International Politics from the Dinaric Karst: Landscapes of States and Empires

Abstract This paper argues for landscape as another form of situated knowledge in International Relations. It engages the literature on territory in IR and landscapes in cultural geography to emphasise the importance of holding the material and symbolic together when discussing land, terrains, and territories. Using a landscape approach to the Dinaric Karst, the paper shows how its physicality—geomorphology and ecology—and its interpretations are constitutive of the practice and study of international politics. First, the paper shows a different way of engaging the political character of karst landscapes. By using debates on the (lack of) forest cover in the Dinaric Karst, I recast the region away from nation-states into a history inter-imperiality that is entwined with both the specificities of karst ecologies and ways of interpreting them. And second, the paper discusses the geographic and anthropo-geographic imaginaries of Jovan Cvijić and his interlocutors who used the materiality of karst to argue for and against a Yugoslav state. Inspired by recent attempts to excavate more material thinkers of nature in international politics, I point to the connections Yugoslav thinkers made between terrain, peoples, and political projects.