Publications

For descriptions of current research themes, see the ‘Research Themes’ section. Copyright laws do not permit me to post PDF files on the web. If you have trouble accessing the articles (list after the books), feel free to request a copy from me.

Books

Kuus_Geopolitics_Expertise_coverKuus, M. Geopolitics and Expertise: Knowledge and Authority in European Diplomacy, Wiley-Blackwell, 2014 (paperback, hardcover, and e-book). The introductory chapter is freely available for download at the publisher’s site.

Link to the book’s page at publisher’s site.

Geopolitics and Expertise is an in-depth exploration of how expert knowledge is created and exercised in European Union institutions. It traces how geopolitical arguments are deployed by foreign policy professionals there and how these practices fit into and transform the social milieu of the European Quarter. The book incorporates over 100 interviews with EU foreign policy professionals over the course of seven years. Blending human geography with international relations, anthropology, and sociology, it illuminates the inner workings of knowledge and power in transnational regulatory institutions

Kuus_Ashgate_coverDodds, K., Kuus, M. and Sharp, J. (eds). The Ashgate Research Companion to Critical Geopolitics, Ashgate, 2013. ISBN: 1409423808, 9781409423805.

Link to the book’s page at publisher’s site.

 

Kuus, M. Geopolitics Reframed: Security and Identity in Europe’s Eastern Enlargement. New York: Palgrave refrramed_coverMacmillan, 2007.

Link to the book’s page at publisher’s site.

 

Articles, commentaries, book chapters

Kuus, M. 2024. What makes a wine region worth visiting: place and beauty in Okanagan Valley, British Columbia. Canadian Geographies/ Géographies canadiennes (accepted, forthcoming).

Kuus, M. 2023. The in-person of fieldwork: on effectiveness, efficiency, and ethics. Guest editorial, Political Geography https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2023.103000.

Kuus, M. 2023. The social lives of Arctic expertise, or how to do transnational networks’ (Briefing Note). In Heininen, L., H. Exner-Pirot and J. Barnes (eds.) (2023). Arctic Yearbook 2023: Arctic Indigenous Peoples: Climate, Science, Knowledge and Governance. Akureyri, Iceland: Arctic Portal. Available from https://arcticyearbook.com/. Open access

Kuus, M. 2023. Interstitial expertise and international governance: Cultivating diplomatic practitioners in Europe. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography. https://DOI: 10.1080/04353684.2023.2211078

Kuus, M. 2023. Between an archipelago and an ice floe: the know-where of Arctic governance expertise. Polar Record, online early Open access https://www.doi.org/10.1017/S0032247422000316

Kuus, M. 2023. ‘Bureaucratic sociability, or the missing eighty percent of effectiveness:  the case of diplomacy’. Geopolitics 28 (1): 174-195  https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2021.1934672.

Kuus, M. 2021. ‘The Know-Where of Diplomatic Sociability: Expanding the Spaces of Practice Theory’. In the Collective Discussion: ‘Thinking with Diplomacy: Within and Beyond Practice Theory’ (with C. Constantinou, J. Dittmer, F. McConnell, S. Opondo, V. Pouliot). International Political Sociology 15 (4): 559–587. https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olab028

Kuus, M. 2021. “Professions and their expertise: charting the spaces of ‘elite’ occupations”. Progress in Human Geography, 45(6): 1339-1355. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132520950466

Kuus, M. 2020. ‘Regulatory power and region-making in the Arctic: China and the European Union’ (Euro commentary). European Urban and Regional Studies vol. 27, 4: pp. 321-324. https://doi.org/10.1177/0969776420925539.

Kuus, M. 2020. ‘Europe’s future depends on perspective not policy’. New Perspectives 28 (3): pp. 270-274. Essay based on Keynote Address 1B at the Hamburg (Insecurity) Sessions, 21 November 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/2336825X20934970

Kuus, M. 2020. ‘Toward the geopolitics of geoeconomic ideas’. In ‘Reading Geopolitics of the Knowledge-Based Economy by Sami Moisio’ (review forum). Political Geography 80, June 2020. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0962629820301980

Kuus, M. 2020. ‘Political Geography III: Bounding the International’. Progress in Human Geography vol. 44, 6: pp. 1185-1193. This is the third of three progress reports commissioned by the journal. (https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132519869457).

Kuus, M. 2020. Powerful and Elite Subjects. In J. Darling and H. Wilson (ed.). Research Ethics for Human Geography: A Handbook for Students, pp. 202-210.

Kuus, M. 2020. ‘Political Geography II: Institutions’. Progress Report. Progress in Human Geography  44(1) 119–128. Second of three progress reports on political geography.  https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132518796026.

