Suchergebnisse

For over a century, spatialised economic representations of variegated political strands have found a convenient linguistic shell in the term geoeconomics. Since the 1990s, iterations of geoeconomics, usually citing the US-based strategist Edward Luttwak, have become subject to attendant scrutiny by geographers. However, the longer arc of geoeconomic postulates and reasoning, deeply entwined with key 20th century political moments and economic events has long been overlooked. Notably, nearly all of these arguments share a common desire to twist the economic spaces of capitalism towards particular national-political aims that nonetheless are planetary in reach. Invariably this means that geoeconomics' entanglement with imperialism merits careful consideration. Alongside the range of other interventions assembled in this set, we therefore call for a broad and sustained effort to respond to the present 'geoeconomics boom', that is fuelled by a transatlantic, and increasingly trans-Pacific, think-tank industry. In these contexts, we chart vectors for a critical geoeconomics in the form of five condensed theses inviting further debate.

AbstractThis article examines how variegated local and transnational interactions are reconfiguring Myanmar's largest city of Yangon. We do this through an analytical focus on frontiers and an empirical focus on how these are secured, drawing on interviews at two Security Expos and street‐level observations in Yangon conducted over three years. Yangon thereby becomes a site for critical reflections about complex and multiple imbrications of frontiers, security and the urban with implications for how these may be conceptualized elsewhere.

AbstractThe world city aspirations and spectacular urbanization of Gulf cities such as Abu Dhabi rest on the combination of petrodollars, connections and labour. Drawing on interviews with South Asian men working there, this article reports their lives and labour as a mirror to the development of Abu Dhabi. This requires and invites an investigation of spaces of social reproduction, raising broader theoretical and comparative issues about these in the context of Gulf cities and other sites of rapid urbanization and migration. Transnational categories and connections are thereby opened up in ways that have implications for the study of other cities.RésuméLes aspirations à devenir ville mondiale et la spectaculaire urbanisation des grandes villes du Golfe, comme Abou Dhabi, s'appuient sur les atouts combinés que sont les pétrodollars, les capacités de connexion et la main‐d'œuvre. À partir d'entretiens auprès de travailleurs venus d'Asie du Sud, cet article relate leur vie et leur travail en les rapprochant du développement d'Abou Dhabi. Cette démarche exige et suggère une étude des espaces de reproduction sociale, soulevant à leur propos des problèmes théoriques et comparatifs plus vastes, dans le cadre des villes du Golfe ou d'autres lieux d'urbanisation et de migration accélérées. Il en résulte des connexions et des catégories transnationales dont l'étude d'autres villes doit tenir compte.

"Transecting Securityscapes draws on over a decade of fieldwork and participant observation by the co-authors from three conflicted contexts - Cambodia, the Kurdistan region of Iraq and Mozambique. The book pushes critical geopolitics, still often theory-led and discourse-bound, into terrains of the everyday, developing on a method of urban and territorial transects, combined with a range of other methods and modes of encounter. The three research sites enable comparative reflections on diversity and commonality in "securityscapes", studying both long-term networks and short-term circuits. Intersections between "security", power and political economy are examined in the contexts of empire, decolonization, revolution, Cold War and its aftermaths. The result is a book of wide interest; for scholarship on each of the research sites, for others developing qualitative methods in security studies, urban and political geography and for all analysts of conflict, violence and peace"--

1. The nature of an academic discipline -- 2. Foundations -- 3. Growth of systematic studies and the adoption of scientific method -- 4. Human geography as spatial science -- 5. Humanistic geography -- 6. Radical geography -- 7. Postmodernism, poststructuralism and postcolonialism -- 8. Feminist geography -- 9. Applied geography and the relevance debates -- 10. A changing discipline?.

Departing from most coverage of Iraq, which tends to be focused on insecurity, this paper is about securities; drawing on research in the provinces of Iraq administered by the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). In the last decade, the KRG's territory has experienced very few significant bomb attacks. These were directed against KRG personnel, rather than targeting civilians per se, as so frequently happens elsewhere in Iraq. In contrast, the KRG has enjoyed relative security, enabling fast development. To the southwest however, there is a complex territorial contest between the Peshmerga (armed forces of the KRG), the forces of the central government of Iraq and Islamic State ( al-Dawlah al-Islāmīyah – frequently called ISIS or ISIL in English) whose insurgent territory spans the Iraq–Syria border. To the northeast, the Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan (PKK), who have contested the Turkish state since the mid-1980s, now control swathes of territory. Transecting these spaces, the paper develops a grounded study of how Kurdish security forces operate. While insecurity continues in the disputed territories and the Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan governs the zone along the Turkish border, the security forces of the KRG utilize very direct forms of surveillance and control. Negotiating these, our paper traverses spaces of security, sovereignty and (disputed) territory.

"Using Geography to Rethink the State" published on by Oxford University Press.

Over the past four decades, the Mozambican capital city of Maputo has undergone rapid changes. Although still governed by the (formerly socialist) party that inherited the city from a collapsing Portuguese colonial state in 1975, postsocialist Maputo recasts disparities in class and power. This paper negotiates these fractures, based on two walking transects through the central areas of the city conducted by the coauthors. Initially informed by 'psychogeography' literatures on negotiating and representing cities, these were supplemented by and enacted through a focus on security and policing. While the state uses police to secure vital interests, other sites and spaces experience limited policing. To bridge this security gap, commercial and ad hoc security providers are contracted to secure private homes and enterprises. We describe an increased and uneven commoditisation of security. The security landscape of central Maputo thus comprises a complex patchwork of privately secured micro enclaves that relay and rework enclaving on larger scales.