Archive: Novembre 17th, 2014

• “Geographies of ‘Area’: politics, places and disciplines” workshop

“Geographies of ‘Area’: politics, places and disciplines” workshop
 
Monday 12 January 2015 (10.00- 17.30)
School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3QY http://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/events/150112.html
 
Geography has long been ambivalent about the development of area specialisms. The ways in which areas are delimited, described and analysed has profoundly influenced academic practice, shaping both disciplinary boundaries and theoretical proclivities. Linking across political geography, historical geography, cultural geography, cultural anthropology, international relations and area studies, this one-day workshop offers a set of substantive papers from a group of leading interdisciplinary experts on different geographical regions. Participants are invited to reflect upon the construction of particular regions in intellectual thought and the political consequences of these interventions.
 
Programme:
Richard Powell (Oxford) ‘Writing the North: the politics of Circumpolar depiction’
Mike Heffernan (Nottingham) ‘Inventing the Region: a 19th Century Franco-Russian Survey of “New Russia”’
Patricia Daley (Oxford) ‘The north/south divides in African area studies: what direction for radical scholarship?’
Emma Mawdsley (Cambridge) ‘Framing the new geographies of wealth and poverty in the Global South: re-ordering the spaces of development’
James D. Sidaway (NUS) ‘Comparative postcolonialisms’
Richard Phillips (Sheffield) ‘Serial Area Studies: Connections and Curiosities’
Roundtable with Discussants: Andrew Barry (UCL); Fiona McConnell (Oxford); Felix Ciută (UCL)
 
Organisers: Ian Klinke and Richard Powell Workshop supported by the ‘Transformations: Economy, Society and Place’, and ‘Technological Natures: Materialities, mobilities, politics’ research clusters, School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford.
 
This event is free and open to all, but pre-registration is required (please contact ian.klinke@ouce.ox.ac.uk before 19 December 2014)

• Geopolitics in Europe: power, crisis and the return of territory

CFP: Geopolitics in Europe: power, crisis and the return of territory

Section at the European International Studies Association’s 9th Pan-European Conference on International Relations

23 – 26 September 2015, Giardini Naxos, Sicily, Italy
http://www.paneuropeanconference.org/

 

Gonzalo Pozo (KCL) and Ian Klinke (Oxford)

 

 

European geopolitics has long enjoyed an intimate relationship with forms of political violence, from 19^th century imperialism to 20^th century territorial revanchism. Yet, post-Cold War Europe is often cast as a curiously post-geopolitical continent, a place where geopolitics no longer matters. Struggles over territorial space seem to happen elsewhere.

 

The Russian annexation of Crimea is only the most recent reminder that the politics of territory has not been banned from Europe. This comes as no surprise to those who have noted that whilst the European Union may have dissolved borders throughout the Schengen era, it has long hardened and militarised its outer border in attempt at keeping the global poor outside its fortress of wealth. Classical geopolitics may remain a taboo in the corridors of Brussels power, but it has made a revival in national capitals throughout the EU. Moreover, the Eurozone crisis has installed a new hierarchical geography of core and periphery in which the economies of the North limit the sovereignty of the South. As territorial conflict returns to haunt the continent, territorial borders are also being questioned by peaceful nationalisms, from Glasgow to Barcelona. In short, political power in Europe continues to be exercised over and resisted through territorial space. Perhaps more surprisingly, the recent uprising in Ukraine has also shown that street level violence can still be sparked in the name of ‘Europe’.

 

Bringing the fields of International Relations and Political Geography into dialogue, this section seeks to attract critically minded work from a whole range of theoretical backgrounds to reflect on the geopolitics of contemporary Europe.

 

Submissions will address issues such as:

 

–       Territorial conflict, separatism and centrifugal nationalism

–       The return of great power rivalry and the spectre of a new Cold War

–       The status of classical geopolitical thought in Europe

–       The political economy of crisis Europe

–       Geopolitical fantasies of the European Union as a global actor

–       The European border regime, economic migration and the current refugee crisis

–       The role of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation in Europe

 

Submissions will be made through the conference website, but in the meanwhile please get in touch with a title and short (200w) abstract.

Ian Klinke (ian.klinke@ouce.ox.ac.uk) and Gonzalo Pozo (gonzalo.pozo-martin@kcl.ac.uk).