► Reviews the meanings (and misunderstandings) of critical, anti-, and feminist geopolitics. ► Argues that feminist geopolitics be seen as a practice that is also engaged in outside of academia. ► ...Proposes the term alter-geopolitics for feminist geopolitics as it happens ‘off the page’. ► Describes international accompaniment and a peace community as forms of alter-geopolitics. ► Argues for solidarity scholarship and collaborative thinking with such groups about security.
In an age of increasing state (in)security, some are coming together on their own to build alternative nonviolent securities. They are making connections across distance and difference which focus on the safety of bodies (often by actually moving bodies), and ground geopolitics in everyday life. The term anti-geopolitics focuses on resistance to hegemonic geopolitics (material or discursive), rather than this sort of effort to build something new. Feminist geopolitics is a form of anti-geopolitics that not only takes apart but also puts the pieces together in new ways – with broader definitions of security for more bodies in more places. Yet it has not generally looked at that practice as engaged in outside of academia. I propose the term alter-geopolitics for a type of feminist geopolitics as a way to extend both the concepts of anti- and feminist geopolitics. I argue for the term as a reminder to look to grassroots practice, to the ways that groups are doing geopolitics in the streets, in homes, in jungles, and in many other spaces ‘off the page’. Though they may not think of their work as geopolitics, framing it in this way can open fruitful conversations. As academics we have much to learn and offer through collaboratively thinking with such groups about security. I have been doing this with international accompaniers in Colombia and discuss their work, and the peace community of San José that they accompany, as forms of alter-geopolitics.
InHard Interests, Soft Illusions, Natasha Hamilton-Hart explores the belief held by foreign policy elites in much of Southeast Asia-Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, and ...Vietnam-that the United States is a relatively benign power. She argues that this belief is an important factor underpinning U.S. preeminence in the region, because beliefs inform specific foreign policy decisions and form the basis for broad orientations of alignment, opposition, or nonalignment. Such foundational beliefs, however, do not simply reflect objective facts and reasoning processes. Hamilton-Hart argues that they are driven by both interests-in this case the political and economic interests of ruling groups in Southeast Asia-and illusions.
Hamilton-Hart shows how the information landscape and standards of professional expertise within the foreign policy communities of Southeast Asia shape beliefs about the United States. These opinions frequently rest on deeply biased understandings of national history that dominate perceptions of the past and underlie strategic assessments of the present and future. Members of the foreign policy community rarely engage in probabilistic reasoning or effortful knowledge-testing strategies. This does not mean, she emphasizes, that the beliefs are insincere or merely instrumental rationalizations. Rather, cognitive and affective biases in the ways humans access and use information mean that interests influence beliefs; how they do so depends on available information, the social organization and practices of a professional sphere, and prevailing standards for generating knowledge.
The break-up of the Ottoman empire and the disintegration of the Russian empire were watershed events in modern history. The unravelling of these empires was both cause and consequence of World War I ...and resulted in the deaths of millions. It irrevocably changed the landscape of the Middle East and Eurasia and reverberates to this day in conflicts throughout the Caucasus and Middle East. Shattering Empires draws on extensive research in the Ottoman and Russian archives to tell the story of the rivalry and collapse of two great empires. Overturning accounts that portray their clash as one of conflicting nationalisms, this pioneering study argues that geopolitical competition and the emergence of a new global interstate order provide the key to understanding the course of history in the Ottoman-Russian borderlands in the twentieth century. It will appeal to those interested in Middle Eastern, Russian, and Eurasian history, international relations, ethnic conflict, and World War I.
This article seeks to advance the case for feminist geopolitics that recognises the challenges both to the Enlightenment individual and the discursive turn in geography posed by ‘new materialisms’. I ...will argue that for a distinctively feminist geopolitics a consideration of the way that representational categories align the material around bodies is vital. After a brief discussion of feminist geopolitical approaches, the article moves on to consider accounts of new materialism and assemblage approaches as they are applied to geopolitics, before moving on to consider what a forensic approach might offer to a materialist feminist geopolitics.
