- Geography, Political Geography and Geopolitics, Nationalism, Central Asia, Arabian/Persian Gulf Studies, Sport, and 23 moreComparative Politics, Authoritarianism, Spectacle, Michel Foucault, Qualitative methodology, The Persian Gulf, Arabian Gulf, Space and Place, Human Geography, History of geography, Political Geography, Critical Geopolitics, Post-Soviet Regimes, Cultural Geography, History of Geographic Thought, Geopolitics, Urban Geography, Nationalism And State Building, Critical Geography, Anthropology of space, Qatar, Gulf Studies, and United Arab Emiratesedit
- I am a political geographer focusing on authoritarianism, empire, geopolitics, nationalism and citizenship, oil and e... moreI am a political geographer focusing on authoritarianism, empire, geopolitics, nationalism and citizenship, oil and energy geopolitics, and sports geography. All of my research revolves around the broad question of how illiberal regimes and authoritarian relations are reproduced through sites of pleasure and opportunity, rather than just violence and oppression. Empirically, I focus on the Arabian Peninsula, where I study the many transnational ties that bind the Gulf countries, actors, and ideas to other parts of the world.edit
All nationalisms have multiple storylines that evolve in response to changes in global affairs. The shifting geopolitical and ecological circumstances surrounding climate change are contributing to the strengthening of “green... more
All nationalisms have multiple storylines that evolve in response to changes in global affairs. The shifting geopolitical and ecological circumstances surrounding climate change are contributing to the strengthening of “green nationalisms” around the world — including in authoritarian states. This article examines the rise of green nationalism in the UAE, where state-led discourse has tapped into sustainability tropes to reframe the country's national identity and values as “green.” Building from over 5 years of qualitative research on the UAE's sustainability agenda, it examines the evolution of state-led green nationalist storylines through institutional, policy, and events landscapes in the years leading up to and including the United Nations COP28 climate talks in Dubai in December 2023. Emirati political elites, I argue, mobilise green nationalism to cultivate symbolic capital domestically and internationally and, in so doing, legitimate their authoritarian hold on state power. The greening of nationalisms requires much closer scrutiny around the world — and especially when promoted by authoritarian leaders who are more motivated by regime durability rather than joining the global community for urgent climate action.
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Nationalist visions of the future are articulated through the language and logic of science. This article extends political geography research on the future by examining "scientific nationalism" expressed at two museums of the future in... more
Nationalist visions of the future are articulated through the language and logic of science. This article extends political geography research on the future by examining "scientific nationalism" expressed at two museums of the future in Germany and the UAE: Berlin's Futurium and Dubai's Museum of the Future. The techno-science ideals narrated in the museums are projected as planetary stories about building common futures through science, technological innovation, and concern for the environment, but fundamentally reinforce nationalist ideals and aspirations about their nations' success and prosperity in the future. In Germany and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), nationalist discourses celebrate science and technologyand technoscientific prowess is framed in the two museums of the future as holding the key to solving planetary challenges like the climate crisis. But in "technowashing" social, political, and environmental challenges, they reflect a conservative approach to centering technology-centered questions about the future, while working to persevere the energy-intensive, capitalist political economy that defines their present. By projecting these extractive and nationalist presents into the future, the two future-themed museums illustrate how the future animates nationalist visions not just through stories of survivance, but also through stories of science.
Research Interests: Future Studies, Human Geography, Political Geography and Geopolitics, German Studies, Climate Change, and 13 moreMuseum Studies, Nationalism, History of Museums, Nationalism And State Building, STS (Anthropology), Museums and Exhibition Design, Arabian Gulf, Political Geography, Futures Studies and Foresight, United Arab Emirates, science and technology studies (STS), Technoscience, and Arabian/Persian Gulf Studies
https://aspeniaonline.it/gulf-sport-geopolitics-and-western-cultural-hegemony/ This essay argues that Western anxieties about Gulf investment in global sport reflect a mismatch between an idealized vision of sport as a tool of cultural... more
https://aspeniaonline.it/gulf-sport-geopolitics-and-western-cultural-hegemony/ This essay argues that Western anxieties about Gulf investment in global sport reflect a mismatch between an idealized vision of sport as a tool of cultural diplomacy and the reality of how it operates as a tool of Western cultural hegemony. Viewed through the lens of cultural hegemony, recent Gulf sports investments are best understood as part of the broader geopolitics surrounding Western definitions of “modernity” in postcolonial contexts.
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This paper reflects on teaching sport in political geography undergraduate courses in the United States, through which I simultaneously aim to de-essentialize geopolitics and de-essentialize sport. I integrate sport examples in diverse... more
This paper reflects on teaching sport in political geography undergraduate courses in the United States, through which I simultaneously aim to de-essentialize geopolitics and de-essentialize sport. I integrate sport examples in diverse courses on political geography and teach a dedicated "Geopolitics of Sport" course. By framing my approach to the political geographies of sport around the specific term "geopolitics," I deliberately tap into a sense among Americans that it is a "more serious" topic than "geography." Since students in my courses rarely come from Geography, but are primarily majors in Political Science and International Relations, "geopolitics" invites them to approach sports geography as a serious subject and to be more open to the field of geography. Since geography remains a neglected subject in US schools and universities, teaching sports geography through geopolitics, and geopolitics through sports geography, can be a powerful way to encourage critical geographic reasoning, especially among non-geography majors.
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Event ethnography is a methodological tool that involves ethnographic research on or at events. "Events" are activities, gatherings, and collective experiences that are limited in time and are highly diverse in their scope, organization,... more
Event ethnography is a methodological tool that involves ethnographic research on or at events. "Events" are activities, gatherings, and collective experiences that are limited in time and are highly diverse in their scope, organization, and thematic organization. Because of their temporary nature, events serve as unique venues for the convergence of actors who are usually spatially, temporally, and socially dispersed. Ethnographic research at events thus offers scholars a useful window onto how power relations are formed through the concentrated interaction among individuals, ideas, affects, and infrastructures. This article defines "event ethnography" and surveys the existing literature that examines events through ethnographic research. It suggests that taking events seriously for fieldwork has the potential to open up new questions for political geographers and other scholars interested in power and politics.
