Seminar May 19: The Colonial Imaginary of ‘Europe’ in the EU’s Asymmetrical Response to the Russian and Israeli Aggressions: Ukraine as a Member of the ‘Family’ Whilst ‘Othering’ Palestine
🎓Welcome to our online seminar!
Seminar May 19: The Colonial Imaginary of ‘Europe’ in the EU’s Asymmetrical Response to the Russian and Israeli Aggressions: Ukraine as a Member of the ‘Family’ Whilst ‘Othering’ Palestine
🎤Alvaro Oleart, Post-doctoral Researcher at the Université Libre de Belgique (ULB)
📅May 19, 15:15-17:00
🏢Zoom: https://lnkd.in/e8wPDsrm
Abstract: What is ‘Europe’? The response to this question is not straightforward, as ‘Europe’ is a floating signifier that is in constant renegotiation. In this article, we focus on the imaginary of ‘Europe’ that has been deployed in the most salient international crises of the last years that have heavily shaken European Union (EU) politics: the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the attack of Hamas on 7 October 2023, followed by the ensuing offensive of Israel on the Palestinian Gaza Strip. More concretely, we ask: what is the narrative of ‘Europe’ articulated by the European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, and the HRVP, Josep Borrell, in response to these events? We argue that, in the context of these two cases, two distinct imaginaries of ‘Europe’ have been mobilised based on differentiated conceptualisations of the relationship of ‘Europe’ to Ukraine and Palestine. Whereas Ukraine is conceived as part of the ‘European family’, there is a process of ‘othering’ Palestine. Our article exposes the racism and double standards of the EU in regard to the defence of international law and human rights, the exclusiveness of who belongs to ‘Europe’ and the continuity of the colonial thinking that permeates the narratives of EU leaders.
Seminar May 12: From role change to policy change: EU member states and change in EU foreign policy after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
Seminar May 12: From role change to policy change: EU member states and change in EU foreign policy after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
🎤Tyyne Karjalainen, Research Fellow in the European Union research programme at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs – FIIA (FIIA)
📅May 12, 15:15-17:00
🏢Zoom: https://lnkd.in/ejcufBbr
Abstract: Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine has led to a fundamental rethinking of EU foreign policy, including enlargement, security and defence and energy policy. This lecture builds on a recent article published in the Journal of European Integration and analyses the EU policy shift as an outcome of the member states’ co‑constitutive role changes: abandoning opposition to enlargement, renouncing the energy partnership with Russia, and the military turn. It shows that these changes remain contested and highly context-specific, limiting outcomes of the EU policy shift. While the EU is increasingly expected to implement its new defence agenda, the member states’ objectives remain fragmented. In enlargement policy, the member states’ role changes are not sufficient for enlargement to materialise.
Tyyne Karjalainen is a Research Fellow in the European Union research programme at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA) since 2020, and a doctoral researcher in political science at the University of Turku since 2021. Her research focuses on European security, Ukraine, the EU’s foreign and security policies, and EU enlargement. She has also published on peacebuilding, crisis management, and peace mediation. Her work has appeared in several peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of European Integration, European Journal of International Security, The International Spectator, and Contemporary Social Science.
RUCARR Distinguished Speaker Series, May 5: Madina Tlostanova: “Caucasian deep coalitions? A case for the future relational critical political imaginary”
Caucasian deep coalitions? A case for the future relational critical political imaginary
Bio Madina Tlostanova
Madina Tlostanova professor of gender studies at Linköping University, is a decolonial feminist thinker and fiction writer. Her research interests include epistemic and aesthetic aspects of decoloniality; the postsocialist human condition, fiction, and art; critical future inquiries and critical interventions into complexity, crisis, and change. Tlostanova`s most recent books include A new Political Imagination, Making the Case (co-authored with Tony Fry, Routledge, 2020), Decoloniality of Knowledge, Being and Sensing (Centre of Contemporary Culture Tselinny, Kazakhstan, 2020, Kazakhian translation – 2023), and Narratives of Unsettlement. Being Out-of-joint as a Generative Human Condition (Routledge, 2023). Currently she is working on a monograph Not by Leviathan Alone. An exercise in Post-nation-state Worlding.
