Community Narratives in the Context of China's Belt & Road Initiative

Duration: 2023–oppen

Project Management: Jun.-Prof. Simon Runkel

Funding: open

Research focus: Geosocial imaginaries

Content

The research project examines geographies of the future of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) ("New Silk Roads") geopolitical narrative. The project aims to make an empirical contribution to the time-agnostic understanding of contemporary geographies of the future of the BRI. By examining the global socio-material transformation processes generated by the BRI, a better understanding of the temporal and geographical (de)stabilisation mechanisms, modes of operation and implications of the BRI will be gained. The overarching question of the research project is how the imaginaries of future geographical presences are configured and de/stabilised in their entanglement with the materialities of present futures of the BRI in practices of logistics and the (occupational) biographies that are formed in and around them. This makes a theoretical contribution to understanding the narratives and imaginaries of the BRI as produced in a 'geopolitics from below'. The field of investigation is the logistics industry and its living environments in the networked "global logistic cities" of Hamburg and Shanghai. Empirically, the overarching question is firstly related to the imaginings of future geographical presences of the BRI. The question is how (professional) biographies of middle management employees are imaginatively de/stabilised in and through logistics practices. Methodologically, narrative-biographical interviews will be conducted. Secondly, the lifeworld embedding of the materiality of current geographical futures of the BRI in Hamburg and Shanghai will be investigated. It will be asked how the BRI as an everyday geopolitical imagination is reflected in its material presence in practices of biographising. Methodologically, a set of ethnographic in-situ techniques will be used. In the evaluation, practices of biographising function as a hinge for the analytical integration of the research perspectives. This will also make a methodological contribution to the further development of social science approaches to biographical research based on practice and spatial theory.