A/Prof. Srinjoy Bose1, Dr Keshab Giri2, Dr Rumela Sen3
1UNSW, Sydney, Australia, 2University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK, 3Columbia University, New York, USA
Biography:
Dr Srinjoy Bose is A/Prof in Politics and International Relations at UNSW, Sydney. He researches topics in political order and violence, focusing on rebel governance and the political economy of state building and peacebuilding in 'fragile' and deeply divided societies.
Dr Keshab Giri is Lecturer in International Relations at University of St Andrews, Scotland. He was Research Fellow at the Women and Public Policy Program, Harvard Kennedy School (2023-24). He is the author of the forthcoming monograph 'Intersectionality and Experiences of Female Combatants' (Oxford University Press, 2025).
Abstract:
Although the rebel governance literature recognizes the importance of rebel interest in controlling emotions to increase predictability in civilian behaviour and in articulating a social contract in a 'rebelocracy', there is a lack of focused research examining the governing of emotions. In this paper we articulate the concept of 'intimate governance', which we define as the strategies and practices deployed by rebels to exert control over emotions in the personal, interpersonal (social), and everyday aspects of individuals’ lives. Intimate governance draws inspiration from the ‘micropolitics of the everyday’ and the idea of social reproduction in feminist political economy and feminist security studies central to the everyday moral and political economy of war. We illuminate the mechanisms of intimate governance by examining rebel education. The central question we explore is: how does regulating education shape the emotional and intimate spheres? We investigate this question by exploring rebel governance of education in three different armed groups in South Asia—the Maoists in Nepal, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the LTTE in Sri Lanka. We show that these rebel groups, by shaping the institutions, delivery and curricula of education, regulate other intimate aspects of civilian life, and present themselves as the rightful authority. In doing so, rebels are able to consolidate power and establish a new socio-political order via (re)constructing an alternative system of values, histories, rituals and beliefs concerning all aspects of life and death, which contributes to a sustainable cultural reproduction of violence.