Research Interests: Human Geography, Political Geography and Geopolitics, Anthropology, International Relations, Ethnography, and 12 moreGeopolitics, Qualitative methodology, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Mega Events As Catalysts For Regeneration, Political Science, Politics, Ethnography (Research Methodology), Qualitative Research, Events, Qualitative Research Methods, Mega Events, and Sports Mega Events
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for... more
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. The information, practices and views in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG).
Research Interests: Discourse Analysis, Human Geography, Political Geography and Geopolitics, Qualitative methodology, Liberalism, and 9 moreCritical Discourse Analysis, Michel Foucault, Political Geography, Qualitative Research Methods, Authoritarianism, Speech acts, Foucault power/knowledge - discourse, Political Speech Analysis, and Foucault
Dairy products seemed to gain a new political significance in the Arabian Peninsula in June 2017, when Qatar was suddenly placed under an air, land, and sea embargo by its Gulf neighbours. While the country’s entire food supply chain were... more
Dairy products seemed to gain a new political significance in the Arabian Peninsula in June 2017, when Qatar was suddenly placed under an air, land, and sea embargo by its Gulf neighbours. While the country’s entire food supply chain were affected, residents in Qatar were especially concerned with their access to dairy products because they were keenly aware that the embargo’s two leaders, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, were their primary source of dairy goods. In the wake of the 2017 embargo, dairy acquired a new importance for how people understood Qatar’s sovereignty. These events spurred the Qatari government to invest heavily in kick-starting domestic milk production by flying in thousands of milk cows to Baladna Farms, a dairy farm that came to be described as a nationalist champion for the country’s food independence. The “cowlift” was a dramatic spectacle, but it is part of a broader trend of “milk nationalism” seen across the Arabian Peninsula. This chapter traces this longer history and asks why the branding of national dairy companies has been so important in four Gulf Arab states: Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, and Oman. As a study in political geography, it employs the lens of critical geopolitics to analyse the history and narrative construction of milk nationalism these countries. As a branding discourse in the Gulf countries, milk nationalism both draws upon and builds contemporary understandings of the state and sovereignty.
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This review article considers recent scholarship on the geographies of nationalism by focusing on three key binaries that have defined the field of nationalism studies: inclusive/exclusive (geographies of community), love/hate... more
This review article considers recent scholarship on the geographies of nationalism by focusing on three key binaries that have defined the field of nationalism studies: inclusive/exclusive (geographies of community), love/hate (geographies of emotion), and past/future (geographies of time). It argues that asking who participates in constructing such conceptual dualisms, geographers can offer important insights about how nationalist discourses underpin contemporary practices of governing ourselves and others as political subjects-and their multifarious spatial dimensions. Geographers are well positioned to investigate the drawing of conceptual boundaries as political acts, with real effects in the world, rather than intellectually "wrong." As such, this article calls for nationalism scholars not to outright reject binaries, but to take them seriously as a way to open up broader questions about the geographies of nationalism that all subjects of today's state system must confront.
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A revelatory new history of the colonization of the American West, by way of camels, date palms, and Biosphere 2: The iconic deserts of the American southwest could not have been colonized and settled without the help of desert experts... more
A revelatory new history of the colonization of the American West, by way of camels, date palms, and Biosphere 2: The iconic deserts of the American southwest could not have been colonized and settled without the help of desert experts from the Middle East. For example: In 1856, a caravan of thirty-three camels arrived in Indianola, Texas, led by a Syrian cameleer the Americans called "Hi Jolly." This "camel corps," the US government hoped, could help the army secure the new southwest swath of the country just wrested from Mexico. Though the dream of the camel corps—and sadly, the camels—died, the idea of drawing on expertise, knowledge, and practices from the desert countries of the Middle East did not. As Natalie Koch demonstrates in this evocative, narrative history, the exchange of colonial technologies between the Arabian Peninsula and United States over the past two centuries—from date palm farming and desert agriculture to the utopian sci-fi dreams of Biosphere 2 and Frank Herbert’s Dune—bound the two regions together, solidifying the colonization of the US West and, eventually, the reach of American power into the Middle East. Koch teaches us to see deserts anew, not as mythic sites of romance or empty wastelands but as an "arid empire," a crucial political space where imperial dreams coalesce.
Research Interests: Human Geography, Political Geography and Geopolitics, Environmental History, North American West, Arid Land Ecology, and 13 moreAmerican West, Saudi Arabia, Arabian Gulf, American imperialism, Political Geography, Settler Colonial Studies, United Arab Emirates, Settler Colonialism & Its Legacies, History of the American West, Arizona, Arabian/Persian Gulf Studies, Settler colonialism, and Sultanate of Oman
This paper examines the recent interest in hydrogen energy among political and economic leaders in the oil and gas producing states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Although key stakeholders continue to reinforce the fossil fuel... more
This paper examines the recent interest in hydrogen energy among political and economic leaders in the oil and gas producing states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Although key stakeholders continue to reinforce the fossil fuel systems that have defined the region’s political economy for decades, they increasingly recognize that the hydrocarbon era is drawing to a close. This has led to an increase in various “post-oil” energy investments, which most recently include hydrogen energy. This discussion paper examines why this is the case – that is, why the GCC’s political and corporate leaders are keen on promoting hydrogen energy systems in the region. It shows that the aspiration to produce “green” hydrogen – originating in Europe and Germany in particular – is increasingly seen as a way to broadcast the region’s green credentials, while simultaneously supporting the investments in “blue” hydrogen promoted by the state-owned hydrocarbon giants in the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
Research Interests: Human Geography, Political Geography and Geopolitics, Gulf Studies, Renewable Energy, Saudi Arabia, and 9 moreEnergy and Environment, Arabian Gulf, Oil and gas, Political Geography, United Arab Emirates, Gulf Cooperation Council, Arabian/Persian Gulf Studies, Oil Natural Gas Energy Geopolitics, and Hydrogen Energy
In February 1956, several years after the death of Stalin, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev gave his famous Secret Speech, “On the cult of personality and its consequences.” In the speech, Khrushchev broke a taboo of silence about the... more
In February 1956, several years after the death of Stalin, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev gave his famous Secret Speech, “On the cult of personality and its consequences.” In the speech, Khrushchev broke a taboo of silence about the brutality of Stalin’s regime, including years of bloody purges, and scorned the leader’s infatuation with himself. To Khrushchev, Stalin’s personality cult was not just to blame for the unchecked violence of his regime, but it was also anti-Soviet, anti-Leninist, anti-Marxist, anti-communist. In Khrushchev’s nationalist reading, Soviet politics was not destined to be ruled by a cult-promoting autocrat and the country needed to move on in a more democratic fashion. From the vantage point of post-Trump America, this article considers what a U.S. parallel to Khrushchev’s post-Stalin speech would entail. In contrast to Khrushchev’s assertion that Soviet politics is not underpinned by cult-promoting ideology, I reject the nationalist line of critique and argue that American history has always been defined by personality cults.
