Andrey Makarychev

Alexandra Yatsyk

This book is a critical attempt to cast a biopolitical gaze at the process of subjectification of Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, and Estonia in terms of multiple and overlapping regimes of belonging, performativity, and (de)bordering. The authors strive to go beyond the traditional understandings of biopolitics as a set of policies corresponding to the management and regulation of (pre)existing populations. In their opinion, biopolitics might be part of nation building, a force that produces collective political identities grounded in the acceptance of sets of corporeal practices of control over human bodies and their physical existence. For the authors, to look critically at this biopolitical gaze on the realm of the post-Soviet means also to rethink the correlation between the biopolitical vision of the post-Soviet and the biopolitical epistemology on the post-Soviet, which would demand a new vocabulary. The critical biopolitics might be one of these vocabularies, which would fulfill this request.

From Populations to Nations

Critical Biopolitics of the Post-Soviet

The edited volume explains why sport mega events can be discussed from the viewpoint of politics and power, and what this discussion can add to the existing scholarship on political regimes, international norms, national identities, and cultural narratives. The book collects case studies written by insiders from different countries of post-Soviet Eurasia that have recently hosted— or intend to host in the future —sporting events of a global scale. Contributing authors discuss cultural, political, and economic strategies of host governments, examining them from the vantage point of an increasing shift of the global sport industry to non-Western countries. Mega-events often draw domestic lines of cultural and social exclusion within host’s polities. It is these ruptures and gaps this volume explores, contributing to a better understanding of the intricate interconnections between global institutions and national identities.

Shifting Borderlines of Inclusion and Exclusion

Mega Events in Post-Soviet Eurasia

Die Autoren untersuchen Identitäten in den postsowjetischen Grenzgebieten in der Ukraine, Estland und Russland seit dem Fall der Sowjetunion. Anstatt auf die großen geopolitischen Akteure richten sie den Fokus auf eine Vielzahl unterschiedlicher Akteure in den Grenzgebieten und Ihre verschiedenen kulturellen, ethnischen, religiösen und zivilisatorischen Strömungen.

Nations and Identities in Ukraine, Georgia and Estonia

Celebrating Borderlands in a Wider Europe

This book aims to inscribe the prominent Soviet semiologist Yurii Lotman into the analysis of political forms and components of power as seen from the context of various Russian-European encounters.

Lotman's Cultural Semiotics and the Political

This book focuses on the recent political trajectories within the Baltic Sea Region from one of the success stories of regionalism in Europe to a potential area of military confrontation between Russia and NATO. The authors closely examine the following issues: new security challenges for the region stemming from Russia’s staunch anti-EU and anti-NATO polices, institutions and practices of multi-level governance in the region, and different cultural strategies that regional actors employ. The common threads of this innovative volume are issues of changing borders and boundaries in the region, and logics of inclusion and exclusion that shape its political contours. From diverse disciplinary and methodological positions the authors explain policies of specific Baltic Sea states, as well as structural matters that make them a region.

Suturing the Ruptures

Borders in the Baltic Sea Region

Anna Arutunyan

Nina Rozhanovskaya

Natalia Moussienko

Oleksiy Krysenko

Sergey Sukhankin

Oleksandr Potiekhin

Maryna Bessonova

Victoria Zhuravleva

Roman Abramov

Valentyna Kharkhun

Kateryna Smagliy

Russian and Ukrainian Debates on Culture, History, and Politics

Identity Clashes

The conflict in Ukraine and Russia's annexation of Crimea has undoubtedly been a pivotal moment for policy makers and military planners in Europe and beyond. Many analysts see an unexpected character in the conflict and expect negative reverberations and a long-lasting period of turbulence and uncertainty, the de-legitimation of international institutions and a declining role for global norms and rules. Did these events bring substantial correctives and modifications to the extant conceptualization of International Relations? Does the conflict significantly alter previous assumptions and foster a new academic vocabulary, or, does it confirm the validity of well-established schools of thought in international relations? Has the crisis in Ukraine confirmed the vitality and academic vigour of conventional concepts? These questions are the starting points for this book covering conceptualisations from rationalist to reflectivist, and from quantitative to qualitative. Most contributors agree that many of the old concepts, such as multi-polarity, spheres of influence, sovereignty, or even containment, are still cognitively valid, yet believe the eruption of the crisis means that they are now used in different contexts and thus infused with different meanings. It is these multiple, conceptual languages that the volume puts at the centre of its analysis. This text will be of great interest to students and scholars studying international relations, politics, and Russian and Ukrainian studies.

Vocabularies of International Relations After the Crisis in Ukraine

Alexandra Yatsyk

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