Catherine Owens
Biographic Data
| ID | 3684271 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Catherine Owens |
| GIVEN NAMES | Catherine |
| FAMILY NAME | Owens |
| SIGNATURE | OWENS C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Exeter |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4520-777X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 144 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
After Covid
This article traces the lasting transformations in China’s urban grassroots governance system wrought by three years of zero-COVID policy: increased information gathering and surveillance activities conducted by Residents’ Committees (RCs), as well as their integration into the hierarchical bureaucratic system. To demonstrate these transformations, we employ a Foucauldian lens to distinguish between emergency policies introduced during the pandem…
What is a “regime”? Three definitions and their implications for the future of regime studies
This is the final version. Available on open access from Routledge via the DOI in this record
A contextual approach to decolonising IR
Although calls to decolonise International Relations (IR) have become more prominent, the endeavour becomes infinitely more complex when searching for concrete approaches to decolonise IR knowledge production. We posit that decolonising IR, a global counter-hegemonic political project to dismantle and transform dominant knowledge production practices, must be enacted according to context-specific particularities. Contexts shape practices of epist…
The CCP, Campaign Governance and Covid-19
Participatory budgeting and the party
This is the final version. Available on open access from Taylor & Francis via the DOI in this record
Mapping practices and spatiality in IR knowledge production
This article conceptualises the variety of approaches taken by International Relations (IR) scholars around the world to dominant forms of knowledge production in IR. In doing so, it advances Global IR debates along two axes: on practices and on spatiality. We argue that binary conceptions are unhelpful and that engagement with knowledge production practices is best captured by a landscape of complexity, requiring a deeper interrogation of positi…
Active Citizens in a Weak State
This article explores the new political subjectivities that are emerging in disadvantaged communities in Kyrgyzstan following post-Soviet state transformation and retreat. It explores the ways in which the collapse of the Soviet-era bureaucracy and emergence of a marketising yet rent-seeking state bureaucracy has facilitated the emergence of ‘active citizens’ in self-built shanty towns in two locations in Kyrgyzstan – the capital, Bishkek, and th…
The Belt and Road Initiative’s Central Asian Contradictions
This essay considers the nature of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Central Asia. Rather than a “grand strategy” coordinated by Beijing, it is better seen as a decentered, contradictory network of transnational clientelist relationships and semiautonomous profit-seeking institutions. While building much-needed infrastructure, these projects serve to enrich local political elites while fueling resentment and suspicion among their populati…
The ‘internationalisation agenda’ and the rise of the Chinese university
This essay is a critical reflection on the challenge to academic freedom presented by the globalisation of practices of knowledge production. It explores a tension within the logic of the internationalisation agenda: UK universities are premised upon forms of knowledge production whose roots lie in European Enlightenment values of rationalism, empiricism and universalism, yet partnerships are growing with universities premised on rather different…
Governance and order-making in Central Asia
This forum brings together five different angles on the question as to whether and how political regimes and forms of order-making can and should be researched through the concept of ‘illiberalism’. The discussion engages critically with this and associated concepts, such as ‘illiberal peace’ and ‘authoritarian conflict management’, which have been developed out of the Central Asian / Eurasian context and discussed in their wider global ramificat…
Participatory authoritarianism
This article explores the way in which Russian and Chinese governments have rearticulated global trends towards active citizenship and participatory governance, and integrated them into pre-existing illiberal political traditions. The concept of ‘participatory authoritarianism’ is proposed in order to capture the resulting practices of local governance that, on the one hand enable citizens to engage directly with local officials in the policy pro…
Centred discourse, decentred practice
This paper challenges dominant understandings of ‘rising powers’ by developing a decentred, relational account of Russia and China in Central Asia. We ask whether Moscow and Beijing’s regional integrative strategies do not guide, but rather are led by, everyday interactions among Russian and Chinese actors, and local actors in Central Asia. Rising powers, as a derivative of ‘Great Powers’, are frequently portrayed as structurally comparable units…
Authoritarian conflict management in post-colonial Eurasia
This contribution considers ‘illiberal peace’ in post-colonial Eurasia in the aftermath of the Soviet Union and in the shadow of Russia and China as ‘emerging powers’. Authoritarian modes of conflict management – which have economic, spatial and discursive aspects – are oriented towards regime consolidation and the creation of a particular type of political economy. We should understand these as a form of authoritarian interventionism which had t…
