Subsovereignty and necroeconomics: Ethnicity, violence and Kosovo.

Item

Title
Subsovereignty and necroeconomics: Ethnicity, violence and Kosovo.
Identifier
AAI3278441
identifier
3278441
Creator
Haskaj, Fatmir.
Contributor
Adviser: Patricia T. Clough
Date
2007
Language
English
Publisher
City University of New York.
Subject
Sociology, Social Structure and Development | Political Science, General | Sociology, Theory and Methods
Abstract
This dissertation focuses upon the structural, cultural, political and economic forces and tendencies that contributed and continue to inform the conflict in Kosovo/Kosova. I argue that ethnic conflict between the majority Albanian population and minority Serbs is conditioned and characterized by subsovereignty and necroeconomics. The hierarchical structuring of global capital and Western political hegemony in concert with the weakening of the former Yugoslavia produced reactive nationalist regimes that resorted to pseudo-feudal mechanism of primitive accumulation to buffer against disruptive economic restructuring. Ethnic groups were mobilized in order to redistribute resources as well as buttress new political regimes which deliberately targeted the Albanian population of Kosovo in order to galvanize political support and extract value. The process by which these transformations occurred depended upon western notions of the subject which privileges the human and commodifies the individual. Value is located at the level of the body, not as labor but as death. This type of biopolitical regime targets populations deliberately within necroeconomic circuits of exchange and relationships of power and draws upon what I call necrolabor, which is the release of stored value through death. I further argue that subsovereignty continues to present a significant risk to the regions minorities, especially the Serbian community in Kosovo.
Type
dissertation
Source
PQT Legacy Restricted.xlsx
degree
Ph.D.