Spatializing Authoritarianism

Spatializing Authoritarianism
Author: Natalie Koch
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2022-06-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0815655568

Authoritarianism has emerged as a prominent theme in popular and academic discussions of politics since the 2016 US presidential election and the coinciding expansion of authoritarian rhetoric and ideals across Europe, Asia, and beyond. Until recently, however, academic geographers have not focused squarely on the concept of authoritarianism. Its longstanding absence from the field is noteworthy as geographers have made extensive contributions to theorizing structural inequalities, injustice, and other expressions of oppressive or illiberal power relations and their diverse spatialities. Identifying this void, Spatializing Authoritarianism builds upon recent research to show that even when conceptualized as a set of practices rather than as a simple territorial label, authoritarianism has a spatiality: both drawing from and producing political space and scale in many often surprising ways. This volume advances the argument that authoritarianism must be investigated by accounting for the many scales at which it is produced, enacted, and imagined. Including a diverse array of theoretical perspectives and empirical cases drawn from the Global South and North, this collection illustrates the analytical power of attending to authoritarianism’s diverse scalar and spatial expressions, and how intimately connected it is with identity narratives, built landscapes, borders, legal systems, markets, and other territorial and extraterritorial expressions of power.

Global Authoritarianism

Global Authoritarianism
Author: International Research Group on Authoritarianism and Counter-Strategies
Publisher: transcript Verlag
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2022-11-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3839462096

We are witnessing a worldwide resurgence of reactionary nationalist, religious, racist, and antifeminist ideologies and movements, as well as a rapid process of global de-democratization. Nevertheless, most studies remain tied to a methodological nationalism, while comparative research is almost exclusively limited to European countries and the USA. But authoritarian transformations in the Global South and the struggles against them have not only been at least as dramatic as in the North, they also often date back longer - and have been studied and theorized by Southern scholars for many years. Twenty scholar-activists from the Global South show in their in-depth studies how national processes of authoritarian capitalism have undermined political systems on a global scale.

Authoritarian Populism and the Rural World

Authoritarian Populism and the Rural World
Author: Ian Scoones
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 474
Release: 2021-06-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000442063

The rise of authoritarian, nationalist forms of populism and the implications for rural actors and settings is one of the most crucial foci for critical agrarian studies today, with many consequences for political action. Authoritarian Populism and the Rural World reflects on the rural origins and consequences of the emergence of authoritarian and populist leaders across the world, as well as on the rise of multi-class mobilisation and resistance, alongside wider counter-movements and alternative practices, which together confront authoritarianism and nationalist populism. The book includes 20 chapters written by contributors to the Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative (ERPI), a global network of academics and activists committed to both reflective analysis and political engagement. Debates about ‘populism’, ‘nationalism’, ‘authoritarianism’ and more have exploded recently, but relatively little of this has focused on the rural dimensions. Yet, wherever one looks, the rural aspects are key – not just in electoral calculus, but in understanding underlying drivers of authoritarianism and populism, and potential counter-movements to these. Whether because of land grabs, voracious extractivism, infrastructural neglect or lack of services, rural peoples’ disillusionment with the status quo has had deeply troubling consequences and occasionally hopeful ones, as the chapters in this book show. The chapters in this book were originally published in The Journal of Peasant Studies.

The City as Power

The City as Power
Author: Alexander C. Diener
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2018-09-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1538118270

This interdisciplinary book considers national identity through the lens of urban spaces. By bringing together scholars from a range of disciplines, The City as Power provides broad comparative perspectives about the critical importance of urban landscapes as forums for creating, maintaining, and contesting identity and belonging. Rather than serving as passive backdrops, urban spaces and places are active mediums for defining categories of inclusion—and exclusion. With an international scope and ready appeal to visual learners, the book offers a compelling survey of historical and contemporary efforts to enact state ideals, express counter-narratives, and negotiate global trends in cities. The contributors show how successive regimes reshape cityscapes to mirror their respective socio-political agendas, perspectives on history, and assumptions of power. Yet they must do so within the legal, ethnic, religious, social, economic, and cultural geographies inherited from previous regimes. Exploring the rich diversity of urban space, place, and national identity, the book compares core elements of identity projects in a range of political, cultural, and socioeconomic settings. By focusing on the built form and urban settings for social movements, protest, and even organized violence, this timely book demonstrates that cities are not simply lived in but also lived through.

Nationalism

Nationalism
Author: David H. Kaplan
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2023-11-17
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0429789025

Nationalism provides a comprehensive exploration of nationalist identity, ideology, and practice which centers the geographic underpinnings of the phenomenon. It unpacks the fundamental principles and the many variations of this global phenomenon, as it examines nationalism through a spatial lens. Nationalism is the dominant political force in the modern world and no other global ideology is so strongly tied to concepts like territory, homeland, frontiers, and boundaries. The authors delve into how nationalism is fundamentally related to territory and place, why mapping is critical to the nationalist endeavors, the role of performance and personification, ethnonationalism, multinationalism, nationalist movements, and how nationalism is evidenced and experienced in cities and towns throughout the world. These provide a solid summary of what makes nationalism so compelling, so uniting, and so dangerous. Nationalism provides a fresh and compelling perspective on a complicated and often controversial subject. Written in an accessible and attractive style, the book will be especially useful for classes in Geography, Global Studies, International Relations, Political Science, Sociology, History, and Anthropology. It provides information and conceptual insights to scholars interested in a concise and sophisticated synthesis of contemporary nationalism. For casual readers interested in the phenomenon of nationalism, this book provides clear explanations and compelling examples.

