September 2022 Monthly Digest - Ninth digest of 2022

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The Monthly Digest is a resource provided by Security in Context that provides a list of recent publications, calls, conferences and other items relevant to the critical global, security, and international political economy studies audience. In addition to new items, our digest may contain relatively recent entries, so please double check dates on any calls or conferences. All descriptions taken from their original sources unless otherwise indicated. If we’ve missed something, or you have items you’d like to contribute for future digests, please email us at: submissions@securityincontext.org

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Books

After Stories: Transnational Intimacies of Postwar El Salvador

IRINA CARLOTA SILBER

https://www.sup.org/books/extra/?id=31158&i=Contents.htm

This book builds upon Irina Carlota [Lotti] Silber's nearly 25 years of ethnographic research centered in Chalatenango, El Salvador, to follow the trajectories—geographic, temporal, storied—of several extended Salvadoran families. Traveling back and forth in time and across borders, Silber narrates the everyday unfolding of diasporic lives rich with acts of labor, love, and renewed calls for memory, truth, and accountability in El Salvador's long postwar. Through a retrospective and intimate ethnographic method that examines archives of memories and troubles the categories that have come to stand for "El Salvador" such as alarming violent numbers, Silber considers the lives of young Salvadorans who were brought up in an everyday radical politics and then migrated to the United States after more than a decade of peace and democracy. She reflects on this generation of migrants—the 1.5 insurgent generation born to forgotten former rank-and-file militants—as well as their intergenerational, transnational families to unpack the assumptions and typical ways of knowing in postwar ethnography. As the 1.5 generation sustains their radical political project across borders, circulates the products of their migrant labor through remittances, and engages in collective social care for the debilitated bodies of their loved ones, they transform and depart from expectations of the wounded postwar that offer us hope for the making of more just global futures.

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Savage Ecology: War and Geopolitics at the End of the World

Jairus Victor Grove

https://www.dukeupress.edu/savage-ecology

Jairus Victor Grove contends that we live in a world made by war. In Savage Ecology he offers an ecological theory of geopolitics that argues that contemporary global crises are better understood when considered within the larger history of international politics. Infusing international relations with the theoretical interventions of fields ranging from new materialism to political theory, Grove shows how political violence is the principal force behind climate change, mass extinction, slavery, genocide, extractive capitalism, and other catastrophes. Grove analyzes a variety of subjects—from improvised explosive devices and drones to artificial intelligence and brain science—to outline how geopolitics is the violent pursuit of a way of living that comes at the expense of others. Pointing out that much of the damage being done to the earth and its inhabitants stems from colonialism, Grove suggests that the Anthropocene may be better described by the term Eurocene. The key to changing the planet's trajectory, Grove proposes, begins by acknowledging both the earth-shaping force of geopolitical violence and the demands apocalypses make for fashioning new ways of living.

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Seeing Like a Smuggler: Borders from Below

Edited by Mahmoud Keshavarz and Shahram Khosravi

https://www.plutobooks.com/9781786808387/seeing-like-a-smuggler/

The word smuggler often unleashes a simplified, negative image painted by the media and the authorities. Such state-centric perspectives hide many social, political and economic relations generated by smuggling. This book looks at the practice through the eyes of the smugglers, revealing how their work can be productive, subversive and deeply sociopolitical.

By tracing the illegalised movement of people and goods across borders, Seeing Like a Smuggler shows smuggling as a contradiction within the nation-state system, and in a dialectical relation with the national order of things. It raises questions on how smuggling engages and unsettles the ethics, materialities, visualities, histories and the colonial power relations that form borders and bordering.

Covering a wide spectrum of approaches from personal reflections and ethnographies to historical accounts, cultural analysis and visual essays, the book spans the globe from Colombia to Ethiopia, Singapore to Guatemala, Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, and from Kurdistan to Bangladesh, to show how people deal with global inequalities and the restrictions of poverty and immobility.

