300464 World Politics - Spaces, Fields, Mobilities (S) (SoSe 2023)

The seminar explores spaces, fields and mobilities in World Politics. Spatial categories organize the physical world and set up the structure within which World Politics are enacted.
A shared understanding of space, of its dimensions, its extent and its limits provides a framework within which e.g. statehood is rooted. The organization and control of space lies at the core of modern statehood, raising the question of how space is observed and how these observations are translated into modes of organization. Historically different conceptualizations of space have competed with each other, establishing different notions of reach, control, boundaries etc. resulting in different modes of organization. Those modes of organization include e.g. empires, nation-states, as well as networked organizations, such as e.g the Dutch East India Company, or the Venetian system of proxy-control/ trade networks.

Mobilities - as social constructions and enactments of movement in space – shape and account for the dynamics within World Politics. Flows of goods, people and ideas span the globe and are subjected to constant change. With the digitalization of every aspect of modern life, the question to move, or not to move was never as salient as today, when needs can be instantly fulfilled without even physically changing one´s own position. World Politics are constantly re-negotiated to fit within the network of global mobilities, with socially shared fictions, as e.g. citizenship being scrutinized as modes of economic reproduction cease to be bound to certain locations.

In the seminar we will explore the history of spaces, fields and mobilities in World Politics and model pathways of how those concepts might shape future World Politics.

Each session will last 4 hours. Each session will begin with a one-hour introduction to the topic of the respective session. Here, among other things, the compulsory reading and introductory literature will be presented and discussed. In seminar hours 2-3, students will work in small groups on questions relating to the respective session topic. In lesson 4, the students present the results of their group work and the discussion questions they have developed. All seminar participants will have the opportunity to work on all session topics.

The bi-weekly seminar will be offered for the first time on 08.04.2024 in room C5-141. All sessions will be held in English. An online-, or hybrid-format will not be offered.

Bibliography

Required reading in `Lernraum´