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This article examines the role of "oil money" in promoting the energy transition, tracing activities across the oil industry and countries heavily dependent on oil revenues to bolster their green credentials. Through a case study of the... more
This article examines the role of "oil money" in promoting the energy transition, tracing activities across the oil industry and countries heavily dependent on oil revenues to bolster their green credentials. Through a case study of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), I argue that financial sustainability is paramount in places and institutions that feel threatened by fossil fuels divestment efforts and other threats to the oil business and the governmental and financial systems that have been built on and through hydrocarbons. Drawing on research in the UAE from 2014 to 2022, the article illustrates how corporate and government leaders profiting from hydrocarbon sales are searching for diversification opportunities to prolong the benefits of the oil money they control. But given the moral taint of oil money today, these actors are especially interested in the symbolic capital derived from "greening" this oil money by investing in sustainability and energy transition activities, which in turn might even allow them to retain control of global energy systems that they have dominated for so long.
Research Interests: Human Geography, Political Geography and Geopolitics, Climate Change, Renewable Energy, Energy Policy, and 12 moreEnergy and Environment, Arabian Gulf, Environmental Sustainability, Political Geography, United Arab Emirates, International political economy of oil and gas, Arabian/Persian Gulf Studies, Oil Natural Gas Energy Geopolitics, Greenwashing, Climate Finance, Energy transition, and Geography of Energy
Sustainability projects are being promoted around the world with a large dose of spectacle, including those in the Arabian Peninsula where governments have invested heavily in large greening projects and events. This article examines... more
Sustainability projects are being promoted around the world with a large dose of spectacle, including those in the Arabian Peninsula where governments have invested heavily in large greening projects and events. This article examines these spectacular projects in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which are typically dismissed by Western observers as mere PR and 'greenwashing.' Moving past this simplistic critique, I contextualize 'sustainability spectacle' as a broad cultural phenomenon, with deep roots in Western countries. Based on ethnographic research on sustainability events, sites, and initiatives in the UAE, I show how 'post-oil' greening initiatives use sustainability spectacle to promote a positive narrative about the 'modern' national self, and reflect the growing international imperative to be green.
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In this commentary, I respond to James Riding and Carl Dahlman's article, 'Montage space: borderlands, micronations, terra nullius, and the imperialism of the geographical imagination'. I build on their arguments about 'more-than-dry... more
In this commentary, I respond to James Riding and Carl Dahlman's article, 'Montage space: borderlands, micronations, terra nullius, and the imperialism of the geographical imagination'. I build on their arguments about 'more-than-dry landscapes' to consider how the relationship between fluid and non-fluid landscapes sheds light on the construction and contestation of political space. To do so, I offer additional examples of how people plant flags in water, shedding light on the political implications of how physical territories are imagined, claimed, and sometimes, simply created at the fluid/non-fluid interface.
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Authoritarianism has emerged as a prominent theme in popular and academic discussions of politics since the 2016 US presidential election and the coinciding expansion of authoritarian rhetoric and ideals across Europe, Asia, and beyond.... more
Authoritarianism has emerged as a prominent theme in popular and academic discussions of politics since the 2016 US presidential election and the coinciding expansion of authoritarian rhetoric and ideals across Europe, Asia, and beyond. Until recently, however, academic geographers have not focused squarely on the concept of authoritarianism. Its longstanding absence from the field is noteworthy as geographers have made extensive contributions to theorizing structural inequalities, injustice, and other expressions of oppressive or illiberal power relations and their diverse spatialities. Identifying this void, Spatializing Authoritarianism builds upon recent research to show that even when conceptualized as a set of practices rather than as a simple territorial label, authoritarianism has a spatiality: both drawing from and producing political space and scale in many often surprising ways. This volume advances the argument that authoritarianism must be investigated by accounting for the many scales at which it is produced, enacted, and imagined.
Including a diverse array of theoretical perspectives and empirical cases drawn from the Global South and North, this collection illustrates the analytical power of attending to authoritarianism’s diverse scalar and spatial expressions, and how intimately connected it is with identity narratives, built landscapes, borders, legal systems, markets, and other territorial and extraterritorial expressions of power.
Including a diverse array of theoretical perspectives and empirical cases drawn from the Global South and North, this collection illustrates the analytical power of attending to authoritarianism’s diverse scalar and spatial expressions, and how intimately connected it is with identity narratives, built landscapes, borders, legal systems, markets, and other territorial and extraterritorial expressions of power.
