Political geography III: Bounding the International

Abstract

This report focuses on the imaginaries and practices that demarcate space at the international and supranational scale. I will first review political geographic scholarship on region-making and regionalism, using the studies of Europe and the Belt and Road Initiative as examples, and I will then highlight some central themes in the current research on international borders. The report highlights the flexibility of bounding practices and the polymorphic character of borders. It underscores the resilience of state power and the transformations of sovereignty currently under way. It concludes by underscoring the interdisciplinary character of the relevant work.

The ‘soft infrastructure’ of the Belt and Road Initiative: Imaginaries, affinities and subjectivities in Chinese transnational education

“…The BRI's geopolitical and geoeconomic reframing of disparate places and territories into new regional spaces represent a major redefinition of local and regional imaginaries. But because imaginaries are ‘culturally shared and socially transmitted’ representations that interact with personal imaginations (Salazar, 2020: 770), such regional spaces are glued together by ‘rather fuzzy sets of imaginaries’ that enfold current institutional logics and practices into historical narratives of regional identities and connections (Kuus, 2020: 1186). The concept of imaginaries is thus useful in highlighting how institutional and everyday production of connective scripts co‐construct ‘invented’ knowledge and histories, including those of diasporic communities.…”

The construction and enforcement of East Asia’s air defence identification zones: Grey volumes in the sky?

“…Although this criticism focused on the technical and legal aspects of ADIZ research, a similar accusation could be made about its conceptual underpinnings. There are perennial criticisms that international relations scholarship neglects deeper questions of territoriality and the spatiality of power (Beeson, 2009: 498; Brenner et al, 2003; Flint et al, 2009: 827; Kuus, 2020: 1190; Lacher, 2006: 15; Ruggie, 1993). Indeed, the resurgence of interest in ADIZs was limited by its adherence to classical geopolitical assumptions of two-dimensional, container-like states engaged in territorial competition as well as the tendency of English language scholarship to focus on China as a geopolitical threat.…”

“To Whom the Sirens Wail.” Poland’s Post-2022 Geopolitical Debates on Central and “Eastern Europe”

“…Researchers who focus on Central and Eastern Europe have actively relied on social constructivist insights to analyze local practices of border-drawing and geopolitical imaginaries. They have pointed out their “fuzzy” nature and the simultaneous multiplicity of the sites of their production (Kuus, 2019) as well as their tight nexus with political entrepreneurship and “ambitious region-making initiatives with avid region-hopping – in and out of ‘the Balkans’, ‘South-East Europe’ or ‘Central Europe’, as necessary – suggesting the intense fluidity of all regional constructs” (Białasiewicz et al, 2009).…”