Call for Abstracts
at the 5th Open Conference of the ‘International Relations’
Section of the Deutsche Vereinigung für Politikwissenschaft (DVPW), Univers
ity of Bremen, 4 to 6 October 2017
Panel Organizer:< /strong> Christoph Humrich (University of Groningen), Sebastian Knecht (Fre ie Universität Berlin)
Projecting Geopolitics on the Arctic
In the past decade, media, political and academic interest in
the Arctic as a political region has steadily been on the rise. Climate-ind
uced geophysical changes in the region, its presumed richness in resources,
its strategic importance in the wake of increasing tensions between Russia
and ‘the West’ and its possible future relevance as a maritime transport c
orridor often make the lead story for research and debate about the politic
al state of Arctic affairs. Many contributions to the debate make use of th
e terms ‘geopolitics’ or ‘geopolitical’ to either characterize or highlight
political interests and conflict constellations in the Arctic, or to use t
hem as analytical and theoretical concepts. The often invoked ‘return of ge
opolitics in the Arctic’ has a double-meaning in that regard: A renewed int
erest in geopolitical ideas and strategies for political action in or with
respect to the Arctic region on the one hand, and as a case for academic sc
rutiny and theoretical reflection that would suggest or even exemplify thes
e terms, on the other. For both, geopolitical action and geopolitical theor
y, the Arctic has become a scenery for projecting geopolitics.
Howeve r, the prominence of the term in public and academic discourse seems to hav e diluted its overall distinctiveness, analytical precision and theoretical substance. If the terms ‘geopolitics’ and ‘geopolitical’ cannot even be su bstituted with ‘politics’ and ‘political’ without any loss of meaning, they often insinuate little more than the security or economic relevance of Arc tic change or connote alarmistic scenarios of the Arctic as a scene for cli mate or resource wars, a regional theater of a new ‘Cold War’, or global po wer transformation processes. In turn, theoretical assumptions and causal m echanisms associated with these scenarios often remain unspecified.
T he proposed panel thus wants to use the example of the Arctic to clarify th e analytic potential, theoretical substance and empirical value added of th e terms ‘geopolitics’ and ‘geopolitical’. This shall be done, first, in a p ositive manner by distinguishing geopolitics as a theoretical research prog ram from other international relations (IR) theories so that characteristic and distinct assumptions and causal mechanisms or conditioning contexts be come visible. On the other hand, a more critical review of current politica l science research on the Arctic will have to show whether and where geopol itical terminology distorts or obfuscates the empirical analysis rather tha n enlightening it. To this end, we ask for innovative papers that:
de
velop theoretical hypotheses for political analysis of Arctic affairs, dist
ill those from the existing IR literature or deduce them from classic or mo
dern works on geopolitics (and contribute to concept and theory development
). The notions of “spill-over” or “proxy conflicts/wars” within a new “Grea
t Game” could be interesting conceptual venues for probing the value added
of geopolitical theory for the Arctic.
test or refute such hypotheses
in a comparative analysis with other cases inside the Arctic region (includ
ing also historical comparison with Cold War times or even earlier epochs o
f Arctic explorations and politics) or with other maritime regions.
or
critically reflect on the usage of the terms ‘geopolitics’ and ‘geopolitic
al’ in the discourse about Arctic change (either historically or along a co
nceptual differentiation between popular, formal and practical geopolitics)
or combine a positive and critical application of the terms in the sense o
f a critical geopolitics of the Arctic.
Abstracts of no more than 200 words should be sent to Christoph Humrich (This email address is being protected fr om spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) and Sebastian Knecht (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) b y 28 March 2017. Full-length paper manuscripts are due in late September 2017. Please note that no funding to cover travel and accomm odation costs is available for this conference.
CONTACT:Christoph Humrich (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. document.getElementById('cloak8c2910955f1eaafbd695645b7e6bad8f').innerHTML = ''; var prefix = 'ma' + 'il' + 'to'; var path = 'hr' + 'ef' + '='; var addy8c2910955f1eaafbd695645b7e6bad8f = 'c.humrich' + '@'; addy8c2910955f1eaafbd695645b7e6bad8f = addy8c2910955f1eaafbd695645b7e6bad8f + 'rug' + '.' + 'nl'; var addy_text8c2910955f1eaafbd695645b7e6bad8f = 'c.humrich' + '@' + 'rug' + '.' + 'nl';document.getElementById('cloak8c2910955f1eaafbd695645b7e6bad8f').innerHTML += ''+addy_text8c2910955f1eaafbd695645b7e6bad8f+''; ) and Sebastian Knecht (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. document.getElementById('cloak7c9cb41d27ca6188d0e86654a9b8bd00').innerHTML = ''; var prefix = 'ma' + 'il' + 'to'; var path = 'hr' + 'ef' + '='; var addy7c9cb41d27ca6188d0e86654a9b8bd00 = 's.knecht' + '@'; addy7c9cb41d27ca6188d0e86654a9b8bd00 = addy7c9cb41d27ca6188d0e86654a9b8bd00 + 'transnationalstudies' + '.' + 'eu'; var addy_text7c9cb41d27ca6188d0e86654a9b8bd00 = 's.knecht' + '@' + 'transnationalstudies' + '.' + 'eu';document.getElementById('cloak7c9cb41d27ca6188d0e86654a9b8bd00').innerHTML += ''+addy_text7c9cb41d27ca6188d0e86654a9b8bd00+''; ) DTSTAMP:20261010T202027 DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20171004T020000 DTEND;TZID=UTC:20171007T015959 SEQUENCE:0 TRANSP:OPAQUE END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR