Geopolitics and expertise : knowledge and authority in European diplomacy / Merje Kuus.

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Geopolitics and Expertise: Knowledge and Authority : in European Diplomacy; Copyright; Contents; Series Editors' Preface; Acknowledgements; Introduction: The Crown Jewel; "Evaporative things"; Contexts and Conversations; The Political, the Geographical, and the Social: A Roadmap of the Argument; Notes; Chapter One The Dead Relative: Bounding Europe in Europe; Geopolitics by Nobody; Carving Places out of Space; Borderless Europe?; Geopolitics renascent; Embodied Europes; Notes; Chapter Two Knowledge and Policy in Transnational Fields; Placing Diplomatic Knowledge; Policy Fields.

Habitus and the transnationalEurope; "The work of reciprocal elucidation"; Interviewing in practice; Notes; Chapter Three Brussels and Theatre: Bureaucracy and Place; Planet Brussels; The square kilometre; Those Who Hold the Pen: EU Professionals; Between cosmopolitanism and corporatism; Recruitment and working conditions; The quiet bureaucracy: The European Commission; The Political and the Technical -- and the Social; "A social, network-like thing"; On getting blooded; Notes; Chapter Four Transnational Diplomats: Representing Europe in EU 27; European External Action Service.

Curved Mirrors: Negotiating the NationalThe Group for Which There is no Term: The New Member States; Entering Europe; Recruitment; Learning the networks; Being a eurocrat; Notes; Chapter Five Powers of Conceptualization and Contextualization; A New Object of Knowledge; The birth of the neighbourhood; Fields of Expertise in the European Quarter; Man on a bicycle; The Brussels bubble; "Most people just want to do what they are told"; Powers of contextualization; Notes; Chapter Six Feel for the Game: Symbolic Capital in the European Quarter; Symbolic Capital; "We are dealing with elites."

Cosmopolitan Brussels"Natural reflex"; "In the third degree of depth"; "An urbane, subtle approach"; The big unsaid: money; La bella figura; Learning ease; Shifts and Spirals; Notes; Chapter Seven Political Geographies of Expertise; Knowledge From and On the East; Finding a Market; Learning and teaching; "Things are evolving"; Adaptation; The uses of history; Managing Difference; Notes; Conclusion: Circles of Knowledge; Spaces and Agents of Bureaucratic Knowledge; Less is More; Notes.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

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.