Kuus, M. 2019. ‘The terroir of bureaucratic practice: Everyday life and scholarly method in the study of policy’, Environment & Planning C: Politics & Space, 2019, 37(4) 617–633:  https://doi.org/10.1177/0263774X18802954

Kuus, M. 2019. ‘Political Geography I: Agency’, Progress in Human Geography 43 (1): 163-171, 2019. First of three progress reports on political geography. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0309132517734337

Kuus, M. 2019. ‘State Power, Spatial Inequality, and Geographical Expertise: Notes on Method’. In Thilo Lang and Franziska Görmar (eds). Regional and Local Development in Times of Polarisation: Rethinking Spatial Policies in Europe. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 79-94.

Kuus, M. 2018. ‘Political Economies of Transnational Fields: Harmonization and Differentiation in European Diplomacy’, Territory, Politics, Governance, 6(2): 222-239. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21622671.2016.1266960

Kuus, M. 2018. ‘Transnational Institutional Fields: Positionality and Generalization in the Study of Diplomacy’, Political Geography 67, pp. 156-165. Link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0962629817300598,

Kuus, M. 2017. ‘Diplomacy and the Other – and Wagner’. Discussion forum ‘On On Diplomacy: James Der Derian’s Classic 30 Years On’ (with H. Leira, J. DerDerian, I. Neumann, M. Acuto, P. Sharp), New Perspectives: Interdisciplinary Journal of Central & Eastern European Politics and International Relations 25(3):  pp. 19-24. Link to the entire forum, which is open access: http://perspectives.iir.cz/download/forum-on-on-diplomacy-james-der-derians-classic-30-years-on/

Kuus, M. ‘Locating Europe’s Power, or the Difference between Passports and Passporting’. in ‘Interventions in Europe’s Political Futures’ (with Fiona McConnell, Alex Jeffrey, Adrian Smith, Nick Vaughan-Williams, Heaven Crawley) Political Geography, 60, 2017, pp. 261-271. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096262981730029X

Kuus, M. ‘Diplomacy and Audit: Technologies of Knowledge in Europe’, Geoforum, 2016, vol. 68 (January): 39-47. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718515300592

Kuus, M. “‘To Understand the Place’: Geographical Knowledge and Diplomatic Practice”, The Professional Geographer, 2016, vol. 68 (4) 546-553. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00330124.2015.1099450

Kuus, M. ‘Transnational Diplomacy in Europe: What is Transcended and How?’. In J. Dittmer and F. McConnell (eds.), Diplomatic Cultures and International Politics: Translations, Spaces and Alternatives. London: Routledge, 2015, pp. 41-58.

Kuus, M. ‘Symbolic Power in Diplomatic Practice: Matters of Style in Brussels’, in V. Pouliot and J. Cornut (eds.) “Diplomacy and Practice Theory”, special issue of Cooperation and Conflict, 2015, vol. 50 no. 3 368-384.

Kuus, M. ‘Crafting Europe for its Neighbourhood: Practical Geopolitics in European Institutions’, in V. Bachmann and M. Müller (eds.) Perceptions of the EU in Eastern Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa: Looking from the Outside In. London: Palgrave, 2015, pp. 34-49.

Kuus, M. ‘Regional Institutions’, in A. Agnew, V. Mamadouh, A. Secor, and J. Sharp (eds.). The Companion to Political Geography (2nd ed.). Routledge, 2015, pp. 311-323.

Kuus, M. ‘For Slow Research’, In Temenos, C., and T. Baker (eds.), Debates and Developments forum ‘Urban Policy Mobilities: Moving Forward’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2015. DOI: 10.1111/1468-2427.12257

Kuus, M. ‘Response: Studying Evaporative Things’, In Bachmann, V. (ed.) ‘Bureaucratic Fields and the Brussels Machinery: Reading Merje Kuus’ Geopolitics and Expertise (Review forum), Political Geography, 44 (Jan): 19-28, 2015.

Kuus, M. ‘Transnational Bureaucracies: How Do We Know What They Know?’, Progress in Human Geography, 30 (4), pp. 432-448, 2015.

Kuus, M. ‘Places of Lower Rank: Margins in Conversations’. Invited commentary. Political Geography, 36 (6), pp. 30-32, 2013.

Kuus, M. ‘Introduction: Human Agency in Geopolitics’, In Dodds, K., Kuus, M. and Sharp, J. (eds). The Ashgate Research Companion to Critical Geopolitics, Ashgate, pp. 383-386, 2013.

Dodds, K., Kuus, M., and Sharp, J. ‘Introduction: Geopolitics and its Critics’. In Dodds, K., Kuus, M. and Sharp, J. (eds). The Ashgate Research Companion to Critical Geopolitics, Ashgate, pp. 1-18, 2013.

Kuus, M. Foreign Policy and Ethnography: A Skeptical Intervention’. Geopolitics, 18 (1), 2013: 115-131.

Kuus, M. ‘Banal Huntingtonianism: Civilizational Geopolitics in Estonia’. In Stefano Guzzini (ed.) The Return of Geopolitics in Europe?: Social Mechanisms and Foreign Policy Identity Crises. Cambridge University Press, 2012, 174-191.

Kuus, M. ‘Bureaucracy and Place: Expertise in the European Quarter’. Global Networks: A Journal of Transnational Affairs, 2011 (4), pp. 421-439.

