Description
Book SynopsisGeopolitics and Expertise is an in-depth exploration of how expert knowledge is created and exercised in the external relations machinery of the European Union.
- Provides a rare, full-length work on transnational diplomatic practice
- Based on a rigorous and empirical study, involving over 100 interviews with policy professionals over seven years
- Focuses on the qualitative and contextual, rather than the quantitative and uniform
- Moves beyond traditional political science to blend human geography, international relations, anthropology, and sociology
Table of ContentsSeries Editors' Preface vii Acknowledgements viii
Introduction: The Crown Jewel 1
1 The Dead Relative: Bounding Europe in Europe 12
Geopolitics by Nobody; Carving Places out of Space; Embodied Europes
2 Knowledge and Policy in Transnational Fields 32
Placing Diplomatic Knowledge; Policy Fields; "The work of reciprocal elucidation"
3 Brussels and Theatre: Bureaucracy and Place 61
Planet Brussels; Those Who Hold the Pen: EU Professionals; The Political and the Technical – and the Social
4 Transnational Diplomats: Representing Europe in EU 27 86
European External Action Service; Curved Mirrors: Negotiating the National; The Group for Which There is no Term: The New Member States
5 Powers of Conceptualization and Contextualization 112
A New Object of Knowledge; Fields of Expertise in the European Quarter; "Most people just want to do what they are told"
6 Feel for the Game: Symbolic Capital in the European Quarter 133
Symbolic Capital; "We are dealing with elites"; "In the third degree of depth"; "An urbane, subtle approach"; Shifts and Spirals
7 Political Geographies of Expertise 171
Knowledge From and On the East; Finding a Market; "Things are evolving"; Managing Difference
Conclusion: Circles of Knowledge 195
References 209
Index 225
