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Navigating Anxiety: International Politics, Identity Narratives, and Everyday Defense Mechanisms International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2024-03-05 Anne-Marie Houde
How do individuals navigate international politics and mitigate the anxieties it elicits in the everyday? Giddensian literature on ontological security suggests that (collective) internalized routines and narratives provide a sense of certainty and stability that enable individuals to “go on” with their daily lives. This article adopts a Kleinian psychoanalytical approach to show that when faced with
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Preserving Law and Order: How Institutions Implementing International Norms on Refugee Protection Can Restrict Asylum Outcomes International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2024-01-27 Angela Y McClean
The international frameworks on refugee protection, including the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, are among the strongest norms to govern international mobility. Despite the salience and universality of these international norms, however, asylum outcomes, as indicated by refugee recognition rates (RRRs), vary extensively across state parties. The variation
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Curated Power: The Performative Politics of (Industry) Events International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2024-01-03 Ruben Kremers, Lena Rethel
Since the turn of the millennium, there has been an increased interest in the social performance of power in international political sociology. At the same time, recent years have seen the growing popularity of event ethnographic research approaches. In this article, we develop the concept of “curated power” as a tool to explore the performative enactment of power at and through conferences and events
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The Spirit of the Convention and the Letter of the Colony: Refugees Defining States in a British Overseas Territory International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2023-11-10 Olga Demetriou
Whereas asylum policy is predicated on the assumption that states define refugees, this paper examines how refugees define states. Through the legal case of refugees stranded on a British military base in Cyprus since 1998, I show how refugees and the states that grant them or deny them protection become co-constitutive. The processes involved in judicial activism delineate the modalities through which
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Teaching and Learning Reflexivity in the World Politics Classroom International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2023-10-19 Roxani Krystalli
Complementing discussions of reflexivity as a research practice, this article turns its attention to the classroom. How does a pedagogy that invites students to practice reflexivity represent possibilities for thinking, writing, and imagining otherwise in scholarly engagements with world politics? In response to this question, I explore the dilemmas, challenges, and possibilities students encounter
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“Be Creative, Be Friends and Share Cultural Experiences”: Genre, Politics, and Fun at the Junior Eurovision Song Contest International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2023-10-19 Zoë Jay
This article examines children’s political agency in the context of the Junior Eurovision Song Contest. The Eurovision Song Contest is widely recognized as a political arena—a space for nation branding and soft diplomacy, narratives of European musical and democratic harmony, and protests over global political events. But despite filling similar roles to their adult counterparts, the young performers’
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Digital–Nondigital Assemblages: Data, Paper Trails, and Migrants’ Scattered Subjectivities at the Border International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2023-09-04 Lucrezia Canzutti, Martina Tazzioli
This paper argues that the border regime works through entanglements of digital and nondigital data and of “low-tech” and “high-tech” technologies. It suggests that a critical analysis of the assemblages between digital and nondigital requires exploring their effects of subjectivation on those who are labeled as “migrants.” The paper starts with a critique of the presentism and techno-hype that pervade
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Visual Necropolitics and Visual Violence: Theorizing Death, Sight, and Sovereign Control of Palestine International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2023-08-21 Miriam Deprez
The Israeli military’s occupation of Palestinian territory relies heavily on its ability to shape the visual environment and set the terms of how Palestinians may see and be seen. However, the relationship between violent occupation and violent visualities has yet to be fully theorized. This article gathers several conceptual strands—biopolitics, visual biopolitics, and necropolitics—to theorize what
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An Autoethnography of Hybrid IR Scholars: De-Territorializing the Global IR Debate International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2023-08-14 Haro L Karkour, Marco Vieira
Who can speak from the perspective of the Global South? In answering this question, Global International Relations (IR) finds itself in a cul de sac: rather than globalize IR, Global IR essentializes non-Western categories by associating difference and knowledge to place (countries, regions, and civilizations) which occludes de-territorialized forms of knowledge production. To reach out for these forms
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Political Visual Literacy International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2023-07-05 Yoav Galai
Visual politics is a fast-growing field and much of it is focused on images that inspire criticism. This tendency results in a lack of attention to oppressive visual practices. A political visual literacy approaches all visual practices as being layered with different “visual truths” that were developed in response to political commitments over time. These “visual truths” inflected visual practices
