Rethinking the Geographies of Diplomacy

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Fiona McConnell University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom [email protected]

Abstract

Space and place matter to diplomacy, yet surprisingly little analytical attention has been paid to geographical approaches and questions. This intervention sketches out the potentially productive lens that a geographical approach to diplomacy can offer in terms of diversifying conceptual framings, widening the empirical lens so that a broader range of practices, actors and objects come into view when we consider “diplomacy,” and embracing an open and integrative approach to interdisciplinary thinking about diplomacy.

Keywords space – place – diplomatic setting – interdisciplinarity – human geography ... The foyer of “Building E” at the un’s Palais des Nations in Geneva is as drab as its 1969 modernist exterior but entering Room xx on the third floor is like entering another world. Cream leather chairs are arranged in concentric arcs in the expansive conference room which is brightly lit and able to seat over 700. And then there is the ceiling: a dazzling sculp- ture by Spanish artist Miquel Barceló consisting of brightly coloured sta- lactites made from pigments symbolically sourced from all continents. Representatives of minority communities – particularly those for whom this is their first time at the un – are awestruck by the space. They pause at the doorway, taking in the ceiling, and then reach for their phone to take photographs which they immediately post on social media.1

1 Author’s fieldnotes from 8th un Forum on Minority Issues, Geneva, November 24, 2015.

Rethinking The Geographies Of Diplomacy 47 ∵

Space and place matter to diplomacy. If diplomacy is understood as the pro- cess of negotiating and mediating estrangement between groups,2 while retaining separateness,3 then spatiality emerges as integral to this practice. In essence state-based diplomacy can be imagined both as a network of bilateral and multilateral relations, and as materialized in a series of nodes. The latter are designated sites that are choreographed to produce particular affective atmospheres, be that symbolic sites of international neutrality such as un buildings, conference venues and ministerial offices that are associated with highly ritualized behavior,4 or spaces like Room xx that have a sublime aesthetic de- signed to create a sense of awe.5 Beyond these relational spaces and tangible places are the increasingly important digital domains of diplomacy in which social media connections and the proliferation of digital data are transform- ing the speed and tone of diplomatic communications and generating new diplomatic agendas around cyber security, privacy and internet governance.6 Yet despite the centrality of spatiality to the practice of diplomacy, surprisingly little analytical attention has been paid to geographical approaches and questions. It is only in recent years that a select group of scholars in diplomacy studies have started to focus on the spatial dimensions of diplomacy and even then the theorization of concepts such as space, place and scale remains some- what underdeveloped.7 For example, whilst Iver Neumann usefully sets out the evolution of traditional sites of diplomacy – negotiation tables, ministerial offices, press conferences – and hyperspatial sites where diplomacy appears out of place, his 2013 book Diplomatic Sites is surprisingly devoid of a theoretical

2 Der Derian, J. On Diplomacy: A Genealogy of Western Estrangement (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987). 3 Sharp, P. Diplomatic Theory of International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 4 Constantinou, C. M. “Before the Summit: Representations of Sovereignty on the Himalayas.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 27 (1) (1998), 23–53; Craggs, R. “Postcolonial Ge- ographies, Decolonization, and the Performance of Geopolitics at Commonwealth Confer- ences.” Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 35 (1) (2014), 39–55. 5 On the role of the sublime in diplomacy see Neumann, I. B. “Sublime Diplomacy: Byzan- tine, Early Modern, Contemporary.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 34 (3) (2006), 865–88. 6 Bjola, C., and M. Holmes. Digital Diplomacy: Theory and Practice (London: Routledge, 2015). 7 For example see Shimazu, N. “Diplomacy as Theatre: Staging the Bandung Conference of 1955.” Modern Asian Studies 48 (1) (2014), 225–52; Shimazu, N. “Places in Diplomacy.” Political Geography 31 (2012), 335–36.