Time: 5 May, 17:30-19:00
Place: Niagara (Nordenskiöldsgatan 1, 211 19 Malmö), NI:C0E11 or Zoom: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/69619037103
Abstract:
An integral perception of the Caucasus as a single community/space has gradually disappeared throughout the 20th and particularly in the 21st century while the Caucasus has become divided into often hostile to each other nation-states with divergent allegiances while its Northern part has remained a Russian colony. Despite these current geopolitical divisions, a long-going transversal intra-Caucasian community, determined not only culturally or historically but also geographically and even climatically, is no news to Caucasians and may become important in the future. Caucasian community grounded in Lugonesian deep coalitions that allow to keep our differences yet also find intersections for refuturing – is not a myth, but a viable onto-epistemic and ethical-political stance, which may help to survive. Yet, the Caucasus continues to be represented in media, arts and in area studies through typically modern/colonial Orientalist or alarmist security lenses, leaving no legitimate space for any bottom-up alternative frameworks of relational political and social life and images of the shared future coming from Caucasian thinkers, artists and activists themselves. Bringing these voices forward internationally, as well as facilitating democratic discussions with each other, is necessary for the Caucasians to be able to reimagine themselves regionally in the upcoming decades of the intensified enviro-climatic and geopolitical crises when the main challenge will be that of physical survival.
Moderator: Karina Vamling, Professor Emerita of Caucasus Studies, Malmö University
RUCARR seminar with Alexandra Brankova: Russian Digital Nationalism; April 21
Alexandra Brankova: “Russian Digital Nationalism: Digital Practices and Discursive Constructions of the Russian Nation in a Nationalist Media Ecology”
Time: 21 April, 15:15-17:00
Place: NI:C1029, Niagara or Zoom: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/64162465427?from=addon
Mötes-ID: 641 6246 5427
Alexandra Brankova is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Political Science at the Swedish Defence University working on a project about Geopolitical Narratives and mediatisation of emotions in international relations. Alexandra is also an affiliated researcher at the Institute for Russian and Eurasian studies, Uppsala University. She holds a PhD degree in Media and Communications from Uppsala University. Her research interests include geopolitical narratives, identity construction, international relations, digital media, & nationalism studies.
Abstract:
The seminar explores the discursive construction and digital enactment of Russian nationalism in a hybrid media system, before and after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The discourses and practices are situated through a close mapping of the Russian nationalist media ecology, and intertextuality with other actors is examined (such as state institutions, state-aligned media groups, the Russian Orthodox Church portals, military bloggers, and influencers). Theoretically, the study is grounded in the discursive turn of nationalism theories, critical discourse studies, digital practices, and media ecology. Media outlets owned by entrepreneurs of influence (such as Konstantin Malofeev or Yevgeny Prigozhin) or the state act as intermediaries between the regime and audiences. A mixed-methods and longitudinal approach (June 2018–June 2023) was adopted, combining digital methods (such as data scraping and netnography) with discourse-historical analysis, incorporated into the framework of a digital discourse-ethnographic approach. The primary data for this study consists of websites and media publications (news, opinion pieces, manifestos, videos), social media posts (from VKontakte and Telegram), and other audio-visual formats.
The findings reveal that the Russian nationalist media ecology penetrates mainstream media spaces, youth initiatives, and memory politics. Discourses about the nation are not only found in texts of various formats and genres. They are also enacted through digital practices of representation and aesthetics, gamified through virtual or augmented reality applications, and manifested in social media engagement campaigns, reels, or participatory denunciation. The discourses about the Russian nation and its enemies construct a supranational identity and narratives about Russia’s return to great power politics, striving towards the establishment of multipolarity. Russian digital media and technological infrastructures are subjects of securitisation and ongoing enclosure framed as a push for Internet sovereignty from Western platforms. Neo-authoritarian hybrid media systems involve media intermediaries in nation-building, political influencing, discourse dissemination, and user engagement in times of war, going beyond standard mechanisms of restrictions and surveillance.
