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Politics and Philosophy in European Global Knowledge Production

Projects & Collaborations

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Dissertation Morell: Security abroad: How the People's Republic of China defends its interests in the Horn of Africa

Research Project  | 2 Project Members

This dissertation interrogates the apparent irreconcilability between the People's Republic of China's (PRC) long standing non-interference policy and the ongoing expansion of its economic, political, and military presence abroad. Specifically, it aims to understand how the PRC mediates the tensions arising from this irreconcilability, and those that may emerge between the different aspects of its overseas presence. To explore how these tensions manifest on the ground, the dissertation focuses on the Horn of Africa (HoA) region1, particularly the Republic of Djibouti. The research question is as follows: Does the PRC's intensified economic, political and military presence in the HoA region challenge the credibility of existing foreign policy practices and conceptualizations related to the PRC's broader non-interference doctrine? Djibouti represents a unique case study to address this question, as it is the locus of the PRC's very first overseas military base while also hosting multiple projects within the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) framework. Furthermore, the PRC has also increasingly made use of 'non-traditional' means of securitization beyond military actors and infrastructures in Djibouti to stave off threats against its overseas nationals. Building on recent advances in Critical Security Studies and writings on the CCP/PRC's global influence networks, this dissertation takes the securitization of the PRC's overseas nationals and their economic and political embedment in Djibouti as a point of departure to study potential rifts in the PRC's non-interference policy. Unlike other diaspora groups, the PRC's overseas nationals are closely managed by the PRC and the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Methodologically, two approaches are pursued: On the one hand, the dissertation reconstructs the institutional links between the Chinese presence in Djibouti and the party-state through Chinese language open source research. On the other hand, it employs a field-based Qualitative Network Analysis (QNA) to examine the co-presence of PRC-associated people, companies, security details, and the military base in their local contexts. This research makes a key contribution to scholarly debates concerning an increasingly powerful and globally present PRC. Crucially, it also provides valuable insights for the formulation of government policy that addresses the political frictions that emerge between the PRC's non-interference doctrine and its expansive economic and political-military strategies overseas.

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Dissertation Schlauri: Actors and networks shaping Xi Jinping's New Era's messages dissemination in European media

Research Project  | 2 Project Members

The project will research the CCP's and the PRC's relations with foreign traditional and new media in the German speaking European region in order to disseminate CCP/PRC positions and favorable messages. The project also analyzes the current structure, with a focus on the (external) propaganda (publicity) system and its recent restructuring. Ultimately, this subproject aims to disentangle the channels of information going from China to Europe. To take the recent shifts of the propaganda system into account, the time period analyzed will range from the 19th Party Congress in October 2017 (including a five-year program on the revision of central party regulation released in 2018, which prioritizes the promulgation of Rules on Propaganda Work (宣传工作条例)) to the 20th Party Congress in October-November 2022. To understand how the PRC's communication apparatus engages European media, the subproject's research questions are: How does the CCP's external propaganda system and other relevant actors disseminate their messages to European media entities? What are strategies and actors involved in this dissemination processes? To find answers to these questions, the project combines institutional analysis of the relevant (political) party structures in Beijing with media analysis of European media of the German region and thus attempts to find relevant intermediaries which contribute to message dissemination.

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Reversing the Gaze: Towards Post-Comparative Area Studies

