José Ciro Martínez
Biographic Data
| ID | 3692470 |
|---|---|
| NAME | José Ciro Martínez |
| GIVEN NAMES | José Ciro |
| FAMILY NAME | Martínez |
| SIGNATURE | MARTÍNEZ J C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cambridge |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7960-4055 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 68 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Rolling the dice: Capitalism, trafficking and speculation across the Western Mediterranean
This paper ruminates alongside two hashish traffickers whose lives span the Strait of Gibraltar in light of their simultaneous critique and embrace of the speculative underpinnings of contemporary capitalism. Drawing inspiration from Walter Benjamin’s allegorical image of chance, illustrated in his delightful portraits of the gambler, I foreground these traffickers’ distinctive engagements with and recounting of uncertainty in their profession. F…
Pursuing Opacity: Geographies of Visibility in the Western Mediterranean
The Moroccan and Spanish governments pursue the visibility of people and things. They observe and survey in order to codify, catalogue, classify, and calculate. Rather than trace the contours of such projects, this paper seeks to provoke a more sustained engagement with modes of errantry that confound their logics of command and control. Building on more than 18 months of multi‐sited ethnography, it explores how marginalised communities navigate …
Bureaucraft: Statemakers in Amman and Baghdad
Bakers and soldiers strive to provide subsistence and security to the residents of Amman and Baghdad. Yet neither set of actors is involved in straightforward administrative work; they do not sit behind desks, they rarely push paper. Their enrolment in bureaucratic assemblages and policy enactment takes on an altogether different hue. This article dissects the embodied dexterities deployed by bakers and soldiers as they carry out their jobs at ba…
States of Subsistence: The Politics of Bread in Contemporary Jordan
On any given day in Jordan, more than nine million residents eat approximately ten million loaves of khubz 'arabi —the slightly leavened flatbread known to many as pita. Some rely on this bread to avoid starvation; for others it is a customary pleasure. Yet despite its ubiquity in accounts of Middle East politics and society, rarely do we consider how bread is prepared, consumed, discussed, and circulated—and what this all represents. With this b…
Ambivalent states: Paradoxes of subjection in the Jordanian south
This paper explores the passionate attachments that underpin subjection to political authority. It does so through an examination of the ways residents of the Jordanian city of Ma‘an are formed by, respond to and live with stateness. Rather than unpacking the prosaic practices through which the state comes to appear as an external structure, it probes the forms of agency and affective connection that emerge from life amidst these practices, explo…
Topological twists in the Syrian conflict: Re-thinking space through bread
This article seeks to question the epistemological monopoly of territory and scale in analyses of the Syrian conflict. It does so to both challenge static conceptualisations of space in the study of politics and analyse how seemingly remote actors influence wartime outcomes. Since 2011, NGOs, government bodies, and merchants have worked to connect Damascus to Tehran, Idlib to Istanbul, London to Dara‘a. These connections have proven crucial to th…
Of bakeries and checkpoints: Stately affects in Amman and Baghdad
This paper examines bakeries and checkpoints through their relationship to the state and connects considerations of affect with the burgeoning literature on infrastructure. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Amman and Baghdad, we centre routine encounters at these sites and argue that infrastructural engagements ignite energies, desires and sentiments that are deeply implicated in how the state plays out in everyday life. We zoom in on these or…
Stifling stateness: The Assad regime’s campaign against rebel governance
This article assesses the impact of the Assad regime's aerial bombardment campaign on a frequently neglected component of Syria's ongoing civil war: rebel governance. While analysis of the military and humanitarian ramifications of such attacks has been extensive, these perspectives fail to consider how the Assad regime's counter insurgency efforts subvert governance practices by Syria's diverse rebel groups. Drawing on performative approaches to…
Leavened Apprehensions: Bread Subsidies and Moral Economies in Hashemite Jordan
This article analyzes the microprocesses that imbue bread with meaning and the macropolitics that shape its subsidized provision. It begins by outlining bread's multiple forms of value and significance, some easily quantifiable, others not. It problematizes the predominant approach to studying moral economies before putting forth an alternative framework. Drawing on eighteen months of fieldwork in Jordan, the following empirical sections examine …
Site of Resistance or Apparatus of Acquiescence? Tactics at the Bakery
This article explores the importance and impact of a set of actions through which bakers manipulate laws and regulations that seek to organize and regulate how they do business. It builds on eighteen months of fieldwork conducted in Jordan, twelve of which were spent working in three different bakeries in the capital, Amman. Moving away from the idea that public policies are simply imposed, the article looks in detail at the social relations thro…
The struggle for the state in Jordan: The social origins of alliances in the Middle East
Struggling to Perform the State: The Politics of Bread in the Syrian Civil War
Recent studies of civil war have problematized frameworks that rely on a strict binary between state-sanctioned order and anarchy. This paper extends these insights and combines them with theories of performativity to examine welfare practices during the Syrian conflict (2011-2015). Specifically, we argue that conceptualizing the state as a construct-as an effect of power-can expand the study of civil war beyond its quantifiable aspects and embra…
Leavening Neoliberalization’s Uneven Pathways: Bread, Governance and Political Rationalities in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
Techniques of governance in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan do not follow a single or unifying logic. Despite a more than decade-long shift towards a neoliberal orientation, market-disciplinary policies coincide with important exceptions. This article employs a modified variegated neoliberalization approach to explore one such exception. Specifically, it analyses the recent debate over the country’s bread subsidy to elucidate key elements of Jord…
Jordan’s self-fulfilling prophecy: The production of feeble political parties and the perceived perils of democracy
This article analyses the depiction of political parties in a ‘hybrid regime’ so as to explain how state-sponsored articulatory practices contribute to the discrediting of potential opponents. Through an examination of textbooks, speeches and government documents combined with semi-structured interviews and participant observation, it dissects how tropes concerning party weakness or extremism make Jordan appear unprepared for democracy. Making th…
The unintended consequences of emergency food aid: Neutrality, sovereignty and politics in the Syrian civil war, 2012-15
This article dissects the role of emergency food aid during the current Syrian conflict. Drawing on Séverine Autesserre's concept of frames and Giorgio Agamben's theory of sovereignty, we argue that the neutrality frame, which undergirds the majority of humanitarian relief efforts in Syria, obfuscates the impact of emergency food aid, both on sovereign power relations and local political dynamics. While neutrality appears benign, it has had a tan…
Stifling stateness: The Assad regime’s campaign against rebel governance
This article assesses the impact of the Assad regime's aerial bombardment campaign on a frequently neglected component of Syria's ongoing civil war: rebel governance. While analysis of the military and humanitarian ramifications of such attacks has been extensive, these perspectives fail to consider how the Assad regime's counter insurgency efforts subvert governance practices by Syria's diverse rebel groups. Drawing on performative approaches to…
Of bakeries and checkpoints: Stately affects in Amman and Baghdad
This paper examines bakeries and checkpoints through their relationship to the state and connects considerations of affect with the burgeoning literature on infrastructure. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Amman and Baghdad, we centre routine encounters at these sites and argue that infrastructural engagements ignite energies, desires and sentiments that are deeply implicated in how the state plays out in everyday life. We zoom in on these or…
The unintended consequences of emergency food aid: Neutrality, sovereignty and politics in the Syrian civil war, 2012-15
This article dissects the role of emergency food aid during the current Syrian conflict. Drawing on Séverine Autesserre's concept of frames and Giorgio Agamben's theory of sovereignty, we argue that the neutrality frame, which undergirds the majority of humanitarian relief efforts in Syria, obfuscates the impact of emergency food aid, both on sovereign power relations and local political dynamics. While neutrality appears benign, it has had a tan…
Leavening Neoliberalization’s Uneven Pathways: Bread, Governance and Political Rationalities in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
Techniques of governance in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan do not follow a single or unifying logic. Despite a more than decade-long shift towards a neoliberal orientation, market-disciplinary policies coincide with important exceptions. This article employs a modified variegated neoliberalization approach to explore one such exception. Specifically, it analyses the recent debate over the country’s bread subsidy to elucidate key elements of Jord…
Leavened Apprehensions: Bread Subsidies and Moral Economies in Hashemite Jordan
This article analyzes the microprocesses that imbue bread with meaning and the macropolitics that shape its subsidized provision. It begins by outlining bread's multiple forms of value and significance, some easily quantifiable, others not. It problematizes the predominant approach to studying moral economies before putting forth an alternative framework. Drawing on eighteen months of fieldwork in Jordan, the following empirical sections examine …
