Video dispatch from the borderscape: toward a diplomatic geography

Abstract

This article should be read together with watching the video Lines (2019). Video and text explore the complex Cypriot borderscape that crisscrosses over four rival zones of control and jurisdiction. The article reflects on videographic methods and the challenges faced in filming the borderscape. In addition, video and text highlight the relevance of the emerging field of diplomatic geography, approaching diplomacy not merely as something that happens out-there-in-the-world but as something that is taking place, always within a habitat of relations and spaces scripted with meaning and a plurality of forces and potentialities that require negotiation and balancing. The article explores how meaning and materiality are implicated in the production and transformation of the place of diplomacy, with implications for both how we practice diplomacy across spaces and microgeographies and how we study place-specific and plural practices of diplomacy that go beyond the formal state-centric diplomatic culture and capture the cultural worlds and informal diplomacies of everyday life.