In order to portray the “Greek” merchant by elucidating the confidential aspects of his affairs (basically related to money and merchandise), starting the investigation from the virtues and emotions ...previously resulted, while exploiting, as storage media for any such information, the Greek documentary sources (the accounting books and acts and the commercial correspondence within the remaining archival fonds), as well as data from medieval juridical literature (mostly drawn up in Latin), this paper analyzes the dimensions of the secretiveness that pervades the practical and scriptural usages specific to the old medieval mercantile humanity in the Euro-Balkan region (XVth – mid-XIXth century).Generously illustrated with inedited fragments from documents (also including fifteen photoreproductions), the study aims at unifying the coordinates – communication, scriptural act, archivology – that clarify the extent to which the commercial archives testify to the secretive obsessions and compulsions of the merchants, especially the “Greek" ones, and of those who have inspired their customs.The Greek documents within the fonds of Aromanian trading houses and companies attest encoding reflexes for messages, contexts and names belonging to the entrepreneurs involved in the Euro-Balkan trade. The analysis of such communication methods has been structured on an array of mercantile risks that impose precautionary measures: economic and political espionage, Arcana Artis, great businesses, money, travelling, characterizations and recommendations, loan, trials, the “economy of secrets”. Cryptic writings, forged words and the use of pseudonyms and nicknames ‒ beyond being major palaeographic hindrances ‒ represent scriptural practices that conceal commercial realia (prohibited goods, forbidden currencies, hidden fees and profits, loans, favors, etc.).The regulatory instruments of medieval bookkeeping disclose the theoretical vision of the epoch (the one that has generated the historiographic concept of the “economy of secrets”) regarding the range of merchants’ mystical consuetudes ‒ starting from protecting the correspondence, keeping secret records, concealing the archives ‒, in the interest of debating mainly the excessive prudence displayed towards the juridical requesting of these private archives. A certain discretion reveals itself as one of the defining features of the bookkeepers; in the spirit of the professional secrecy, so sacredly guarded by the medieval guilds (Arcana Artis) and even more so by the merchants’ branch, this discretion occults the methodology of the accounting books and, consequently, the very “art” of counting and justifying the flow of money.In conclusion, after outlining these levels of mercantile secretiveness, by means of stepping, then, further into the family secretiveness (the trade house and firm correspond to the founding social entity), the research leads will be possible to be followed in order to disclose the personal categories of informations that prove to be sensitive inside the “Greek” merchants network and to create echoes in their social norms and emotions: blood ties, affinities or dissolutions, psychomental medical history.
Since the mid-twentieth century China and India have entertained a difficult relationship, erupting into open war in 1962. Shadow States is the first book to unpack Sino-Indian tensions from the ...angle of competitive state-building - through a study of their simultaneous attempts to win the approval and support of the Himalayan people. When China and India tried to expand into the Himalayas in the twentieth century, their lack of strong ties to the region and the absence of an easily enforceable border made their proximity threatening - observing China and India's state-making efforts, local inhabitants were in a position to compare and potentially choose between them. Using rich and original archival research, Bérénice Guyot-Réchard shows how India and China became each other's 'shadow states'. Understanding these recent, competing processes of state formation in the Himalayas is fundamental to understanding the roots of tensions in Sino-Indian relations.
The struggle between Russia and Great Britain over Central Asia in the nineteenth century was the original “great game”. For the British, control over the region protected their vital possessions in ...the subcontinent. For an expanding Russian Empire, Central Asia represented the next step in their evolution as a great power. In the past quarter century, a new “great game” has emerged. Not only is the region enmeshed in America's global war on terror, it sits between a newly aggressive Russia and resource-hungry China and alongside one of the volatile areas in the world. This book explores the dynamics of the new competition for influence over the region since 9/11. All three great powers have crafted strategies to build their influence the region, which includes Afghanistan and the former Soviet republics of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan. All three are pursuing important goals: basing rights for the U.S., access to natural resources for the Chinese, and increased political influence for the Russians. However, overlooked in all of the talk about this new great game is fact that the Central Asian governments have proven themselves critical agents in their own right, establishing local rules for external power involvement that serve to fend off external pressures and bolster their sovereign authority.
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