Research Interests: Human Geography, Political Geography and Geopolitics, Legitimacy and Authority, Totalitarianism, Political Geography, and 5 moreAuthoritarianism, Authoritarian regimes, Comparative Politics, Democratization, Authoritarian Regimes, Regime Change, Concept Analysis, Measurement, Political Economy of Authoritarianism, and Manifestations of Authority and Power
In the late 1930s, the American oil company Aramco helped Saudi Arabia's King Ibn Saud develop his royal farm outside Riyadh. On the king's request, Aramco introduced new technology to tap the Al Kharj region's rich aquifer water and... more
In the late 1930s, the American oil company Aramco helped Saudi Arabia's King Ibn Saud develop his royal farm outside Riyadh. On the king's request, Aramco introduced new technology to tap the Al Kharj region's rich aquifer water and establish vast fields of wheat, alfalfa, and other water-intensive crops. Saudi Arabia's aquifers have since been pumped dry in service of the ‘Garden of Eden’ idyll promised by American advocates, who boasted of their ability to reclaim thousands of acres of ‘desert wasteland.’ This article draws on Traci Voyles' formulation of ‘wastelanding’ to interrogate the agricultural spectacle of Al Kharj in the 1930s–50s. The project was an early exemplar what came to be an established pattern of wastelanding Arabia, built on the unsustainable use of groundwater and social inequalities to create an ‘Eden’ in the desert. Agricultural wastelanding has unique spatial and temporal dimensions that set it apart from other extractive industries, like the uranium mining that Voyles examines in Diné lands. But as this article shows, desert greening projects draw on and produce similar structures of social and environmental violence – with America's ‘Garden of Eden’ in central Arabia being just one case among many of wastelanding across space and time.
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The Arabian Peninsula has hosted an array of major sporting events in recent years, including high-profile events in tennis, cycling, sailing, golf, polo, horse racing, and Formula 1 and E, the Asian Games, and the FIFA World Cup. To... more
The Arabian Peninsula has hosted an array of major sporting events in recent years, including high-profile events in tennis, cycling, sailing, golf, polo, horse racing, and Formula 1 and E, the Asian Games, and the FIFA World Cup. To enable this, local leaders and their allies have transformed the urban fabric of cities like Doha, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Manama, and Riyadh. Branding these places as “sporting cities,” urban boosters hope, can help to diversify local economies for the “post-oil future” – a looming concern that has organized a great deal of state development in the past decade. The idea is that by hosting these events and investing in a wholesale makeover of urban infrastructure to accommodate a sports-oriented “visitor class,” they will serve as an engine to fuel growth in the future – even if funding them relies on the same hydrocarbon-dominated economic system that their national development plans purport to overcome.
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Research Interests: Human Geography, Political Geography and Geopolitics, Space and Place, Political Geography, Space and Time (Philosophy), and 8 moreTime geography, Authoritarianism, Authoritarian regimes, Settler Colonial Studies, Settler Colonialism & Its Legacies, Comparative Politics, Democratization, Authoritarian Regimes, Regime Change, Concept Analysis, Measurement, Settler colonialism, and Space and time
Deserts have a special prominence in apocalyptic visions of the future. As a trope, the desert frequently indexes apocalyptic visions of the warming planet and future challenges of securing food, energy, and water in a changing... more
Deserts have a special prominence in apocalyptic visions of the future. As a trope, the desert frequently indexes apocalyptic visions of the warming planet and future challenges of securing food, energy, and water in a changing environment. This article considers how diffuse visions of "environmental apocalypse" are spun through narratives constructions of the desert as sites of utopia and dystopia -- places where humanity is simultaneously portrayed as meeting its most dire possibilities of collapse, but also places where hopeful futures might be tested out and extremes overcome in an era of climate catastrophe. This article offers a genealogy of techno-scientific schemes in the Arizona desert and the "visioneers" behind them, focusing on the most iconic example of Biosphere 2. Initiated in the mid-1980s, Biosphere 2's history illustrates how such projects are underpinned by multiple forms of spectacle, which draw on the ideals of science, technology, and environmental salvation to build settler colonial structures of exclusion and Indigenous dispossession. By centering the question of whose apocalypse we are being sold in such techno-centric "solutions" to ecological dilemmas, this article expands recent discussions of environmental injustice and settler colonial violence to show how ostensibly "progressive" ideals and initiatives are also violent and routinely overwrite histories and presents of colonial dispossession.
Research Interests: Human Geography, Political Geography and Geopolitics, History of Science, Spectacle, North American Southwest, and 8 moreSTS (Anthropology), Political Geography, Settler Colonial Studies, Apocalypse, Settler Colonialism & Its Legacies, science and technology studies (STS), Arizona, and Settler colonialism
In 2014 the largest dairy company in the Middle East, Almarai, purchased a farm near Vicksburg, Arizona, to grow alfalfa as feed for cattle in Saudi Arabia. Almarai is headquartered at Al Kharj farms, just outside of Riyadh, where it has... more
In 2014 the largest dairy company in the Middle East, Almarai, purchased a farm near Vicksburg, Arizona, to grow alfalfa as feed for cattle in Saudi Arabia. Almarai is headquartered at Al Kharj farms, just outside of Riyadh, where it has a herd of more than 93,000 milk cows. Given that dairy and alfalfa farms both require an immense amount of water to maintain, what explains these developments in the deserts of Arizona and Arabia? The answers are historical and contemporary, demanding an approach to “desert geopolitics” that explains how environmental and political narratives bind experts across space and time. As a study in political geography and environmental history, this article uncovers a geopolitics of connection that has long linked the US Southwest and the Middle East, as well as the interlocking imperial visions advanced in their deserts. To understand these arid entanglements, I show how Almarai’s purchase of the Vicksburg farm is part of a genealogy of exchanges between Saudi Arabia and Arizona that dates to the early 1940s. The history of Al Kharj and the decades-long agricultural connections between Arizona and Saudi Arabia sheds light on how specific actors imagine the “desert” as a naturalized site of scarcity, but also of opportunity to build politically and economically useful bridges between the two regions.
