Violence and ordering of the Third World: an introduction

Abstract

The decisive role violence has played in the ordering of the Third World cannot be ignored or consigned to the past. Accordingly, we argue for a more systematic and determined attention to the connections between the devastation unleashed by colonialism, imperialism, and other forms of large-scale violence in the post-independence periods. In contradistinction to situating violence in and against the Third World as a backdrop of incomplete modernization, we recognize that its proper location is in the larger dynamics of racialized and colonial international relations. The articles in this volume address these dynamics of violence.