Paradoxes of Emancipation

Paradoxes of Emancipation
Author: Dimitris Soudias
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2023-08-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0815656912

In Paradoxes of Emancipation, Dimitris Soudias traces the formation of political subjectivity in times of crisis by attending to the 2011 occupation of Syntagma Square in Athens—the heart of the Greek anti-austerity movement following the debt crisis. Soudias conceives of the Syntagma Square occupation as a lens through which we can critically engage with broader theoretical and political issues: the crumbling promises of the capitalist imaginary, the epistemic “spirit” of neoliberal rationalities, the spatialized practices of navigating precarity and uncertainty, and the prospects for a radically better tomorrow. By challenging both the romanticization of anti-austerity activism and the reduction of neoliberalism to mere free market thinking, Soudias reveals that the relationship between political subject formation and emancipation in neoliberalism is utterly paradoxical. In their effort to overcome neoliberal rationalities, individuals also partly stabilize them. Interweaving the stories and insights of activists with sociology, geography, and political theory, this book makes bold claims about the future of emancipation by envisioning an “alter-neoliberal critique.” In so doing, Paradoxes of Emancipation presents an illuminating inquiry into how our experiences with capitalist crises lead to profound reevaluations of ourselves that challenge our expectations of the future.

Decolonial Politics in European Peripheries

Decolonial Politics in European Peripheries
Author: Sanja S. Petkovska
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2023-12-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1003808301

Decolonial Politics in European Peripheries: Redefining Progressiveness, Coloniality and Transition Efforts is a timely contribution to the project of theorizing "Europe" through decolonial perspectives on the Left, as the European and global crisis has prompted new reflections on what it means to sit still at the European "peripheries". The book explores how the joint scholarship efforts of postcolonial and postsocialist scholars might come up with better-grounded and more detailed theoretical and methodological insights into the process of globalization, and subsequent peripheralization, if framed under a progressive and leftist perspective. The authors, many from the South-East Europe region, use a variety of analytical lenses to demonstrate how the nexus of postcolonial, postsocialist area studies and progressive developmental political thought could inspire changes in the future which are in dissonance with neoliberal and neoconservative capitalism. As the side effects of global capitalism continue to accelerate, scholars and activists in the postsocialist periphery are increasingly turning to the concept of decoloniality in the hope it might offer more options on how to begin to build up their framework. This book offers numerous examples of how decolonial theory can be applied to activist work in the fight against austerity and neo-liberalization, as well as examples of how decolonial critique can be mobilized to contest processes of Europeanization and Euro-Atlantic integration. This book will intrigue students and scholars of critical social scholarship in general, postsocialism, postcolonialism, critiques of right populism and the rise of white nationalism in Europe, as well as those studying the regions of South-Eastern Europe and Eurasia more generally. It will also interest activists, organizers, decision-makers, policy analysts, and leftists, both in the region and internationally.

Spatializing Marcuse

Spatializing Marcuse
Author: Margath Walker
Publisher: Policy Press
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2022-07-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1529211123

This fresh appraisal of philosopher Herbert Marcuse’s work foregrounds the geographical aspects of one of the leading social and political theorists of the 20th century. Margath A. Walker considers how Marcusean philosophies might challenge the way we think about space and politics, and create new sensibilities. Applying them to contemporary geopolitics, digital infrastructure, and issues like resistance and immigration, the book shows how social change has been stifled, and how Marcuse’s philosophies could provide the tools to overturn the status quo. She demonstrates Marcuse’s relevance to individuals and society, and finds this important theorist of opposition can point the way to resisting oppressive forces within contemporary capitalism.

Spatializing Literacy Research and Practice

Spatializing Literacy Research and Practice
Author: Kevin M. Leander
Publisher: Peter Lang
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2004
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780820467498

Current research on literacy often conceives space as a container within which social practice occurs. In sharp contrast, this edited collection argues that literary practice and social space are produced in relation to one another. Contributors to this collection consider how a spacial analysis provides entirely new information for the interpretation of literary practice. Traversing geography and literacy studies, drawing on Bakhtin, Deleuze and Guattari, Lefebvre, Soja, and a range of other theorists, contributors analyze space/literacy relations in diverse settings, including classrooms, prisons, streets, institutional programs, homes, and the popular media.

Globalized Authoritarianism

Globalized Authoritarianism
Author: Koenraad Bogaert
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2018-03-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1452956707

A rich investigation into Morocco’s urban politics Over the past thirty years, Morocco’s cities have transformed dramatically. To take just one example, Casablanca’s medina is now obscured behind skyscrapers that are funded by global capital and encouraged by Morocco’s monarchy, which hopes to transform this city into a regional leader of finance and commerce. Such changes have occurred throughout Morocco. Megaprojects are redesigning the cityscapes of Rabat, Tangiers, and Casablanca, turning the nation’s urban centers into laboratories of capital accumulation, political dominance, and social control. In Globalized Authoritarianism, Koenraad Bogaert links more abstract questions of government, globalization, and neoliberalism with concrete changes in the city. Bogaert goes deep beneath the surface of Morocco’s urban prosperity to reveal how neoliberal government and the increased connectivity engendered by global capitalism transformed Morocco’s leading urban spaces, opening up new sites for capital accumulation, creating enormous class divisions, and enabling new innovations in state authoritarianism. Analyzing these transformations, he argues that economic globalization does not necessarily lead to increased democratization but to authoritarianism with a different face, to a form of authoritarian government that becomes more and more a globalized affair. Showing how Morocco’s experiences have helped produce new forms of globalization, Bogaert offers a bridge between in-depth issues of Middle Eastern studies and broader questions of power, class, and capital as they continue to evolve in the twenty-first century.