Research Project  | 8 Project Members

This project proposes the approach of a "conceptual laboratory" to test the analytic purchase of mid-level concepts that seek to explain the crises of political identity and liberal democracy, through practices of reciprocal comparison. The overarching research question for the conceptual laboratory is the following: how can mid-level concepts developed in the Global South be made useful for knowledge production in general? The key critical theoretical assumption underlying the methodological level is the idea that we need to reverse the gaze, i.e. deploy conceptualisations developed in the South in the North. On a substantive level, we ask how useful the mid-level concepts "re-tribalisation", "political society" and "the cunning state" are in describing, analysing and interpreting these crisis phenomena in liberal democracies of Europe (in comparison to already existing conceptual vocabularies developed in a European context), more specifically in the Alpine region (Switzerland, Austria and Italy)? On a theoretical level, we ask how freeing such concepts from the constraints of context can contribute to particular relational approaches to area studies (and disciplinary comparison). Finally, on a methodological level, we seek to draw lessons from the conceptual laboratory in operationalizing an epistemological practice of reciprocal comparison. We propose three empirical case studies which meet two main goals. On the one hand, they seek to offer innovative and conceptually out-of-the-box perspectives on and across the cases themselves, differing from those derived and developed exclusively within and against a European background. Moreover, they draw respectively from an old concept ("retribalisation", Africa), a fashionable but contested concept ("political society", Asia) and an emerging concept that still needs to establish itself in the area studies domain ("the cunning state", Asia). Second, we approach the concepts as descriptions of the set of particulars making up crisis phenomena in specific settings. The question we ask is whether the particulars brought into view can help us shed more light on similar phenomena in Europe, thereby shifting the case for conceptual regionalism in favour of greater attention to the possibilities of comparison. These different histories of the concepts provide us with a diversity of mid-range concepts whose application in other empirical contexts beyond their area studies domain can be tested. Crucial to the research approach is the distinction between the object of research and the scope of inquiry. The former refers to the "Southern" background of the deployed concepts and the three case studies in the Alpine region within which empirical research takes place. The latter refers to the concrete phenomenon we describe, analyse and interpret in a given setting. Our project proposal is thus a response to recent critical reflections on Area Studies, comparative disciplinary work, as well as critiques from the South. In building on these literatures while attending to knowledge production in practice, its scholarly outcomes include potentially new perspectives on comparison; a critical engagement with "universal" concepts and the politics of conceptual travel; and practical visions on how to imbue the pursuit of knowledge with a concern for ethical and political issues raised by these critiques.

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Dissertation Soualhi: Breaking the Silence on Arab Maghreb Union: A Mapping and Analysis of European Studies in North African Countries

Research Project  | 2 Project Members

The primary goal of the study is to map and analyze the development of European Studies in Arab Maghreb Union universities. European Studies have been of interest to academia for the past three decades due to myriad of factors: be it the colonial heritage or cultural influence and entangled political, economic and security interests, in addition to the large quantity of research this field has generated in the Maghreb region since the beginning of the last decade. Moreover, it traces the origins and institutionalization of European Studies in Maghreb universities by highlighting the links that the main actors have forged in Europe with the academic world and the European institutions. It will attempt to highlight the internal factors specific to each university and North African societies, as well as external factors, such as the Commission's initiatives and the tensions of European politics, which have influenced their development. At the crossroads of these factors, the challenge of establishing a critical and independent research program within an institutional framework that is primarily aimed at promoting the European Studies will be discussed. It will also highlight the partial weakness of teaching Europe in law and economics and other disciplines, mainly in comparison to its place in Political Science and International Affairs. Beyond this quantitative observation for which various explanations can be put forward, the teaching of "Europe" offers a fairly complete inventory of the debates that traverse the discipline around this theme, and proposes keys of reading relating to the circulation pattern of the modes of "thinking Europe" from one country to another.

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Dissertation Wenger: The Study of Europe in the Arab World: The case of Postmodernism

Research Project  | 2 Project Members

This dissertation project deals with the diverse images and perceptions of "Europe" articulated in academic and intellectual discourse in the Arab world of the past and the present day. In addressing such a broad and expansive subject, focus will be placed on a specific case, namely the case of "Postmodernism" in the Arab world. A closer examination is to be conducted of the scholarly engagement and the different stances adopted by Arab intellectuals towards the influence of European "postmodern" thought since the 1970s. Although the dissertation builds on the disciplinary foundations of "intellectual history", at the same time it seeks to enhance the scope of discussion, incorporating the analytical sensibilities that have been brought to the fore by more recent research within the domain of "Global Knowledge Production". In doing so, particular attention will be paid to the following two analytical premises: First, in order to avoid one-dimensional and culturally biased patterns of interpretation, this thesis will put an emphasis on tracing what may be considered the multilayered, multidimensional and multilateral nature of entanglements between Europe and the Arab world. Second, to avoid analytical parochialism and regionalism, an attempt will also be made to adopt a global frame of reference that goes beyond the geographical boundaries of "Europe" and the "Arab region". In adopting such an analytical approach, this project will consider both the more conceptual and epistemological aspects of global knowledge production as well as the more practical and material ones