This thesis is an ethnography of the Italian-Slovenian border. The data presented in this thesis have been collected during one year of fieldwork (August 2008 - August 2009) that took place in the Province of Gorizia, the smallest of the region Friuli Venezia Giulia in the North-East of Italy. To be more specific, I conducted my fieldwork in the two areas of this Province that straddle the international border between Italy and Slovenia: the main town of Gorizia and the wine area of Collio that stretches North West of the town. I chose these areas because the town has been portrayed by some locals as a divided town as the Italian-Slovenian border straddles its peripheries and the peripheries of the Slovenian town of Nova Gorica, and the wine growers that live and/or work in the Collio area remove and replace the boundary according to their business. This thesis is about the making and marking of the Italian-Slovenian border now that both Italy and Slovenia are part of the European Union and, more importantly in this context, the Schengen Space. In fact, within the Schengen area the physical structures of the border have been erased; because of this erasure locals discussed the border as having ‘disappeared’, hence putting emphasis on the border structure as an object of demarcation. This thesis is an ethnographic example of how such a combined erasure (of borders within the EU) and simultaneous maintenance of state borders is being experienced on an everyday basis. This research aims to be an example of how Gorizia and the Collio area are shaped by the local residents’ narratives and perceptions of the political processes of bordering and de-bordering: an example of border theory from the local perspective. This work wants to be an example of border as a quality -as ongoing activity-, rather than as a fixed object. As such this thesis is looking at borderworks: the multiple qualities of borders, and how those qualities constantly change.

This practice-based PhD, titled The Itinerant, proposes a concept for exhibiting processes, detected along a route thought through various frames of geopolitical relations. Its point of departure is framed by a declaration of solidarity via statesocialist institutions, of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), in particular, with revolutionary independence movements, such as the P.L.O. (Palestinian Liberation Organization), manifested in educational collaborations around image production. The project is built around the micro-political potency of a non-institutional archive of photographic images arriving from the GDR and P.L.O. in the 1980s, and therefore intends to enact the emergence of a vocabulary for deconstructing macropolitical narratives of global Cold War histories. The work of deconstruction thus begins within the micro-political dimension of an archive whose mode of existence may even be limiting our ability to speak of an 'archive' in the common sense. Hence, the inherent archival function of the photographic image transforms the materiality at stake; it may decompose itself, or end up working against itself. Such work is absolutely necessary for the possibility of undoing the exhibition as a territorial and synchronic entity, as a major responsibility in exhibiting making in the early 21st century, when globalisation takes place in capital and data. The focus of investigation inhabits the actual working conditions of making and exhibiting photographs as rehearsed in a series of educational gatherings around photography, which unfolded throughout the 1980s in Beirut, East Berlin and Tunis between the East German photographer Horst Sturm and former fedayeen / then photographers of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (P.L.O.), and which helped place the call for the liberation of Palestine on an international and public display. The Itinerant is the first project attempting to complicate the support for the Palestinian liberation movement by discussing image/exhibition production based in geopolitically defined ideologies of a socialist internationalism during the global Cold War. The collapse of the socialist project in 1989 that spilled into world-fracturing events demands that we situate ourselves within the changing geopolitical and economic order of the world. This project resonates deeply in an intergenerational contract along the continuities and discontinuities of that kind of internationalism, and thus takes a position within the realms of knowledge embodied by members of societies that experienced and are experiencing in everyday life the collapsed or as yet-unfinished project of becoming independent in relation to globalising powers of capitalism or from Western narratives of history. Such investigation results in the necessity to conceive photography as a network of practices, which activates a spatiality between ‘here and elsewhere,’ the two being, simultaneously, the conditions of production. In other words, photography can be mobilised here through a deep questioning of its entangled practices, processes and conditions: firstly, as the continuation of a militant struggle by other means including a discussion on the question of solidarity, violence and economics; and secondly, as complex exhibiting processes in geopolitics, which demands to take position, not on-behalf of, but to speak from one’s own position for a Cause emerging today out of the problems of exhibition making in the field of contemporary art. I speculate about this network of practices as being constitutive of a concept of exhibiting in the geopolitics of the 21st century. The thesis is repeatedly framed by a single sentence by Jean Genet, whose book Un Captif amoureux (1986) has provided a crucial resonating body and interlocutor throughout the entire research process. The multiple returns demonstrate a possibility to labour the complex set of layers that such geopolitical relations constitute. In my attempt to dedicate the practice-based and theory-driven research to anti-colonial thinking, the thesis takes distance from producing a ready-to-use or copy/paste manual for ‘curatorial practice’ commonly understood as placing objects and/or images on public display. This contextualisation demands situating this research within a trans-disciplinary setting, i.e., The Itinerant entangles concepts from theory, lived experience, living memory, from travelling and teaching, from academia, the means of art, and from the militant struggle. My approach wishes to open up towards a thinking that affords the possibilities of transversing disciplines, regions, geographies, time-zones, borders, generations and economic systems from which a geopolitics emerges. Such possibilities shift from space to spatiality in exhibition-making. This geopolitical concern implicates us today in the prolonged conflicting wills in the Middle East, in which taking a binary position would perpetuate two strong forces of European enlightenment: representation and individualism. In this frame, an exhibition can only be a symptom as it insists on being interpreted, this being, in itself, a symptom of the limits of European modernity. The thesis discusses in seven chapters and two inserts (Transit A and Transit B) the projects, practices, proposals and positions by Ariella Azoulay, Bruno Barbey, Heike Behrend, Berthold Beiler, Jacques Derrida, Richard Dindo, Dziga Vertov Group, Tarek Elhaik, Okwui Enwezor, Kodwo Eshun/Ros Gray, Frantz Fanon, Subversive Film (Reem Shilleh/Mohanad Yaqubi), Mark Fisher, Jean Genet, Iris Gusner, Joachim Hellwig, Tariq Ibrahim, Youssef Khotoub, Armin Linke, Achille Mbembe, Reinhard Mende, Heiner Müller, The Otolith Group, Griselda Pollock, Evelyn Richter, Irit Rogoff, Suely Rolnik, Abderrahmane Sissako, Terry Smith, Susan Sontag, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Hito Steyerl, Horst Sturm, Clemens von Wedemeyer, a.o.

