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• The paper generalises the classical approach to structural change. • It brings together different ways of aggregating sectors and social groups. • Economic interdependencies can act as constraints to political-economic conflict. • Sectors and groups can hold different understandings of the system. • Such understandings and material and political conditions shape endogenous dynamics. The paper builds on the classical understanding of the interplay between material processes and political conflicts, but generalises it in several key respects. This approach does not assume relevant political-economic aggregations ex ante (such as industries or 'classes'); rather, it explores different possible ways of aggregating social groups and defining their interests depending on the situation under investigation. Moreover, interdependencies in the economy impose the need to keep conflicts within boundaries that are compatible with the viability of the system. Because sectors and groups can be aggregated in different ways, dynamics also depends on how actors represent the system and their position therein, and hence what they understand their interest to be. Different representations give rise to different definitions of competing interests and viability requirements, which in turn generate different endogenous dynamics of the political-economic system. The approach is illustrated through the examples of the Eurozone crisis and Covid-19 crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Constantly shifting geopolitical-economic conditions of the Korean peninsula pose analytical challenges that existing approaches to the inter-Korean border have failed to address; they require a fresh epistemological perspective. The concept of a frontier, which has been widely employed in association with Western history, is helpful in elucidating these complexities. This paper claims that conflicting imperial interests and imperatives construct the inter-Korean border as a frontier. Once a geopolitical front line to recover lost territory and extend freedom, the inter-Korean border was relegated to the periphery as the Cold War order persisted. It was only after the early 2000s that a new geoeconomic vision of frontier was promoted in South Korean academia and policy circles. However, it is not a clear-cut transition but a more complicated competition between geopolitical and geoeconomic visions that has constructed the border in the form of a frontier. Examining the recent conflicts in border cities regarding the distribution of anti-North Korean leaflets across the border, this paper demonstrates that these imperial visions projected in the form of frontiers lay bare hope, profit, or desire but mask the suffering of local border people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes bargaining interactions recorded in Ghana's Kumasi Central Market to examine how traders employ kasadϵ ('sweet/persuasive talk') in transactional exchanges. Kasadϵ —a compound noun derived from kasa ('talk' or 'language') and dϵ ('sweet')—is a genre of market speech that simultaneously incorporates Akan norms of verbal politeness and the art of persuasion. In interviews on the metapragmatics of kasadϵ, market women highlighted their use of complimentary address forms and deference markers to pamper (krɔkrɔ) potential and recurring customers. My analysis of recorded bargaining interactions, however, revealed that traders also wield rougher, more argumentative language—a style that violates the Akan ideal of politeness and blurs the boundaries between conflict and mock conflict talk. That is, while traders reported that kasadϵ denotes good, polite speech, actual trading talk incorporates a mixture of indirect, direct, antagonistic, and deferential forms. Using two recorded bargaining interactions, this paper presents a detailed analysis of these juxtaposed forms of marketplace talk. I argue that while both styles are critical in economic exchanges—one for maintaining customer relationships, the other for protecting transactional gains—each presents interactional and transactional risks. The tension between these competing motivations creates interactional ambiguity and requires moment by moment navigation. • Ghanaian market traders use (kasadϵ) 'sweet talk' in bargaining transactions to nurture exchange relationships. • 'Sweet talk' in marketplace bargaining incorporates features of Akan verbal politeness. • Traders also use a verbal form that violates Akan politeness and hinges between conflict and mock conflict. • Both forms are critical in economic exchanges but present interactional and transactional risks. • Amid economic precarity a single transactional exchange is a high-stakes negotiation; traders rapidly pivot between forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Conceptually, this paper is about the becoming of states and how such states are a socially constructed spaces, imagined and performed by those who perceive themselves as belonging to that state. It asks through what imaginaries and performative practices does a state come into being? More specifically, the paper investigates how the state is imagined and performed in times of war and peace hoping to offer insights to the co-constitution of war or peace and the state. The analysis of the fledgling state and suspended state-making process makes visible the emplaced imaginary and performative quality of every state. It may also shed light on the constitutive relationship between war-making on one hand and state-making