News

This coming September, INFRAGLOB researchers Jana and Raoul will organize a panel (see the abstract below) for the 14th Pan-European Conference on International Relations, hosted by the European International Studies Association (EISA). Jana and Raoul will present a paper on Chinese Multinationals and CSR. Here is the abstract of the panel.

 

The Making of Globalities with/in the Global South

 

The influence that China, Brazil and other actors from the Global South have on the world in general and international relations (IR) theories in specific is being intensively debated. However, up to now, there is a dearth of literature analyzing how actual practices on the ground by actors from these countries reshape transnational governance and (re)make ‘globalities’ from below. This panel invites contributions drawing from practice theories broadly defined and/or post/de-colonial approaches to fill this gap. Moving beyond the question of whether emerging actors fundamentally challenge or reproduce a liberal world order, particular attention is paid to how transnational experts and professionals negotiate knowledge and practices from different contexts, including building upon and creatively (re)interpreting and (re)making dominant practices in transnational governance. In other words, the panel emphasizes connections (i.e. ‘relationality’) rather than disconnections and brings together evidence that complicates dichotomies such as the ‘West’ and ‘non-West’, and change versus stability. By so doing, it also challenges positions that posit ‘the West’ as facing ‘threats’ represented by unitary actors such as ‘China’.       

 

Papers:

 

Jonna Nyman (University of Sheffield): Towards a Global Security Studies: What can looking at China tell us about the concept of security?

 

Jana Hönke and Raoul Bunskoek: Chinese Multinationals and CSR: Mimicking or Reworking the ‘Universal’?

 

Prof. Chris Alden (LSE) and Prof David Styan (Birkbeck): ‘Africa: towards a New Geopolitics of Port Infrastructure? Evidence from East Africa’

 

Jing Gu (Director of the Centre for Rising Powers and Global Development, Institute of Development Studies): China’s Development Finance and African Infrastructure Development

 

Tobias Berger (Freie Universität Berlin) & Karoline Eickhoff (Berghof Foundation): The evolution of India’s Foreign Policy Doctrines vis-à-vis East Africa

 

Discussant: Pinar Bilgin