Citation

Bourne M. Int. Polit. (Hague) 2018; 55(3-4): 441-461.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1057/s41311-017-0080-6

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW) are the principal tools of armed violence, but the development of a global 'regime' has been a fragmented and fragile process that reinforces sovereignty more than it regulates violence. This article argues that rather than a settled regime, the global processes on SALW are better understood as a 'global assemblage'. Drawing on new materialism and process philosophy, the article does not seek to explain a regime through power but to explain power through its assemblage. It shows how powers are produced as a global collective for action on SALW is composed. This composition of powers operates not only by producing agreements, but by creating and proliferating the possibilities to disagree, re-composing the meanings of decision and consensus, and generating objects for cooperation that constitute particular modes of global action that render guns governable.

Language: en