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(Dis)possessive Borders, (Dis)possessed Bodies: Race and Property at the Postcolonial European Borders International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2023-05-25 Tarsis Brito
There has been a profusion of institutionalized practices of confiscation and destruction of migrants’ belongings during European bordering operations conducted by the police and border authorities. Clothes, shoes, money, food, mobile phones, and even water have been among the items seized by authorities, a practice that exposes migrants to multiple risks. That said, despite the pervasiveness of current
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More than Extraction: Rethinking Data's Colonial Political Economy International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2023-03-30 Catriona Gray
This article offers a novel conceptual framework to enable empirical investigation and analysis of the different ways in which contemporary data practices are entangled with colonialism. Departing from recent theorizations of the politics and political economy of data and data-driven technologies, including the theory of so-called data colonialism, I argue for a historicized and differentiated account
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Reconciling Theory and Practice: Confronting Violent Histories in Poland and Israel–Palestine International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2023-03-20 Yifat Gutman
The role of violent histories and their legacies in reconciliation processes has been a central question in debates on reconciliation and nation building after conflict: whether, how, and when painful events should be remembered in post-conflict and post-transition societies. A dominant approach to this question since the 1980s has been the “reconciliation paradigm,” which views addressing violent
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Methods Regimes in Global Governance: The Politics of Evidence-Making in Global Health International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2023-03-20 Annabelle Littoz-Monnet, Juanita Uribe
This article opens up the blackbox through which evidence is selected and assessed in the making of guidelines and recommendations in global governance, through an exploration of “methods regimes.” Methods regimes are a special kind of sociomaterial arrangement, which govern the production and validation of knowledge, by establishing a clear hierachy between alternative forms of research designs. When
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“Citizenship Cheaters” before the Law: Reading Fraud-Based Denaturalization in Norway through Lenses of Exceptionalism International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2023-03-04 Simon Roland Birkvad
For decades, fraud-based denaturalization was hardly used in Norway. In the 2015–2016 “refugee crisis,” however, the right-wing government decided to reinforce efforts to expose “citizenship cheaters.” This article asks how this decision emerged, what arguments the government articulated to legitimize this decision, and how parliament responded. I examine the Norwegian case by reworking Schmitt and
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The Dislocation of LGBT Politics: Pride, Globalization, and Geo-Temporality in Uganda and Serbia International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2023-02-25 Koen Slootmaeckers, Michael J Bosia
Scholars consider the translatability and efficacy of “western” LGBT politics as they diffuse, but pay little attention to the role of its histories and cultures as geo-temporal phenomena. Focusing on Pride events, this article demonstrates how such oversights inhibit a full account of the widely diverse impacts of similar actions in different places. We explore the ways in which Pride events, as a
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The Paradox of Anthropocene Inaction: Knowledge Production, Mobilization, and the Securitization of Social Relations International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2023-02-09 Madeleine Fagan
This article argues that the Anthropocene produces a paradox when thinking about political mobilization. I show how the knowledge production practices that render the Anthropocene visible and actionable, including planetary boundaries, Earth System Science modeling of earth systems, and geological strata, also circulate a security rationality. This rationality is one that attempts to manage, co-opt
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Above Reproach: Rawls, Cavell, and Emersonian Conversation as a New Model for Democratic Counter-Radicalisation Policy International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2023-01-30 Michelle Bentley, Clare Woodford
The UK Prevent strategy is strongly criticized: accused of racism, human rights violations, and demonization of the (Muslim) other. Outlining an original interpretation of these problems, the article draws on political theory to identify parallels between this controversy and Stanley Cavell's critique of John Rawls’ Theory of Justice. Although aiming to avoid violence, Rawls limited the “conversation
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Liquid Legitimacy: Lessons on Military Violence from the Israeli Occupation in the West Bank International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2023-01-28 Nir Gazit, Erella Grassiani
During the past decades, militaries have increasingly used force against civilians and armed adversaries in operational settings other than war. Theories about legitimacy for the use of military force often focus on macro variables such as international law, government policy, and structural political contingencies. The strength of such theories in explaining military violence during conventional wars
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Security beyond Biopolitics: The Spheropolitics, Co-Immunity, and Atmospheres of the Coronavirus Pandemic International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2023-01-28 Jaroslav Weinfurter
This article explores the limitations of the oft-used biopolitical frameworks of interpreting the regulatory emergency measures that have been enacted worldwide in the face of the spreading pandemic of COVID-19. Not only have the state responses to coronavirus often been beset by manner of “biopolitical failures,” it is also the Foucauldian emphasis on the top-down formation and application of immunity
