Public Talk: Against All Odds: Contemporary State Formation and the Case of the Kurds

• In-person event
• A602 , Loeb Building , Carleton University
• 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6

Carleton University’s Political Science & Political Economy departments are hosting a Public Lecture featuring:

Wayne S. Cox

Associate Professor, Department of Political Studies & Fellow, Centre for International and Defence Policy, Queen’s University

When: Thursday, February 15, 2018

3.00-4.30 pm

Where: A602 Loeb Building

Abstract:

For the past fifty years at least, contemporary social and political thought has struggled to develop a robust understanding of state formation in spite of the fact that the state remains a primary agent for theorizing in both comparative politics and international relations.  Assumptions about the universal characteristics or the common denominators that describe current state units predominate in our understanding of world politics in ways that more often than not remove state formation and state evolution from the historical and social conditions from which they emerge.  At the same time, the process of Kurdish state building has persisted from within the existing sovereign states of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria (as well as from within many Kurdish diaspora communities) against all odds. On top of this, the various Kurdish peoples have long been conditioned and often repressed by the pre-existing Turkish, Persian and Arab nationalisms that do not conform well to the current sovereign divisions imposed upon much of the Middle East as historical legacies of European colonialism.  The contemporary case of Kurdish Ethnonationalism provides one of the best current cases from which we can observe state formation.  This talk will provide an overview of the most recent phases of Kurdish state development within Northern Iraq looking specifically at how states in formation attempt to achieve domestic and international legitimacy, how emerging states develop a functioning state apparatus, how state formation presents nearly insurmountable obstacles for existing states in the region and for the international community, and what impact the political and economic viability of new states has upon their prospects for state creation.  In will be argued, that in spite of the rigidity of the existing international and regional state system and its resistance to change, and in spite of the economic and political prospects for state success, the driving force behind state formation is first and foremost an ideational construct in the minds of the Kurdish peoples themselves and so long as the national project can maintain legitimacy in the eyes of the Kurds, the project will persist.  Enhanced repression by existing states and/or the international community, an inability to develop a robust state apparatus, or the failure to develop a functioning Kurdish political economy may in the short term prolong the state formation process or even alter the nationalist objectives, but so long as the ideational construct or “Imagined Community” of Kurdistan is legitimized and perpetuated from within the various Kurdish communities, then the state formation process will continue. The contemporary case of the Kurds in Northern Iraq will demonstrate the flexibility of Kurdish state formation in rapidly changing local, regional and international environments, and examine how this persistence and flexibility is a key aspect of state formation that needs to be better understood by scholarship in comparative politics and international relations.

About the Speaker:

Wayne Cox is an Associate Professor in Political Studies and a Fellow at the Centre for International and Defence Policy at Queen’s University.  Early in his career, Professor Cox was actively involved in the debates International Relations “third debate” and the post-positivist turn towards critical international relations theory (see, for example Beyond Positivism: Critical Reflections on International Relations (Sjolander and Cox, 1994), or his work published in the International Political Yearbook (1997) series).  He has also published widely in the areas of critical security studies, The Kurdish question, identity and the legitimization of violence in world politics, Canadian foreign policy and national defence, and the evolution of international relations as a field of study.  His work has been included in the Ole Weaver and Arlene Tickner series on International Relations Scholarship Around the World, and some of his more recent themes include the linkages between the local and the global in world order (see, for example, Locating Global Order, Cox and Charbonneau, 2011). Professor Cox is currently looking at the Kurdish Question in Iraq and Turkey, and is writing a critical analysis of the importance of Edward Said as an intellectual figure in the studies of world politics and subaltern studies.