エピソード

  • Cotton, Central Asia and the New Great Game

    Cotton, Central Asia and the New Great Game
    2025/03/10
    On this episode, rural sociologist Dr. Irna Hofman explores how Tajikistan’s cotton fields illuminate shifting power dynamics in Central Asia, historically and in the present. She discusses how the Soviet Union once showcased cotton production to visiting delegations—particularly from Muslim-majority countries—as evidence of its development model. Now, as global powers, including Russia, China, and the EU, vie for influence in the region, cotton has again become a strategic commodity—used to forge political ties, secure resources, and drive infrastructure projects. Hofman highlights local communities’ active role in shaping these developments, emphasizing that rural landscapes are not simply backdrops for a “New Great Game,” but sites where broader geopolitical forces and grassroots agency intersect. Through her long-term fieldwork, she illustrates how Tajik farmers navigate and negotiate these overlapping external interests, and in doing so, reframe Central Asia’s future amidst geopolitical tensions. Dr. Hofman specializes in agrarian and social change in Central Asia, where she has worked since 2012. She completed post-doctoral research at Oxford's Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies as part of an ERC-funded project "China, law and development." In 2019, she obtained her Ph.D. from Leiden University in the Netherlands with a dissertation focused on the political economy of agrarian transformation in Tajikistan: "Cotton, control, and continuity in disguise: The political economy of agrarian transformation in lowland Tajikistan." Her research interests span political economy, political ecology, and political sociology. In recent years, she has focused on rural labour, gender, and commodity politics. Dr. Hofman is completing a monograph based on her dissertation and post-doctoral research projects. Her research agenda for the coming years centers on the rural everyday of geopolitics, focusing on China's growing assertiveness in the global agrifood regime, shifting geographies of production, and rural labour. Dr Irna Hofman | School of Geography and the Environment | University of Oxford @irnahofman Resources: Hofman, I. (2024) Seeds of empire or seeds of friendship? The politics of the diffusion of Chinese crop seeds in Tajikistan. Journal of Agrarian Change, 24(2): e12581. Hofman, I. (2022) Tajikistan. The people's map of global China Hofman, I. (2021) Migration, crop diversification, and adverse incorporation: Understanding the repertoire of contention in rural Tajikistan. Canadian Journal of Development Studies, 42(4): 499-518. Hofman, I. (2021). Chinese cotton diplomacy in Tajikistan: greasing the ties by reviving the cotton economy. Research Brief. Hofman, I. (2018). Politics or profits along the “Silk Road”: What drives Chinese farms in Tajikistan and helps them thrive? In The Geoeconomics and Geopolitics of Chinese Development and Investment in Asia, pp. 183-208. Routledge. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    続きを読む 一部表示
    46 分
  • Why Can’t the US Compete with China in Infrastructure?

    Why Can’t the US Compete with China in Infrastructure?
    2024/11/07
    In this episode, Dr. Shahar Hameiri and Dr. Lee Jones discuss the political economy and financing behind global infrastructure development, with a focus on China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The discussion explores the driving forces behind Chinese infrastructure investment, while addressing the crucial question of why American and European initiatives such as Global Gateway and the Program for Global Infrastructure and Investment struggle to compete with the BRI. We discuss dynamics of public and private finance, the role of public-private partnerships, and the challenges private investors face. Importantly, this episode reveals the U.S. Development Finance Corporation’s increasing reliance on private capital, and the decline of the construction sector in the U.S. economy. This comprehensive view shows how different financing and development models shape the global infrastructure landscape, how infrastructure development has evolved into its current state, and novel fields of competition, such as undersea Internet cables. Hameiri and Jones are co-authors of Fractured China: How State Transformation is Shaping China's Rise (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Dr. Hameiri is Professor in the School of Political Science and International Relation at The University of Queensland. A political economist with diverse research interests, traversing the fields of security, development and aid, governance, political geography and international relations, he is interested in understanding the evolving nature of statehood and political agency under conditions of globalisation. His books include International Intervention and Local Politics (Cambridge University, 2017), Governing Borderless Threats: Non-Traditional Security and the Politics of State Transformation (Cambridge University Press, 2015), and Regulating Statehood (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), and he is a co-editor for the fourth edition of The Political Economy of Southeast Asia: Poliltics and Uneven Development Under Hyperglobalisation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). X: @ShaharHameiri. Dr. Jones is Professor in International Politics at the Queen Mary University of London. Lee specialises in political economy and international relations, focusing on the politics of intervention, security, and governance, with a particular interest in social conflict and the transformation of states. Much of his work focuses on Southeast Asia and China. Lee regularly advises the British and other governments and civil society organisations and has often appeared in the national and international media. A fellow of the Higher Education Academy, he also sits on the board of Palgrave’s series Studies in the Political Economy of Public Policy, and the ESRC’s peer review college. For further information see www.leejones.tk. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    続きを読む 一部表示
    48 分
  • India Rising: Navigating the Second Cold War in South Asia from Nepal to the Maldives

