Political Spaces of INGOs

Abstract

In many ways, using a spatial approach to examine INGOs seems obvious. Spatiality has always been a fundamental element of international politics, from the conceptualisation of the multilateral and international system through to geopolitics and transnational networks. Yet until recently, the idea of ‘political space’ itself has been under-researched. But why is the examination of political space important to practitioners and to academics who study civil society organisations such as INGOs? I would suggest it is primarily because, as Foucault argues, power and space are integrally connected. Foucault brings to light the continuously moving terrain where power struggles occur, outlining how ‘power permeates and courses through spaces, sparking a multiplicity of points of resistance as well as producing and embedding particular institutional forms, patterns and practices’ (quoted in Cornwall, 2002: 8). Through the study of political space, we are able to see who initiates, who participates and how others are allowed to take part in both everyday and formal political processes.

‘There is a politics of space because space is political.’ (Lefebvre in Brenner and Elden, 2009: 168)

‘Space is a social product … it is not simply “there”, a neutral container waiting to be filled, but is a dynamic, humanly constructed means of control, and hence of domination, of power.’ (Lefebvre, 1991: 24)