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| 1 |
ID:
168587
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| Summary/Abstract |
This paper addresses an early case in critical and anarchist geopolitics by analysing a body of work from Spanish geographer Gonzalo de Reparaz Rodríguez-Báez (1860–1939). After reconstructing the complex and contradictory figure of Reparaz, a scholar and activist who oscillated between very different political positions in his especially long and productive career, we focus on the geostrategic writings he produced for the anarchist journals, CNT, Fragua Social and Solidaridad Obrera during the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939. Our argument is twofold. First, in the ideological wanderings of Reparaz, it is possible to identify some elements of coherence around the principles of Iberism, Federalism and Africanism as produced by the Spanish culture of that time. Second, the works he produced for the anarchist press in the last part of his life can provide important insights for present-day scholarship on critical, radical and anarchist geopolitics, especially on what an ‘anarchist geopolitics’ might look like and which ways it can contribute to the largely debated problem of exiting the ‘territorial trap’. The case we present contributes to these debates by showing that an anarchist engagement with ‘geopolitics’, a term that Reparaz used some times at the end of his career, might draw on challenging clashes of civilization and ‘pure’ identities, on questioning statist and administrative frameworks of analysis and on focusing more on grassroots activism than on providing advice for state strategies.
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| 2 |
ID:
168588
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| Summary/Abstract |
Cultural and religious concepts of space inform contemporary social and political identities, confirming the inherent embeddedness of borders in social life. This study analyzes concepts of borders and bordering processes in socially heterogeneous and politically sensitive environments, as portrayed in classic Jewish texts. Jewish-legal rabbinic writings dated from the first to the fifth century reveal perceptions of both concrete and metaphysical aspects of a territorial homeland and of social-spatial bordering. These perceptions are echoed in contemporary debates of national sovereignty and borders.
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| 3 |
ID:
168581
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The geopolitical discourses of hegemonic actors dominate the inter-state system and are significant determinants of how international politics play out on the world stage. Particularly in terms of security discourses, peripheral nation-states are often considered to be pawns moved (or not) at the will of dominant nation-states across the grand chessboard of the world. This assumption, however, ignores the ability of peripheral and peripheralised nation-states to influence geopolitical agendas. Through a critical analysis of the US and Estonian discourses present during President Barack Obama’s 2014 visit to Tallinn, Estonia, immediately preceding the 2014 NATO Summit in Wales, this paper argues that historically peripheralised nation-states can leverage historical context, “good geopolitical citizenship,” changes to the international status quo, and security goals that are complementary to those of more powerful actors to influence geopolitical agendas and become important players in geopolitical strategy and action. Drawing on Ó Tuathail’s theory of geopolitics as a drama played out on the world stage and Gee’s “building tasks of language” framework for discourse analysis, this paper investigates how the complementary security discourses of President Obama and President Toomas Ilves of Estonia produced a kind of “cooperative” geopolitical agenda that advanced both US and Estonian goals for NATO’s 2014 Summit and NATO’s future plans for addressing Russian action in the post-Ukraine Crisis environment. Specifically, the analysis suggests that peripheralised countries, such as Estonia, can and do exercise agency in geopolitical processes even while dominant security discourses, such as those of the US and NATO, seek to manage them according to hegemonic priorities.
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| 4 |
ID:
168586
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| Summary/Abstract |
The recent shift in the study of toponyms has drawn substantial attention from political geographers. The aim of this study is to demonstrate how toponymic inscription is a territorial project that involves the contesting of different naming regimes and political subjects. Through an examination of the history of toponymic inscription in Taiwan, it is first argued that different naming regimes have attempted to inscribe their political subjectivities onto the island with a view to asserting their spatial domination. Second, it is proposed that the connection between regime change and toponymic renaming is contingent, and has affected the ability of the new naming regime to draw temporal boundaries. Finally, it is contended that marginalised groups have resorted to toponymic struggle to reclaim the ‘lost’ sovereignty from the ruling regime. This study provides an overview of and insights into the different episodes of toponymic hegemony, politicking and resistance that have taken place in Taiwan.