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48 McConnell engagement with the concepts of space and place.8 Meanwhile in the field of human geography, though there has been a long tradition of interrogating spatial practices in various (geo)political domains, as a discipline geographers have been surprisingly slow to turn critical attention to the field of diplomacy. My aim in this short intervention is to sketch out the potentially productive lens that a geographical approach to diplomacy can offer in terms of diversifying the conceptual framings that can be brought to bear on diplomacy, widening the empirical lens so that a broader range of practices, actors and objects come into view when we consider “diplomacy,” and embracing an open and integrative approach to interdisciplinary thinking about diplomacy. Across human geography the topic of diplomacy has received very little attention. A handful of historical geographers and the occasional diplomatic historian have turned attention to connections between geography, diplomacy and colonial knowledge, particularly in relation to cartographic practices,9 but a distinct historical geography approach to the study of diplomacy has yet to emerge. Meanwhile work within critical geopolitics may have been pioneering in deconstructing the discourses of foreign policy,10 and examining the agency of geopolitical elites,11 but the practices, sites and actors of diplomacy have rarely featured center stage in political geography scholarship. As Herman van der Wusten and Virginie Mamadouh note, “political geography textbooks, the repositories of the ordered stock of knowledge of the relevant sub-discipline, treat the subject of diplomacy sparingly, if at all.”12 Illustrative of this is the strikingly scant attention paid by geographers to one of the most quintessen- tial sites of diplomacy, the United Nations. The only dedicated work on political geography and the un is a special issue of that title published in Political

8 Neumann, I. B. Diplomatic Sites: A Critical Enquiry (London: Hurst, 2013). 9 For example, Withers, C. W. J. “On Enlightenment’s Margins: Geography, Imperialism and Mapping in Central Asia, C.1798-C.1838.” Journal of Historical Geography 39 (2013), 3–18; Legg, S. “An International Anomaly? Sovereignty, the League of Nations and India’s Princely Geographies.” Journal of Historical Geography 43 (2014), 96–110; Henrikson, A.K. “The Map as an ‘Idea’: the Role of Cartographic Imagery during the Second World War.” American Cartographer 2 (1975), 19–53. 10 For example Dodds, K. “Geo-Politics, Experts and the Making of Foreign Policy.” Area 25 (1) (1993), 70–74; Ó Tuathail, G., and J. Agnew. “Geopolitics and Discourse: Practical Geo- political Reasoning in American Foreign Policy.” Political Geography 11 (2) (1992), 190–204. 11 For example Kuus, M. “Professionals of Geopolitics: Agency in International Politics.” Geography Compass 2 (6) (2008), 2062–79; Müller, M. “Situating Identities: Enacting and Studying Europe at a Russian Elite University.” Millennium: Journal of International Stud- ies 37 (1) (2008), 3–25. 12 van der Wusten, H., and V. Mamadouh. “The Geography of Diplomacy.” In The Internation- al Studies Encyclopedia, ed. R. A. Denemark (Oxford: Blackwell, 2010), 2884–2902: 2284.

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Rethinking The Geographies Of Diplomacy 49

Geography in 1996. The agenda behind the issue was to make the case for “geographers of all persuasions” to contribute to “the education of the people of the world about the un”13 and it was notable that the articles “were not to be theoretical […] but rather were to describe, explain and analyze practical, day- to-day un activities,”14 from peacekeeping to mediating boundary disputes and environmental protection.15 What attention had been paid to diplomacy within geography was, until relatively recently, either topographical or was focused on case studies of particular diplomatic negotiations. The latter has ranged from detailed analysis of how the international diplomacy of the Dayton Accords brought into being a particularly ethnicized construction of Bosnia,16 to the diplomacy of peace- building in Israel-Palestine,17 and how the eu’s projection of “civilian power” underpins its positioning as a global actor.18 Meanwhile topographical work has largely focused on analyzing the shifting locations of diplomacy. This in- cludes studies on the factors determining the selection of sites of diplomatic exchange,19 quantitative examinations of diplomatic connections, networks

