Towards a Theory of Inter-Imperial Action: Space, Power, and Positionality

N. Yasemin Bavbek, Harvard University

The bourgeoning literature around the framework of inter-imperiality, as developed by Doyle (2014) and Parvulescu and Boatca (2022), has highlighted local dynamics in regions characterized by the territorial claims of multiple empires and the “inter-imperial positionality” of local actors operating with an eye to multiple different structures of sovereignty. According to this framework, these dynamics and positionalities are not adequately captured by prevailing postcolonial models. While the inter-imperial model decenters the focus on state structures and provides a language for capturing the existence of multiple claims to sovereignty, I argue that it can be extended to inter-imperial contestations that do not correspond to territorial claims with an adequate theory of inter-imperial action. Thinking about positionality and action within a Bourdieusian (imperial) field structure has the advantage of focusing on meso-level processes driving change, such as changes in the rules of the game and accumulation of different types of capital. I take as a case the educational and humanitarian actions of American civil society actors in the Ottoman Empire in the late 19th century. Drawing on Doyle’s concept of inter-imperial positionality, I develop ‘trans-imperial positionality’ as a way to describe the embeddedness of American civil society actors in two different kinds of imperial frameworks, the American and Ottoman Empires. What I call the ‘trans-imperial positionality’ of these civil society actors allowed them to be embedded in, translate across, and broker between the Ottoman educational, American economic, and Anglo-Saxon Protestant fields of action from a position of power emanating from their position as citizens of the American Empire. I argue that this gave them maneuvering space in mediating between global and imperial inequalities in contrast to the ‘inter-imperial positionality’ of Armenian actors in the Ottoman Empire, who navigated between different empires from a position of subordination.

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 Presented in Session 22. Structure and Space in Historical Causality