Welcome!
RUCARR Distinguished Speaker April 14: Prof. Henry E. Hale
RUCARR Distinguished Speaker Series
The Role of Traditional Moral Appeals in Putinite Autocracy
Speaker? Henry E. Hale, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University (GW),
When? April 14th, 17:30-19:00
Where? Niagara, NI:C0E11 or on Zoom (click here for the Zoom link)
Abstract: Over the last decade and a half, Russia’s Kremlin has increasingly emphasized traditional moral values in its appeals for public support. This marked a major shift in regime strategy from its earlier “catch-all” approach to a socially divisive form of “wedge politics.” Has this worked? What have been the consequences of this strategy for the regime? In this event, the speaker will examine data from Russia to show that the results have been mixed. Traditional moral appeals’ most powerful effects have been to help the regime win support even from Putin opponents for major initiatives ranging from term-limit contravention to war. But at the same time, they have alienated some potential Putin supporters and inadvertently catalyzed a (relatively) moral liberal opposition coalition that is potentially larger than commonly believed.
Moderator: Stefan Hedlund, Professor Emeritus of Soviet and East European Studies, Uppsala University
Seminar March 16: Silent Dissent: Transforming Russia from within: Illiberal legislation and silovik coalition-building in the Russian State Duma, 2011-202
🎓Welcome to our online seminar!
Seminar March 16: Silent Dissent: Transforming Russia from within: Illiberal legislation and silovik coalition-building in the Russian State Duma, 2011-2021
🎤Daniella Slabinski, PhD Candidate, Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages, University of Oslo
📅March 16, 10:15-12:00
🏢Zoom: https://lnkd.in/e86W-CKi
Abstract: For the last decade, the Russian State Duma has arguably become a site where production of illiberal ideology and rent seeking intersect which has resulted in severe consequences for domestic and global politics. Nevertheless, knowledge of the lawmakers and the various power coalitions that they form to achieve their goals is limited. In this paper I address this lacuna by focusing on the role of the siloviki – individuals with career experience in the military, intelligence and law enforcement apparatus – in the State Duma and ask: what coalitions do silovik representatives form when passing illiberal legislation? Drawing on a unique set of illiberal bills sponsored by silovik-MPs during the 6th (2011 – 2016) and 7th (2016 – 2021) convocations, I use social network analysis to test for Brian D. Taylor’s typology of silovik formations (clan, corporate and cohort) on a unique dataset of illiberal legislation passed by silovik-MPs during the 6th (2011 – 2016) and 7th (2016 – 2021) Duma convocations. The data illustrates that neither ideology nor institutional belonging (corporate and party affiliation) among silovik-MPs are decisive factors during coalition-building when passing illiberal bills. Instead, there is a distinctively growing trend in favor of grouping into informal networks in which silovik-MPs act as legislative patrons.
Seminar June 2: Russian-led Eurasia: still holding together, but for how long?
🎤Sean Roberts, Senior Lecturer and Ulrike Ziemer PhD, Senior Lecturer, both from University of Winchester
📅June 2, 13:15-15:00
🏢Zoom: https://lnkd.in/eFB3P9Ua
Abstract: Developments in the post-Soviet space continue to raise important questions on the strength of Russia’s regional leadership. However, gauging the cohesion of Russian-led Eurasia is complicated by competing images of Russia’s relations with long-standing allies—notably Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan—which are often portrayed in terms of a ‘community of fate’ or partners destined for closer integration but also as a ‘community of fortune’ or ad hoc, situational partners, loosely centered on Russia. By drawing on the English School of International Relations and considering Russian-led Eurasia as an example of a nascent, regional interstate society, bound together by shared interests and values but also Russian hegemony, we understand how Russia’s ‘rights’ and ‘responsibilities’ serve to simultaneously unite and divide the region.