Grounded Normative Theory and Intersectional Differences

This article focuses on the promise of grounded normative theory in Luis Cabrera’s The Humble Cosmopolitan. The article celebrates Cabrera’s use of grounded normative theory as a way to center the lived experience of politically marginalized groups while also being attentive to the politics of knowledge production. My concern is not with the methodology itself; rather, it is with Cabrera’s partial use of it. I ask, how might the analysis of the book change if the author considered different intellectual histories of citizenship rooted in feminist and critical approaches? How might the theoretical assumptions and justifications of the book change if the author challenged his own assumptions, especially as they relate to the epistemic authority of Dalit women?

Building back better from COVID-19: Knowledge, emergence and social contracts

COVID-19 recovery is an opportunity to enhance life chances by Building Back Better, an objective promoted by the UN and deployed politically at national level. To help understand emergent and intentional opportunities to Build Back Better, we propose a research agenda drawing from geographical thinking on social contracts, assemblage theory and the politics of knowledge. This points research towards the ways in which everyday and professional knowledge cocreation constrains vision and action. Whose knowledge is legitimate, how legitimacy is ascribed and the place of science, the media and government in these processes become sites for progressive Building Back Better.

Balai Pustaka and the Politics of Knowledge

During the colonial period of Indonesia the Dutch government was an important source of knowledge which was disseminated through the production of books, such as textbooks and other printed material. In response to the establishment of many new commercial printers and publishers, the colonial government, in 1917, set up its own publishing company, Balai Pustaka, which also published attractive and popular books. This new publishing house intentionally and unintentionally served several goals at a time that was characterized by the rise of young Indonesian intellectuals who were part of new political movements formed in the first decades of the 20th century.

Statehood and recognition in world politics: Towards a critical research agenda

This article offers a critical outlook on existing debates on state recognition and proposes future research directions. It argues that existing knowledge on state recognition and the dominant discourses, norms and practices needs to be problematized and freed from power-driven, conservative, positivist and legal interpretations and reoriented in new directions in order to generate more critical, contextual and emancipatory knowledge. The article proposes two major areas for future research on state recognition, which should: (a) expose the politics of knowledge, and positionality, and seek epistemic justice and decolonization of state recognition studies; and (b) study more thoroughly recognitionality techniques encompassing diplomatic discourses, performances and entangled agencies. Accordingly, this article seeks to promote a long overdue debate on the need for re-visioning state recognition in world politics.