us are guards,’² just as we probably understand what is meant by allegations along the lines of ‘North Korea is one large prison camp.’ The gist of, and the intention behind, such formulations is surely laudable, but they erode the significant differences between those unfortunate North Koreans who are in fact incarcerated and the majority who are not. Even somewhat more accurate comparisons of territories such as the Gaza Strip with prisons are only really useful if used for a comparison of the residents of Gaza with the rest of the Palestinian nation, on the West Bank or in a diaspora situation (vide infra).³

As ‘exceptional spaces’ or, as Giorgio Agamben puts it, ‘spaces (or states) of exception,’⁴ camps are almost emblematic, no matter what kind of camp we are talking about: Prison camps, concentration camps, labour and death camps, prisoners-of-war camps, guerrilla or terrorist training camps, strategic hamlets or refugee or IDP (internally displaced person) camps, to all of which some space is devoted in the following.

1.2Camps and academic discipline(s)

Just as camps and similar types of confinement, according to Foucault and others, play quite a central role in disciplining societies, discipline(s) also play a role in understanding the phenomenon/a of the camp, as a camp may look quite differently from the academic vantage points of, for instance, architecture, law, political science or anthropology. The study of camps thus almost cries out for multidisciplinary studies, even when approached from the present article’s historical-functional-line up dialectical angle, which simply opens up for a wealth of interesting research avenues.

History is obviously indispensable for tracing the genealogy of contemporary camps, but it would be unwise to narrow this down to traditional (written) history based on archival studies and the reading of autobiographies and memoirs (e.g., of concentration camp commanders, staff and inmates), as there is also a role for oral history, as far as the not-too-distant past is concerned.

Archaeology may also prove relevant, especially for the study of the more distant past, and works have indeed been published with the ambition of founding so exotic sub-disciplines as the ‘archaeology of internment’ or even ‘prisoner-of-war archaeology,’ specialising in excavations at former prisoners-of-war camps.⁵

Political science as well as political philosophy are relevant as vantage points for studying the links between various forms of camps and their functional equivalents and governmentality in the sense of Foucault. Might societies dispense with prisons in which to incarcerate habitual offenders, for instance, and which functional equivalents might be relevant? Would all-encompassing and around-the-clock surveillance help reduce crime and promote order, and what implications might this have for human rights, including the right to privacy?⁶

Law, both international and national, is similarly relevant as this is (at least in most cases) the preferred instrument for deciding who should be incarcerated, on what grounds and under which conditions.

Criminology and its sub-discipline of penology are interested in, among other things, for example, the pros and cons of punishment (today mainly in the form of imprisonment) v. correction; and in the consequences the constant ‘gaze’ which Benthamian panoptic spaces or arrangements may have on behaviour,⁷ as well as on, for instance, the crime rates in modern ‘ghettos’ and what might be done about them.

Economics has, for instance, proved relevant for the analysis of labour camps, such as those of the Soviet Gulag and some of the Nazi concentration camps, as business ventures, as well as for analysing the pros and cons of prison privatisation (vide infra).

A...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Introduction: Methods, Concepts and Theories
• 2  Punitive and/or Preventative Confinement
• 3  Concentration Camps and Ghettos
• 4  Camps for/in War
• 5  Camps for People in Flight
• 6  Conclusion
• Selective Bibliography
• Index