This thesis explores the impact of the border between Turkey and Iraq on Kurdish identity. Since the demarcation of the border in 1926, both Turkey and Iraq have struggled to accommodate their Kurdish citizens into their common national communities. There have been numerous bloody conflicts on both sides. As of September 2016, the Iraqi Kurdistan President repeatedly announced that it was time for Kurdistan to demand independence. He stated that 'the time has come to redraw Middle East boundaries'. On the Turkish side of the border, a new series of bloody conflicts began at Turkey's Iraq border after the peace talks between the Turkish state and the Kurdish Worker's Party [or PKK] paused in July 2015. Kurds have been exposed to different nation-state building processes with different notions of inclusion and exclusion in Iraq and Turkey. Kurds in each state have had a different socio-political environment within which to construct and practice their identity. Based on original data collected during a rarely encountered peaceful period on both sides of the border, this thesis addresses three important research gaps in the literature. (1) It brings Kurds' voices, self-understanding and self-narratives to the existing body of knowledge. The thesis explores how Kurds themselves perceive their nation and construct their identity. It shows how different socio-political environments in each state have shaped a different Kurdish identity and discusses the implications of these differences. (2) The thesis also explores how Turkish Kurds and Iraqi Kurds perceive their ruling states as well as construct their identity in relation to them. (3) It explores how Turkish Kurds and Iraqi Kurds perceive their nation and narratively construct their identity in relation to each other. The thesis examines how bordering, as a process of socio-spatial homogenisation and differentiation, works on each side of the border between Turkey and Iraq.

This dissertation examines the impact of ‘Tongan culture’ as represented by those with power in the Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga (FWC). The word “free” in the name of a church usually denotes the desire to be independent of the State or any other outside control but in this context it was often the contrary. From the outset of the Wesleyan Mission in 1826, the chiefs who embodied and controlled Tonga, welcomed the early European explorers yet with the twin underlying aims of gaining benefits while simultaneously maintaining their supremacy. The dissertation argues that the outcome leaves the FWC in dire need of inculturation, with Gospel challenging ‘Culture.’ Historical and anthropological approaches are used to substantiate this claim. Encouraged by Captain Cook’s report the missionaries arrived and were welcomed by the chiefs. The conversion of the powerful Taufa‘ahau was pivotal to the spread of the Wesleyan Mission yet this marriage of convenience came at a cost because Taufa‘ahau had his own agenda of what a church should be. This study assesses Tongan demeanour prior to the arrival of Europeans and in the early years of settlement, especially the response to Cook in 1773, 74, 77 which set the tone for later interaction. It then looks at how Tongan ways have moulded the FWC since the beginning of the Wesleyan Mission in 1826 by relying on data from archives, interviews, and journals of early explorers and missionaries. This dissertation argues that what is widely accepted as the Tongan way of life, which the FWC represents as the Gospel, is essentially the interest of the elite with power and wealth. From the start the chiefs were not only interested in the Wesleyan Mission for religious but also for political reasons; indeed they made and even still make no such separation. Because of this collusion of the FWC and the state, the FWC is recognized as the supporter of the status quo, its ministers being part of the elite system of social and spiritual control. The ensuing confusion between the church, Christ, and culture leads to a neglect of the poor and marginal and a failure to speak prophetically to the elite.