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Transversal Politics of Big Tech International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2023-01-08 Linda Monsees, Tobias Liebetrau, Jonathan Luke Austin, Anna Leander, Swati Srivastava
Our everyday life is entangled with products and services of so-called Big Tech companies, such as Amazon, Google, and Facebook. International relations (IR) scholars increasingly seek to reflect on the relationships between Big Tech, capitalism, and institutionalized politics, and they engage with the practices of algorithmic governance and platformization that shape and are shaped by Big Tech. This
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Terrain of Contestation: Complicating the Role of Aid in Border Diplomacy between Europe and Morocco International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2022-12-10 Lorena Gazzotti
Theorists of border externalization have portrayed aid in border control cooperation as a bargaining chip that the European Union uses to “buy” the cooperation of countries of “origin” and “transit.” More recent scholarship, instead, has depicted aid as a rent that Southern actors try to extract from Northern donors by capitalizing on the presence of foreign, “undesirable” populations within their
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It Just Feels Right. Visuality and Emotion Norms in Right-Wing Populist Storytelling International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2022-10-17 Freistein Katja, Gadinger Frank, Unrau Christine
This paper contributes to debates on the growing appeal of right-wing populism by combining a focus on visuality, narratives, and emotions. We argue that right-wing populists’ claims extend to establishing alternative emotion norms that collectivize feelings and their expression, and are conveyed in visual narratives. The emotional range covered by these norms transcends emotions usually associated
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Connected Memories: The International Politics of Partition, from Poland to India International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2022-10-17 Kerry Goettlich
This article theorizes connected memory, or in other words how people remember each other's memories, through the connected histories of territorial partition in different contexts. It claims that social memories can travel beyond their original context, pushing beyond efforts to understand supranational “mnemonic communities,” or to understand cosmopolitan memory as a thin memory community encompassing
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Subjects of Quantum Measurement: Surveillance and Affect in the War on Terror International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2022-08-20 Italo Brandimarte
The idea of measurement (of bodies and identities) is a guiding principle of globalized surveillance in the War on Terror. Nevertheless, this inherently scientific notion is so naturalized in public and academic discourse that its meaning and implications are left undiscussed. This paper builds on quantum theory to present an immanent critique of measurement in surveillance. Foregrounding surveillance's
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What Can a Critical Cybersecurity Do? International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2022-07-24 Andrew C Dwyer, Clare Stevens, Lilly Pijnenburg Muller, Myriam Dunn Cavelty, Lizzie Coles-Kemp, Pip Thornton
Cybersecurity has attracted significant political, social, and technological attention as contemporary societies have become increasingly reliant on computation. Today, at least within the Global North, there is an ever-pressing and omnipresent threat of the next “cyber-attack” or the emergence of a new vulnerability in highly interconnected supply chains. However, such discursive positioning of threat
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Inking Wartime: Military Tattoos and the Temporalities of the War Experience International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2022-07-24 Mirko Palestrino
Military tattoos have recently become the latest genre of war art deployed by museums to make war tangible to their visitors. These new war objects give rise to important temporal inconsistencies: as individual soldiers relate different understandings of wartime, exhibitions mediate them monolithically, reproducing a notion of wartime as exceptional, finite, and temporary. To grasp this inconsistency
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The Settler Coloniality of Free Speech International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2022-07-05 Darcy Leigh
Public and scholarly debates surrounding free speech often assume free speech is a public good and/or should be approached as a problem of “drawing the line” between free and regulated or benign and harmful speech. In contrast, this article provides a genealogy of free speech in which liberal freedom of expression has, since its inception, been integral to white supremacist settler colonialism in the
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The Most Denounced, the Least Punished: Ruling Elites, Illegalisms, and Anti-Money Laundering International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2022-06-29 Anthony Amicelle, Killian Chaudieu
This article contributes empirically and conceptually to the literature on finance and security in the light of anti-money laundering and to discussions on international crime control and social order. It draws on unique data in Switzerland to question the chain of security through which the main global policy against crime is produced in concreto. What and who is denounced by financial institutions
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Perceiving and Controlling Maritime Flows. Technology, Kinopolitics, and the Governmentalization of Vision International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2022-06-29 Georgios Glouftsios, Panagiotis Loukinas
This article speaks to debates in international political sociology that critically interrogate the ongoing digitization of border controls through the deployment of surveillance technologies that render mobility intelligible and governable. Our contribution to these debates is both empirical and conceptual. Empirically, we explore not only how surveillance is enacted but also how it is contested and
