CPSA/ISA-Canada section on International Relations

C12(b) - Managing Contested Geographies

Date: May 31 | Time: 02:00pm to 03:30pm | Location: Classroom - CL 313 Room ID:15719

Chair/Président/Présidente : Michael MacLeod (St. Mary's University)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Ali Dizboni (Royal Military College of Canada)

Energy, Agency, and Structure: The Politics of Energy Geographies: Joshua McEvoy (Queen's University)
Abstract: Discussion in international relations (IR) concerning the relational concepts of boundaries, identity and agency have grown increasingly transdisciplinary, particularly in constructivist and international political sociology scholarship. This paper will contribute to this discussion by building on the arguments of political geographers, like John Agnew, that (1) there are multiple spatialites of power, and (2) that political territory (or place) is not the sole purview of the state. Specifically, this paper will explore how non-state group boundaries, identities, and agencies are shaped or (trans)formed in relation to energy resources. It will be argued that these “energy geographies” are relational - they are manifested through co-constitutive processes of interaction between material (i.e. the energy resource/system), ideational, and social structures, such as the connection between group identity and territoriality. To do so, the paper will draw on the concept of “assemblages” to demonstrate how energy geographies “structure politics from below” with implications for local, domestic and global politics.

National Security and the High North: Post-Cold War Arctic Security Policy in Norway: Wilfrid Greaves (University of Victoria)
Abstract: this chapter examines the dominant contemporary and historical meanings of Arctic security for the Norwegian state, focusing particularly on the post-Cold War redefinition of security in the High North. While Norway emphasized desecuritizing Russian relations immediately following the Cold War, the more recent High North Initiative has served to heavily securitize the Arctic region within Norwegian national security discourse and policy. I argue that despite many changes in global and European politics, Russia and the extraction of Arctic resources remain the core pillars of Norway’s official understanding of security in the Arctic in both recent and historical contexts. To support this claim, I draw on English-language scholarship on Norwegian foreign and security policy, in addition to primary analysis of Norwegian government policy documents and related texts. These sources support the argument that security is the central concept for Norwegian policy in the Arctic, and that Norway’s Arctic security interests have been constructed around the threat of Russian instability and/or invasion, and the control and extraction of petroleum as necessary for the Norwegian economy and maintenance of its social welfare system.

Evolving Arctic Maritime Relations: Lauren Moslow (University of Calgary)
Abstract: The Arctic is an area of tremendous significance, both in terms of its untapped resources and its growing economic and geopolitical importance. There are multiple issues within the region that are in a state of flux. Political boundaries, fish stocks, ice cover, ocean circulation patterns, climatic variability and marine biodiversity are all undergoing significant and rapid change. Be it the changing size of the permanent ice cover of the region; the nature of economic development in the region or the political boundaries in the region. all are in a state of transformation. Such rapid change and growing activity presents numerous challenges for Arctic states, on how they can develop policy and procedure for the political management and defense of national interests and predict changes on numerous landscapes in a rapidly evolving Arctic frontier. Focusing on the period of 1991 to 2016, this study examines Arctic maritime relations among the eight Arctic states (Canada, United States, Russia, Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Sweden and Norway) as they respond to a changing Arctic.