Dialectics of International Interventions through Scale, Space, and Time

Abstract

This talk advances a dialectical conceptualization of interventions that allows for a better understanding of their diverse modalities and enduring mechanisms of order-making, In so doing, it stresses the intertwined histories and practices of interventions as integral components of colonial modernity in relation to the histories and practices of empires and their contemporary rearticulations. Methodologically, it identifies three key historical processes: a) the co-formation of interventions’ state-building, economic development, and cultural practices; b) the co-production of institutions and infrastructural systems; and c) the cumulative accretion of interventions’ infrastructures and imaginaries.

Presenter’s Profile

Debora V. Malito is Associate Professor of International Relations at the Xi’an Jiaotong – Liverpool University in Suzhou, China.

Her work intersects critical approaches in the study of sovereignty and international intervention. Current research projects concern: the unmaking of political orders through interventionist projects and the political economy of measuring governance.

Her publications have appeared in journals such as International Peacekeeping, Politikon and Third World Quarterly; she is the author of Destabilising Interventions in Somalia (Routledge 2020) and co-editor of the Palgrave Handbook of Indicators in Global Governance (2018) with G. Umbach and N. Bhuta.