Assembling geographies of diplomacy under neoliberalism

Bibliographic Data

ID8962096
AuthorsAlun Jones (0000-0002-3442-1335, School of Geography University College Dublin Dublin Ireland, corresponding author), Julian Clark (0000-0002-9439-4375, School of Geography Earth and Environmental Sciences University of Birmingham Birmingham UK)
Year2017
Volume43
Issue1
Pages31-46
Publication date2017-08-20
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTransactions of the Institute of British Geographers (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-2754 • E-ISSN: 1475-5661
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/tran.12197
OpenAlexW2750474214
LanguageEN
Citations received16
References cited49

There is an enormous gap in our understanding of the state's role in the construction of international markets. Specifically, diplomacy's position in the contemporary entanglement of state and markets has been overlooked. Increasingly, diplomacy's on‐going adaptation to support neoliberalism has led to diplomats operating in a “twilight world” between diplomacy and business. Using assemblage thinking, we investigate the codings, capacities and tendencies emerging in the social spaces of diplomatic possibility in this “twilight world”. Drawing on comprehensive empirical materials on the UK –India diplomatic relationship, we show how the material and expressive components of the UK Foreign Office assemblage are being deployed to champion state goals in global markets. We illustrate the ways in which diplomacy struggles in the name of the state's international competitiveness. In particular, we argue that these social spaces of possibility are structured by both diplomatic and business calculations that have the capacity to create new and unpredictable courses that render both an uncertainty and fuzziness to the agential interactions between assemblages

Assemblage (archaeology · Champion · Diplomacy · Economics · Economy · International business · International political economy · Neoliberalism (international relations · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Public Diplomacy · Sociology · State (computer science · European Union Policy and Governance · History · International Relations and Foreign Policy · Law · Peacebuilding and International Security

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