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Book Introduction
Research Interests: Human Geography, Political Geography and Geopolitics, Political Theory, Critical Geopolitics, Geopolitics, and 9 moreNationalism, Nationalism And State Building, State Theory, Political Geography, Anthropology of the State, Nations and nationalism, History of Nationalism and Nation-Building, State, and Sociology of the State
Oman to develop research laboratories for the country's "One Million Date Palms for Oman" initiative. This project is only the most recent example of a much longer set of collaborations between actors in the two regions, which began when... more
Oman to develop research laboratories for the country's "One Million Date Palms for Oman" initiative. This project is only the most recent example of a much longer set of collaborations between actors in the two regions, which began when Omani date palms were imported to the University of Arizona's Agriculture Experiment Station in the 1890s. In tracing this history, I show how establishing state power in the US West was facilitated by the work of scientists and research institutions drawing on materials and knowledge from the Middle East. In the case of Arizona, the colonial project was advanced through the federally funded land-grant programmes at the University of Arizona, which aimed to entice white settlers to the territory through promoting commercially oriented agriculture. University researchers' efforts to secure date palm imports from abroad illustrate how the settler colonial vision treated the desert Southwest as an analogue to the Middle East, but their personal laboratory for developing modern knowledge about desert farming. The case sheds light on the role of scientific institutions in consolidating state power in desert frontiers-a process that is depoliticised by framing the desert as a laboratory as a site for "modern" science rather than a site to be colonised.
Research Interests: Human Geography, Political Geography and Geopolitics, Higher Education, Agriculture, North American Southwest, and 13 moreSTS (Anthropology), Arabian Gulf, Political Geography, Agriculture and Food Studies, Empire, Settler Colonial Studies, science and technology studies (STS), History of the American West, Arizona, Arabian Peninsula, Settler colonialism, Date Palm, and Deserts
Deserts, like any geographic setting, are not sites where geopolitical dramas simply unfold or "touch down"; rather, they actively constitute geopolitical orders. This article shows how taking deserts rather than states as an entry point... more
Deserts, like any geographic setting, are not sites where geopolitical dramas simply unfold or "touch down"; rather, they actively constitute geopolitical orders. This article shows how taking deserts rather than states as an entry point can provide a unique lens on geopolitics, state making, and empire. Investigating the political lives of deserts requires asking how they are imagined, narrated, and connected across space and time, and with what effect. To do so, I consider one case of desert-to-desert connection: a long but little-known history of exchange between individuals and institutions in Arizona and the Arabian Peninsula. Taking one example from this history, I show how the "desert" as an environmental imaginary figured in the University of Arizona Environmental Research Laboratory's joint greenhouse and desalting plant, which was initiated in Abu Dhabi in the late 1960s. Primarily drawing from archival research in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Arizona, I also show how this project fit into shifting geopolitical relations in the Arabian Peninsula's colonial relations, the rise of the UAE as an independent state, and the role of experts working in the service of broader political agendas of the state and the academy, as well as their own self-interest.
Research Interests: Political Geography and Geopolitics, Critical Geopolitics, Environmental Studies, Environmental History, Geography of food, and 10 moreArid environments, STS (Anthropology), Political Geography, Agriculture and Food Studies, United Arab Emirates, science and technology studies (STS), Abu Dhabi, Arizona, Arabian/Persian Gulf Studies, and Arabian Peninsula
On 4 June 2017, Qatar was suddenly put under an embargo by its regional neighbors-an effort spearheaded by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, who cut off most of its existing land, sea, and air traffic routes. With no domestic agriculture to speak... more
On 4 June 2017, Qatar was suddenly put under an embargo by its regional neighbors-an effort spearheaded by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, who cut off most of its existing land, sea, and air traffic routes. With no domestic agriculture to speak of, Qatar's external logistics networks are essential for maintaining its food supply. The country's 2.6 million residents, many of whom flooded the grocery stores, were understandably concerned about their ability to secure food when news about the embargo broke. Eventually, new food supply chains were established, primarily with the assistance of partners in Iran and Turkey. The ongoing rift between Qatar and its neighbors in the Arabian Peninsula, manifested only in part by this effort to undermine the country's material supply networks raises a number of questions about an old idea: that of food as a 'weapon'. This article puts this concept in historical and regional perspective in the Arabian Peninsula through the lens of critical geopolitics, tracing the securitizing discourses about food security and their intertwining with narratives about territorial sovereignty, nationalism, and essentialist understandings of geography to explain the causes and effects of the food embargo in the ongoing Qatar-Gulf rift.
Research Interests: Human Geography, Political Geography and Geopolitics, Gulf Studies, Geopolitics, Critical Security Studies, and 14 moreNationalism, Geography of food, Nationalism And State Building, Agriculture and Food Studies, Critical Food Geographies, Critical security studies (International Studies), Food Security, Food Studies, Qatar, Arabian/Persian Gulf Studies, Arabian Peninsula, Critical Food Studies, Dairy Products, and Politcal Geography
The political and ethical quandaries of the "crisis of representation" that beset the social sciences from the 1980s on continue to reverberate in how geographers conduct their research today. Illustrated with two vignettes from my... more
The political and ethical quandaries of the "crisis of representation" that beset the social sciences from the 1980s on continue to reverberate in how geographers conduct their research today. Illustrated with two vignettes from my research in the UAE and Kazakhstan, this article explores the idea of "deep listening" as a methodological tack and mindset to guide geographic fieldwork, rooted in intellectual humility. Deep listening involves a critical reflex-ivity about our subject positions as researchers, as well as a suspicion of metanarratives that prevail in the media and academic debates, and a willingness to question our complicity in reproducing those narratives through our choice of research topics and methods. Deep listening is ultimately a way of practicing intellectual humility-which involves accepting that we could be incorrect at many levels, whether theoretical, factual, emotional, social, cultural, or political, and seeking out opportunities to change our mind.
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This article examines recent renewable energy initiatives in two hydrocarbon rich states of Eurasia: Kazakhstan and Russia. The global nature of challenges surrounding energy and natural resource use demand that sustainability and “energy... more
This article examines recent renewable energy initiatives in two hydrocarbon rich states of Eurasia: Kazakhstan and Russia. The global nature of challenges surrounding energy and natural resource use demand that sustainability and “energy transition” policies be understood as geopolitical issues, which are increasingly (re)defining political relations among and within states. Existing research and media coverage of international energy politics in Eurasia is overwhelmingly dominated by a focus on oil and gas extraction, especially in Kazakhstan and Russia, due to their central place in traditional hydrocarbon fuels markets. As elsewhere in the world, however, political and economic leaders in both countries have started to adopt the language of promoting environmental sustainability, the “green economy,” and renewable energy infrastructures. Taking a critical geopolitics lens to recent developments, this article considers who is involved in advancing renewable energy in contexts that have traditionally been dependent on traditional energy sources, and what this may portend for the shifting energy landscape of Eurasia.
