Browsing by Author "Makarychev, Andrey"

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A Tale of Two Orthodoxies: Europe in Religious Discourses of Russia and Georgia
(Routledge, 2018) Makarychev, Andrey; Kakabadze, Shota
The article seeks to analyze discourses of two Orthodox Churches—Georgian (GOC) and Russian (ROC)—from the vantage point of their various interconnections with Europe and the ensuing representations of Europe framed in religious terms. Of particular salience are relations between ROC and GOC, on the one hand, and the Roman Catholic Church, on the other, as well as the positioning of both ROC and GOC within the global community of Orthodox Churches. The analyzed political circumstances force religious hierarchs of both institutions, even if they share the similar ambivalence toward the West, to differently reproduce the image of Europe. The broader geopolitical picture puts the GOC in the position of supporting government’s foreign policy agenda which goes in opposition to the Kremlin, in spite of the fact that the former has a lot of common with the Moscow Patriarchate when it comes to criticism toward the Western liberal value systems.
Assessing Populism at Europe’s Margins: Pervasive, Performative, Persistent
(Brill, 2020) Makarychev, Andrey; Crothers, Lane
This special issue is a collection of articles whose authors explore different forms of populism in countries located beyond the Western core and therefore much less known to specialists in the field. The country-based case studies selected for this issue reflect diversity of populist forces in non-central polities in Europe. Each of them has a rich legacy of conflicts and controversies with major European powers, which serves as one of powerful sources of contemporary populist discourses, pushing many of them towards national reassertion and EU-skepticism.
Beyond Geopolitics: Russian Soft Power, Conservatism, and Biopolitics
(Brill’s publications, 2018) Makarychev, Andrey
This article offers a new approach to Russian foreign policy under Putin’s presidency as shifting from its ‘soft power’ model to what might be characterized through the prism of biopower. The author discusses the various meanings attached to the concept of attraction, and scrutinises the biopolitical turn in Russia as a domestic phenomenon and as a key element of Russia’s power projection abroad. It is argued that biopolitics as a power instrument can play different roles – it can be a tool to construct Russian national (and simultaneously imperial) identity and to distinguish Russia from the West, and channel for communication with conservative forces across the globe.
Biopolitical art and the struggle for Sovereignty in Putin’s Russia. Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern
(Routledge, 2019) Makarychev, Andrey; Medvedev, Sergey
This article addresses the public appeal of political actionism in today’s Russia through analysis of the political art of Pyotr Pavlensky. The research uses the methodological paradigm of biopower and biopolitics, as outlined by Michel Foucault and further critically developed by Giorgio Agamben, since it helps to better understand both the oppressive nature of the Russian state, and the protest art of Pavlensky. The article seeks to unpack the struggle for the human body that has started in Russia in recent years, with the state imposing its normalizing and regulatory mechanisms upon private lives and corporeal practices of individuals, and people’s responses by re-claiming their bodies, from an open public discussion of sexuality, domestic violence and gender equality, to the radical exposure of the body by artists like Pavlensky. As the argument goes, the centerpiece of political controversy is not just the battle for the human body, but a battle for sovereignty, defining the limits of state intervention, the borders of the political community and the rights of the individual. The article asks a number of questions: how Pavlensky’s performances can be explained within the framework of the biopolitical regime of Putin’s rule? Whether Pavlensky’s use of his own body for political purposes (a “biopolitical art’ of sorts) is a response to the increased biopolitical intervention of the Russian state that has marked Putin’s third term in office? Why did political protest become corporeal? How does the individual body turn into a tool for political contestation and how does it embody collective meanings? How the politicization of the body transpires, and how an individual body can incarnate a collective body of nation?
Biopolitical conservatism and “pastoral power”: a Russia – Georgia meeting point.
(Tbilisi: Georgian Institute of Politics., 2017) Makarychev, Andrey
The paper applies the concept of biopolitics to the analysis of Russia's relations with Georgia. It highlights the centrality of Orthodoxy for Russia's "soft power" and religious diplomacy.
Biopolitics and national identities: between liberalism and totalization
(Routledge, 2017) Makarychev, Andrey
This is an introductory article to the special cluster on the biopolitical reading of nation-building in post-Soviet countries. The authors explain the advatnages of using the biopolitical approach to countries with hybrid identities, and discuss the totalizing potential of biopolitical narratives
Biopolitics and Russian Studies: An Introduction
(Brill’s publications, 2018) Makarychev, Andrey
This introductory article explains how the concept of biopolitics can be used as an analytical tool in the sphere of Russian studies. The author elucidates different approaches to the idea of biopolitics in contemporary political philosophy, and relates the extant theoretical debate to the ongoing political and academic discussions on power and identity in Russia, both from domestic and international perspectives. He claims that biopolitical vocabulary is a nuanced cognitive instrument for unpacking a plethora of social and cultural dimensions inherent to relations of power, and further conceptualizing the specificity of post-Soviet illiberal regimes.
Biopower and Geopolitics as Russia's neighbourhood strategies: reconnecting people or reaggregating lands?
(Routledge, 2017) Makarychev, Andrey
In this article, we address geopolitics and biopower as two different yet mutually correlative discursive strategies of sovereign power in Russia. We challenge the dominant realist approaches to Russia’s neighborhood policy by introducing the concept of biopolitics as its key element, which makes analysis of political relations in the post-Soviet area more nuanced and variegated. More specifically, we address an important distinction between geopolitical control over territories and management of population as two of Russia’s strategies in its “near abroad.”