13 Glassner, M. “Political Geography and the United Nations.” Political Geography 15 (3–4) (1996), 227–30. 14 Ibid., 227, emphasis in the original. 15 See Chopra, J. “The Space of Peace-Maintenance.” Political Geography 15 (3–4) (1996), 335– 57; Prescott, V. “Contributions of the United Nations to Solving Boundary and Territorial Disputes, 1945–1995.” Political Geography 15 (3/4) (1996), 287–318; and Momtaz, D. “The United Nations and the Protection of the Environment: From Stockholm to Rio De Janei- ro.” Political Geography 15 (3–4) (1996), 261–71 respectively. It should be noted that there has been detailed geographical research on environmental bodies and mechanisms, for example see Weisser, F. “Practices, Politics, Performativities: Documents in the Interna- tional Negotiations on Climate Change.” Political Geography 40 (2014), 46–55; Weisser, F., and D. Müller-Mahn. “No Place for the Political: Micro-Geographies of the Paris Climate Conference 2015.” Antipode 49 (3) (2017), 802–20; Schroeder, H., and H. Lovell. “The Role of Non-Nation-State Actors and Side Events in the International Climate Negotiations.” Climate Policy 12 (2012), 23–37. 16 Campbell, D. “Apartheid Cartography: The Political Anthropology and Spatial Effects of International Diplomacy in Bosnia.” Political Geography 18 (1999), 395–435; Dahlman, C., and G. Ó Tuathail. “Bosnia’s Third Space? Nationalist Separatism and International Super- vision in Bosnia’s Brcko District.” Geopolitics 11 (4) (2006), 651–75. 17 Newman, D. “The Geopolitics of Peacemaking in Israel-Palestine.” Political Geography 21 (5) (2002), 629–46. 18 Bachmann, V., and J. D. Sidaway. “Zivilmacht Europa: A Critical Geopolitics of the Eu- ropean Union as a Global Power.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 34 (2009), 94–109. 19 Henrikson, A. K. “The Geography of Diplomacy.” In The Geography of War and Peace: From Death Camps to Diplomats, ed. C. Flint (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 369–94.

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50 McConnell and hubs,20 and assessments of the geographical unevenness of bilateral diplomatic networks.21 These concerns remain, but recent years have also seen the emergence of more fine-grained, ethnographic and theoretically attuned geographical work on diplomacy that intersects with and productively extends post-structuralist informed research by scholars in international relations (IR) that has turned attention to the role of discourse, practice and embodiment in diplomacy.22 In particular, geographers have been attentive to the relational dynamics of diplomacy, arguing that diplomacy should be seen as a “translocal network of practices” involving a diverse set of interrelated actors, times and spaces.23 A distinctive contribution in this vein has been work by political geographers Merje Kuus, Alun Jones and Julian Clark who have built on and brought a spatial lens to field theory and practice based approaches in ir and political science to examine the everyday habits and mundane performances of diplomats themselves.24 As Kuus has argued, practice theory offers a way to bring

20 Neumayer, E. “Distance, Power and Ideology: Diplomatic Representation in a World of Nation-States.” Area 40 (2) (2008), 228–36; van der Wusten, H., and H. van Korstanje. “Dip- lomatic Networks and Stable Peace.” In The Political Geography of Conflict and Peace, eds. N. Kliot and S. Waterman (London: Belhaven Press, 1991), 93–109. 21 van der Wusten, H., and V. Mamadouh. “The Traditional Diplomatic Network and Its Adaptation to European Integration and New Media.” In Diplomatic Cultures and Inter- national Politics: Translations, Spaces and Alternatives, eds. J. Dittmer and F. McConnell (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 93–112. 22 Der Derian 1987; Constantinou, C. M. On the Way to Diplomacy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996); Constantinou, C. M. “On Homo-Diplomacy.” Space and Culture 9 (4) (2006), 351–64; Constantinou, C. “Between Statecraft and Humanism: Diplomacy and Its Forms of Knowledge.” International Studies Review 15 (2013), 141–62; Cornago, N. Plural Diplomacies: Normative Predicaments and Functional Imperatives (Leiden: Brill Ni- jhoff, 2013); Neumann, I. B. “Returning Practice to the Linguistic Turn: The Case of Diplo- macy.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 31 (3) (2002), 627–51; Neumann, I. B. “To Be a Diplomat.” International Studies Perspectives 6 (2005), 72–93; Neumann, I. B. At Home with the Diplomats: Inside a European Foreign Ministry (Ithaca, ny: Cornell Univer- sity Press, 2012). 23 Dittmer, J., and F. McConnell. “Introduction.” In Diplomatic Cultures and International Politics: Translations, Spaces and Alternatives, eds. J. Dittmer and F. McConnell (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 1–20, 6. This builds on Constantinou (2013) and Sending, O. J., V. Poulliot, and I. Neumann, eds. Diplomacy and the Making of World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 24 Clark, J., and A. Jones. “The Spatialising Politics of European Political Practice: Transact- ing ‘Eastness’ in the European Union.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 29 (2015), 291–308; Clark, J., and A. Jones. “The Great Implications of Spatialisation: Grounds for Closer Engagement between Political Geography and Political Science?” Geoforum 45 (2013), 305–14; Kuus, M. Geopolitics and Expertise: Knowledge and Authority in European

