Everyday Foreign Policy: Performing and Consuming the Nation

Abstract: Do you drink an americano or a rossiyano? Do you eat French fries or freedom fries? Our everyday choices are always political and ever more international. This book offers a way to theorize and expose how everyday foreign policy works at the grassroots level, using empirical material from Russia, sometimes literally from the kitchen table. The book argues that everyday foreign policy should be theorized as an assemblage of micro-practices and discourses across both physical and digital spaces, inside and outside the body. In this way, everyday foreign policy can be seen as a decentralized phenomenon, where biological and cultural elements are intertwined through physical and digital spaces, often expressed through consumerist and carnal practices. This book studies post-Crimea grassroots foreign policy and exposes motivations and coping mechanisms behind foreign policy practice on the individual level. The fundamental question this book seeks to address is: how do international relations, and specifically foreign policy, translate to the grassroots level? The book provides an overview of the most significant everyday foreign policy practices from the popular Russian perspective, ranging from sanctions to vaccinations.

Lisa Gaufman is Assistant Professor of Russian Discourse and Politics in the Department of European Politics and Society at the University of Groningen. Her research is situated at the intersection of political theory, international relations, media, and cultural studies, focusing on bottom-up approaches to international relations. Gaufman is the author of Security Threats and Public Perception: Digital Russia and the Ukraine Crisis (Palgrave, 2017) and Everyday Foreign Policy: Performing and Consuming the Russian Nation after Crimea (Manchester University Press 2023).

The workshop will be held in a hybrid format. Login details will be communicated after mandatory registration via this link: https://forms.office.com/e/MECBauwmu8?origin=lprLink

March 18th, 2024, from 12:00 till 2:00 pm
Université libre de Bruxelles
Campus du Solbosch – IEE Kant Room
39 Avenue Franklin Roosevelt
1050 Bruxelles

Registration required