Dispute Inflation: Intangible Stakes and Tensions in the East and South China Seas

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED

CANCELLED

Professor Todd Hall

Dispute Inflation: Intangible Stakes and Tensions in the East and South China Seas

In this talk, Prof Todd Hall explores the dynamics at work in ongoing tensions in the East and South China Seas. Much work has focused on the escalatory behaviour of parties to the disputes in these regions, and in particular employed the model of the security dilemma to explain regional tensions. Prof Hall suggests that we also need to examine the ways in which disputes over specific, concrete issues have become increasingly linked to larger, more abstract and intangible concerns. To explain how this has occurred, Prof Hall will introduce several logics of dispute inflation through which disagreements can become invested with larger emotional, symbolic, or abstract significance. He will then examine how these logics are now playing out in China’s maritime periphery.

Todd H. Hall is an associate professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations and tutor in politics at St Anne’s College. His research interests extend to the areas of international relations theory; the intersection of emotion, affect, and foreign policy ; and Chinese foreign policy . Recent publications include articles on the dynamics of crises in East Asia, provocation in international relations, and the lessons of World War I for contemporary East Asian international politics. Professor Hall is also the author of Emotional Diplomacy: Official Emotion on the International Stage (Cornell University Press), which was named co-recipient of the International Studies Association’s 2016 Diplomatic Studies Section Book Award. His most recent work looks at the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute between Japan and the People’s Republic of China.

Organiser: Kerem Nisancioglu

Contact email: kn18@soas.ac.uk