Welcome to Critical Edges Podcast!
Critical edges may be understood as global borderlands, peripheral areas, and margins that may seem remote, isolated and distant. They may also seem war- and conflict-ridden. Or appear as capitalist ruins or as parochial places frozen in time. They may seem ripe for all kinds of development projects, including those of colonization, tourism and conservation, as well as militarization and peace-building interventions. They may be products of imperialism. Critical edges may be Indigenous lands, or occupied territories, places full of biodiversity, or deserts, local-global hybrids, or alternative spaces for escapism and freedom. Critical edges may be borderwaters such as oceans, seas, rivers and channels whose shores are connected and separated by global history, geopolitics, transactions, and social interactions. They are also communities and loci intimately connected with each other. They may rest at inter-state borders and yet remain borderless. These are other kinds of borderlands: those between and within different ecological habitats, between and within urban and rural areas, between and within Global Norths and Global Souths. They are simultaneously bordered and bounded by distinct cultural differences and similarities. They may be asserting or challenging the East-West dichotomies. They are economic. They are social. They are political. They are inhabited by humans and-or non-humans. They involve bodies and matters that engender the in-betweenness and intermediacy. These are lived experiences where violences and peaces entangle, sometimes indistinguishably. Moreover, critical edges are also boundaries between and within academic disciplines, epistemologies, and ideologies. Our frontiers of thought that elucidate new contested paradigms.
In the Critical Edges-podcast, we explore critical edges that may seem distant and marginal at first glance, but which are, in fact, very much connected to, and even interdependent with, our global society and politics. To this end, this podcast discusses with a variety of scholars, who have, one way or the other, addressed critical edges, critically. We believe that their findings and experiences can help us understand the role played by such places and actors, which are ultimately, and deeply, connected to all of us.
Banner image by Pauliina Mäkelä.
Consult here the list of episodes.