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Rethinking The Geographies Of Diplomacy 51 space and diplomacy into a more meaningful dialogue. She asserts that to “grasp the messiness of practice – what happens rather than what is supposed to happen – we must open up our understanding of where it happens.”25 By widening our gaze as to the times, space and actors of diplomacy, these relational and practice based approaches de-center the role of state diplomats. As Kuus puts it, when attention is focused on the social spaces in which diplomatic practice operates, diplomacy “comes into view as less state-centered and for- malistic, and more place-specific and social.”26 Indeed political geographers are in a prime position to contribute to current thinking on the plurality and diversity of agents of diplomacy. Loosely grouped under the heading of “new diplomacy’”27 there has been a growing body of scholarship on the proliferation of “new” actors in the diplomatic field working in parallel to, in partnership with or in competition with state diplomats.28 In- spired by engagement with a range of conceptual initiatives from postcolonial studies, feminist theory and new materialism, political geographers have fos- tered a distinctive broadening of their field of enquiry beyond formal politics and towards an array of non-state actors and everyday practices. Crucially, the aim has not been simply to add “new” subjects to the empirical purview but to challenge and reassess conventional understandings of political subjectivity and agency. Translated to the field of diplomacy, this offers a framework for

Diplomacy (London: Wiley, 2014); Kuus, M. “Symbolic Power in Diplomatic Practice: Mat- ters of Style in Brussels.” Conflict and Cooperation 50 (3) (2015), 368–84; Kuus, M. “Politi- cal Economies of Transnational Fields: Harmonization and Differentiation in European Diplomacy.” Territory, Politics, Governance 6 (2) (2018), 222–39; Jones, A., and J. Clark. “Mundane Diplomacies for the Practice of European Geopolitics.” Geoforum 62 (2015), 1–12. On work in international relations on practice based approaches to diplomacy see Adler-Nissen, R. “Symbolic Power in European Diplomacy: The Struggle between National Foreign Services and the Eu’s External Action Service.” Review of International Studies 40 (4) (2014), 657–81; Neumann (2002); Sending, O. J. The Politics of Expertise: Competing for Authority in Global Governance (Ann Arbor mi: University of Michigan Press, 2015). 25 Kuus (2015), 270. See also Jones and Clark (2015). 26 Kuus (2015), 371. 27 Riordan, S. The New Diplomacy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003). 28 For example on ngo diplomacy see Betsill, M. M., and E. Corell, eds. NGO Diplomacy: The Influence of Nongovernmental Organizations in International Environmental Negotiations (Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 2008); on indigenous diplomacy see Beier, J. M., ed. Indig- enous Diplomacies (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); on supranational diplomacy of the European External Action Service see Kuus (2014); and on the paradiplomacy of substate nations see Aldecoa, F., and M. Keating, eds. Paradiplomacy in Action: The For- eign Relations of Subnational Governments (Portland: Frank Cass, 1999); and Cornago, N. “On the Normalization of Sub-State Diplomacy.” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy 5 (2010), 11–36.

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52 McConnell pushing beyond what Ole Jacob Sending and colleagues have noted is an ana- lytically limited “explanation by naming” tendency within the new diplomacy literature.29 Pioneering in pushing the conceptual boundaries of what we understand as constituting diplomacy is Jason Dittmer’s work on diplomatic encounters as assemblages that bring state and non-state bodies, objects and materials into relation with one another.30 Bringing Deleuzean approaches to bear on diplomacy emphasizes the contingency and affective qualities of diplomacy, the materiality of diplomacy which exceeds human agency, and the entrepreneurial creativity of individual diplomats.31 In recent work with Elaine Ho I have argued that the lens of assemblage theory brings into sharp focus the “polylateral”32 and multi-directional aspects of the diplomacy enacted by diaspora communities who draw on diverse networks and flows of people, information and resources.33 In my own work I have been interested in unpacking the legitimating work that diplomacy accomplishes and have focused on two particular aspects: the practices and geographies of liminal diplomatic actors who seek recognition through performances of formal diplomacy; and what a focus on the micro- spaces of diplomatic institutions can tell us about how modes of politics are articulated. Drawing on cultural anthropology work on the notion of liminality I have sought to turn ethnographic attention to an eclectic group of diplomatic actors – representatives from unrecognized states, indigenous peoples, state- less nations and minority communities, and diasporas – that exist “betwixt and between” formal state diplomacy and activism.34 In seeking legitimacy these actors often deliberately mimic particular aspects of state-based diplomatic