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'AgTech' is the latest discourse about introducing new technologies to agricultural production. Researchers, corporations, and governments around the world are investing heavily in supporting its development. Abu Dhabi, the largest and... more
'AgTech' is the latest discourse about introducing new technologies to agricultural production. Researchers, corporations, and governments around the world are investing heavily in supporting its development. Abu Dhabi, the largest and wealthiest emirate in the UAE, has been among these supporters, recently announcing a massive scheme to support AgTech companies. Given the extreme temperatures and aridity of the Arabian Peninsula, several new start-ups have focused on 'controlled environment' facilities-hydroponics and aeroponics in various kinds of greenhouses. Despite the narrative of novelty touted by these companies, this is not the UAE's first foray with bringing ultra-modern or 'scientific' greenhouses to the Arabian Peninsula--a large University of Arizona project did so in Abu Dhabi from 1969-1974. Yet that project is largely forgotten today, including among today's new AgTech entrepreneurs. This article investigates why this is the case and, more generally, why the systematic failures of high-modernist, spectacular projects like those to green the desert are so routinely forgotten. In analyzing the story linking AgTech in Arabia 50 years ago and today, I show how 'spectacular forgetting' is related to the technopolitics of spectacle, but also rooted in geopolitical discourses and spatial imaginaries particular to each historical moment.
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American university globalization has increasingly targeted and been courted by authoritarian states. While the reasons for these partnerships are manifold—including the ease of top-down large-scale monetary investment, “knowledge... more
American university globalization has increasingly targeted and been courted by authoritarian states. While the reasons for these partnerships are manifold—including the ease of top-down large-scale monetary investment, “knowledge economy” development strategies, social engineering programs, and other corporate and imperial entanglements—an overwhelming discourse has emerged around higher education initiatives in places like the Arabian Peninsula, China, Singapore, and Central Asia that juxtaposes liberalism (in the form of higher education) with the illiberal, authoritarian contexts it is supposedly encountering within the framework of neoliberal globalization. Through a discussion of American branch campuses in Qatar and the UAE, this article traces a more complex web of actors whose interests may include neoliberal and imperial inclinations but are not reducible to them. By focusing on the discursive framings of these branch campus initiatives, we show how the notion of “liberal education” operates as a global discourse of power through American branch campuses in the Arabian Peninsula and, by extension, other nondemocratic states around the world. Specifically, we argue that the very concept of “authoritarianism” is discursively produced in and through these university projects, and simultaneously builds (upon) an idealized narrative about the national self in the United States that erases existing and emerging inequalities—indeed, authoritarianisms—within the home spaces of American academia.
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This article examines a dominant vision in contemporary geopolitics, in which the world is imagined as divided between liberal and illiberal political systems, clustering around the two conceptual nodes of "democracy" and... more
This article examines a dominant vision in contemporary geopolitics, in which the world is imagined as divided between liberal and illiberal political systems, clustering around the two conceptual nodes of "democracy" and "authoritarianism". It considers how these conceptual nodes are imagined, mapped, and brought to life through writing, policies, and institutions related to democracy promotion. Instead of focusing on the definition of these concepts, this essay scrutinizes the ideological underpinnings of efforts to define "authoritarianism" and "democracy", and shows how these definitional debates themselves produce geopolitical imaginaries that facilitate certain kinds of intervention in an era of "post-triumphalist geopolitics".
Research Interests: Human Geography, Political Geography and Geopolitics, International Relations, International Relations Theory, Critical Geopolitics, and 10 moreDemocratic Theory, Geopolitics, Liberalism, Democratization, Totalitarianism, Media and Democracy, State Theory, Democracy, Ideology and Discourse Analysis, and Authoritarianism
State leaders in the Arabian Peninsula have increasingly sought to host globalized sporting events to broadcast a cosmopolitan and modern image of the region. These efforts are typically interpreted as examples of states exercising 'soft... more
State leaders in the Arabian Peninsula have increasingly sought to host globalized sporting events to broadcast a cosmopolitan and modern image of the region. These efforts are typically interpreted as examples of states exercising 'soft power'. This article challenges the state-centric assumptions built into the soft power approach by employing an event ethnography of the 2016 UCI Road Cycling World Championships in Doha. Advancing a more grounded geopolitics of elite sport in the Gulf, I examine how geopolitical identity narratives about Qatar, and the Gulf region more broadly, circulate at various scales and through countless contingent encounters at the event. I ask specifically how these identity narratives are constructed and challenged, both materially and discursively by athletes, spectators and urban residents. Sporting events, I argue, are key sites of geopolitical encounter: where subjects and spaces are not predetermined, but actively constituted through people's interactions in the host cities and countries.
Research Interests: Sociology of Sport, Geography, Human Geography, Political Geography and Geopolitics, Urban Geography, and 13 moreCritical Geopolitics, Geopolitics, Mega Events As Catalysts For Regeneration, Sociology of Cycling, Mega Events, Soft Power, Qatar, Sport, Sports, Soft Power and International Relations, Cycling, Soft Power and Public Diplomacy, and Sports Mega Events
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Although 'resources' and 'nationalism' are core analytical categories in geography, the concept of 'resource nationalism' has received little attention in the discipline. We address this lacuna by reviewing relevant literature across the... more
Although 'resources' and 'nationalism' are core analytical categories in geography, the concept of 'resource nationalism' has received little attention in the discipline. We address this lacuna by reviewing relevant literature across the social sciences, and tracing key concepts and scalar frames to advance a critical approach to resource nationalism. In contrast to realist approaches, we understand it as a political discourse mobilized by a wide range of actors. Highlighting its multiple, co-existing, and often contradictory narratives about places, subjects, identities, and materialities, we illustrate the relevance of this critical framework with brief examples from Kazakhstan, Bolivia, and the USA.
