Merje Kuus
Associate Professor
Department of Geography
1984 West Mall, Room 235
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2, Canada
Tel. (604) 822-3443
E-mail: merje.kuus@geog.ubc.ca
Research Themes
In broad terms, my work concentrates on geopolitics and transnational policy processes. I study geopolitical practices and knowledge production inside modern bureaucracies— processes that what might be called political geographies of expertise. The list below highlights the key themes and projects within that work.
Geopolitics
Geopolitics is a tricky term that many rightly associate with the violent inter-state power politics of the previous two centuries. In my work, as in much of contemporary human geography, to study geopolitics is to analyze and deconstruct the geographical assumptions and definitions that underpin international politics today. In broad terms, I investigate how political practices, especially on the international arena, are underpinned by spatial assumptions—by geographically defined categories like center and margin, inside and outside, Self and Other. These assumptions are not a rhetorical nuance—an icing on the cake—but an integral part of the very fabric of politics—the cake itself. They are central to the processes by which complex political issues come to be defined and managed in a particular manner. In recent years, I have also written on the heterogeneous scholarship called critical geopolitics.
Policy processes
Policy impinges on all aspects of self and society. It shapes not just societal outcomes but, more importantly, the processes that produce these outcomes. To study policy is to investigate not a ready-made blueprint but a dynamic and unpredictable process. In geography as well as other social sciences, there is today a growing recognition of the need for close-up studies of policy processes. My work is a part of that effort to understand the fields of power that operate within policy-making bureaucracies.
Security, surveillance, and the state
Security is a key political dynamic today, as an ever wider range of social issues, such as environment, health, or minority rights, are increasingly framed in terms of national security in many countries. Such security threats are not simply external to the community which they allegedly endanger. Rather, threats from the 'outside' are necessary components of maintaining and consolidating that community's identity 'inside'. Inscription of threats is therefore a key part of political struggles. Focusing empirically on Europe, I examine how particular foreign and domestic policies are justified by invoking national security, and with what effects. In so doing, I illuminate the transformations of state power in the context of growing immigration pressures, cross-border cooperation, and the current 'war on terror'.
European Union
Madeleine Albright is said to have quipped that in order to understand the EU, one has to be a genius, or French. Yet the EU is too important to be left to those two groups of people. The Union is a key power center in today’s world: the world’s largest trade block and a model of regulatory standards in all spheres of social life. Any attempt to understand the diffuse operation of power in the international sphere must closely consider the EU in all of its irresolvable ambiguities.
Boundaries and identity in contemporary Europe
Many of the geographical and territorial concepts that we take for granted today, such as those of nation and state, originate in Europe and were first applied there. By studying Europe, we can better understand their historical emergence and transformation, their mass appeal, and their societal effects. Today too, mainstream understandings of civilization, borders, and historical memory are closely bound up with geographical understandings of identity and belonging. Unraveling this inherently spatial operation of culture and politics in Europe therefore tells us a great deal about that continent, and others.
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For further information, see ‘Geopolitical Passport’, an interview with Leonhardt, van Efferink, published at Exploring Geopolitics (website) , April 2011
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Geopolitics and Expertise
This multi-year project synthesizes my interest in geopolitics and policy, especially in contemporary European settings. It investigates how geopolitical space is produced within labyrinthine bureaucratic structures. I am currently developing this project into a book. Abbreviated summary follows:
The power of European Union institutions both inside and outside the Union rests on their expertise: their ability to make other actors work with their data and their analytical tools. This expert authority brings diverse places in Europe into one regulatory space. It also packs a constant tug of war over whose expertise specifically, from where, is built into European expertise. The Union’s knowledge production appears standardized in institutional charts, but the social reality in Brussels is a highly ambiguous transnational scene of power relations. It is a space with its own geopolitical and social scripts about what kind of space is Europe and who has expertise on it. There are unwritten—and sometimes unspoken—rules for the production of rules inside the European bureaucracy.
Geopolitics and Expertise investigates the scripts of and struggles over expertise at the central place of European knowledge production—Brussels. Drawing from over eighty interviews (conducted over five years) with the professionals who wield EU foreign affairs expertise, it unpacks the ways in which this daily production of expert authority works—not how the process is modelled to unfold but how it actually operates socially. Eschewing a traditional ‘big picture’ account of inter-state and inter-institutional relations, the book instead offers a more agent-based and peopled account of the ambiguities and idiosyncrasies of expert knowledge in Brussels. A blend of policy studies, geopolitics, and sociology of knowledge, the study speaks to scholars of international relations, political geography, critical policy studies, and contemporary Europe.
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These projects have been funded by grants and fellowships from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; The United States Institute of Peace; Fulbright Scholarship; Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna; and the Soros Foundation, among others.