29 Sending, O. J., V. Pouliot, and I. Neumann. “The Future of Diplomacy: Changing Practices, Evolving Relationships.” International Journal 66 (3) (2011), 527–42: 529. 30 Dittmer, J. “Everyday Diplomacy: UKUSA Intelligence Cooperation and Geopolitical Assemblages.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 105 (3) (2015), 604–19; Dittmer, J. Diplomatic Material: Affect, Assemblage and Foreign Policy (Durham: Duke Uni- versity Press, 2017). 31 McConnell, F., and J. Dittmer. “Liminality and the Diplomacy of the British Overseas Ter- ritories: An Assemblage Approach.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 36 (1) (2018), 139–58. 32 Wiseman, G. “‘Polylateralism’ and New Modes of Global Dialogue.” In Diplomacy: Prob- lems and Issues in Contemporary Diplomacy, eds. C. Jönsson and R. Langhorne (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2004). 33 Ho, E. L. E., and F. McConnell “Conceptualising ‘Diaspora Diplomacy’: Territory and Popu- lations Betwixt the Domestic and Foreign.” Progress in Human Geography (forthcoming). 34 McConnell, F. “Liminal Geopolitics: The Subjectivity and Spatiality of Diplomacy at the Margins.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 42 (1) (2017), 139–52.

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Rethinking The Geographies Of Diplomacy 53 work, from establishing quasi embassies to hosting foreign delegations and of- fering consular services. When viewed through Homi Bhabha’s work on mimicry such practices can be understood to both promote official state diplomacy as the “gold standard” to aspire to, and unsettle this system by undermining the gap between the “real” and the “mimic.”35 As diplomatic “shape shifters” the diplomatic repertoires that these liminal diplomats draw on at different times and in different spaces thus trouble conventional assumptions regarding who can legitimately lay claim to be a practitioner of diplomacy, what the norms and mechanisms of international recognition and statecraft are and what geographies underpin diplomacy.36 With regards to the latter, the spatialities of liminal diplomacy brings to the fore not only how spatial practices are used to exclude particular actors but also the fallacy of the distinction between outsid- er and insider (particularly in the case of diaspora diplomacy) and the extent to which embassies can be rendered as symbolic sites of resistance.37 I have sought to further interrogate the spatialities of diplomacy by examining how the spatial aesthetics of and micro-spatial practices enacted within the un can shape the production of international diplomacy. This is premised on two particular spatial dynamics: the fact that the un, as essentially a members club, is a space defined by practices of inclusion and exclusion; and that within the physical spaces of un buildings individuals with prescribed identities as members and non-members are often in close proximity, speak- ing during the same session, and encountering each other in the institution’s corridors and cafes. In seeking to examine the extent to which spatial practices are used by members of the club to exclude and control non-members and the agency that non-members have within the spaces of the un I have taken in- spiration from cross-disciplinary work that ethnographically examines a range of (geo)political site including international conferences,38 court rooms39 and

35 McConnell, F., T. Moreau, and J. Dittmer. “Mimicking State Diplomacy: The Legitimizing Strategies of Unofficial Diplomacies.” Geoforum 43 (4) (2012), 804–14. 36 McConnell (2017). 37 For example the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, established in 1972 in front of Parliament House, Canberra, was constructed as part of a claim that, since Aboriginal people were effectively aliens in their own land, they needed an embassy to represent their interests to the Australian state. It has remained a site of aboriginal resistance in the decades since. See Foley, G., A. Schaap, and E. Howell, eds. The Aboriginal Tent Embassy: Sovereignty, Black Power, Land Rights and the State (London: Routledge, 2013). 38 See Craggs (2014); Hodder, J. “Conferencing the International at the World Pacifist Meet- ing, 1949.” Political Geography 49 (2015), 40–50; Shimazu (2014). 39 See Gill, N. Nothing Personal? Geographies of Governing and Activism in the British Asylum System (Oxford: Wiley, 2016); Jeffrey, A., and M. Jakala. “The Hybrid Legal Geographies of