    India Rising: Navigating the Second Cold War in South Asia from Nepal to the Maldives
    2024/10/23
    What is the role of India in the Second Cold War (SCW) in South Asia? How do local histories, internal politics, and subnational dynamics shape relations with India and China? How does connectivity and infrastructure become a tool for geopolitical competition in the region, from China’s BRI to India’s infrastructural collaboration, and the US’s Millennium Challenges Corporation? On this episode we sit down with Dr. Dinesh Paudel and Aaron Magunna to answer these questions and discuss how it unfolds through cases in the Maldives and Nepal. A wide-ranging conversation, we learn about a rising India, India-China tensions, and how local politics shape the regional SCW. Dr. Dinesh Paudel is a Professor in the Sustainable Development Department at Appalachian State University. His current research focuses on exploring the relationships and entanglements between the rising Asian economies, growing environmental degradations and rapidly expanding infrastructure in the Himalaya. He has written extensively on infrastructure and the Belt and Road Initiative in Nepal. Aaron Magunna is a PhD student at the University of Queensland in Australia. His research focuses primarily on how countries in Asia, particularly India and Japan, respond to China-US competition by adapting their security, trade, and technology policies. Resources: Paudel, Dinesh. 2021. Himalayan BRI: an infrastructural conjuncture and shifting development in Nepal. Area Development and Policy. Paudel, D., & Rankin, K. (2022). Himalayan geopolitical competition and the agency of the infrastructure state in Nepal. In The Rise of the Infrastructure State (pp. 213-226). Bristol University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    続きを読む 一部表示
    57 分
  • Industrial Policy and Energy Transition amidst Geoeconomic Restructuring: Perspectives from Eastern Europe

    Industrial Policy and Energy Transition amidst Geoeconomic Restructuring: Perspectives from Eastern Europe
    2024/06/28
    This episode features scholars who research East European countries situated on geopolitical border zones and characterized by long-term external economic dependence. Current geopolitical tensions and geoeconomic restructuring are rapidly transforming the maneuver space of local regimes. What do these positions tell us about third-country maneuvering and its limits in the current global context? How are these positions transformed in the context of global industrial restructuring? And what theoretical considerations do they highlight as necessary to grasp the potential impacts of geoeconomic transformation? To answer these questions, we are joined by several guests: David Karas proposes a regulationist framework to compare ongoing reconfigurations in the internal and international dimensions of American and European capitalism. Agnes Gagyi, Tamás Gerőcs, and Linda Szabó show how the current Hungarian regime’s geopolitical balancing supports a historic wave of reindustrialization at the intersection of German and East Asian EV and battery production chains. Nina Djukanović focuses on Serbia's resistance to lithium mining and the Western Balkans' semi-peripheral position in relation to the EU. Analyzing this in the context of the EU’s twin green and digital transitions, she offers a critique of green extractivism and growth-based solutions to climate change. Lela Rekhviashvili and Evelina Gambino examine the extractive character of infrastructure-led development and discuss how previous failures prefigure the revival of infrastructure projects, focusing on two large infrastructure projects in Georgia: the Deep Sea Port of Anaklia and Namakhvani Hydropower Plant (HPP) projects. You can read the corresponding essays on Dispatches of the Second Cold War Observatory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    続きを読む 一部表示
    1 時間 6 分
  • US-Soviet Scientific Cooperation & Implications for Environmental Politics Today with Dr. Vladimir Jankovic

    US-Soviet Scientific Cooperation & Implications for Environmental Politics Today with Dr. Vladimir Jankovic
    2024/03/02
    In this episode, we look to history to consider areas of potential areas for US-China environmental politics and cooperation today. Dr. Vladimir Jankovic discussed US-Soviet scientific cooperation in the 1980s, early climate cooperation, and the 1989 Sundance Symposium on Global Climate Change dubbed ''greenhouse glasnost'' by its sponsors. What are the legacies of this conference and partnership, and how did they move the needle on our understanding of climate change? What happened after the collapse of the USSR? What were the lasting impacts on the scientific field, and what might be the implications for climate and environmental (geo)politics today? Dr. Vladimir Jankovic is a historian of atmospheric sciences who writes on the cultural history of meteorology, medical environmentalism, and contemporary urban climatology in relation to urban design. His research focuses on scientific, cultural, and social engagement with weather and climate since the 1700s. He is currently president of the International Commission for the History of Meteorology and a Reader in History of Science and Atmospheric Humanities at the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine (CHSTM), University of Manchester. In 2005, he was featured on Storms of War, the Discovery Channel’s five-episode documentary on warfare and the weather. He is the author of Reading the Skies (Chicago, 2000), Confronting the Climate (New York, 2010), Intimate Universality (with Fleming and Cohen, 2005), Weather Local Knowledge and Everyday Life (with Barbosa, 2009), and Klima (with Fleming, Chicago, 2011). Links and resources from the episode: US and China agree to boost green energy in climate action ‘gesture’ in The Financial Times The Aspen Institute Greenhouse Glasnost: The Crisis of Global Warming by Terrel Minger (1990) Ross, Andrew. 1991. Is global culture warming up? Social Text. 1989 New York Times article: "Summit of Sorts on Global Warming" The book Reading the Skies A Cultural History of English Weather, 1650-1820 by Vladimir Jankovic (2001) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    続きを読む 一部表示
    43 分
  • Africa and the Second Cold War: Infrastructure, Corridors, and Critical Minerals with Dr. Tim Zajontz

