8 - Perspectives from the Top: Justice, International Relations and the Political Geography of the Arctic

Summary

‘Perspectives from the top’ is inferred as a double, or perhaps even a triple, entendre. Questions of justice in my research (to date) focus on the international politics of the Arctic and the political processes that shape the spatial and ideational structures and, in turn, how these structures influence the international politics of and in this space. To begin the contextualization of the Arctic from the top, we can begin with the placement of the region in most cartographies, both worldly and otherworldly, at the top of planet earth. Second, the Arctic features at the top – or at least the start – of many global processes; it is the weather kitchen of the world, the seeds of the food web where phytoplankton and sea algae begin the nutrient chain that sustains top predators, and even as a laboratory for norms of governance or as a frontier for the just transition. Finally, it is a commentary on the top-down character of international politics where decisions on the distribution of harms or resources, access to procedures, decision- making and the recognition of legitimate inclusion are often ultimately decided through hierarchies of power.

Conversations of justice and injustice do not come easily to discussions of International Relations theory, although they do exist within some circles, especially within discussions of global governance. While Rawls suggested that ‘justice is the first virtue of international institutions’ (1999: 3), this virtue does not extend to the international system as a socially constructed institution that exists only in principle. Justice appears so infrequently within the discipline, it has even been suggested that ‘International Relations is insensitive to the question of justice’ (Ray, 1999: 1368). Ethics, liberal values and their focus on norm- shaping interactions that create semblances of order appear more frequently than the emphasis on justice and the consequences on structures and political processes. However, within political geography – which focuses more clearly on the relationship between the people and place, there is more evaluation of geographies of injustice, such as those evident in the environmental justice discourse or, as emerges in the work of Dikec, in looking at ‘the processes that produce space, and, at the same time, the implications of these produced spaces on the dynamic processes of social, economic, and political relations’ (2001: 1793).