Dr Christopher Lizotte
Lecturer in Human Geography
School of Law and Social Sciences
Role
Dr Christopher Lizotte is a Lecturer in Human Geography for the School of Social Sciences at Oxford Brookes University.
Areas of expertise
- Nationalism
- Territory and territoriality
- Geopolitics
Teaching and supervision
Modules taught
Autumn 2021:
- GEOG5012 Political Geography: Place and Power (Module leader)
- GEOG4001 Introduction to Human Geography (Co-teacher)
- GEOG4007 Introduction to Geographical Skills and Techniques (Co-teacher)
- GEOG4008 Geographical Perspectives (Tutor)
Publications
Journal articles
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Lizotte C, Kallio KP, 'Introduction to the special issue on the geographies of populism and populist geographies'
Space and Polity [online first] (2023)
ISSN: 1356-2576 eISSN: 1470-1235AbstractPublished here -
Lizotte C, 'For ordinary kindness in human geography'
Dialogues in Human Geography 14 (2) (2023) pp.357-360
ISSN: 2043-8206 eISSN: 2043-8214AbstractPublished here Open Access on RADARIn this commentary, I make a case for recognizing and encouraging in human geography a sort of mundane kindness that is unremarkable in its ambition, but potentially profound in its impacts. Although it is important to continue to analyze the conditions that have left so many of us in need of acts of kindness that compensate for the failures and violence of the neoliberal academy, I argue that alongside this critical scholarship we could continue to make room for ‘ordinary’ kindness that does not necessarily need to justify itself through critical reflection.
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Lizotte C, 'Rethinking laïcité as a geopolitical concept'
Modern and Contemporary France 31 (3) (2023) pp.305-321
ISSN: 0963-9489 eISSN: 1469-9869AbstractPublished here Open Access on RADARLaïcité, France’s idiosyncratic religious neutrality, is a concept that governs significant aspects of daily life while being notoriously variable in its application. Alongside sociological, legal and historical understandings of laïcité, I propose an additional way to view laïcité: through a critical geopolitical perspective. I argue that laïcité has been made and unmade through geographic imaginaries and practices through which idealized modes of universal citizenship confront and negotiate with affiliations to faith and culture to produce hegemonic ideas about the place of religious identity in French society. In particular, this confrontation has occurred within the French public school system, the école républicaine. I argue that laïcité, as it is manifested through educational policies as well as geographic imaginaries, reflects a will to forge a nationally unified citizenry as well as ambivalence about the need to negotiate with locally-rooted cultural identities. I illustrate this through the phenomenon of student infringements, or atteintes, against laïcité: while these are framed as a grave threat to republican unity requiring national interventions, there has nevertheless been a consistent lack of spatially specific official knowledge of where atteintes take place.
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Lizotte C, Kallio K, 'Youth far-right politics in Finland as a form of lived citizenship'
Space and Polity 27 (3) (2023) pp.309-334
ISSN: 1356-2576 eISSN: 1470-1235AbstractPublished here Open Access on RADARGeographies of youth have explored multiple modalities of youth political agency, yet privilege apolitical or progressive forms of politics. We propose expanding the scholarship to formal arenas where conservative and reactionary politics are practiced, as these form another significant domain within which youths exercise citizenship. The paper draws on two aspects of the ‘lived citizenship’ framework, developed by Kallio et al.: a desire to rescale society to the strictures of nation-state sovereignty and imagined national heritage (spatial aspect), and provocations of despised ‘globalists’ (performative aspect). We analyze these through the former youth wing of Finland’s populist-right party, Perussuomalaiset Nuoret (Finns Youth).
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Lizotte C, 'The prosaic stateness of secularism: diversity, incoherence and divergence in the application of laïcité'
Geopolitics 29 (3) (2023) pp.962-986
ISSN: 1465-0045 eISSN: 1557-3028AbstractPublished here Open Access on RADARFrance’s idiosyncratic form of secularism, laïcité, is a highly contested principle bound up in centuries of conflict over the state’s relationship to religious practice. Of late, commentators have interpreted it as taking somewhat of an authoritarian turn as it is used to disproportionately identify and suppress signs of overt Muslim religiosity, including notably within the public school system. I apply Painter’s (2006) “prosaic stateness” framework to understand how educators interpret and rework laïcité within the French public school to produce “actually-existing” laïcité. In particular, I show that educators are situated within three "spatialities" through which laïcité inhabits French schooling: the idealized space of the French republic set against religious obscurantism, schools as spaces of inviolable neutrality, and risky bodies who refuse to conform to norms of republican citizenship. Within these spatialities, educators enact a prosaic stateness of laïcité through their experiences of diversity of the student populations they serve, the incoherence of the institution they work for, and the divergence of the policies they end up applying.