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Curating Vraca Memorial Park: Activism, Counter-Memory, and Counter-Politics International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2022-04-06 Lydia C Cole
In 2005, officials designated Vraca Memorial Park in Sarajevo, Bosnia–Herzegovina, as a national monument. However, official disputes over responsibility for curating stalled progress on the site's restoration. In response, activists initiated two campaigns to save and restore Vraca: “Let's Save and Restore Vraca Memorial Park” and a campaign to restore the vandalized monument Ženi borac (woman fighter)
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Exclusivity and Circularity in the Production of Global Governance Expertise: The Making of “Global Mental Health” Knowledge International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2022-04-05 Annabelle Littoz-Monnet
Global mental health expertise favors biomedical explanations of mental disorders that conceive such disorders as stable entities, which can be diagnosed according to universal categories. Following this logic, universal and standardized solutions can also be applied throughout the world, regardless of context. Despite its assumptions and data being contested within the field of psychiatry itself,
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Unpacking the Role of Metrics in Global Vaccination Governance International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2022-04-05 Anna Pichelstorfer, Katharina T Paul
Recent efforts by intergovernmental actors, such as the World Health Organization (WHO), to foster collaboration on vaccine-preventable diseases stand in stark contrast to the contextually contingent nature of national immunization programs: vaccination schedules and delivery differ greatly, and so do the ways in which these programs are assessed by means of coverage rates—a key metric in global health
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Machine Learning and the Platformization of the Military: A Study of Google's Machine Learning Platform TensorFlow International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2022-04-01 Marijn Hoijtink, Anneroos Planqué-van Hardeveld
Against the background of the growing use of machine learning (ML) based technologies by the military, our article calls for an analytical perspective on ML platforms to understand how ML proliferates across the military and to what effects. Adopting a material–technical perspective on platforms as developed within new media studies, and bringing this literature to critical security studies, we suggest
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War Myths and the Normalization of PTSD and Military Suicide: The Military Suicide Equation International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2022-04-01 Megan MacKenzie, Nicole Wegner
Military suicide is an increasing concern for Western militaries. In this article, using a qualitative media analysis, we introduce the military suicide equation as a metanarrative and analytic tool for understanding discourse on military suicides. This metanarrative—overseas service + post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) = suicide—positions military suicide as the consequences of PTSD acquired during
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Unmastering Research: Positionality and Intercorporeal Vulnerability in International Studies International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2022-04-01 Enrike van Wingerden
This article argues that in order to understand how bodily impressions shape ways of knowing and being, researchers need to enhance claims of positionality through a language of intercorporeality. The notion of positionality is used to indicate the inherent situatedness and partiality of knowledge, but positionality statements also risk affirming a hierarchical narrative structure, leaving out how
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Who Owns a Deadly Virus? Viral Sovereignty, Global Health Emergencies, and the Matrix of the International International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2022-04-01 Stefan Elbe
This article investigates the global inequities imbricated in the international response to lethal viruses. It does so by developing a virographic approach to the study of international relations that builds upon the matrix methods pioneered within black feminist thought for unraveling particularly complex forms of interlocking oppression. Performing such a virography of international relations exposes
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Deprivation of Citizenship as Colonial Violence: Deracination and Dispossession in Assam International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2022-04-01 Rudabeh Shahid, Joe Turner
This article argues that deprivation of citizenship is an ongoing force of colonial violence. By exploring the case of citizenship stripping in India's northeastern state of Assam, the article proposes that the removal of citizenship rights is not merely an aberration of the “normal” rules of citizenship but bound up with ongoing forms of colonial dispossession informed by racial hierarchies, the regulation
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Performing Rebellion: Karaoke as a Lens into Political Violence International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2022-01-28 David Brenner
In explaining political violence, Conflict and Security Studies commonly focuses on the rational decision-making of elites. In contrast, this article considers the everyday aspirations of rebel grassroots. Understanding their lifeworlds is important, as their interaction with rebel elites shapes the collective trajectories of revolutionary movements and, thus, wider dynamics of war and peace. This
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Visual Appropriation: A Self-reflexive Qualitative Method for Visual Analysis of the International International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2021-12-22 Frank Möller, Rasmus Bellmer, Rune Saugmann
This article introduces visual appropriation as a method in critical international political thinking and acting, contributing to the evolving repertoire of multiple, pluralist methods for visual analysis of international relations operating in a digital visual environment. We define appropriation as reuse of existing visual material—either in its entirety or in part—without substantially altering