This thesis presents Giovanni Gentile’s actual idealism as a radical constructivist doctrine for use in moral theory. The first half describes the moral theory that Gentile explicitly identifies with actual idealism, according to which all thinking, rather than an exclusive domain of ‘practical reason,’ has a moral character. It is argued that after Gentile’s turn to Fascism in the early 1920s, this theory is increasingly conflated with his political doctrine. This entails several major changes that cannot be squared with the underlying metaphysics. The second half of the thesis develops a more plausible account of Gentilean moral constructivism based on the pre-Fascist idea of reasoning as an internal dialogue. Comparisons and contrasts are drawn with contemporary constructivist doctrines, as well as theories employing dialogical conceptions of reason. The internal dialogue is presented as a device enabling the thinking subject to make objective judgements about real-world problems despite the impossibility of her occupying a fully objective standpoint. Thus actual idealist moral theory is offered as an example of constructivism at its most radical, inviting advocates of less radical varieties to re-assess the foundations on which their theories are built.

Contractarianism has a distinguished history and is one of the most influential schools of thought nowadays, yet there are only few general discussions about this school. The research question which intrigues me is whether contemporary contractarianism can provide a satisfactory normative justification for political principles. I argue that contractarianism, as a methodology, consists of three elements: a conception of practical reason, hypothetical contractors, and a hypothetical contract. Based on various conceptions of practical reason, different contractarian models can be developed. In this thesis, I examine three possible contractarian models: Hobbesian contractarianism (represented by David Gauthier), Kantian contractarianism (represented by T. M. Scanlon) and hybrid contractarianism (represented by John Rawls). I diagnose the shortcomings of these three existing models respectively. Hobbesian contractarianism assumes a conception of rationality, hence it conceives hypothetical contractors as individual utilitymaximizers, and the hypothetical contract as a mutually advantageous agreement. Kantian contractarianism assumes a conception of reasonableness, hence it conceives hypothetical contractors as moral persons who would behave in a way which could be justifiable to one another, and the hypothetical contract as an agreement that no one could reasonably reject. These two models fail since their conceptions of practical reason are too one-sided: the former overlooks reasonableness, whereas the latter overlooks rationality. Due to their one-sideness, these models can at best justify political principles that are general but not overriding. Hybrid contractarianism avoids this problem by assuming that hypothetical contractors were both rational and reasonable and proving that rationality and reasonableness would justify the same hypothetical contract. However, in order to show the congruence between rationality and reasonableness, this model inevitably assume substantial, controversial conceptions of practical reason. Hence, hybrid contractarianism can at best justify political principles that are overriding but not general. The failures of these three models show the limit of this methodology. No matter how contractarians construct their models, their models are subject to the fatal dilemma of choosing between generality and priority. While these two properties are necessary for political principles, this implies that contractarianism does not have the resources to offer a satisfactory normative justification for political principles.