Reclaiming Humanity in Palestinian Hunger Strikes: Revolutionary Subjectivity and Decolonizing the Body

Ashjan Ajour

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-88199-3

Rooted in feminist ethnography and decolonial feminist theory, this book explores the subjectivity of Palestinian hunger strikers in Israeli prisons, as shaped by resistance. Ashjan Ajour examines how these prisoners use their bodies in anti-colonial resistance; what determines this mode of radical struggle; the meanings they ascribe to their actions; and how they constitute their subjectivity while undergoing extreme bodily pain and starvation. These hunger strikes, which embody decolonisation and liberation politics, frame the post-Oslo period in the wake of the decline of the national struggle against settler-colonialism and the fragmentation of the Palestinian movement. Providing narrative and analytical insights into embodied resistance and tracing the formation of revolutionary subjectivity, the book sheds light on the participants’ views of the hunger strike, as they move beyond customary understandings of the political into the realm of the ‘spiritualisation’ of struggle. Drawing on Foucault’s conception of the technologies of the self, Fanon’s writings on anti-colonial violence, and Badiou’s militant philosophy, Ajour problematises these concepts from the vantage point of the Palestinian hunger strike.

Lectures & Webinars

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Scholarships/Fellowships

​Mentoring workshop - APSA 

MENA Mentoring Initiative

https://web.apsanet.org/mena/mentoring-initiative/

With COVID-19 restrictions having limited access to traditional sources of networking and scholarly support, we are pleased to offer a new opportunity for early-career scholars to receive feedback and guidance on a project-specific activity.

See last year’s Call for Applications for more information. The deadline for applications is Sunday October 16, 2022.

Eligibility and Scope

The MENA Mentoring Initiative is open to early-career scholars (PhD students, post-doctoral fellows, and faculty/researchers who received their PhD within the past 5 years) who are citizens of countries in the Arab MENA region and currently based at non-U.S. institutions. Selected applicants will be paired with a senior scholar for a period of 3 to 6 months for feedback and mentoring on a project-specific activity. Acceptable project activities include:

• journal article
• book chapter
• dissertation chapter
• book proposal
• grant proposal

How to apply:

Completed applications, including all necessary documents (in PDF or Word Format), must be submitted by the deadline listed. All applications must be in English and include:

1. The completed online Application Form
2. A detailed recent Curriculum Vitae / Resume
3. A short project statement (500 words maximum) describing the specific project you seek feedback on. This statement should outline the focus and status of the research project, including the methods used, the data/fieldwork on which it is based, where the project is in terms of completion, intended outputs, and how it relates to your broader research agenda. Please also note the specific journal(s) you wish to target (if applying with journal article); date you hope to defend (if dissertation chapter); deadline for submission of book chapter, book proposal, grant proposal; include link to grant opportunity if relevant. The work should not be part of a co-authored project and should not be an excerpt from a work that is already completed or accepted for publication.
4. Three suggested mentors (please know that it may not be possible to pair you with your suggested mentor)

Upon selection, APSA will identify possible mentors and match selected applicants with appropriate mentors. In each case, we will help outline a clear set of responsibilities, expectations, and timeline to help guide the mentorship. All selected mentees will receive 1-year APSA membership to facilitate professional development and networking. If you have questions or seek additional information, please email: menaworkshops@apsanet.org.

Call for Abstracts

International Theory ISA pre-conference workshop

The IT Section, with generous funding and support from the journal International Theory, will be hosting a day-long workshop in advance of the 2023 ISA Convention in Montréal for young career and underrepresented scholars who work on international theory.

The workshop will be held on Tuesday, March 14 at one of the conference hotels and will give scholars an opportunity to meet with members of the IT editorial team and receive feedback on a manuscript they intend to submit to IT or another journal. Travel stipends of 500 USD will be provided to all participants. Participants need to be(come) members of ISA and be registered for the 2023 Annual Convention.

To apply for this workshop, please submit an abstract and short paper outline (max. 3 pages) to:

International heory@@cambridge.org

Deadline: 16 October 2022, so that participants will receive their acceptance before the registration deadline. Please include "II workshop" in the subject line.

