In this introduction to the special section on "Engaging Geopolitics through the Lens of the Intimate", we first locate the papers collected here in the context of developing an "Intimate Geopolitics" project at the University of Manchester. We then review the importance of 'intimacy' and the concept of 'the intimate' across an array of disciplinary studies, drawing especially on the rich body of work by critical geopolitics scholars who have long challenged categorical binaries and territorial boundaries. Our focus here is exploring what insights we can bring to understanding the nexus of intimacy and global politics by deploying the lens of the intimate-understood as a variety of processes of attachment and relationalityin six globally dispersed case studies. Collectively, the papers presented here not only engage a wide range of issues and locations, but also contribute to research engaging geographically specific contexts and practices. We note that the papers 'cluster' around issues of migration, borders, 'home', asylum and visa regimes, prompting us to suggest that the papers productively inform three foci of inquiry. Specifically, the papers 1) enrich our understanding of bordercrossing beyond simple association of this with the movement of people, things and ideas; 2) deepen our understanding of how geopolitics is constituted by forms of attachments and relationality that are integral to forms of governance; and 3) help us explore how attachments are not simply additive but productive of geopolitical concerns.
Abstract:One of the most extensively discussed requirements introduced in the 2014 REF was impact. In this review piece we focus on the linear and temporal consequences of the REF impact system. We link such consequences to our own research agendas to provide a sense of empirical richness to the broad concerns that arise from the impact agenda and to highlight the effects of the REF's linear focus, and, crucially, the types of alternative narratives it potentially silences. This "silencing" does not render alternative narratives impossible, but rather makes them difficult to articulate as 'safe' options within the existing framework. We highlight how a focus on direct impact could miss the collective nature of impact endeavours, as well as the broader social and cultural benefits of research, and potentially shape and limit the possible research questions posed within this national system. We conclude by opening up some broader questions for the future of impact raised through the consideration of linearity including the question of 'measurement'.1 Although all based within the Politics Discipline Area of the University of Manchester (UoM) when writing this piece, our views are not a result of an institutional experience; we were not told we had to produce REF impact, and nor are there any strong expectations on how to produce impact. Finally, our views are not that of UoM, or other ECRs at UoM.
Conceptualizing citizenship as an act rather than a status enables us to rethink the familiarity of both 'who' can be a citizen and of the 'type' of practices that can be understood as citizenship. This paper explores the liminal site from which intergenerational migrant youth resist the taken-for-granted space of citizenship through a turn towards vernacular music and language, and doing so focuses on unfamiliar acts of citizenship per se. It considers how citizenship is resisted here through the unfamiliar act of turning away from either identifying or, failing/refusing to identify with the nation-state. It explores the effect of this move in challenging narrow national linguistic and ethnic ideologies through the development of non-standard language practice and cross-cutting musical styles. It argues that citizenship is enacted in this move by creating a space in vernacular music and language for expressions of hybrid political identity and belonging.
This article considers a referendum which was held in the Republic of Ireland in 2004 involving a proposal to qualify the existing universal constitutional entitlement to birthright citizenship. Existing analysis of this referendum reflects dominant trends in citizenship scholarship. It does so by framing the issue in terms of two opposing perspectives -one particularistic (exclusive) and one universalistic (inclusive) -and positing the question of the 'politics' of citizenship as a trade-off between these diverging models. This article argues, however, that Rob (R.B.J.) Walker's notion of the constituent subject of (sovereign) politics challenges this dualistic framework as the necessary starting point for discussions about citizenship. It does so by problematizing the premise upon which it is based which is the taken-for-granted autonomous existence of persons (individuals) who are understood to be connected to, but ultimately separate from, 'the state.' This article concludes with reflections on what an alternative framework for exploring citizenship (based specifically on a historicization of subjectivity in relation to sovereignty) might look like. It suggests that this provides us with a different starting point to the prevalent form of a timeless dialectic of inclusion and exclusion, particularism and universalism, polis and cosmopolis currently determined by the boundaries of the Irish state.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.