Jordan’s self-fulfilling prophecy: The production of feeble political parties and the perceived perils of democracy
This article analyses the depiction of political parties in a ‘hybrid regime’ so as to explain how state-sponsored articulatory practices contribute to the discrediting of potential opponents. Through an examination of textbooks, speeches and government documents combined with semi-structured interviews and participant observation, it dissects how tropes concerning party weakness or extremism make Jordan appear unprepared for democracy. Making th…
Site of Resistance or Apparatus of Acquiescence? Tactics at the Bakery
This article explores the importance and impact of a set of actions through which bakers manipulate laws and regulations that seek to organize and regulate how they do business. It builds on eighteen months of fieldwork conducted in Jordan, twelve of which were spent working in three different bakeries in the capital, Amman. Moving away from the idea that public policies are simply imposed, the article looks in detail at the social relations thro…
Pursuing Opacity: Geographies of Visibility in the Western Mediterranean
The Moroccan and Spanish governments pursue the visibility of people and things. They observe and survey in order to codify, catalogue, classify, and calculate. Rather than trace the contours of such projects, this paper seeks to provoke a more sustained engagement with modes of errantry that confound their logics of command and control. Building on more than 18 months of multi‐sited ethnography, it explores how marginalised communities navigate …
Bureaucraft: Statemakers in Amman and Baghdad
Bakers and soldiers strive to provide subsistence and security to the residents of Amman and Baghdad. Yet neither set of actors is involved in straightforward administrative work; they do not sit behind desks, they rarely push paper. Their enrolment in bureaucratic assemblages and policy enactment takes on an altogether different hue. This article dissects the embodied dexterities deployed by bakers and soldiers as they carry out their jobs at ba…
Ambivalent states: Paradoxes of subjection in the Jordanian south
This paper explores the passionate attachments that underpin subjection to political authority. It does so through an examination of the ways residents of the Jordanian city of Ma‘an are formed by, respond to and live with stateness. Rather than unpacking the prosaic practices through which the state comes to appear as an external structure, it probes the forms of agency and affective connection that emerge from life amidst these practices, explo…
Leavening Neoliberalization’s Uneven Pathways: Bread, Governance and Political Rationalities in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
Techniques of governance in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan do not follow a single or unifying logic. Despite a more than decade-long shift towards a neoliberal orientation, market-disciplinary policies coincide with important exceptions. This article employs a modified variegated neoliberalization approach to explore one such exception. Specifically, it analyses the recent debate over the country’s bread subsidy to elucidate key elements of Jord…
Jordan’s self-fulfilling prophecy: The production of feeble political parties and the perceived perils of democracy
This article analyses the depiction of political parties in a ‘hybrid regime’ so as to explain how state-sponsored articulatory practices contribute to the discrediting of potential opponents. Through an examination of textbooks, speeches and government documents combined with semi-structured interviews and participant observation, it dissects how tropes concerning party weakness or extremism make Jordan appear unprepared for democracy. Making th…
The unintended consequences of emergency food aid: Neutrality, sovereignty and politics in the Syrian civil war, 2012-15
This article dissects the role of emergency food aid during the current Syrian conflict. Drawing on Séverine Autesserre's concept of frames and Giorgio Agamben's theory of sovereignty, we argue that the neutrality frame, which undergirds the majority of humanitarian relief efforts in Syria, obfuscates the impact of emergency food aid, both on sovereign power relations and local political dynamics. While neutrality appears benign, it has had a tan…
The struggle for the state in Jordan: The social origins of alliances in the Middle East
Struggling to Perform the State: The Politics of Bread in the Syrian Civil War
Recent studies of civil war have problematized frameworks that rely on a strict binary between state-sanctioned order and anarchy. This paper extends these insights and combines them with theories of performativity to examine welfare practices during the Syrian conflict (2011-2015). Specifically, we argue that conceptualizing the state as a construct-as an effect of power-can expand the study of civil war beyond its quantifiable aspects and embra…
Stifling stateness: The Assad regime’s campaign against rebel governance
