From Ferguson to Michoacán to Rio de Janeiro, scholars, journalists and the public at large are talking about the prevalence of forms of paramilitarization such as the expansion of paramilitary police, the increasing role of military contractors in zones of conflict, the privatization of the security state and the militarization of civilians as organized autodefensas.
This 2-day symposium brings together an interdisciplinary group of premier scholars examining the history of these forms of paramilitarization throughout the Americas. The symposium aims to facilitate an interdisciplinary, transnational dialogue that will accompany the pioneering volume of original essays of the same name, edited by Professor Joshua Lund of the University of Notre Dame and the University of Arizona's Professor Anne Garland Mahler.