Ethnography of the state has long been focused on either a state’s reproduction of itself or on ‘the people’s’ resistance to it. In both cases, the state is cast as a unified, holistic identity that exists in diametric opposition to the people living within its borders. There have been some recent attempts to speak back to these assumptions (e.g. Navaro-Yashin 2002), but we are still left with a monolithic image of the state. This thesis is an attempt to break down the ‘obvious’ divides between the reified concepts of People and State, especially in regards to Arab Middle Eastern countries. My analysis is based on 13 months of fieldwork in Damascus, Syria, where I witnessed how politics are lived and described in the course of everyday life. This work focuses on popular stories about and interactions with what might be labeled global and state politics. Thus I read their stories to not be just narratives but narrative actions—a concept I suggest considering as a ‘narraction’ to encompass its seemingly dualistic, but practically singular nature. Political narractions in Syria often take the form of identity-work or conspiracy theory; this thesis approaches these as ethnographic objects and undertakes a more performative analysis of these narractions. I suggest that in narracting these stories, Syrians are doing a form of relations, making connections and disconnections between the various subjects within the narractions (and themselves) in a manner that is highly fluid and flexible and can seem somewhat ambiguous (if not in the conventional use of the term). That there can be simultaneous connections and disconnections is not as mutually exclusive a state as it would appear and is also one that Syrians experience in relation to kinship and friendship. In a comparative turn, I suggest that in both familial and political relations, the disconnections (challenges) are not a form of ‘resistance,’ but are a negative (Narotzky and Moreno 2002) aspect of relations that are just as essential to the overall construction and maintenance of a relationship as the positive ones we are more familiar with (e.g. familial affection or political activism). Finally, I argue that this process of ‘making connections’ via observing and narracting relationships can provide a broader model of knowledge production that applies to the work of anthropologists as much as to the conspiracy theorizing of Syrians.

In contrast to the Great Game narrative, this thesis demonstrates the extent and limitations of Kazakhstan in generating autonomy. It provides a detailed account of the tactical and strategic choices that the state has made, particularly through its energy industry, to improve its position relative to Russia, China and the West. Using the innovative marginality literature, this thesis reimagines the Central Asian state as more powerful regional actor than has previously envisioned. Moreover, it explores how Kazakhstan is able to effect change in Russian and Chinese foreign policy, and exemplifies a marginal state affecting the centres of power. To demonstrate this, the thesis examines the strategic choices of the Kazak state, its governance structure and the changing identity politics. As geopolitics becomes increasingly antagonistic in Europe, it is vitally important that we understand how these large states are ‘playing’ overseas. It is suggested that Kazakhstan is not a “small” or a “weak” state and from its position on the periphery has exercised remarkable leverage: it is a prism thought which we can see the truly multi-polar nature of world politics in the second decade of the twenty-first century.

This dissertation presents an analytical study of the evolution of the right of political selfdetermination and the influence of the principle of non-interference on promotion of this right. The intellectual and legal interests in democracy, good governance and social justice have contributed to the development of this right and its realisation for peoples lacking the least degree of good governance. The right of political self-determination is strongly associated with international intervention because governments facing popular demands for this right often resort to repression and military means to suppress such claims. Such interventions have also been driven by contemporary interest in supporting collective rights through international organisations that monitor and identify violations of various political rights. Thus, this dissertation focuses on the tension between the principle of non-interference and the modern legal trend to promote the political rights of all peoples. This research contributes considerable insights into the transformation of the principle of non-interference from an absolute obligation into a flexible concept by tracing the contributing legal changes both in international practices and in emerging rules and principles in international law. It is concluded that the promotion of the right of self-determination has resulted in international practices that have dramatically influenced and caused tension with the principle of noninterference. Keywords: right of political self-determination, democracy, statehood, the principle of noninterference, international intervention, sovereignty.

This thesis presents a history of the concept of the state as a political community. Beginning with the early-nineteenth century and using debates about state formation and state recognition as its source material, it uses the language of English-speaking policy makers and political commentators to explore understandings of statehood across different time periods. The thesis argues that the meaning and connotations of the state have changed significantly in the past two hundred years, as it has become more salient in images of world politics. In particular, the state has evolved to incorporate the idea of the 'nation,' such that when governments act they are perceived to have their populations 'in tow.' These conceptual changes are surprisingly recent, solidified particularly since the Second World War. Four broad themes structure the argument in each chapter. First, the historical 'nation' has become an increasingly dominant way of conceptualising the populations of states. Second, the state has come to be construed as the inevitable unit of world politics, corroborated by the assumption that each one arises out of a pre-existing 'nation.' Third, the state has increasingly been perceived as a unitary actor with its own consciousness, separate from 'government.' Finally, the state with its nationalist implications, has come to define the dynamics of international politics, a means of simplifying an ever more complex world. The thesis roots contemporary (English language) understandings of the state in a particular historical and political context, defined by the contestation between 'American' and 'British' worldviews, the triumph of liberal internationalism and the multiple interests at stake in the image of the state as a nation. The thesis thus exposes the intensely political nature of language and the complacency of International Relations with regard to its own use of words and conventional narratives.