Making Things International 1

"Surprising, informing, disturbing and ultimately note- worthy in its culmination of geographically relevant material."—Progress in Human Geography

Building on recent debates in critical social theory and international relations, Making Things International I: Circuits and Motion presents twenty-five essays that engage the global, the local, and the international through the lens of objects. It represents the first substantial new materialist intervention in global politics and international relations, offering a diverse and provocative set of reflections on how different objects create, sustain, complicate, and trouble the international.

Problematizing the stuff of global life, Making Things International focuses on contemporary materialist scholarship on the international realm. The first of two volumes, these original contributions by both new and established scholars examine how war, diplomacy, trade, communication, and mobile populations are made by things: weapons, vehicles, shipping containers, commodities, passports, and more. The authors demonstrate how mundane, everyday objects—not normally understood as international—are in fact deeply implicated in how we think of the world: blood, garbage, viruses, traffic lights, clocks, memes, and ships’ ballast.

Contributors: Michele Acuto, U College London; Peter Adey, Royal Holloway U of London; Rune Saugmann Andersen, U of Helsinki; Jessica Auchter, U of Tennessee at Chattanooga; Mike Bourne, Queen’s U Belfast; Kathleen P. J. Brennan; Elizabeth Cobbett, U of East Anglia; Stefanie Fishel, Hobart and William Smith Colleges; Emily Gilbert, U of Toronto; Jairus Grove, U of Hawai‘i at Manoa; Charlie Hailey, U of Florida; John Law, Open U; Wen-yuan Lin, National Tsing-hua U; Oded Löwenheim, Hebrew U of Jerusalem; Chris Methmann; Benjamin J. Muller, U of Western Ontario; Can E. Mutlu, Bilkent U; Geneviève Piché; Joseph Pugliese, Macquarie U; Katherine Reese; Michael J. Shapiro, U of Hawai‘i at Manoa; Benjamin Stephan; Daniel Vanderlip; William Walters, Carleton U; Melissa Autumn White, U of British Columbia; Lauren Wilcox, U of Cambridge; Yvgeny Yanovsky.

Mark B. Salter is professor of political studies at the University of Ottawa. He is author of Rights of Passage: The Passport in International Relations and Barbarians and Civilization in International Relations and is editor of Research Methods in Critical Security Studies (with Can E. Mutlu), Mapping Transatlantic Security Relations, and Politics at the Airport (Minnesota, 2008). In 2014, he was awarded the Canadian Political Science Association Prize for Teaching Excellence.

Contents

Introduction: Circuits and Motion
Mark B. Salter
Part I. World in Motion
Electronic Passports
William Walters and Daniel Vanderlip
Passport Photos
Mark B. Salter
The Traffic Light
Katherine Reese
AVATAR
Benjamin J. Muller
Containers
Can E. Mutlu
Bicycle
Oded Löwenheim
Boats
Geneviève Piché
Ballast
Charlie Hailey
Part II. Bodies in Motion
Symptoms
John Law and Wen-yuan Lin
Corpses
Jessica Auchter
Virus
Melissa Autumn White
Microbes
Stefanie Fishel
Breathless
Peter Adey
Blood
Jairus Grove
Bodies
Lauren Wilcox
Tanks
Michael J. Shapiro
Drones
Joseph Pugliese
Part III. Things in Motion
MemeLife
Kathleen P. J. Brennan
Video
Rune Saugmann Andersen
Garbage
Michele Acuto
Carbon
Chris Methmann and Benjamin Stephan
Currency
Emily Gilbert
Biometric MasterCard
Elizabeth Cobbett
Cocaine
Mike Bourne
Clock
Yvgeny Yanovsky
Acknowledgments
Contributors
Index