Description
Book SynopsisApplying new materialism to international relations, Jason Dittmer offers a counterintuitive reading of foreign policy by tracing the ways that complex interactions between people and things shape the decisions and actions of diplomats and policymakers.
Trade Review"A valuable contribution to the field of political geography.... Dittmer... provides a refreshing take on foreign policy by tracing the material circulations that continually influence how political elites understand the international community." -- Ed Bryan * Geopolitics *
“The world is a much more complicated place than simple assumptions of international relations between autonomous territorial states often suggest; our task as scholars is to explicate the complexities, and Jason Dittmer has done us all a favour here by offering an exemplary text that shows us both how to do it and why it matters.” -- Simon Dalby * Social & Cultural Geography *
"Dittmer’s achievement in the book (and perhaps that for which he should be most lauded) is that of dragging insights from the deepest, darkest depths of theoryland into the light of the everyday." -- Stephen Legg * Antipode *
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Diplomatic Material is an innovative study that substantially broadens how we think about the makings of foreign policy." -- John A. Gentry * Perspectives on Politics *
Table of ContentsAbbreviations ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: Geopolitical Assemblages and Everyday Diplomacy 1
1. Materializing Diplomacy in the Nineteenth-Century Foreign Office 25
2. UKUSA Signals Intelligence Cooperation 49
3. Interoperability and Standardization in NATO 73
4. Assembling a Common Foreign and Security Policy 99
Conclusion 123
Notes 141
Bibliography 161
Index 171