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Cold War Psychiatry, Extremism, and Expertise: The “Special Committee on the Political Abuse of Psychiatry” International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2021-12-11 Charlotte Heath-Kelly
Throughout the history of psychiatric ethical professionalization, the question of the “extremist” contextualizes and frames the limits of medical practice. Using archival research at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the article explores how professional committees debated medical ethics after evidence of psychiatric participation in national security measures against dissidents. British, American
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Making Digital Surveillance Unacceptable? Security, Democracy, and the Political Sociology of Disputes International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2021-10-23 Claudia Aradau, Emma Mc Cluskey
Despite extensive criticisms of mass surveillance and mobilization by civil liberties and digital rights activists, surveillance has paradoxically been extended and legalized in the name of security. How do some democratic claims against surveillance appear to be normal and common-sense, whereas others are deemed unacceptable, even outlandish? Instead of starting from particular “logics” of either
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Periods, Pregnancy, and Peeing: Leaky Feminine Bodies in Swedish Military Marketing International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2021-10-20 Maria Stern, Sanna Strand
The notion of “leaky” female bodies has long rationalized the exclusion of women from military service. Yet, in an attempt to bolster enlistments by appealing to women, the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF) embarked on a marketing strategy that aims to break with gender stereotypes in order to fill its ranks. Most notably, in a 2018 recruitment campaign, an SAF billboard posed the question “Can I have my
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Thinking with Diplomacy: Within and Beyond Practice Theory International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2021-10-20 Costas M Constantinou, Jason Dittmer, Merje Kuus, Fiona McConnell, Sam Okoth Opondo, Vincent Pouliot
Following the considerable interest in practice theory, this Collective Discussion interrogates what it means to practice and, ultimately, to think with diplomacy. In asking how empirical, methodological, and axiological disagreements over what constitutes diplomatic practice can be productively employed to develop or revise practice theory, the Discussion engages the historically and culturally contingent
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“We Closed the Ports to Protect Refugees.” Hygienic Borders and Deterrence Humanitarianism during Covid-19 International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2021-10-11 Martina Tazzioli, Maurice Stierl
This article investigates how the security-humanitarian rationale that underpins migration governmentality has been restructured by and inflected in light of hygienic-sanitary borders which enforce racialised confinement in the name of both migrants' and citizens' safety from infection by Covid-19. Focusing on the politics of migration containment along EUrope's frontiers, examining in particular border
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Reporting Security: Postcolonial Governmentality in the United Nations’ Trusteeship System International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2021-10-11 Thorsten Bonacker
This article examines the political rationality and governance practices that emerged in the course of the international politics of decolonization. It focuses primarily on the UN trusteeship system, within which the former League of Nations mandates were continued by the trusteeship powers. In this process, the trustees' policies were placed under international scrutiny. The article ties in with International
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Field Heteronomy and Contingent Expertise: The Case of International Tax Justice International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2021-09-29 Michael Vaughan
The international tax system is targeted by a diverse range of networked civil society actors, from critical professionals mobilizing their expertise to anti-austerity protestors targeting the consequences of tax dodging. The years following the 2008 financial crisis saw an increase in the range of these actors and their cooperation with one another. This paper argues that a transnational field analysis
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Settler Military Politics: On the Inclusion and Recognition of Indigenous People in the Military International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2021-09-25 Federica Caso
After decades of refusal, neglect, and tacit admittance, the service of Indigenous people in the national armed forces of settler colonial states such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States is finally gaining acknowledgment. Indigenous people are now integrated in the regular forces and represented in national war commemoration. This article maintains that while inclusion and recognition
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Donor Love Will Tear Us Apart: How Complexity and Learning Marginalize Accountability in Peacebuilding Interventions International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2021-09-06 Stefan Bächtold
Complexity theory and systems thinking are increasingly popular in both academic and practitioner discourses to “improve” peacebuilding. Recently, they have also been considered to make peacebuilding interventions more bottom-up and less exclusive. Contributing to the debate in international political sociology on the role of (professional) knowledge in shaping interventions, I examine this claim with
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Contributors International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2021-07-29
Dolores Amat is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the National University of San Martín and Senior Teaching Assistant in Law and Political Science at the National University of José C. Paz, both in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her primary area of interest is political philosophy, including articles on Hannah Arendt, Leo Strauss, and democratic politics.