    Africa and the Second Cold War: Infrastructure, Corridors, and Critical Minerals with Dr. Tim Zajontz
    2023/10/02
    In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Tim Zajontz to discuss growing geopolitical and geoeconomic competition across infrastructure, economic corridors, and resource extraction in Africa, specifically Uganda, Tanzania, and Zambia. Dr. Zajontz is a Lecturer in Global Political Economy at the Dresden University of Technology, Germany. He is also a Research Fellow at the Centre for International and Comparative Politics at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. His research focuses on Africa’s international relations and political economy, particularly Africa-China and Africa-EU relations. Before joining academia, Tim worked in several advisory positions in German and EU politics. He is also the co-founder of a German not-for-profit that collaborates with partners in the social and health sectors in Uganda. Tim currently researches geopolitical developments on the African continent and the political economy of competing connectivity initiatives in Africa and has co-edited a book on Africa’s Railway Renaissance, which was recently published. Recommended Resources: Zajontz, T. 2023. The Political Economy of China’s Infrastructure Development in Africa Capital, State Agency, Debt. Zajontz, T, Pádraig Carmody, Mandira Bagwandeen, Anthony Leysens (editors). 2024. Africa’s Railway Renaissance: The Role and Impact of China. Zajontz, T. 2022. ‘Win-win’ contested: negotiating the privatisation of Africa's Freedom Railway with the ‘Chinese of today’. The Journal of Modern African Studies. Zajontz, T. 2022. Debt, distress, dispossession: towards a critical political economy of Africa’s financial dependency. Review of African Political Economy. Zajontz, T. 2022. Seamless imaginaries, territorialized realities: the regional politics of corridor governance in Southern Africa. Territory, Politics, Governance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    続きを読む 一部表示
    1 時間 8 分
  • Extractivist Projects and Environmental Justice Struggles on the Polar Silk Road with Dr. Ksenija Hanaček

    Extractivist Projects and Environmental Justice Struggles on the Polar Silk Road with Dr. Ksenija Hanaček
    2023/06/27
    In this episode, we talk with Dr. Ksenija Hanaček about her research on the Polar Silk Road and extractivism and environmental conflicts in the Arctic region. Dr. Hanaček is a political ecologist and a Margarita Salas postdoctoral fellow at Global Development Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki and at Institute for Science, Technology and Environment Global (ICTA), at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, where she is working on the Atlas of Environmental Justice. Her research focuses on environmental conflicts due to extractivist and mega infrastructure projects in the Arctic region. Current research includes commodity frontiers, climate coloniality and green extractivism, the Belt and Road Initiative’s expansion to the Arctic (“Polar Silk Road”), nuclear supply chain and environmental justice struggles in post-Soviet spaces, and coal extraction conflicts in southwestern Siberia. RELATED LINKS Global Atlas of Environmental Justice: http://envjustice.org/ [envjustice.org] Article: On thin ice–The Arctic commodity extraction frontier and environmental conflicts Article: Nuclear supply chain and environmental justice struggles in Soviet and Post-Soviet countries Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    続きを読む 一部表示
    34 分
  • Technological Competition in Argentina: Nuclear Energy and Smart Cities, with Dr. Maximiliano Vila Seoane

    Technological Competition in Argentina: Nuclear Energy and Smart Cities, with Dr. Maximiliano Vila Seoane
    2023/05/22
    This episode centers on competition in two technology sectors in Argentina: nuclear energy and smart cities. While they may seem like disparate sectors, Dr. Maximiliano Vila Seoane shows how both illustrate the interest of Argentine state actors in cooperating with Chinese counterparts in science & technology, specifically in areas that used to be dominated by US or Western partners. He offers a nuanced and localized understanding of how competition in these sectors is unfolding in various provinces and cities in Argentina. Dr. Maximiliano Vila Seoane is a researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council in Argentina. He is a professor at the School of Politics & Government of the National University of San Martín. His interests span cybersecurity, international politics, and development. Currently, he is interested in how the intensifying rivalry between the US and China is transforming digital capitalism, particularly in Latin America. RELATED LINKS Book talk on The Rise of the Infrastructure State. Media coverage on Chinese surveillance tech in Latin America: 'Safe like China': In Argentina, ZTE finds eager buyer for surveillance tech: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-argentina-china-zte-insight-idUSKCN1U00ZG Made in China, Exported to the World: The Surveillance State: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/technology/ecuador-surveillance-cameras-police-government.html In a Secret Bunker in the Andes, a Wall That Was Really a Window: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/26/reader-center/ecuador-china-surveillance-spying.html Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
    続きを読む 一部表示
    47 分