This article assesses the impact of the Assad regime's aerial bombardment campaign on a frequently neglected component of Syria's ongoing civil war: rebel governance. While analysis of the military and humanitarian ramifications of such attacks has been extensive, these perspectives fail to consider how the Assad regime's counter insurgency efforts subvert governance practices by Syria's diverse rebel groups. Drawing on performative approaches to…
Leavened Apprehensions: Bread Subsidies and Moral Economies in Hashemite Jordan
This article analyzes the microprocesses that imbue bread with meaning and the macropolitics that shape its subsidized provision. It begins by outlining bread's multiple forms of value and significance, some easily quantifiable, others not. It problematizes the predominant approach to studying moral economies before putting forth an alternative framework. Drawing on eighteen months of fieldwork in Jordan, the following empirical sections examine …
Site of Resistance or Apparatus of Acquiescence? Tactics at the Bakery
This article explores the importance and impact of a set of actions through which bakers manipulate laws and regulations that seek to organize and regulate how they do business. It builds on eighteen months of fieldwork conducted in Jordan, twelve of which were spent working in three different bakeries in the capital, Amman. Moving away from the idea that public policies are simply imposed, the article looks in detail at the social relations thro…
Topological twists in the Syrian conflict: Re-thinking space through bread
This article seeks to question the epistemological monopoly of territory and scale in analyses of the Syrian conflict. It does so to both challenge static conceptualisations of space in the study of politics and analyse how seemingly remote actors influence wartime outcomes. Since 2011, NGOs, government bodies, and merchants have worked to connect Damascus to Tehran, Idlib to Istanbul, London to Dara‘a. These connections have proven crucial to th…
Of bakeries and checkpoints: Stately affects in Amman and Baghdad
This paper examines bakeries and checkpoints through their relationship to the state and connects considerations of affect with the burgeoning literature on infrastructure. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Amman and Baghdad, we centre routine encounters at these sites and argue that infrastructural engagements ignite energies, desires and sentiments that are deeply implicated in how the state plays out in everyday life. We zoom in on these or…
States of Subsistence: The Politics of Bread in Contemporary Jordan
On any given day in Jordan, more than nine million residents eat approximately ten million loaves of khubz 'arabi —the slightly leavened flatbread known to many as pita. Some rely on this bread to avoid starvation; for others it is a customary pleasure. Yet despite its ubiquity in accounts of Middle East politics and society, rarely do we consider how bread is prepared, consumed, discussed, and circulated—and what this all represents. With this b…
Ambivalent states: Paradoxes of subjection in the Jordanian south
This paper explores the passionate attachments that underpin subjection to political authority. It does so through an examination of the ways residents of the Jordanian city of Ma‘an are formed by, respond to and live with stateness. Rather than unpacking the prosaic practices through which the state comes to appear as an external structure, it probes the forms of agency and affective connection that emerge from life amidst these practices, explo…
Bureaucraft: Statemakers in Amman and Baghdad
Bakers and soldiers strive to provide subsistence and security to the residents of Amman and Baghdad. Yet neither set of actors is involved in straightforward administrative work; they do not sit behind desks, they rarely push paper. Their enrolment in bureaucratic assemblages and policy enactment takes on an altogether different hue. This article dissects the embodied dexterities deployed by bakers and soldiers as they carry out their jobs at ba…
Pursuing Opacity: Geographies of Visibility in the Western Mediterranean
The Moroccan and Spanish governments pursue the visibility of people and things. They observe and survey in order to codify, catalogue, classify, and calculate. Rather than trace the contours of such projects, this paper seeks to provoke a more sustained engagement with modes of errantry that confound their logics of command and control. Building on more than 18 months of multi‐sited ethnography, it explores how marginalised communities navigate …
Rolling the dice: Capitalism, trafficking and speculation across the Western Mediterranean
This paper ruminates alongside two hashish traffickers whose lives span the Strait of Gibraltar in light of their simultaneous critique and embrace of the speculative underpinnings of contemporary capitalism. Drawing inspiration from Walter Benjamin’s allegorical image of chance, illustrated in his delightful portraits of the gambler, I foreground these traffickers’ distinctive engagements with and recounting of uncertainty in their profession. F…
Political science (13 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Law (11 works) · Politics (10 works) · Political economy (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies (7 works) · Middle East Politics and Society (6 works) · Economics (5 works) · State (computer science (5 works)