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“Videogames Saved My Life”: Everyday Resistance and Ludic Recovery among US Military Veterans International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2021-07-22 Aggie Hirst
While the explosion of videogames as a global entertainment medium has been explored in International Relations (IR) and associated fields in some detail in recent years, the proliferation of games in military settings remains under-researched. This paper examines the uses to which US military veterans put videogames following service, showing that they play an important role in healing and rehabilitation
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Outsourcing Hotspot Governance within the EU: Cultural Mediators as Humanitarian–Border Workers in Greece International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2021-07-22 Aila Spathopoulou, Kirsi Pauliina Kallio, Jouni Hakli
Responding to the self-declared “Mediterranean migration crisis” in 2015, the European Commission launched a Hotspot Approach to speed up the handling of incoming migrants in the “frontline states” of Greece and Italy. A key element in this operation is the identification of those eligible for asylum, which requires effective communication across cultural and linguistic difference between the asylum
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Political Subjectivation and the In/Visible Politics of Migrant Youth Organizing in Germany and the United States International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2021-06-18 Helge Schwiertz
In countries of the Global North, migrant youth with a precarious legal status are not commonly seen as political subjects, but as subjects of politics. Against this background, this paper reflects on how migrant youth nevertheless manage to organize themselves and intervene in the dominant society, thereby emerging as unforeseen political subjects. Discussing acts of citizenship and autonomy of migration
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Secrecy and Subjectivity: Double Agents and the Dark Underside of the International System International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2021-06-14 Tom Lundborg
Drawing on a wide range of material, from memoirs of former spy masters to the highly acclaimed TV series Le Bureau des Légendes, this article shows how documentary as well as fictional accounts of double agents cast light on a “dark underside” of the international system. This dark underside is made up of exceptional spaces of secrecy in which intelligence organizations and spies operate. The article's
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Telling Stories about Sexual Violence, Victimization, and Agency in Militarized Settings International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2021-06-08 Jill A Steans
In this article, I contribute to a debate among feminist scholars on whether survivors of sexual violence should be seen as passive victims or as agents who possess the capacity to resist or actively fight back against their assailants. I probe this question in the context of militarized settings, following those scholars who have challenged the constructions of victimhood and agency as a binary and
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Colonial Lives of the Carceral Archipelago: Rethinking the Neoliberal Security State International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2021-06-04 Sabrina Axster, Ida Danewid, Asher Goldstein, Matt Mahmoudi, Cemal Burak Tansel, Lauren Wilcox
Mass incarceration, police brutality, and border controls are part and parcel of the everyday experiences of marginalized and racialized communities across the world. Recent scholarship in international relations, sociology, and geography has examined the prevalence of these coercive practices through the prism of “disciplinary,” “penal,” or “authoritarian” neoliberalism. In this collective discussion
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Occupation, Sight, Landscape: Visibility and the Normalization of Israeli Settlements International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2021-05-29 Jakub Zahora
This article contributes toward the understanding of social and political mechanisms that work to normalize and naturalize contested political conditions on the part of privileged segments of the public. I engage these issues via an ethnographic study of Israel's so-called non-ideological settlements in the occupied West Bank, which attract Israelis due to socioeconomic advantages rather than a nationalistic
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Contributors International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2021-04-21
Nadya Ali is a Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Sussex, UK. She is currently working on a book exploring the intersection of UK counter-terrorism and immigration regimes. Her work also connects with the wider themes of border politics, citizenship, and British as a post-imperial state.
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A Feeling of Unease: Distance, Emotion, and Securitizing Indigenous Protest in Canada International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2021-04-15 Eric Van Rythoven
Why do public officials sometimes avoid using security claims to frame an issue, even when there are strong incentives and historical precedent for doing so? Efforts to portray indigenous protest as a security issue are a recurring feature of Canada's settler colonial history. Recently, however, a series of public officials have emphatically rejected these kinds of claims. To explain this puzzle, I
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Midwives and Humanitarian Bureaucracy: Managing Migration at a Postcolonial Border International Political Sociology (IF 3.229) Pub Date : 2021-03-22 Nina Sahraoui
Drawing on Foucauldian biopolitics, Max Weber's and Hannah Arendt's understandings of bureaucracy, and Achille Mbembe's theoretical insights into necropolitical power, I propose the notion of humanitarian bureaucracy to account for the involvement of medical personnel in the summary deportations of pregnant Comorian women in Mayotte, a French overseas department in the Indian Ocean. In addition to