From 1 November 2016 – 30 January 2017, I will be a Visiting Scholar at the Groupe de Recherche sur la Stratégie et la Sécurité, Faculté des Sciences Juridiques, Economiques et Sociales, Université de Marrakech. The research stay serves to connect to local urban and security studies specialists, and to conduct field research on the reconfiguration of urban security management in different sub-city laboratories, the Souks des Ferblantiers, the Place Djemaa el-Fna, the Gare Routière, and the Quartier de Guéliz.
Author: Jonas Hagmann
JIRD article on securitization as world-ordering practice (out now)
Securitization theory conceptualizes the construction of threats. In its original variant, however, the theory focuses strongly on the deontic (norm-breaking) powers of ‘security talk’ – and not on the threat sceneries that the latter substantively describes. This recent article in the Journal of International Relations and Development addresses this link, reworking securitization into a positional/relational argument. Seen its way, the framing of something as threatening comes with larger – often implicit – claims about threatening and threatened actors in world politics. The empirical cases on post-war France and West Germany show how securitization equals an epistemological systematization of international affairs, thus becoming an ordering process that conditions foreign policy strategizing.
Hagmann, Jonas (2016). Securitisation and the production of international order(s). Journal of International Relations and Development. PDF
ISR forum on sites of IR knowledge (re-)production (out now)
How does the organization of social scientific fields, education policies, and related institutional transformations condition the production and diffusion of scholarly knowledge about world politics? In the latest International Studies Review forum, Félix Grenier and I promote a more dedicated engagement with the disciplines’ institutional sociology. The ambition of the forum, which brings together contributions from Inanna Hamati-Ataya, Tom Biersteker, Thierry Balzacq, Marina Lebedeva, Jason Lane and Martin Müller, is to highlight the diversity of sites and settings where specialized knowledge about international relations is produced, shaped and re-instantiated.
Hagmann, Jonas; Lebedeva, Marina (2016). Teaching (as) statist practice: Diplomatic schools as sites of international education. International Studies Review 18(2): 349-353. PDF
Grenier, Félix; Hagmann, Jonas (2016). Sites of knowledge (re-)production: Towards an institutional sociology of International Relations scholarship. International Studies Review 18(2): 333-336. PDF
Pro Helvetia/Swiss Arts Council mandate: How to secure a country
Since winter 2015, I am counselling a Pro Helvetia Förderprojekt in visual arts. The project is developed by photographer Salvatore Vitale, and seeks to capture practices of contemporary national security management in Switzerland. Under the title How to secure a country, he visualises standard operating procedures of national danger management broadly defined – the control of borders, people, goods, urban spaces, mobility and so on. By focusing on manuals for professional security production, and their practical implementation in the field, he lends attention to – and displays in new ways – the difficult and bureaucratic rationalisation of the fluid thing termed ‘(in-)security’.
For more information and early results of this project, visit Salvatore Vitale’s website or read his interview for American Suburb X.
Research stay at Centre for Urban Conflicts Research, University of Cambridge
From 15 August – 30 October 2016, I will be a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Urban Conflicts Research, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, University of Cambridge. One goal of this stay is to connect to local urban and security studies specialists, and to refine the analytical framework of my ongoing SNSF Ambizione enquiry into the global politics and practices of urban protection. Another aim is to design a collaborative research project with Dr Wendy Pullan on the politics of memorializing genocide in the City of Kigali, an upcoming case study city.
BISA @40 Blogpost: Does everyone need a national IR school?
At the ISA Annual Convention in New Orleans numerous scholars drew on the sociology of IR literature to call for the creation of ‘national IR schools’, i.e., new and exclusively locally defined approaches to world politics and international analysis. An Indian school of IR ranked prominently among the candidates, but so did a Chinese school of IR, an Anatolian and a Brazilian one, and further propositions made at the panels and roundtables I attended centred on Eastern Europe. Hearing these calls, I wondered: Is the institutionalization of national IR disciplines really what the sociology of IR research agenda seeks to achieve?
Hagmann, Jonas (2016). Does everyone need a national IR school? Engaging the sociology of IR’s most recent appropriation. British International Studies Association BISA @40 Posts. 12 February. PDF
Recruitment: Research Assistant in Political Science/Urban Studies
In support of my SNSF research grant on the politics and practices of urban protection in the Global South, I am looking for a Research Assistant in Political Science/Urban Studies, to be based at ETH Zürich’s new Institute of Science, Technology and Policy. The candidate should have a BA degree in social science (International Relations, political science, sociology or other), urban studies or urban planning. Her/his main tasks include the production of literature reviews on urban politics, security dispositives and transnational networks, as well as desk-based research on city case studies in Morocco, Nepal, and Rwanda. Click here for further information about the recruitment. Deadline for applications is 25 February 2016.
ISR forum on the ‘institutional sociology’ of International Relations
How does the organization of social scientific fields, education policies, and related institutional transformations condition the production and diffusion of scholarly knowledge about world politics? In an upcoming International Studies Review forum, Félix Grenier and I seek to promote a more dedicated engagement with the disciplines’ institutional sociology. The ambition of the forum, which brings together contributions from Inanna Hamati-Ataya, Tom Biersteker, Thierry Balzacq, Marina Lebedeva, Jason Lane and Martin Müller, is to highlight the diversity of sites and settings where specialized knowledge about international relations is produced, shaped and re-instantiated.
Hagmann, Jonas; Lebedeva, Marina (forthcoming). Teaching (as) statist practice: Diplomatic schools as sites of international education. International Studies Review. PDF
Grenier, Félix; Hagmann, Jonas (forthcoming). Sites of knowledge (re-)production: Towards an institutional sociology of International Relations scholarship. International Studies Review. PDF
SNSF/RFH research project on ‘international teaching’ in Russia, Canada, and Switzerland
How are civil servants educated in international politics in the East, in the West, and in-between? The Swiss National Science Fundation and the Russian Foundation for Humanities decided to co-fund a comparative two-year investigation into the contents and practices of teaching world politics at academic and professional schools in Russia, Canada and Switzerland. The project starts in 2016 and ends in 2019, brings together a team of scholars from Russia, Canada and Switzerland, and is jointly led by the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID) in Geneva and the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO).
SNSF Ambizione Fellowship on the politics of urban protection
Cities are or have become the key locales of everyday life. Since a few years now, the majority of the world’s inhabitants is living in cities, and with this the protection of ‘the urban’ has become an ever more important challenge: The securing of the city, i.e. the development of comprehensive security dispositives specifically targeted to urban habitats, has become a pressing policymaker issue, and it now also emerges as a new research topic in international security studies. This 2016-2019 Swiss National Science Foundation Ambizione research project, institutionally attached to ETH Zürich’s new Institute of Science, Technology and Policy, contributes to this new security studies focus on cities. Based on a comparative empirical analysis of urban protection policies and practices in Switzerland, Morocco, Rwanda and Nepal, it examines how urban security dispositives are turned towards an integrated management of local, national and international dangers of all sorts. It analyses how this process includes use of new tools and actors, and integration and internationalization of existing ones, and how it is influenced by political systems, technological access, cultural influences and traditions of urban planning.
:: Jonas Hagmann :: 