Kuus, M. ‘Policy and Geopolitics: Bounding Europe in Europe’. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 101(5) 2011, 1140-1155.

Kuus, M. ‘Whose Regional Expertise?: Political Geographies of Knowledge in the European Bureaucracy’. European Urban and Regional Studies, 18 (3), 2011, pp. 275 – 288.

Kuus, M. ‘Geopolitics. Part II’. In Agnew, J., and Duncan, J. (eds.) Companion to Human Geography. Blackwell, 2011, pp. 512-522.

Kuus, M. ‘EUrope and the baroque.’ Commentary in Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. 28, 3, 2010, pp. 381-387.

Kuus, M. ‘Critical Geopolitics’. In R. Denemark (ed.) The International Studies Encyclopedia. Blackwell, Volume II (Co-Ec), 2010, pp. 683-701.

Kuus, M. ‘Europe’, in R. Kitchin and N. Thrift. (Editors-in-Chief) The International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Elsevier (2009), pp. 644-648.

Kuus, M. ‘Political Geography and Geopolitics’. (Contribution to a special series of articles on the direction of Canadian geography.) The Canadian Geographer (TCG) / Le Géographe Canadien (LGC) 53 (1) 2009: 86-90.

Kuus, M. ‘All We Need is NATO? Frontiers of Security Cooperation in Europe’. In Klaus Dodds and Alan Ingram, eds. Spaces of Security and Insecurity: Geographies of the War on Terror. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009, pp. 185-204.

Kuus, M. ‘Cosmopolitan Militarism?: Spaces of NATO Expansion’. Environment and Planning A. 41 (2009), pp. 545-562.

Kuus, M. ‘Professionals of Geopolitics: Agency in Spatializing International Politics’. Geography Compass. 2/6 (2008): 2062–2079.

Kuus, M. ‘Civic Militarism?’. In Flusty, Steven, Dittmer, Jason, Gilbert, Emily, and Kuus, Merje. ‘Interventions in Banal Neoimperialism’, Political Geography 27 (2008), pp. 617-629.

Kuus, M. ‘Marginals and Outsiders’. Contribution to the discussion forum ‘Teaching European Identities’ in Journal of Geography in Higher Education. 32 (3), 2008.

Kuus, M. ‘Švejkian Geopolitics: Subversive Obedience in Central Europe’. Geopolitics vol. 13, no. 2, 2008, pp. 257- 277.

Kuus, M. ‘The Ritual of Listening to Foreigners: Appropriating Geopolitics in Central Europe’, in N. Parker (ed.) The Geopolitics of Europe’s Identity: Centers, Boundaries, and Margins. New York: Palgrave, 2008, pp. 177-194.

Kuus, M., and J. Agnew. ‘Theorizing the State Geographically: Sovereignty, Subjectivity, Territoriality’, in K. Cox, J. Robinson, and M. Low (eds.) The Handbook of Political Geography. Sage Publications, 2008, pp. 117-132.

Kuus, M. ‘”Love, Peace and Nato”: Imperial Subject-Making in Central Europe’. Antipode, vol. 39, no. 2, 2007, pp. 269-290.

Kuus, M. ‘Ubiquitous Identities and Elusive Subjects: Puzzles from Central Europe’.  Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, vol. 32 no. 1, 2007, pp. 90-101.

Kuus, M. ‘Intellectuals and Geopolitics: The ‘Cultural Politicians’ of Central Europe’. Geoforum, vol. 37, no. 2, 2007, pp. 241-251.

Kuus, M. ‘Multiple Europes: Boundaries and Margins in European Union Enlargement’. Editorial introduction to a discussion forum on EU enlargement Geopolitics, vol. 10, no. 3, 2005, pp. 567-570.

Kuus, M. ‘Europe’s Eastern Enlargement and the Re-Inscription of Otherness in East-Central Europe’ Progress in Human Geography, vol. 18, no. 4, 2004, pp. 472-489.

Kuus, M. ”Those Goody-Goody Estonians’: Toward Rethinking Security in the European Union Applicant States’. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space vol. 22, no. 2, 2004, pp. 191-207.

Kuus, M. ‘Toward Co-operative Security? International Integration and the Construction of Security in Estonia’. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, vol. 31, no. 2, 2002, pp. 297-317.

Kuus, M. ‘Sovereignty for Security?: The Discourse of Sovereignty in Estonia’, Political Geography, vol. 21, no. 3, 2002, pp. 393-412.

Kuus, M. ‘European Integration in Identity Narratives in Estonia: A Quest for Security’, Journal of Peace Research vol. 39, no 1, 2002, pp. 91-108.

Feldman, M. (former name). ‘European Integration and the Discourse of National Identity in Estonia’, National Identities, vol. 3, no. 1, 2001, pp. 5-21.

Feldman, M. ‘Waterfront Revitalization and Local Governance in Tallinn, Estonia’, Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 52, no. 5, 2000, pp. 829-850.