or state-breaking on the other, as it explores an embryotic process of crafting a state in the midst of war. Empirically, this paper investigates the state-making process of Republika Srpska (RS) through the conceptual lens of state becoming. Here RS figures both as an empirical state-making process, and as an example of an imagined and performed state to be conceptually explored. In particular it reads the irredentism of RS to justify its territorial claims on the basis of real or imagined historic or ethnic affiliations within the context of the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the parallel state-making projects that remade the Western Balkans. Thus, this paper adds to the interdisciplinary debates on becoming a state as well as to imagined and performed statehood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extractive activities such as oil drilling, mining and fishing often appear implicated in international maritime boundary disputes. While natural resources' crucial role as a catalyst for conflict has been well-noted in the literature, such an approach has typically assumed a contextual and passive position of natural resources with little political agency for altering the dynamics of a confrontation. This paper provides an alternative perspective in which resource activities constitute a willful agent that works in part to govern the course of the boundary dispute. Drawing on Foucault's notion of governmentality, I look at how South Korean fishing activities near a disputed maritime border between the two Koreas, called the Northern Limit Line, may be imbued with intentionality representing an indirect arm of the state's geopolitical agenda. Mobilizing the realist narrative of an immovable border and the mundane tactics of education sessions and at-sea radio communication, I suggest that the South Korean government is seeking to create subjects in fishers to reinforce the state objectives of boundary legitimization and defense of claimed waters. The analysis, however, also demonstrates an ambivalent nature of governmentality, with fishers muddling the state interventions through their own conduct and rationale. The South Korean government thus faces a delicate task of managing the fishing operation vis-à-vis the boundary dispute. Taking the seemingly innocuous resource activity such as fishing to the center stage of power relations, this paper also tables one way of engaging with maritime boundaries, one of the understudied domains in political geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about the inhabitants of a small village in Bangladesh, which lies on the border with the Indian state of Assam. Due to an Indo-Bangladesh agreement, inhabitants are confronted with losing their agricultural lands. In addition, since 2010, the Border Security Force of India (BSF) impedes residents in approaching their gardens, an action that has led to repeated confrontations between the bsf and the villagers. Both threats instigate high levels of fear among the residents. However, their hopes are also high. How can we explain equally high levels of fear and hope among the residents? I suggest that the simultaneous surfacing of fear and hope sheds light on "bipolar" state practices on the ground (i.e., at the same time targeting and protecting lives), as well as the entanglement of the existential and the political (i.e., vulnerability and a demand for recognition) in the everyday lives of the residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • The pattern of three functional spaces and three space conflicts are described. • An index for analyzing the intensity of space conflicts is constructed. • The moderate boundary theory is proposed based on the principle of value equilibrium. • Conflicts within moderate boundary are reserved as urban construction space. • Conflicts outside moderate boundary are reserved as production or ecological space. The multi-functionality and the finiteness of land resources collectively determine the inevitable space conflicts among urban construction space (SUC), grain production space (SGP), and ecological protection space (SEP) in planning. Moreover, the increasing urban expansion is expected to further exacerbate these conflicts. However, there is a lack of research on solving space conflicts in planning under the multi-objective. Given this, taking Xuzhou City as an example, using planning data, we analyzed the patterns of space conflicts. Then we proposed a novel method to extract the urban moderate boundary (UMB) based on the principle of value equilibrium. Finally, using UMB as the space boundary to solve the conflicts. The results show that we detected three types of space conflicts, namely construction-production conflicts (CPC), construction-ecological conflicts (CEC), and production-ecological conflicts (PEC), with an area of 17.31 km2, 14.13 km2, and 3.24 km2 of each conflicting area respectively. The land value corresponding to the UMB is 941.90 yuan / km2. The CPC and CEC within the UMB should be reserved as SUC, those outer parts of the boundary should be reserved as SGP and SEP. The PEC should be reserved as SEP according to the principle of ecological priority. After conflict resolution, the new layout of urban functional space was obtained, showing an area of 240.18 km2, 42.56 km2, and 55.35 km2 for SUC, SGP, and SEP, respectively. The new perspective and method proposed in this paper can provide a reference for urban planning and urban functional space layout optimization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]