Space, Fields, Assemblages: The Study of Africa in International Relations

Abstract

Situated at the intersection of International Relations and African studies, this lecture considers ways of negotiating the tensions between attention to the general and the specific, the global and the local. In particular, it explores Bourdieu’s concept of “field” as an approach to study transnational relations and processes and illustrates this through an analysis of the merger of development and security. Starting from within an enclaved gold mine in rural Tanzania, the lecture shows how the roles, alliances, and forms of cooperation and competition between security, development, and corporate actors are best understood as a deep structural transformation of the transnational field of development and as a post-9/11 struggle between diverse actors over the “soul” of development. To capture the depth and significance of these transformations, the lecture traces the emergence of the field of development to the immediate post-war period and the ensuing Cold War tensions. Mapping its actors, structure of values, and forms of power and capital, the lecture portrays how the (re)inclusion of security into the field involves a series of social struggles between different actors, interests, values, and forms of power and capital played out within a transnational field, but with distinct local articulations and consequences.

Biographical Note