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54 McConnell national parliaments.40 By attending to the performative scripting of spaces, practices of choreography, the role of audiences, and auditory rhythms, this literature prompts us to take seriously the performative and affective registers of diplomatic spaces.41 Of particular interest in my own work on how representatives of minority and indigenous communities seek to practice diplomacy at the un has been unscripted and spontaneous moments, as well as the transgressive practice of disruption and examples of when “practices go awry, where they are not executed competently, or appear as exceptional in specific geographic contexts.”42 By playing close ethnographic attention to “affective atmospheres”43 and dynamics of (in)visibility and (in)audibility in the spaces of political institutions this brings into sharp relief the mores of diplomatic practice and the shifting relations between diplomatic actors of different statuses. Indeed, diplomacy is, by its nature, a multifaceted practice and therefore a profoundly interdisciplinary subject. In a milieu of rapidly changing diplomatic practices, expertise and actors, we need a critical toolkit of theoretical framings and methodological approaches in order to ascertain the effects this will have on established diplomatic practices and institutions. Or to put it another way, just as diplomats are increasingly having to diversify their knowledge and practices – to engage with foreign publics, to master social media and to step beyond traditional remits into domains of environmental governance and hu- manitarian crises – so it behooves scholars of diplomacy to be polymathic in their approach. Human geography, in its contemporary guise, is in many ways an outward-looking discipline and is unusual in the social sciences in that it

a War Crimes Court.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 104 (3) (2014), 652–67. 40 See Spary, C. “Disrupting Rituals of Debate in the Indian Parliament.” The Journal of Leg- islative Studies 16 (3) (2010), 338–51; Crewe, E. “An Anthropology of the House of Lords: Socialisation, Relationships and Rituals.” The Journal of Legislative Studies 16 (3) (2010), 313–24. 41 Whilst it is considerably more straightforward to observe and analyse these registers in contemporary settings through ethnographic methods than in historic settings, a project by historical geographers is seeking to access affective atmospheres of past diplomatic events and encounters through documenting multi-sensory histories of the fashions, foods, interior decors, comportments and performances of interwar international conferences: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/interwarconf/home.aspx. 42 Jones and Clark (2015), 3. 43 Closs Stephens, A. “The Affective Atmospheres of Nationalism.” Cultural Geographies 23 (2) (2016), 181–98.

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Rethinking The Geographies Of Diplomacy 55 is not beholden to a particular canon.44 As such, unlike international law or particular branches of international relations, geographers are not wedded to specific schools of thought, theoretical framings or methodologies, but rather take an integrative approach. Our openness to different conceptual perspectives and willingness to embrace multi-disciplinarity means that we are in an opportune position to foster dialogue between and across different schools of thought and disciplinary approaches, be that, inter alia, work in sociology on professionalization, cultural anthropology on liminality, postcolonial theory on mimicry, or literary theory on rhetoric.45 Moreover, as I have sought to ar- gue in this short intervention, space matters, both to how modes of diplomacy are articulated and how diplomatic agency is produced and contested. This is as much the case in the study of diplomacy through history as it is in analysis of contemporary diplomatic practice, with the former requiring that scholars approach archives with a spatial lens, focusing attention on the spatial relations, place based dynamics and mundane spatial practices of past diplomatic encounters. Returning to Room xx at the Palais des Nations, what is striking about this site of diplomacy is the spatial detachment of the un: this is a site of dislocation where there is a jarring disconnect between the “big issues” of human rights in places physically far from Geneva and the “little practices” that pervade Room xx. In order to do justice to such dynamics we need to be attentive to the unsettling, generative and lively nature of diplomatic spaces.

44 Agnew, J. “Of Canons and Fanons.” Dialogues in Human Geography 2 (3) (2012), 321–23; Powell, R. C. “Notes on a Geographical Canon? Measures, Models and Scholarly Enter- prise.” Journal of Historical Geography 49 (2015), 2–8. 45 McConnell, F. “Performing Diplomatic Decorum: Repertoires of “Appropriate” Behavior in the Margins of International Diplomacy.” International Political Sociology 12 (4) (2018), 362–81.

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