Mikael Baaz.
Mikael Baaz.

Mikael Baaz is an Associate Professor in International Law as well as an Associate Professor in Peace and Conflict Studies. He currently works as a Senior Lecturer in International Law at the Department of Law, School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. His research focuses on various aspects of ‘international society’ including, among other things, the ‘politics of governance’ and ‘the politics of resistance’. Baaz is the author of a number of books, including: The Use of Force and International Society (Stockholm: Jure, 2017), Law and Politics in International Society (Stockholm: Jure, 2017, forthcoming), Researching Resistance and Social Change: A Critical Approach to Theory and Practice, together with Mona Lilja and Stellan Vinthagen (London: Rowman and Littlefield International, 2017 forthcoming) and Resistance and Social Change: Contemporary Cambodia between the Global and the Local, together with Mona Lilja (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018, forthcoming). 

Abstract

This presentation will discuss and problematize civil society mobilizations and resistance in relation to a world heritage site – the ninth-century Khmer temple Preah Vihear, which is located in the northern province of Cambodia and borders eastern Thailand. In particular, I will explore resistance in terms of (re)categorizations from a historical and discursive–materialistic perspective. The field of resistance studies has mainly been preoccupied with entities such as texts, signs, symbols, identity, and language. In this presentation, however, I bring in physical and material entities in order to display the ways in which matter is of importance in the (re)construction of discourses and thereby for resistance.