Civic Participation in a Hybrid Regime
This article asks why the Russian government has developed new avenues for public participation in policymaking and delivery and assesses the extent to which these avenues introduce pluralism into these processes. Drawing on 50 interviews with individuals and citizens’ groups involved in either public consultative bodies or socially oriented NGOs, the article demonstrates the government’s desire to harness the knowledge and abilities of citizens …
Making Friends with Neighbors
Many studies have compared the Russian and Chinese projects currently underway in the Central Asian region, namely the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and the Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB), both of which seek to increase integration with Central Asian states. Yet little attention has been paid to how these endeavors are perceived locally by Central Asians themselves. This article aims to fill this gap by presenting the findings of a comparative d…
Populist Authoritarianism. Chinese Political Culture and Regime Sustainability
This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Taylor & Francis via the DOI in this record
How postcolonial is post-Western IR? Mimicry and mētis in the international politics of Russia and Central Asia
Scholars of International Relations have called for the creation of a post-Western IR that reflects the global and local contexts of the declining power and legitimacy of the West. Recognising this discourse as indicative of the postcolonial condition, we deploy Homi Bhabha’s concept of mimicry and James C. Scott’s notion of mētis to assess whether international political dynamics of a hybrid kind are emerging. Based on interviews with Central As…
The Struggle for Meaning of Obshchestvennyi Kontrol’ in Contemporary Russia
This article explores contrasting conceptions of the essentially contested concept obshchestvennyi kontrol’, as understood by the anti-systemic opposition and the Kremlin. It shows that the period of contention accompanying the 2011–2012 elections allowed competing narratives of this concept to emerge. First, the opposition presented it as a means for citizens to hold corrupt authorities accountable to the law; second, the Kremlin promoted it as …
The Sleeping Dragon Is Gathering Strength
In order to explore the roots of contemporary Sinophobia in Central Asia, this article combines historical analysis with ethnographically informed interviews. It shows that Sinophobia is widely spread through conspiracy theories especially in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Based on the territorial acquisitions made by China in the immediate post-Soviet period, conspiracy theories suggest that China is planning to “take over” Central Asia. However, a …
Theorizing Chinese Citizenship
It would be easy for those not intimately acquainted with China to assume that the idea of citizenship is irrelevant in a country in which leaders are not elected, opposition parties are forbidden
Conflict and peace in Eurasia
Despite witnessing a surge in the number of conflicts in the last 25 years, largely enabled by the collapse of the Soviet Union, Eurasia is often neglected by Peace and Conflict Studies whose canon
A Genealogy of Kontrol' in Russia
This article examines the emergence of the concept obshchestvennyi kontrol' in Russian state discourse, the practices to which it has been attached and the legitimating narrative employed to justify them. It traces the concept of kontrol' from Leninist conceptions olrabochyi kontrol', through post-Stalinist discourses of narodnyi kontrol ', demonstrating that contemporary state-driven articulations of obshchestvennyi kontrol' exhibit a substantia…
Civil Society in Putin's Russia
After a peak in scholarly interest in Russian civil society in the early to mid-2000s, studies of this subject have dwindled in recent years as researchers switched their attention to the kind of p
Neoliberalism, Personhood, and Postsocialism. Enterprising Selves in Changing Economies
Neoliberalism, Personhood, and Postsocialism. Enterprising Selves in Changing Economies." Europe-Asia Studies, 67(10), pp. 1719–1720
Consentful contention” in a corporate state
This article explores contentious politics within institutions that are neither state bodies nor "civil society" organisations in contemporary Russia. It shows that human rights activists join Public Monitoring Commissions, created by the state to oversee conditions in prisons, to prevent these bodies from "white-washing" the Federal Penitentiary Service and in some cases have effected small but noteworthy improvements inside the prisons under th…
Civic Participation in a Hybrid Regime
This article asks why the Russian government has developed new avenues for public participation in policymaking and delivery and assesses the extent to which these avenues introduce pluralism into these processes. Drawing on 50 interviews with individuals and citizens’ groups involved in either public consultative bodies or socially oriented NGOs, the article demonstrates the government’s desire to harness the knowledge and abilities of citizens …
Consentful contention” in a corporate state
This article explores contentious politics within institutions that are neither state bodies nor "civil society" organisations in contemporary Russia. It shows that human rights activists join Public Monitoring Commissions, created by the state to oversee conditions in prisons, to prevent these bodies from "white-washing" the Federal Penitentiary Service and in some cases have effected small but noteworthy improvements inside the prisons under th…
Participatory authoritarianism
