Klinger Edits Issue of Journal of Latin American Geography
Julie Klinger, Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, recently co-edited a special issue of the Journal of Latin American Geography entitled “New Geographies of China-Latin America Relations.“
The collection includes eleven articles that presents the latest findings from ethnographic and transnational research, with contributions from throughout the Americas. Klinger and her co-editor, Tom Narins, wrote an introduction calling for the inclusion of the United States and Canada in discussions of Latin America.
From the text of the article:
“This special issue of the Journal of Latin American Geography presents a collection of articles that broaden and deepen the scope of geographic literature on China and Latin America in light of contemporary change in both regions. We note that Latin America is a cultural and geographic construct that includes territories, people, and politics throughout the Americas, and as such the entire hemisphere is a valid site of inquiry for China–Latin America relations. Latin America is not simply a neutral site that is impacted by China, nor China by Latin America; rather, the articles in this issue question the forms of agency exercised by multiple actors constituting China-LAC/LAC-China relations in diverse locations and sectors. We further note that there is no single monolithic “China” acting across global space; rather, there are specific actors with distinct sets of interests, even within the same sector and site.”
“While the literature on LAC-China relations has grown prodigiously over the past fifteen years, work that focuses on the spatial aspects of this relationship has grown more slowly. This is in part due to the methodological commitments of grounded empirical research, which often involve extensive ethnographic fieldwork, sometimes in multiple languages and countries.”
Klinger also published an article in the issue entitled “A Brief History of Outer Space Cooperation between Latin America and China.”
From the abstract of the article:
Entirely absent from research on Latin America-China relations is the question of outer space cooperation, despite the centrality of outer space-based technologies to the very sectors and relations that have proven so generative for Latin America-China scholarship and policy engagement since the turn of the millennium.
Bilateral outer space cooperation between China and Latin American countries dates back to 1984, while multilateral engagements by all parties shaped the dawn of the space age in the 1960s. As such, this collaboration is an important antecedent to what is generally considered the “new” or “contemporary” geography of Latin America- China relations.
Julie Michelle Klinger, PhD, specializes in development, environment, and security politics in Latin America and China in comparative and global perspective. Her recent book Rare Earth Frontiers: From Terrestrial Subsoils to Lunar Landscapes (Cornell University Press in Fall 2017) received the 2017 Meridian Award from the American Association of Geographers for its “unusually important contribution to advancing the art and science of geography.”