Research Interests: Human Geography, Political Geography and Geopolitics, International Relations, Critical Geopolitics, Natural Resources, and 13 moreGeopolitics, Political Ecology, Bolivian studies, Nationalism, Nationalism And State Building, Bolivia, Oil and gas, Political Geography, Political Ecology (Anthropology), Geopolitcs and Geostrategy, Oil Natural Gas Energy Geopolitics, Kazakhstan, and Eurasian Geopolitics
This article reviews how sport has been engaged in urban geography and related fields. Across the social sciences, there has been an explosion of research on " sporting mega‐events, " such as the Olympics and FIFA World Cup. While much of... more
This article reviews how sport has been engaged in urban geography and related fields. Across the social sciences, there has been an explosion of research on " sporting mega‐events, " such as the Olympics and FIFA World Cup. While much of this scholarship has examined the effects of these events for cities and city residents , I emphasize a longer and deeper history of research on sports and the city. I trace three lines of inquiry to illuminate the broader state of the field: (1) sport, (post)colonialism, and modernity; (2) sports, identity, and belonging in the city; and (3) sport, neoliberalism, and urban transformation. Not limited to the work of geographers, this review considers important overlaps between sports geography, urban geography, and a number of other disciplines. I suggest that sports studies has just as much to offer urban geography as the other way around, and in closing, I point to some key directions that might deepen urban geographers' contribution to the interdisciplinary research on sport, as well as critical approaches to urbanism.
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Like many universities in the West, universities across the Arabian Peninsula are increasingly home to various conspicuous sustainability initiatives. This article examines this trend at three of the region's most prominent projects:... more
Like many universities in the West, universities across the Arabian Peninsula are increasingly home to various conspicuous sustainability initiatives. This article examines this trend at three of the region's most prominent projects: NYU-Abu Dhabi in the Emirates, Qatar Founda-tion's Education City, and Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. Based on the textual analysis and informed by fieldwork in these countries since 2012, this article joins interdisciplinary research in political geography, sustainability experimentation , and laboratory studies to understand their iconic campuses not as enclaves, but as " exemplars " of sustainability and renewable energy futures in the region. Tracing their effects beyond their walls, I argue that they have mostly been limited to symbolically injecting sustainability into public discourse. While more substantial shifts toward sustainable development in the region are underway, these have largely stemmed from market forces rather than a new environmental consciousness promoted by these three iconic universities.
Research Interests: Human Geography, Political Geography and Geopolitics, Higher Education, Gulf Studies, Environmental Studies, and 15 moreSustainable Urban Environments, Saudi Arabia, STS (Anthropology), Energy and Environment, Arabian Gulf, Environmental Sustainability, Political Geography, Sustainable Architecture, Alternative Energy, Authoritarianism, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Arabian/Persian Gulf Studies, Iconicity, and Science and Technology Studies
Across Eurasia, authoritarian leaders have sought to justify their 'strong-hand' approach to government by framing instability as a security threat and the strong state as a guarantor of political stability. Such 'regimes of certainty'... more
Across Eurasia, authoritarian leaders have sought to justify their 'strong-hand' approach to government by framing instability as a security threat and the strong state as a guarantor of political stability. Such 'regimes of certainty' promote a modernist valorization of order, the flip side of which is a demonization of political disorder instability, or mere uncertainty. Examining the spatial and temporal imaginaries underpinning such narratives about in/stability in Central Asia, this paper compares official discourse in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, where state-controlled media and official publications have stigmatized political instability in Kyrgyzstan as indicative of the dangers of political liberalization and a weak state. Ostensibly about the 'other', these narratives are also about scripting the 'self'. I argue that official interpretations of 'disorder over the border' in Kyrgyzstan are underpinned by a set of spatial and temporal imaginaries that do not merely reflect regional moral geographies, but actively construct them.
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This article examines monumental mosques and particularly those that are built to be and function more as monuments than as places for worship. We consider the role of monumentality in religious landscapes by way of six exemplary mosques... more
This article examines monumental mosques and particularly those that are built to be and function more as monuments than as places for worship. We consider the role of monumentality in religious landscapes by way of six exemplary mosques in three different world regions – Central Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, and Southeast Asia. Tracing their unique histories and the identity narratives inscribed in their built form, we stress three broader commonalities among these mosques-as-monuments: (1) each is the result of top-down, state-funded planning infused with strong nationalist or ideological symbolism, (2) each was designed to be an iconic architectural showpiece in the country's capital city, and (3) each represents a stark contrast to other places of worship within that national or regional context. In this unique comparative study, we use an interpretive approach designed to push the research on monuments and monumentality into new directions and new empirical contexts, and specifically to ask why and with what effect some religious sites are primarily monuments and only secondarily places of worship.
Research Interests: Religion, Geography, Human Geography, Cultural Geography, Political Geography and Geopolitics, and 19 moreSocial Geography, Urban Geography, Area Studies, Southeast Asian Studies, Gulf Studies, Nationalism, Central Asian Studies, Southeast Asia, Caucasus, Nationalism And State Building, Islam in the Southeast Asia, Arabian Gulf, Islam, Political Geography, Central Asia, Nations and nationalism, Mosque Architecture, Arabian/Persian Gulf Studies, and Iconicity
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This chapter asks why certain autocrats are frequently portrayed as athletes. Focusing less on the personal affinities of the leader, it stresses the wider political and contextual factors to explain the phenomenon of “athletic... more
This chapter asks why certain autocrats are frequently portrayed as athletes. Focusing less on the personal affinities of the leader, it stresses the wider political and contextual factors to explain the phenomenon of “athletic autocrats.” Adopting a cross-regional approach, the chapter examines three cases of “athletic autocrats”: Russian President Vladimir Putin, Sheikh Zayed of the UAE, and Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong. These cases indicate how the depiction of autocrats as sportsmen both reflects and entrenches prevailing power structures of authoritarian regimes that stake governmental legitimacy in personalistic rule, nationalism, and paternalism.