This article explores the way in which Russian and Chinese governments have rearticulated global trends towards active citizenship and participatory governance, and integrated them into pre-existing illiberal political traditions. The concept of ‘participatory authoritarianism’ is proposed in order to capture the resulting practices of local governance that, on the one hand enable citizens to engage directly with local officials in the policy pro…
Neoliberalism, Personhood, and Postsocialism. Enterprising Selves in Changing Economies
Neoliberalism, Personhood, and Postsocialism. Enterprising Selves in Changing Economies." Europe-Asia Studies, 67(10), pp. 1719–1720
The Sleeping Dragon Is Gathering Strength
In order to explore the roots of contemporary Sinophobia in Central Asia, this article combines historical analysis with ethnographically informed interviews. It shows that Sinophobia is widely spread through conspiracy theories especially in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Based on the territorial acquisitions made by China in the immediate post-Soviet period, conspiracy theories suggest that China is planning to “take over” Central Asia. However, a …
Participatory budgeting and the party
This is the final version. Available on open access from Taylor & Francis via the DOI in this record
Authoritarian conflict management in post-colonial Eurasia
This contribution considers ‘illiberal peace’ in post-colonial Eurasia in the aftermath of the Soviet Union and in the shadow of Russia and China as ‘emerging powers’. Authoritarian modes of conflict management – which have economic, spatial and discursive aspects – are oriented towards regime consolidation and the creation of a particular type of political economy. We should understand these as a form of authoritarian interventionism which had t…
A Genealogy of Kontrol' in Russia
This article examines the emergence of the concept obshchestvennyi kontrol' in Russian state discourse, the practices to which it has been attached and the legitimating narrative employed to justify them. It traces the concept of kontrol' from Leninist conceptions olrabochyi kontrol', through post-Stalinist discourses of narodnyi kontrol ', demonstrating that contemporary state-driven articulations of obshchestvennyi kontrol' exhibit a substantia…
The CCP, Campaign Governance and Covid-19
The Struggle for Meaning of Obshchestvennyi Kontrol’ in Contemporary Russia
This article explores contrasting conceptions of the essentially contested concept obshchestvennyi kontrol’, as understood by the anti-systemic opposition and the Kremlin. It shows that the period of contention accompanying the 2011–2012 elections allowed competing narratives of this concept to emerge. First, the opposition presented it as a means for citizens to hold corrupt authorities accountable to the law; second, the Kremlin promoted it as …
Theorizing Chinese Citizenship
It would be easy for those not intimately acquainted with China to assume that the idea of citizenship is irrelevant in a country in which leaders are not elected, opposition parties are forbidden
How postcolonial is post-Western IR? Mimicry and mētis in the international politics of Russia and Central Asia
Scholars of International Relations have called for the creation of a post-Western IR that reflects the global and local contexts of the declining power and legitimacy of the West. Recognising this discourse as indicative of the postcolonial condition, we deploy Homi Bhabha’s concept of mimicry and James C. Scott’s notion of mētis to assess whether international political dynamics of a hybrid kind are emerging. Based on interviews with Central As…
What is a “regime”? Three definitions and their implications for the future of regime studies
This is the final version. Available on open access from Routledge via the DOI in this record
The ‘internationalisation agenda’ and the rise of the Chinese university
This essay is a critical reflection on the challenge to academic freedom presented by the globalisation of practices of knowledge production. It explores a tension within the logic of the internationalisation agenda: UK universities are premised upon forms of knowledge production whose roots lie in European Enlightenment values of rationalism, empiricism and universalism, yet partnerships are growing with universities premised on rather different…
Centred discourse, decentred practice
This paper challenges dominant understandings of ‘rising powers’ by developing a decentred, relational account of Russia and China in Central Asia. We ask whether Moscow and Beijing’s regional integrative strategies do not guide, but rather are led by, everyday interactions among Russian and Chinese actors, and local actors in Central Asia. Rising powers, as a derivative of ‘Great Powers’, are frequently portrayed as structurally comparable units…
Mapping practices and spatiality in IR knowledge production
This article conceptualises the variety of approaches taken by International Relations (IR) scholars around the world to dominant forms of knowledge production in IR. In doing so, it advances Global IR debates along two axes: on practices and on spatiality. We argue that binary conceptions are unhelpful and that engagement with knowledge production practices is best captured by a landscape of complexity, requiring a deeper interrogation of positi…
A contextual approach to decolonising IR
Although calls to decolonise International Relations (IR) have become more prominent, the endeavour becomes infinitely more complex when searching for concrete approaches to decolonise IR knowledge production. We posit that decolonising IR, a global counter-hegemonic political project to dismantle and transform dominant knowledge production practices, must be enacted according to context-specific particularities. Contexts shape practices of epist…