Biopower at Europe’s eastern margins: new facets of a research agenda
(Routledge, 2019) Makarychev, Andrey
This special issue seeks to explore the perspectives of applying the different modalities of biopolitical analysis to four country-based case studies at Europe’s eastern margins. The ambition of this collection is to examine issues pertaining to national political, social and cultural agendas through the prism of biopolitical theorizing as broadly understood. This issue offers a specific examination of the applicability of the concept of biopolitics to research in Central Europe, Russia, and the Caucasus.
Bordering and Identity-Making in Europe After the 2015 Refugee Crisis
(Routledge, 2018) Makarychev, Andrey
Introduction to the spacial issue that presents and analyzes the state of debate on EU's immigration policies from a geopolitical perspective
Borders in the Baltic Sea Region: Suturing the Ruptures
(London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) Makarychev, Andrey
Based on different case studies, the chapters collected in this volume contribute to the conceptualization of the BSR as a particular borderland case, for example, a complex regional formation located at the intersection of different cultural, ethnic, religious and civilizational flows and poles
Boris Nemtsov and Russian Politics: Power and Resistance
(Stuttgart: ibidem Verlag, 2018) Makarychev, Andrey; Yatsyk, Aleksandra
An edited volume in commemoration of Boris Nemtsov's contribution to Russian politics
Both in-between and out: national sovereignty and cross-border governmentality in the Euro 2012 in Lviv
(London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. (New Georgaphies of Europe)., 2016) Makarychev, Andrey; Yatsyk, Alexandra
The chapter focuses on the case of Lviv as a host city of UEFA Cup in 2012, and approaches this case study from the perspective of governmentality
Celebrating Borderlands in a Wider Europe. Nations and Identities in Ukraine, Georgia and Estonia
(2016) Makarychev, Andrey; Yatsyk, Alexandra
The book deploys borderland identities of a group of post-Soviet countries into the reviving binary logic of EU – Russia conflictual interaction
Eastern Borderlands as Europe-Makers: (How) Can neighbours redefine the EU?
(2017) Makarychev, Andrey
A general and strategic effect of EU’s Association Agreements and DCFTAs with Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine has been the extension of the concept of Europe and its wider opening to neighborhoods and margins. It is on this basis that a European normative order can be differentiated from both the ‘Russian world’ and Eurasian geopolitical space. However this paper argues that the process of association is not a unilateral move, but a multilateral and reciprocal development; it is a way for Europe to know more about itself, and to politically redefine itself. The neighbourhood policy causes controversial effects on the EU. On the one hand, it consolidates the liberal minded groups within European societies eager to see the EU as a promoter of values of freedom and civic liberties to be projected eastwards and defended in EU’s neighborhood. On the other hand, the problems of practical implementation tend to solidify sceptical groups in both the EU and its associated neighbours that contest not only the deepening of EU’s engagement with Ukraine, but EU ’s normative project as a whole. The implementation of the joint strategy of the EU and its close neighbours faces a challenge of finding a proper balance between two dominant – yet to a large extent contradictory – approaches. One consists of capitalizing on these countries’ status as victims of Russia’s policies, countries whose very existence is under threat, which implies support and help from the EU. Another, requiring much more consistent efforts, is for the associated neighbouring states to emerge as positive showcases of transition, and useful partners contributing not only to the transformation process in post-Soviet area, but also to EU’s and NATO’s security. The recent three years made clear that the former alone does not guarantee to Ukraine, Georgia or Moldova a fully-fledged European voice.
Entertain and Govern. From Sochi 2014 to FIFA 2018.
(Routledge, 2018) Yatsyk, Alexandra; Makarychev, Andrey
The article looks at Russia’s international sports politics from two different perspectives. The authors discuss sport mega-events as instruments of legitimizing the existing regime and stabilizing its foundations. They argue that, due to mega-events, the Russian state has found itself under persistent external pressures from international organizations, and has had to react to them and adjust its legal norms and policy practices accordingly. The key argument of the article is that both elements of the puzzle can be approached as central elements of governmentality
Estonia and the refugees: political discourses and artistic representations
(2017) Makarychev, Andrey
The article addresses two dimensions of the refugee debate in Estonia – political discourses and cultural representations. The authors specifically focus on distinctions between the mainstream Estonian narrative and that of the Russophone community, as well as on the role of Russia and Europe as two major shapers of the refugee debate
Europe in Crisis: “Old,” “New,” or Incomplete?
(PONARS Eurasia, 2018) Makarychev, Andrey; Kazharski, Aliaksei
The memo discusses the current crisis in the EU institutions from the viewpoint of the ideas of "old" and "new" Europe
From Sochi - 2014 to FIFA - 2018: a Fading Sovereignty?
(2017) Makarychev, Andrey; Yatsyk, Alexandra
In this article, we uncover the dynamics and the evolution of Russian discourses of sovereignty before and after the Sochi 2014 Olympic Games using some elements of Foucauldian methodology and constructivist reading of sovereignty as an institution. We argue that there is a discrepancy between the rhetoric of sovereign power and the institutional practices in which it is embedded. It leads us to theorize that sovereignty discourses are contextual, unstable and constitutively shaped by commitments taken as key elements of international socialization. In the case of Russia, these discourses can be divided into three groups: pre-Sochi, post-Sochi and pre-World 2018 Cup discursive formations. As we venture to demonstrate, Putin's model of sovereignty is in crisis, yet it has support, both domestic and international. In the near future, sport is likely to remain one of those spheres of high visibility where the ideology of surviving under sanctions and counter-attacking the West will be reified.
How to study and teach anew EU– Russia relations: a methodological conclusion in seven points
(Routledge, 2018) Braghiroli, Stefano; Hoffmann, Thomas; Makarychev, Andrey; Hoffmann, Thomas, toimetaja; Makarychev, Andrey, toimetaja