Category Archives: ethnic cleansing

Fears and Fantasies about the “Flesh of the Nation”

Yesterday Adis Maksic defended his Ph D dissertation “Mobilizing for Ethnic Violence? Ethno-National Political Parties and the Dynamics of Ethno-Politicization.” Adis is a Sarajevo native who was fortunately able to come to the United States with his family after his family suffered a … Continue reading

Posted in Affect, Bosnia, Bosnian war, Cartography, Current affairs, Democracy, ethnic cleansing, genocide, Georgia, nationalism, neuropolitics, South Ossetia, World political map | Leave a comment

The Crimea Precedent & the Post-Soviet De Facto States

The well-known Political Science blog The Monkey Cage, now owned by the Washington Post (now owned by Jeff Bezos; we all work for Amazon now) posted earlier today a concise 3 graph summary of what our De Facto State Research Survey reveals … Continue reading

Posted in Abkhazia, Armenia, August War, Caucasus conflict, Current affairs, De Facto States, ethnic cleansing, Five Day War, forced displacement, Geography, Nagorny Karabakh, Putin, Russia, Saakashvili, World political map | Tagged | 1 Comment

Global Conflicts. My Online Course Syllabus

    I’ve been teaching ‘global conflicts’ at Virginia Tech for over twenty years, initially as an undergraduate course called “Geography of Global Conflicts.” In 1995, I offered the course online for the first time. The course has evolved considerably … Continue reading

Posted in ethnic cleansing, forced displacement, Geography, Kurdistan, Kurds, Nagorno-Karabakh, Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, Nagorny Karabakh, nationalism, Political Borders, Political Geography, South Ossetia, Turkey | Tagged | Leave a comment

The Birth of a Nation: Radovan Karadžić and the Ethnopoliticization of Bosnia in 1990

By the time he strode to the podium in Skenderija Hall, Sarajevo, on 12 July 1990 to speak, the journey of Dr Radovan Karadžić from obscure psychiatrist to politician, wartime leader, and later accused war criminal had begun. Karadžić had been working for months … Continue reading

Posted in Affect, Bosnia, Bosnian war, Current affairs, Democracy, ethnic cleansing, genocide, political system, Radovan Karadzic, Rhetoric, war crimes, World political map | Tagged | 2 Comments

Internal Legitimacy in De Facto States

The question of legitimacy is, of course, a central one in the study of de facto states. Unrecognized states don’t have it from the international community (or from only a few as in the case of Abkhazia and South Ossetia), … Continue reading

Posted in Abkhazia, Caucasus conflict, Current affairs, ethnic cleansing, Five Day War, genocide, Geography, Geopolitics, Georgia, legitimacy, Russia, Saakashvili, South Ossetia, World political map | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

‘Land for Peace’ in Nagorny Karabakh? PUBLISHED

My latest publication, with Dr John O’Loughlin, from the De Facto States Research Project, funded by the US National Science Foundation, is “Land for Peace in Nagorny Karabakh? Political Geographies and Public Attitudes inside a Contested De Facto State” which … Continue reading

Posted in Abkhazia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Caucasus conflict, Current affairs, De Facto States, ethnic cleansing, forced displacement, Geography, Nagorno-Karabakh, Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, Nagorny Karabakh, Political Borders, Political Geography, World political map | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Inside South Ossetia article published

The article “Inside South Ossetia: a survey of attitudes in a de facto state” has just been published by Post-Soviet Affairs (now owned by Taylor & Francis). This article is based on a research field trip conducted in 2010 and … Continue reading

Posted in August War, Caucasus conflict, Current affairs, De Facto States, ethnic cleansing, Five Day War, forced displacement, Geography, Geopolitics, George Bush, Georgia, nationalism, Political Geography, Saakashvili, South Ossetia, World political map | Tagged , | Leave a comment

The Irish-Japanese Axis

At a session on De Facto state regimes at last month’s ASN, Tom de Waal wittily remarked on how there appears to be an Irish-Japanese axis of researchers studying these oddities of the world political map. Looking at the presenters … Continue reading

Posted in Abkhazia, August War, De Facto States, ethnic cleansing, Five Day War, Geopolitics, Nagorno-Karabakh, Nagorny Karabakh, nationalism, Political Geography, South Ossetia, World political map | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The Improvised State

Alex Jeffrey is a lecturer in Geography at Cambridge University in the (maybe not so) United Kingdom (what say you Scotland?). He is the author of a theoretically innovative new book called The Improvised State: Sovereignty, Performance and Agency in … Continue reading

Posted in Bosnia, Bosnian war, Critical Geopolitics, Current affairs, Democracy, ethnic cleansing, ICTY, nationalism, Radovan Karadzic, state theory | Leave a comment

Conference Season

Each year different tribes of academic laborers have their trade shows. This laborer is attending two virtually back to back, the Association of American Geographers meeting in Los Angeles and then the Association for the Study of Nationalities conference in … Continue reading

Posted in Caucasus conflict, Critical Geopolitics, Current affairs, De Facto States, ethnic cleansing, Five Day War, Nagorno-Karabakh, Nagorny Karabakh, nationalism, Political Geography, South Ossetia | Tagged | 2 Comments