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Biopower and geopolitics as Russia's neighborhood strategies: reconnecting people or reaggregating lands?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Andrey Makarychev  and
Alexandra Yatsyk
Andrey Makarychev*
Affiliation:
Johan Skytte Institute of Political Science, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia
Alexandra Yatsyk
Affiliation:
Centre for Cultural Studies of post-Socialism, Kazan Federal University, Kazan, Russia
*
∗Corresponding author. Email: andrey.makarychev@ut.ee; asmakarychev@gmail.com
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Abstract

In this article, we address geopolitics and biopower as two different yet mutually correlative discursive strategies of sovereign power in Russia. We challenge the dominant realist approaches to Russia's neighborhood policy by introducing the concept of biopolitics as its key element, which makes analysis of political relations in the post-Soviet area more nuanced and variegated. More specifically, we address an important distinction between geopolitical control over territories and management of population as two of Russia's strategies in its “near abroad.”

Keywords

biopoliticsgeopoliticsRussianeighborhood
Type
Special Section: Biopolitics and National Identities
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , January 2017 , pp. 25 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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