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| 5 |
ID:
168582
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| Summary/Abstract |
The article investigates drones’ attribution to securitise, surveil and pacify border regimes within a threefold, even though contradictory, development: Firstly, borders as demarcation lines or check-points are redefined into border spaces. Secondly, the failing of an out-bound targeted and state-led border security system turns into the claimed necessity for new inner security measures. Within a framework of a technologised migration management, thirdly, a militarisation of internal security occurs within which different capital fractions compete for market shares in policing migration and managing minorities. The drone—a peripheral device just a couple of years ago—turns into the centrepiece of pacification endeavours and the device to draw all battle lines. The (for some) faraway Afgh-Pak combat drone turns into the peripheral border drone finally approaching us as a homeland drone.
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| 6 |
ID:
168583
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In a global era when most wars are fought between state and non-state actors, how do people make peace? This article examines the processes through which civilian communities imagine and build peace during a prolonged active armed conflict. It presents a case of a demilitarized community—popularly understood as a peace zone—of the indigenous peoples community of the Municipality of Sagada in the Philippines in the context of 50 years of armed conflict between the Philippine state and the New People’s Army (NPA), a rebel group waging a Maoist-inspired insurgency. For 30 years, the indigenous community of Sagada has effectively regulated military and rebel operations and prevented conflict-related civilian deaths and internal displacement. While existing research identifies Sagada as a pioneer model of the phenomenon of peace zones in the world, we know very little of the community work that sustains this model. Situated within the “local turn” in peacebuilding literature and emergent field of peace geographies, this article examines the kind of work required from a civilian community to protect their lives during conflict, and what this tell us about peace. I use the term insurgent peace to refer to peace as dynamic processes rooted upon a refusal and disruption of the spatial logics of violence imposed by the competing structures of power of state and non-state armed actors upon civilian communities. Further, insurgent peace captures the quotidian work of civilian communities in carving alternative political spaces and enacting peaceful futures during armed conflict.
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| 7 |
ID:
168585
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| Summary/Abstract |
Every day, migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras risk their lives attempting to reach the US. Accordingly, accounts of migration from Central America are often framed by tragedy and violence, as migrants increasingly confront new security and border control practices in Mexico and the US, in addition to other forms of brutality on their journeys. Though accurate, these descriptions grounded in tragedy obscure other everyday experiences of migrants in transit, which, as I show here, are punctuated not only by brutality and violence but also by play and laughter. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork in migrant shelters across Mexico and the US, I argue that humour represents a crucial, yet neglected, detail in the geopolitics of international migration. I develop the shared and collective aspects of joking and laughter in migrants’ journeys by detailing how Central American migrants deploy humour as a shared mechanism to cope with their vulnerability while generating spaces of collective solidarity, as they join together in making light of their illegality and immobility in transit. Ultimately, I assert, attention to humour in the study of the geopolitics of migration reveals the complexity of migrants’ experiences along their journeys, experiences that transcend overly simplistic accounts of brutality and violence to better understand migrants’ everyday lives in transit.
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| 8 |
ID:
168584
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The article analyses the experiences and material impacts of shifting borders in the historical case of Sri Lanka’s civil war and the contemporary case of the shifting border between Georgia and South Ossetia. The two cases point to some lesser known geopolitical practices in which border-shifts and strengthening of control in contested areas take place without much international attention, partly because the shifts are so minor and gradual that they do not reach the news headlines. Living with shifting borders creates a state of inbetweenness and losing of control, where forms of visibility and invisibility produce individual uncertainties and vulnerabilities in homeplaces and people’s everyday lives. By analysing the borderland and border-shifts from the perspective of the peripheral, the article emphasises the ways in which border practices become part of social action through a rescaling of the understanding of the border encouraged by feminist geopolitics. The article begins by discussing what borders may mean and how borders shift and may produce particular forms of visibility and invisibility. The contexts of the Sri Lankan and Georgian villages are introduced before the comparative methods applied are discussed. The article then analyses how the border-shifts create particular material and symbolic outcomes, an experience of displacement in place and the particular invisibilities produced on the ground in the two cases. The article concludes by reflecting on how border practices produce forms of visibility and invisibility that continue to render people in the borderlands peripheral.
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| 9 |
ID:
168580
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| Summary/Abstract |
In this introduction to the special issue on “Peripheral Visions: Security by, and for, whom?”, we summarise the core themes of the special issue and outline our relational approach to peripheralisation research in security studies. We explain how and why the papers that form part of the special issue address the power geometries that result from, and contour, uneven landscapes of resilience and (in)security. Taking our cue from current scholarship that conceptualises peripheralisation and polarisation as relational socio-spatial processes, we examine how constructions of centrality and peripheralisation unfold in, and underpin, security politics.
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