Symbolic power in the US Government Counterinsurgency Guide: US security, (non-) combatant civilians, and the refugee-in-place

Abstract

Framed by symbolic power as a theory of performance, this essay takes as its subject the state’s use of performance transience for oppressive ends. For Pierre Bourdieu, the symbolic field is about group misrecognition of existing power differentials as legitimate distinctions. Building from this theory, I examine the 2009 US Government Counterinsurgency Guide’s work in the symbolic field. At once a military, social, and performance theory, the Guide creates categorization schemas that differentially define states and people based off of performances of loyalty to US interests. Through the concept of the “non-combatant civilian,” these hierarchies position non-US populations as always already threatening, and acquire social authorization through the threat of further violence. By generating roles for groups of people and framing the means of enforcing those roles, the Guide uses performance transience to structure a symbolic order with deeply racializing consequences.