Journal Articles

Protective exclusion as a postcolonial strategy: Rethinking deportations and sovereignty in the Gambia

Franzisca Zanker and Judith Altrogge

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09670106221119598

In 2019, the tiny West African country of the Gambia imposed a moratorium on all deportation flights from the EU. Though West African countries are notoriously reluctant to cooperate on forced returns, such a moratorium was unheard of and caused an uproar within diplomatic circles in Europe. In the age of deportability, why is deporting ‘unwanted’ migrants an illustration of a nation’s sovereign rights, yet refusing to accept deportees is not? The Gambian government used the moratorium to forestall political destabilization at a time of transition from a long dictatorship. With the moratorium, the government not only sought to protect deportees from violent removal practices but also served the interests of the Gambian population more broadly, among whom deportation remains deeply unpopular. Drawing on original expert interviews and informal conversations carried out between 2017 and 2020, this article shows that the moratorium allowed the Gambia to enact its internal sovereignty through a (temporary) protective exclusion of its citizens. Given the asymmetric and colonial legacy of modern-day sovereignty between states, the moratorium was a legitimate renegotiation of established but questionable standards of interstate sovereignty.

Job Openings

Public Education Academic Coordinator - The Orfalea Center for Global & International Studies

APPLY HERE: https://recruit.ap.ucsb.edu/JPF02261

APPLICATION WINDOW

Open date: September 26, 2022

Next review date: Monday, Oct 10, 2022 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time)

Apply by this date to ensure full consideration by the committee.

Final date: Monday, Oct 31, 2022 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time)

Applications will continue to be accepted until this date, but those received after the review date will only be considered if the position has not yet been filled.

POSITION DESCRIPTION

The Orfalea Center for Global & International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara invites applications for the Public Education Academic Coordinator position. This is a part-time (67%), calendar-year position. The initial appointment will be through June 30, 2024.

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2 PhD positions on PolEcon of solar energy in Mor & Jor - Freiburg, Germany

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The Arnold Bergstraesser Institute (ABI) at the University of Freiburg (Germany) is seeking to fill two positions as

Doctoral Researcher (Salary Level 65% TVL E 13) on the topics:

1) “The political economy of solar energy in Morocco”

2) “The political economy of solar energy in Jordan”

The positions are part of an Emmy Noether Junior Research Group, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), led by Dr. Benjamin Schuetze, and hosted by the ABI, on the overall topic ‘Renewable Energies, Renewed Authoritarianisms? The Political Economy of Solar Energy in the Middle East and North Africa’.

The successful candidates are expected to move to Freiburg, Germany, and start by April 1, 2023. Initial contracts will be for 2.5 years with possible extension of another 1.5 years. The selected candidates will enroll as PhD students with the University of Freiburg’s Faculty of Humanities, supervised by Dr. Benjamin Schuetze, and be provided with office space at the ABI.

Applications should be sent to benjamin.schuetze[at]abi.uni-freiburg.de by November 6, 2022 (as one single PDF file), and should include the following:

• Motivation letter (1-2 pages)
• CV, including names and contact details of two referees
• Copies of university degrees (BA and MA)
• Work sample (MA thesis chapter, published article, or similar)
• PhD project outline (2-3 pages)

For more information please contact Dr. Benjamin Schuetze, via telephone (+49-(0)761-88878-30) or e-mail (benjamin.schuetze[at]abi.uni-freiburg.de).

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Security Studies is looking for a new editor-in-chief.

https://securitystudiesjournal.org/call-for-editorinchief

The Co-chairs of the Editorial Board, on behalf of the Board, and the current Editor-in-Chief, on behalf of the current Editorial Team, invite applications from interested colleagues to serve as the next Editor-in-Chief of Security Studies.  The term of this appointment, commencing July 1, 2023, is for three years but may be renewed by mutual agreement for a second three-year term. 

For more information on the journal, we advise interested parties to peruse both the editor-controlled journal website as well as Taylor & Francis’ journal website.

Co-chairs of the Editorial Board Michael Desch (mdesch@nd.edu) and William Wohlforth (william.wohlforth@dartmouth.edu) and current EIC Ron Krebs (secstudieseditor@gmail.com) welcome inquiries regarding this call at any time through October 15, 2022.

Formal applications should be submitted by November 1, 2022, to secstudiesinfo@gmail.com.  Please put “EIC Proposal” in the Subject line.