Central Asia Workshop: Blogging, the Arctic, and Central Asia

From 2009-2014, I ran the Foreign Policy Association's Arctic Blog. Since February, I have managed the blog independently athttp://www.cryopolitics.com. A major theme of the blog is to look at the impacts of commodities cycles, climate change, and globalization write large on developments in the Arctic, a region often viewed as a periphery or resource frontier. With these two posts, however, I aim to show how the Arctic can actually be perceived as a core to which other countries and regions are peripheral, such as Mongolia and North Korea. The second post may have more specific relevance to those with an interest in Central Asia. Here, I compare how this region and the Arctic are actually sometimes placed into one seamless extractive frontier, discursively and even in practice, by agents such as multinational oil corporations. In discussing these two posts, I would also like to discuss my experience as a blogger and the pros and cons of communicating ideas in the rapid-fire and more accessible sphere of the internet versus the slower-paced but more rigorous world of academia.

"North Korea and the Northern Sea Route":  http://cryopolitics.com/2014/05/08/north-korea-and-the-northern-sea-route/

"Extractive Frontiers: The Arctic and Central Asia":  http://cryopolitics.com/2014/04/17/extractive-frontiers-the-arctic-and-central-asia/