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    Canadian Political Science Association
    2020 Annual Conference Programme

    Confronting Political Divides
    Hosted at Western University
    Tuesday, June 2 to Thursday, June 4, 2020
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    Presidential Address:
    Barbara Arneil, CPSA President

    Origins:
    Colonies and Statistics

    Location:
    Tuesday, June 2, 2020 | 05:00pm to 06:00pm
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    KEYNOTE SPEAKER:
    Ayelet Shachar
    The Shifting Border:
    Legal Cartographies of Migration
    and Mobility

    Location:
    June 04, 2020 | 01:30 to 03:00 pm
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    Keynote Speaker: Marc Hetherington
    Why Modern Elections
    Feel Like a Matter of
    Life and Death

    Location:
    Wednesday, June 3, 2020 | 03:45pm to 05:15pm
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    Plenary Panel
    Indigenous Politics and
    the Problem of Canadian
    Political Science

    Location: Arts & Humanities Building - AHB 1R40
    Tuesday, June 2, 2020 | 10:30am to 12:00pm

CPSA/ISA-Canada section on International Relations



C19(a) - Conceptual Inadequacies and Role of the 'Informal' in IR

Date: Jun 4 | Time: 01:30pm to 03:00pm | Location:

Chair/Président/Présidente : Aaron Ettinger (Carleton University)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : David Black (Dalhousie University)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Aaron Ettinger (Carleton University)

Childhood and the Everyday Pedagogies of a Militarized World: Marshall Beier (McMaster University)
Abstract: Turning chiefly on the problem of child soldiers, explorations of the intersection of childhood and militarism have been largely preoccupied with war-torn contexts of the Global South. Throughout the Global North, far from zones of conflict, gentle allusions to the ubiquity of threat litter the everyday of children’s lives. Hidden in plain sight, they subtly affirm permanent emergency, performing a pedagogical function not only with respect to their explicit instructions to report suspicious behavior in amusement parks or to shelter in place in schools, but also in the underlying affirmation of indissoluble vulnerability to the depredations of others. What is more, they aver reliance on an acting subject in authority but not immediately present: in their call to report, “See Something, Say Something” signs at sporting venues presume an authority responsible and empowered to act; the agential remit of those in the school lockdown is limited to awaiting the restoration of security. These fragments from the scenery of children’s everyday summon the figure of the protector in answer to the immutable danger they continually reiterate. Together with myriad other artefacts, practices, and performatives of everyday life, they inculcate an ontology essential to the intelligibility of militarism and for the naturalization of militarized practices whilst appearing as simply reflections of a ‘reality’ of which they are not instinctively presumed to be constitutive. This paper brings a critical lens to these quotidian circulations, reflecting on what they can tell us about our accustomed ways of thinking about militarism.


The Paralympics as a Lens for Globalizing International Relations: Andrew Heffernan (University of Ottawa)
Abstract: The Paralympics provide an interesting and cutting-edge way to understand the discipline of International Relations (IR) through the sort of modern and global lens that it has greatly been lacking. As a Paralympic athlete, this paper offers an autoethnographic account of my experiences at multiple international Para-Athletics competitions where I witnessed modern international relations play out in interesting, useful, and important ways. The discipline of IR has long since failed to keep pace with global politics and has largely failed to account for the major issues now facing populations falling broadly under the categories of poverty, disease and climate change. The International Political Economy of the Paralympic games shine a spotlight on many of these issues by bringing athletes affected by these sorts of modern challenges from all over the world. Ranging from thalidomide survivors in Canada, to those affected tragically by the genocide in Rwanda, to individuals who have lost limbs in the many ongoing non-linear conflicts engaging sub-state actors around the world. The Paralympics bring these athletes together to compete at the highest level of sport to promote peace, facilitate fellowship, and provide those around the world living with disabilities the types of role models they need.


Failure of Neoliberal Peacebuilding Knowledge in Recognition of Organic Sociocultural Development; The Case of Afghanistan: Seyed Ali Hosseini (Wilfrid Laurier University)
Abstract: The frequent failures of international peacebuilding missions in different regions of the world indicate limitations of neoliberal peacebuilding which is centered on security reform, rule of law, and market economy. There is growing literature on the impact of security and economic interests of powerful designers of neoliberal peacebuilding, some hidden in peacebuilding knowledge and practice, on the effectiveness of these missions. This research answers the following question: what are the shortcomings of international peacebuilding knowledge that, against enormous efforts by various actors, peacebuilding missions fail to bring sustainable peace to conflict-torn societies? My paper argues that the current external, top-down, militarized and economized neoliberal peacebuilding approach is, due to its knowledge bases, inadequate to develop peace organically. This critical review is conducted through examining the peacebuilding efforts in the post-Taliban Afghanistan, as a case study, where colonial knowledge about the country and top-down prescriptions along securitized and economized peacebuilding failed to empower Afghans in achieving sustainable peace. My research proposes that peacebuilding knowledge should be revisited epistemologically and methodologically to elucidate its colonial knowledge-base regarding the host societies, and in an effort to recognize local knowledge, lived experiences, and local-led sociocultural peacebuilding. There are a number of consequences to this epistemological approach to peacebuilding which includes: increased importance of organic social and cultural development in peacebuilding, shifting peacebuilding leadership from foreign to domestic actors, and strong support to national public social and cultural institutions vis-à-vis market actors. Keywords: (neo)liberal peacebuilding, knowledge, failed states, local leadership, sociocultural development, epistemology


Shadow Interregionalisms in Africa: J. Andrew Grant (Queen's University), Abdiasis Issa (Balsillie School of International Affairs), Badriyya Yusuf (Queen's University)
Abstract: Scholars of Regionalism studies have devoted increasing attention to linkages between natural resources and illicit business activities. The income-generating and economic spin-offs of globalization’s licit and illicit interregional hubs, corridors, and polygons – while difficult to quantify with precision – do not go unnoticed by local communities and government officials. Individuals drawn from these groups can discern and assess the opportunities and benefits to be gained by not only inserting themselves into such interregional networks, but also invoking claims to autonomy and authority that are normally associated with reterritorialization – evoking an unintended consequence of interregional dynamics that generates political divides. This paper, which is based on analyses of primary sources including field work, participant observations, and in-person interviews conducted in West Africa and East Africa over the past fifteen years, seeks to contribute in the scholarly literature on interregionalism by illustrating how African state and non-state actors have influenced the interregional dynamics within each region, which has in turn generated informal region-building projects that compete with extant formal region-building projects. Since regional institutions in Africa have a reputation for stagnant or sluggish governance as well as policy delivery failure, this has had knock-on unintended consequences for increasing the salience of informal regionalism. The paper concludes by delving into the implications of how these dynamics in West Africa and East Africa contribute to our broader understanding of “shadow” interregionalisms including their potential to foment political divides.




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