Columbia University Seminars: Studies in Contemporary Africa
Mistaking Order for Anarchy: Territory, Mobility and Security in the Sahel by Casey McNeill
Date: January 28 at 5:00 PM
Location: Faculty House, Morningside Drive
To RSVP, write to Mylkah Djacko at [email protected]
Description: Mistaking Order for Anarchy: Territory, Mobility and Security in the Sahel challenges the common sense that territorial governance is a necessary foundation for international security. The book examines statebuilding projects in the West African Sahel, from the 19th to 21st centuries, as a context in which the territorial spatial logics of modern international order can be put into relief. Like other arid zones, order and security in the Sahel have depended more on the preservation of mobility through space than control over space. By examining relationships between political order, security, and the production of space, the book shows not only that stable forms of social and political order do not necessarily require territorial control or definition, but also that the territorialization of order is itself a transformative political process whose relationship to security is variable and contingent. This has important implications for contemporary theories and practices of international security. McNeill argues that understanding and responding to global security conditions requires delinking security, conceptually and practically, from the project of territorial control and containment.
Casey McNeill is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Fordham University. Her research focuses on international security, political geography, African international relations, and postcolonial international relations theory. She is the author of Mistaking Order for Anarchy: Territory, Mobility, and Security in the Sahel (Stanford University Press, 2026). Her research is also published in Political Geography, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, and in multiple edited volumes.
Columbia University Seminar Studies in Contemporary Africa
Co-chairs: Rhiannon Stephens and Casey McNeill
Rapporteur: Mylkah Djacko
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