ABSTRACT
Recently, social historians, sociologists of science and technology, and social scientists working in critical security studies have turned their attention towards an unconventional class of weapons designed not to maximize killing potential in war and domestic conflict, but rather those which fall under the term “non-lethal” (Rappert 2001, 2003, 2004, Davison 2009). My research focuses on the role of non-lethal weapons in the government of American cities and in international interventions carried out by the US military. It does so by locating them within the context of a set of political and historically-specific relations between technology, security, the governance of insecurity, and broader regimes of governance. It follows the life story of objects of security by asking how they come together and how they sometimes fall apart, and what this means for them and for the sets of practices of which they form a part. Included in the broader class of non-lethal weapons are familiar devices such as tear gas, electrical stun technologies, kinetic impact weapons such as bean-bag rounds, and rubber bullets. Newer and less well-known non-lethal weapons include vehicle-mounted active denial devices which deter crowds by directing sound or microwave beams at them, slippery and sticky foams meant to dissuade crowds or mobs from entering particular areas, and weaponized calmative agents such as the anesthetic Fentanyl.