Governance and order-making in Central Asia
This forum brings together five different angles on the question as to whether and how political regimes and forms of order-making can and should be researched through the concept of ‘illiberalism’. The discussion engages critically with this and associated concepts, such as ‘illiberal peace’ and ‘authoritarian conflict management’, which have been developed out of the Central Asian / Eurasian context and discussed in their wider global ramificat…
Making Friends with Neighbors
Many studies have compared the Russian and Chinese projects currently underway in the Central Asian region, namely the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and the Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB), both of which seek to increase integration with Central Asian states. Yet little attention has been paid to how these endeavors are perceived locally by Central Asians themselves. This article aims to fill this gap by presenting the findings of a comparative d…
Russia as a Network State
Vadim Kononenko & Arkady Moshes (eds), Russia as a Network State: What Works in Russia When State Institutions Do Not? Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, x + 190pp., £55 h/b. Twenty years after
Arrestin-2 and G Protein-coupled Receptor Kinase 5 Interact with NFκB1 p105 and Negatively Regulate Lipopolysaccharide-stimulated ERK1/2 Activation in Macrophages
Toll-like receptors (TLRs) are a recently described receptor class involved in the regulation of innate and adaptive immunity. Here, we demonstrate that arrestin-2 and GRK5 (G protein-coupled receptor kinase 5), proteins that regulate G protein-coupled receptor signaling, play a negative role in TLR4 signaling in Raw264.7 macrophages. We find that lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced ERK1/2 phosphorylation is significantly enhanced in arrestin-2 and …
Russia as a Network State
Vadim Kononenko & Arkady Moshes (eds), Russia as a Network State: What Works in Russia When State Institutions Do Not? Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, x + 190pp., £55 h/b. Twenty years after
Political Theory and Community Building in Post-Soviet Russia
Oleg Kharkhordin & Risto Alapuro (eds), Political Theory and Community Building in Post-Soviet Russia. BASEES/Routledge Series on Russian and East European Studies. Abingdon: Routledge, 2011, xiv
Russia's Encounter with Globalization
Liberals under Autocracy. Modernization and Civil Society in Russia, 1866–1904
In recent years a flurry of works analysing liberalism and civil society in pre-revolutionary Russia have been published in English. Perhaps this trend can be attributed to a search on the part of
The History of Liberalism in Russia
The English translation of this seminal work, originally published in German in 1957, has appeared at a timely moment: liberal and radical elements are currently battling for the upper hand in a fr
Civil Society in Putin's Russia
After a peak in scholarly interest in Russian civil society in the early to mid-2000s, studies of this subject have dwindled in recent years as researchers switched their attention to the kind of p
Neoliberalism, Personhood, and Postsocialism. Enterprising Selves in Changing Economies
Neoliberalism, Personhood, and Postsocialism. Enterprising Selves in Changing Economies." Europe-Asia Studies, 67(10), pp. 1719–1720
Consentful contention” in a corporate state
This article explores contentious politics within institutions that are neither state bodies nor "civil society" organisations in contemporary Russia. It shows that human rights activists join Public Monitoring Commissions, created by the state to oversee conditions in prisons, to prevent these bodies from "white-washing" the Federal Penitentiary Service and in some cases have effected small but noteworthy improvements inside the prisons under th…
Conflict and peace in Eurasia
Despite witnessing a surge in the number of conflicts in the last 25 years, largely enabled by the collapse of the Soviet Union, Eurasia is often neglected by Peace and Conflict Studies whose canon
A Genealogy of Kontrol' in Russia
This article examines the emergence of the concept obshchestvennyi kontrol' in Russian state discourse, the practices to which it has been attached and the legitimating narrative employed to justify them. It traces the concept of kontrol' from Leninist conceptions olrabochyi kontrol', through post-Stalinist discourses of narodnyi kontrol ', demonstrating that contemporary state-driven articulations of obshchestvennyi kontrol' exhibit a substantia…
The Struggle for Meaning of Obshchestvennyi Kontrol’ in Contemporary Russia
This article explores contrasting conceptions of the essentially contested concept obshchestvennyi kontrol’, as understood by the anti-systemic opposition and the Kremlin. It shows that the period of contention accompanying the 2011–2012 elections allowed competing narratives of this concept to emerge. First, the opposition presented it as a means for citizens to hold corrupt authorities accountable to the law; second, the Kremlin promoted it as …
The Sleeping Dragon Is Gathering Strength
In order to explore the roots of contemporary Sinophobia in Central Asia, this article combines historical analysis with ethnographically informed interviews. It shows that Sinophobia is widely spread through conspiracy theories especially in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Based on the territorial acquisitions made by China in the immediate post-Soviet period, conspiracy theories suggest that China is planning to “take over” Central Asia. However, a …
Theorizing Chinese Citizenship
