Symposium Global Studies Graduate Education

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The Spatial Turn in Global Studies

• Symposium Global Studies Graduate Education
• Sophia University, May 2008

Matthias Middell Global and European Studies
Institute (University of Leipzig) MA-Consortium
Global Studies A European Perspective
(Leipzig, London, Vienna, Wroclaw)
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Global Studies as an emerging postdisciplinary
field
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Global Studies and the study of globalization(s)

• long established phenomena (? historicity)
• dialectic processes of deterritorialization and
  reterritorialization (? new spatial orders)
• in all geographic arenas (? regional
  perspectives importance of Areas Studies)
• including social and cultural dimensions (?
  trans-meta- or post-disciplinary perspective)

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Leipzig focus of Global Studies

• Dialectic of
• flows (e.g. migration, capital, goods, ideas )
• and attempts to control these flows by various
  forms of territorialization (state, regions,
  cities as portals of globalizations,
  supra-national structures, identity politics,
  transnational networks )

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Methodological tool-kit

• Process analysis (historical approach
  globalization)
• Study of entanglements (criticism towards a naïve
  reproduction of (national) containers by
  comparative analysis
• Privileging an actor perspective (interactions,
  agency to manage different spatial framings)
• Confrontation of different perspectives on
  globalization (globalization not as a given but
  as a project depending upon situations in a world
  undergoing globalizing processes)

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Disciplinary origins of Global Studies

• History ? Global History
• Geography ? New political geography
• Sociology ? Urban Studies, new migration studies
• Cultural Studies ? Jeux déchelles
• Area Studies ? beyond the understanding of world
  regions as containers
• part of the spatial turn in the humanities and
  social sciences that leads to a postdisciplinary
  situation

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Spatial turn in the humanities
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Key tenets of the spatial turn

• space is not a given category (ditto. time)
• but the result of social practice and
  conventions (which, in turn, are constructed
  through symbolic and discursive acts)
• while space is structured through social
  practice, representations of space also structure
  human action
• Cf. Henri Lefebvre 1991 1974. The Production
  of Space. London Blackwell Publishers.

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Rethinking space

• The recognition that social relations are
  becoming increasingly interconnected on a global
  scale necessarily problematizes the spatial
  parameters of those relations, and therefore, the
  geographical context in which they occur. Under
  these circumstances, space no longer appears as a
  static platform of social relations, but rather
  as one of their constitutive dimensions, itself
  historically produced, reconfigured, and
  transformed.
• Neil Brenner 1999. Beyond state-centrism? Space,
  territoriality, and geographical scale in
  globalization studies, Theory and Society 28,
  39-78.

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Social space

• Territories are not frozen frameworks where
  social life occurs. Rather, they are made, given
  meanings, and destroyed in social and individual
  action. Hence, they are typically contested and
  actively negotiated. .. Spatial organizations,
  meanings of space, and the territorial use of
  space are historically contingent and their
  histories are closely interrelated.
• Anssi Paasi 2003. Territory. In J. Agnew et al.
  (eds.) A Companion to Political Geography. Malden
  MA etc. Blackwell Publishing, 109-122 (110).

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Representations of space

• Social space, symbolic space, imagined space
• Common denominator regulatory power

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Critical junctures of globalization

• Critical junctures of globalization are
  historical spaces, moments and arenas of
  globalization in which spatial orders are
  contested and reshaped. The critical junctures of
  globalization are characterised by distinctive
  new segmentations of the world, by fragmentations
  and reconfigurations, i.e. the destabilisation of
  old and the development of new spatial order. The
  critical junctures of globalization produce
  specific resources for social and cultural
  action.
• Ulf Engel Matthias Middell 2005. Bruchzonen der
  Globalisierung, globale Krisen und
  Territorialitätsregimes Kategorien einer
  Globalgeschichtsschreibung, Comparativ 15 (2)
  5-38.

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Some examples of current research
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The historicity of critical junctures

• From Empire to Nation? A global history of the
  18th century
• The French Revolution and the Haitian Revolution
• Lisbon 1808 The Portuguese capital between
  Atlantization and Europeanization
• Colonialism and spatial order in Togo 1884-1960
• Colonial capitals as contested spaces Hanoi and
  Dakar 1880-1970

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Research on current processes of globalization

• Cultural identities and theatre in Tbilisi
  situating Georgia between East and West, between
  Asia and Europe
• Santería as a transnational religion between
  Africa and Cuba
• Offshore camps for migrants Australian and EU
  migration regimes
• Transnational political activism of African
  diaspora DK UK
• Conflict prevention in Africa the new formation
  of a Pan-African approach by the African Union
• The transformation from coerced to free labour
  is there a strong connection between territorial
  regimes and the forms of labour they privilege?
• Competition between North African and East
  European farm workers in Spain global value
  chains

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Institutionalization and challenges of
multidisciplinarity
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Transnational teaching programmes at the
University of Leipzig
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Modularization in the Global Studies program

• EU (Bologna process) homogenize European higher
  education by standards of 120 ECTS (credit
  points) for a two years MA 60 ECTS per year
• Three modules per term à 10 ECTS
• First term - introduction to Global History,
  Theories of globalization in the Social Sciences,
  Methods in globalization research
• Second and third term research seminars with
  regional focus
• Fourth term seminars on economic and cultural
  dimensions of globalization plus Master thesis
  and colloquium
• Summer school with all students from 4 places of
  study and with international guest scholars

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Challenges of multidisciplinarity

• Integration of faculty from 12 disciplines
• Organizational patterns From voluntary
  cooperation in a center to more coordinated
  research in a Global and European Studies
  Institute
• Transnational integration of complementary
  approaches and academic cultures
• Evaluation against the standards of traditional
  disciplines often misleading if not confronted to
  open competition
• High emphasis as store-sign for universities
  focusing on problems of globalization against
  non-consideration for rankings based on classical
  disciplines

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Conclusions

• Seeing globalization through the lenses of the
  spatial turn is one approach among others, but it
  has a high potential to solve the problem of
  theoretical and methodological integration
• A global consortium representing approaches with
  the ambition to integrate global studies from a
  post-disciplinary perspective can help to
  overcome the challenges raised by the necessary
  multi-disciplinarity of the field