Friday, June 20, 2008

BOOK/CFP- The "New" Central Asia: The Regional Impact of International Actors

Distrib. by: Central-Eurasia-L - Announcement List for Central Eurasian Studies


BOOK/CFP- The "New" Central Asia: The Regional Impact of International Actors

Posted by: Emilian Kavalski <kavalski@ualberta.ca>

Call for Chapters:

The "New" Central Asia: The Regional Impact of International Actors

The editor of a volume on 'The "New" Central Asia: The Regional Impact of
International Actors' announces a call for chapter submission from
interested international relations scholars. The projected volume is both
about the place of Central Asia in world affairs and the way the
international politics of state-building and regionalization have affected
Central Asia since the end of the Cold War. Therefore, this volume pursues
the twin-aims of simultaneously generalizing and contextualizing the
"Central Asian experience" as well as re-thinking and re-evaluating its
comparative relevance to the study of both other regions and international
politics. In this respect, the prospective submissions would assess the
agency of different international actors in Central Asia and their impact on
the dynamics of state-building and regionalization. At the same time, the
contributions would make analytically and empirically grounded propositions
on the possible trajectories of Central Asian state-building and
regionalization, and the possible patterns/transformations in the agency of
external actors in the region. In this way, the volume addresses the need to
systematize the knowledge produced on Central Asia since the end of the Cold
War.

List of chapters (this is only a schematic list of the themes of the
chapters):

1. The European Union (EU) and Central Asia.

2. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (PfP) and Central Asia.

3. The Conference/Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(C/OSCE).

4. The World Bank/International Monetary Fund/other international financial
institutions and Central Asia.

5. The United Nations (and its various agencies) and Central Asia.

6. Russia and Central Asia.

7. China (especially, through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization) and
Central Asia.

8. The United States of America and Central Asia.

9. India and Central Asia.

10. Iran and Central Asia.

11. Turkey and Central Asia.

Additionally, there would be chapters contextualizing the Central Asian
reception/perception of this agency:

12. Kazakhstan and the role of international actors.

13. Kyrgyzstan and the role of international actors.

14. Tajikistan and the role of international actors.

15. Turkmenistan and the role of international actors.

16. Uzbekistan and the role of international actors.

Outline of the main themes and questions for each chapter:

For the purposes of coherence, the assessment of the
roles/implications/agency of different international actors in Central
Asia focuses on the notions and practices of:

- state-building-understood as an attempt by an international actor
to suggest/promote a certain mode of governance to Central Asian
states and, thereby, impact their practices of policy-making according
to certain externally-promoted rules;

- regionalization-understood both (i) in terms of the existence of a
"regional approach" by an international actor to Central Asia-i.e., is
there something in the strategy of your actor (provision of
funds/incentives/infrastructure) that allows/intends for a process of
regionalization to take place; and (ii) in terms of whether there is
anything in the Central Asian interactions with that actor that
"justifies" the use of the term region (in a sense that designates
something unique to the "Central Asian" practice that is broader than
a mere geographical convenience/proximity);


Again for the purposes of coherence, the prospective contributors to
the volume are requested to construct their submissions around (or as
responses to) the following sets of questions:

1. What is the nature of the international actor under discussion?
What are the main theoretical approaches that have been employed in
understanding and explaining the international outreach of this
international actor? What would you say are the main international
norms/foreign policy beliefs that inform your actor's international
outreach? Do its declared policies and actual behavior in Central Asia
confirm such perceptions of its international role?

2. How has your actor defined its interests in Central Asia since the
end of the Cold War? Has such definition of its role in the region
changed over time?

3. What policies/approaches/tactics does your actor pursue in Central
Asia to support its objectives? In particular, what is the
understanding of state-building and regionalization that this
international actor represents/promotes in Central Asia (if any)?

- what are its tools for both state-building and regionalization in
Central Asia;

- in what way would you say they are unique to/property of that
international actor;

4. How successful has your actor's strategy been in Central Asia? What
has been its impact on Central Asian state-building and
regionalization dynamics? Has your actor's influence in Central Asia
grown/decreased since the end of the Cold War? Upon what its influence
in Central Asia rests? What weaknesses/obstacles hamper its influence?
Has something in the "Central Asian experience" of your actor forced
it to alter/reevaluate its international outreach?

5. How would you evaluate the prospects for your actor's policies in
Central Asia? What developments would/could impact its outreach in the
region? In short, (based on your analysis of the relationship between
this actor and the region) what do you think the "future" has in store
both for your actor and Central Asia? What does the explanation and
understanding of this international actor's agency in the region tells
us about the nature and concerns of state-building and regionalization
in Central Asia? Does your study suggest any critical perspectives,
revisions and developments in terms of the study of state-building and
regionalization in international politics, Central Asian affairs
and/or your actor's international outreach and the main theories by
which such study is usually informed?

Submission Procedure:

Interested researchers and scholars, who would be willing to commit to
such a collaborative project are invited to submit 500-word chapter
abstracts (including chapter title and a clear explanation of how the
authors would address the volumes objectives as outlined in the five
sets of questions above) and a short CV (1-2 pages) by 25 May 2008.
Authors would be notified by 30 May 2008 about the status of their
proposals. Full chapters (9,000-11,000 words) are due by 10 December
2008. All submissions should be sent by email to Emilian Kavalski
(emilian.kavalski@gmail.com)


Emilian Kavalski
Dept of Political Science
University of Alberta


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