Geopolitics and Expertise

Geopolitics and Expertise is an in-depth exploration of how expert knowledge is created and exercised in the external relations machinery of the European Union. Provides a rare, full-length work on transnational diplomatic practice Based on a rigorous and empirical study, involving over 100 interviews with policy professionals over seven years Focuses on the qualitative and contextual, rather than the quantitative and uniform Moves beyond traditional political science to blend human geography, international relations, anthropology, and sociology

Series Editors’ Preface vii Acknowledgements viii Introduction: The Crown Jewel 1 1 The Dead Relative: Bounding Europe in Europe 12 Geopolitics by Nobody; Carving Places out of Space; Embodied Europes 2 Knowledge and Policy in Transnational Fields 32 Placing Diplomatic Knowledge; Policy Fields; “The work of reciprocal elucidation” 3 Brussels and Theatre: Bureaucracy and Place 61 Planet Brussels; Those Who Hold the Pen: EU Professionals; The Political and the Technical – and the Social 4 Transnational Diplomats: Representing Europe in EU 27 86 European External Action Service; Curved Mirrors: Negotiating the National; The Group for Which There is no Term: The New Member States Copyrighted Material 5 Powers of Conceptualization and Contextualization 112 A New Object of Knowledge; Fields of Expertise in the European Quarter; “Most people just want to do what they are told” 6 Feel for the Game: Symbolic Capital in the European Quarter 133 Symbolic Capital; “We are dealing with elites”; “In the third degree of depth”; “An urbane, subtle approach”; Shifts and Spirals 7 Political Geographies of Expertise 171 Knowledge From and On the East; Finding a Market; “Things are evolving”; Managing Difference Conclusion: Circles of Knowledge 195 References 209 Index 225