It would be easy for those not intimately acquainted with China to assume that the idea of citizenship is irrelevant in a country in which leaders are not elected, opposition parties are forbidden
Making Friends with Neighbors
Many studies have compared the Russian and Chinese projects currently underway in the Central Asian region, namely the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and the Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB), both of which seek to increase integration with Central Asian states. Yet little attention has been paid to how these endeavors are perceived locally by Central Asians themselves. This article aims to fill this gap by presenting the findings of a comparative d…
Populist Authoritarianism. Chinese Political Culture and Regime Sustainability
This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Taylor & Francis via the DOI in this record
How postcolonial is post-Western IR? Mimicry and mētis in the international politics of Russia and Central Asia
Scholars of International Relations have called for the creation of a post-Western IR that reflects the global and local contexts of the declining power and legitimacy of the West. Recognising this discourse as indicative of the postcolonial condition, we deploy Homi Bhabha’s concept of mimicry and James C. Scott’s notion of mētis to assess whether international political dynamics of a hybrid kind are emerging. Based on interviews with Central As…
Centred discourse, decentred practice
This paper challenges dominant understandings of ‘rising powers’ by developing a decentred, relational account of Russia and China in Central Asia. We ask whether Moscow and Beijing’s regional integrative strategies do not guide, but rather are led by, everyday interactions among Russian and Chinese actors, and local actors in Central Asia. Rising powers, as a derivative of ‘Great Powers’, are frequently portrayed as structurally comparable units…
Authoritarian conflict management in post-colonial Eurasia
This contribution considers ‘illiberal peace’ in post-colonial Eurasia in the aftermath of the Soviet Union and in the shadow of Russia and China as ‘emerging powers’. Authoritarian modes of conflict management – which have economic, spatial and discursive aspects – are oriented towards regime consolidation and the creation of a particular type of political economy. We should understand these as a form of authoritarian interventionism which had t…
Civic Participation in a Hybrid Regime
This article asks why the Russian government has developed new avenues for public participation in policymaking and delivery and assesses the extent to which these avenues introduce pluralism into these processes. Drawing on 50 interviews with individuals and citizens’ groups involved in either public consultative bodies or socially oriented NGOs, the article demonstrates the government’s desire to harness the knowledge and abilities of citizens …
Active Citizens in a Weak State
This article explores the new political subjectivities that are emerging in disadvantaged communities in Kyrgyzstan following post-Soviet state transformation and retreat. It explores the ways in which the collapse of the Soviet-era bureaucracy and emergence of a marketising yet rent-seeking state bureaucracy has facilitated the emergence of ‘active citizens’ in self-built shanty towns in two locations in Kyrgyzstan – the capital, Bishkek, and th…
The Belt and Road Initiative’s Central Asian Contradictions
This essay considers the nature of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Central Asia. Rather than a “grand strategy” coordinated by Beijing, it is better seen as a decentered, contradictory network of transnational clientelist relationships and semiautonomous profit-seeking institutions. While building much-needed infrastructure, these projects serve to enrich local political elites while fueling resentment and suspicion among their populati…
The ‘internationalisation agenda’ and the rise of the Chinese university
This essay is a critical reflection on the challenge to academic freedom presented by the globalisation of practices of knowledge production. It explores a tension within the logic of the internationalisation agenda: UK universities are premised upon forms of knowledge production whose roots lie in European Enlightenment values of rationalism, empiricism and universalism, yet partnerships are growing with universities premised on rather different…
Governance and order-making in Central Asia
This forum brings together five different angles on the question as to whether and how political regimes and forms of order-making can and should be researched through the concept of ‘illiberalism’. The discussion engages critically with this and associated concepts, such as ‘illiberal peace’ and ‘authoritarian conflict management’, which have been developed out of the Central Asian / Eurasian context and discussed in their wider global ramificat…
Participatory authoritarianism
This article explores the way in which Russian and Chinese governments have rearticulated global trends towards active citizenship and participatory governance, and integrated them into pre-existing illiberal political traditions. The concept of ‘participatory authoritarianism’ is proposed in order to capture the resulting practices of local governance that, on the one hand enable citizens to engage directly with local officials in the policy pro…
Political science (29 works) · Sociology (24 works) · Law (23 works) · Politics (21 works) · Political economy (20 works) · Law (19 works) · Economics (12 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (11 works) · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance (7 works) · Epistemology (7 works)