82 research outputs found
âHe was shot because America will not give up on racismâ: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the African American civil rights movement in British schools
Beyond spheres of influence: the myth of the state and Russiaâs seductive power in Kyrgyzstan
This article questions the analytical value of âspheres of influenceâ for understanding power and the state in the post-Soviet region and beyond, based on a critical deconstruction of the ontological and epistemological assumptions inherent in the concept. It proposes an alternative reading of power and the state, drawing on the concept of âseductive powerâ at a distance and Timothy Mitchellâs âstate effect.â Rather than the concept of a sphere of influence, a highly politicized concept that conveys an ontology that flattens and divides space, essentializes the state, and relies on an intentionalist account of power, we need an analytical framework that can help us make sense of the multiple, varied spatialities and historical legacies that produce the state and power. I demonstrate this through an extended discussion of Russian power in Kyrgyzstan, a country often described as a Russian client state. Mobilizing recent re-conceptualizations of state and power in anthropology and political geography, I present an analysis of Russiaâs seductive power in Kyrgyzstan and the way it contributes to producing Kyrgyz state-ness. I also show how Russiaâs Great Power myth is itself evolving and conclude that the differentiated, relational production of space and power in either Kyrgyz or Russian myths of the state is not captured by a the concept of a return to spheres of influence
Waiting for other people: a psychoanalytic interpretation of the time for action
Typical responses to a confrontation with failures in authority, or what Lacanians term âthe lack in the Otherâ, involve attempts to shore it up. A patient undergoing psychoanalysis eventually faces the impossibility of doing this successfully; the Other will always be lacking. This creates a space through which she can reimagine how she might intervene in her suffering. Similarly, when coronavirus forces us to confront the brute fact of the lack in the Other at the socio-political level, we have the opportunity to discover a space for acting rather than continuing symptomatic behaviour that increasingly fails to work
Rethinking the Study of International Boundaries: A Biography of the KyrgyzstanâUzbekistan Boundary
Towards a geography of peace: pacific geopolitics and evangelical Christian Crusade apologies
For ethnography in political geography: Experiencing and re-imagining Ferghana Valley boundary closures
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