Paper short abstract:

Findings of a comparative study of the Islamic State and Mexican drug cartels through the lens of a sociotechnical imaginary are presented. The processes by which evil is constructed, performed, and perpetuated within 'security' institutions are examined here.

Paper long abstract:

In 2015, members of the Islamic State murdered 130 in Paris. Under a month later, 2 individuals killed 14 and wounded 17 more in California; acts attributed to radicalized supporters. Meanwhile, over 60,000 people have been killed in Mexico due to drug cartels. In the context of post-911 risk society, threats of evil acts come about in the interconnectivity of technologies, social networks, and expertise that co-construct U.S. security policy, defined by terror/counterterror, good/evil dichotomies. As such, counterterrorism is 'counter-evil', and depends on and creates dangerous futures as its object.

I examine different ways US national security creates evil through interaction with 2 violent groups. The minimal threat of the IS in the US invokes much more emotion, policy, and technological advances than massive, but mundane murder of citizens in Mexico. One reason rests in the conceptualization of terrorism within the national security culture of the US. Another is that what ostensibly qualifies as terrorism, or in other words, evil, is determined by elites to perpetuate the security machine.

Sociotechnical imaginaries are used to examine the role of evil in the present state of US national security. I examine utopic/dystopic representations in the technologies of 'evil' as well as competing discourses and practices of US security compared to those of the IS, and cartels. This research will provide detail into societal co-constructions of good/evil. Initial findings suggest the IS (re)creates dystopic motivations of national security, whereas cartels do not feed into the good/evil dichotomy of such regimes.