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This article analyzes the role of mosques dedicated to the "father of the nation" under two personalistic authoritarian systems: Saparmurat Niyazov in Turkmenistan and Sheikh Zayed in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Critiquing "cult of... more
This article analyzes the role of mosques dedicated to the "father of the nation" under two personalistic authoritarian systems: Saparmurat Niyazov in Turkmenistan and Sheikh Zayed in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Critiquing "cult of personality" narratives as Orientalist and analytically weak, I emphasize the constructed nature of charisma, asking how such personalistic regimes produce the image of a coherent figurehead—and to what end. As a discursive device, the personalistic leader-as-icon appears in a range of authoritarian regimes, and it is materially inscribed in the symbolic landscapes to create the impression of unity among elites and the masses. To illustrate how this works, I draw on research in Turkmenistan and the UAE from 2012 through 2014, including landscape analysis of two mosques memorializing the countries' founding fathers: the Turkmenbashi Ruhy Mosque in the outskirts of Ashgabat, and the Sheikh Zayed Mosque, in the outskirts of Abu Dhabi.
Research Interests: Human Geography, Cultural Geography, Political Geography and Geopolitics, Urban Geography, Gulf Studies, and 12 moreCentral Asian Studies, Memory Studies, Comparative Politics (Research Methodology), Arabian Gulf, Political Geography, Central Asia, Authoritarianism, Mosque Architecture, United Arab Emirates, Turkmenistan, Arabian/Persian Gulf Studies, and Architecture and Public Spaces
The global landscape of higher education has been in rapid flux, especially apparent in the recent proliferation of new universities, international partnerships, and foreign branch campuses being established in various nondemocratic... more
The global landscape of higher education has been in rapid flux, especially apparent in the recent proliferation of new universities, international partnerships, and foreign branch campuses being established in various nondemocratic states across Asia. This trend is exemplified in the Gulf Arab monarchies of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, which have successfully managed to recruit Western-educated scholars to administer and staff these various higher education projects. In this article, I ask how Western-educated scholars narrate their motives for working in higher education in the Gulf, and what this can tell us about shifting modes of governance of globalized higher education today. Based on interviews conducted in Fall 2014, I illustrate how these diasporic academics are 'normal' entrepreneurial subjects acting on a wide range of opportunities and constraints, desires, and aspirations. I also show how their decisions to work in illiberal states are deeply stigmatized 'at home', and argue that these interpretations are based on geopolitical imaginaries that counterpose liberal and illiberal states through territorially based, normative mappings of space.
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Review of Thomas Fleischman's "Communist Pigs: An Animal History of East Germany's Rise and Fall"
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Research Interests: Human Geography, Political Geography and Geopolitics, Urban Geography, Critical Geopolitics, Geopolitics, and 9 moreCentral Asian Studies, Urban Studies, Political Geography, Central Asia, Authoritarianism, Comparative Politics, Democratization, Authoritarian Regimes, Regime Change, Concept Analysis, Measurement, Urban Design, Arabian/Persian Gulf Studies, and Kazakhstan
Book Discussion for "The Geopolitics of Spectacle: Space, Synecdoche,
and the New Capitals of Asia"
and the New Capitals of Asia"
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Review of "Urban geopolitics: Rethinking planning in contested cities" (eds. Rokem & Boano, Routledge 2018)
Download here: https://eiscas.eu/handbook/download/ This handbook is the first comprehensive teaching material for teachers and students of Central Asian Studies with an actual strong pedagogic dimension. It presents 22 chapters,... more
Download here: https://eiscas.eu/handbook/download/
This handbook is the first comprehensive teaching material for teachers and students of Central Asian Studies with an actual strong pedagogic dimension. It presents 22 chapters, clustered around five themes, with contributions from more than twenty scholars, all leading experts in the field of Central Eurasian Studies. The book doubles as a reference work for scholars.
The book is framed to address post-colonial frameworks and, where possible, untangle topics from their ‘Soviet’ reference frame and point out pitfalls, myths, and new insights. Chapters aim to de-exoticize the region, drawing parallels to European or to historical European-occupied territories.
The goal is to provide solid background knowledge about Central Asia to readers, and intertwine this with an advanced level of insight to leave readers equipped with a strong foundation to approach more specialized sources either in classroom settings or through self-study. Authors (together with didactic experts and editors) took great care to explain concepts and provide (working) definitions.
In addition, the handbook offers a comprehensive glossary, concise atlas, didactic sections, info boxes, overviews of intended learning outcomes, and a smart index (distinguishing between: names, concepts, events and places).
Online lectures (YouTube), recorded by the authors themselves, accompany the handbook either as instruction materials for teachers or as visual aids for students.
ISBN-13: 978-3-8382-7518-5
This handbook is the first comprehensive teaching material for teachers and students of Central Asian Studies with an actual strong pedagogic dimension. It presents 22 chapters, clustered around five themes, with contributions from more than twenty scholars, all leading experts in the field of Central Eurasian Studies. The book doubles as a reference work for scholars.
The book is framed to address post-colonial frameworks and, where possible, untangle topics from their ‘Soviet’ reference frame and point out pitfalls, myths, and new insights. Chapters aim to de-exoticize the region, drawing parallels to European or to historical European-occupied territories.
The goal is to provide solid background knowledge about Central Asia to readers, and intertwine this with an advanced level of insight to leave readers equipped with a strong foundation to approach more specialized sources either in classroom settings or through self-study. Authors (together with didactic experts and editors) took great care to explain concepts and provide (working) definitions.
In addition, the handbook offers a comprehensive glossary, concise atlas, didactic sections, info boxes, overviews of intended learning outcomes, and a smart index (distinguishing between: names, concepts, events and places).
Online lectures (YouTube), recorded by the authors themselves, accompany the handbook either as instruction materials for teachers or as visual aids for students.
ISBN-13: 978-3-8382-7518-5