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Lizotte C, 'The war in Ukraine, the American far-right and the “other” critique of geopolitics'
Political Geography 98 (2022)
ISSN: 0962-6298 eISSN: 1873-5096Published here -
Lizotte C, 'Review essay: The need for nuance in situating and connecting colonialisms across time and space'
Political Geography 99 (2022)
ISSN: 0962-6298 eISSN: 1873-5096Published here -
Lizotte C, Bennett MM, Grove K, 'Introduction: Virtual forum on the Russian invasion of Ukraine'
Political Geography 97 (2022)
ISSN: 0962-6298 eISSN: 1873-5096Published here -
Lizotte C, 'The geography of truth and lies'
Political Geography 89 (2021)
ISSN: 0962-6298 eISSN: 1873-5096Published here -
Casaglia A, Coletti R, Lizotte C, Agnew J, Mamadouh V, Minca C, 'Interventions on European nationalist populism and bordering in time of emergencies'
Political Geography 82 (2020)
ISSN: 0962-6298 eISSN: 1873-5096Published here -
Lizotte C, 'The mainstreaming of “vulgar territory” and popular visions of hyper‐bordered and feminized territory'
Geography Compass 14 (9) (2020)
ISSN: 1749-8198 eISSN: 1749-8198AbstractPublished hereI lay out a case for recognizing “vulgar territory,” a fusing of superficial categories of spatial sovereignty with identarian rhetorics of belonging. I argue that vulgar territory is composed of two primary elements: first, a simplistic conception of sovereignty as being entirely contiguous with state borders. Second, affective elements of spatial belonging, particularly hope and fear. These two basic elements combine in various ways depending on the particular meanings, images, and emotions that are assembled in particular geohistorical contexts. I show this with a rough typology of “vulgates” of hyper-bordered and feminized territory by examining recent examples from around the world.
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Lizotte C, Nguyen N, 'Schooling from the classroom to the state: Understanding schools as geopolitical sites'
Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 38 (5) (2020) pp.920-937
ISSN: 2399-6544 eISSN: 2399-6552AbstractPublished hereIn this paper, we make a case for situating the school as a geopolitical site. The geopolitical functions of schools and schooling have long been investigated by geographers: forming national citizens, promoting geostrategic discourses, and disciplining populations, to name a few. However, we advocate an approach that is “outward looking,” examining the school not just as a space where these functions are carried out by the state, but as a site where institutional structure, educators, and students exercise agency in complicating the actual implementation of state geopolitical aims. We do this by examining two cases where public schooling has been leveraged by Western states in the service of the post-9/11 securitization of Muslim students in the United Kingdom and France. We argue that these two cases illustrate that schools can be examined not just as containers for state policy, but as explanatory moments in their own right in understanding state geopolitical strategy.
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Lizotte C, 'Laïcité as assimilation, laïcité as negotiation: Political geographies of secularism in the French public school'
Political Geography 77 (2020)
ISSN: 0962-6298 eISSN: 1873-5096AbstractPublished hereLaïcité, France's idiosyncratic form of secularism, is a complex concept that is dense with historical genealogy, practical contradictions and – crucially – political geographies. In particular, contemporary laïcité is characterized by a state-sponsored model of universal citizenship that regards French Muslims' identity claims with mistrust. This tension, always latent, was brought to the fore by a series of attacks perpetrated self-styled jihadists in January 2015, centered on the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo notorious for its provocations against Islam. The attacks and their aftermath also highlighted a key space where conflicts over laïcité often play out: the French public school, the école républicaine. This institution was conceived in its modern form as a mechanism to assimilate through laïque pedagogy. Today it is a highly visible space where the optics of race and gender contribute to a narrative of Muslim communautarisme, a willful and defiant communalism that rejects the republican community of citizens.
Following a handful of incidents in which students refused to participate in a moment of silence for the victims of the January 2015 attacks, the Ministry of Education undertook an initiative involving disciplinary and pedagogical supports for laïcité in the schools, called the Great Mobilisation for the Republic's Values. Like other past interventions in this area, it operationalizes an assimilating vision of laïcité to bring recalcitrant peripheries into compliance with republican norms. At the same time, though, it reveals the agency of the peripheries to negotiate the terms of laïcité according to local knowledge and needs. On the basis of interviews with educators serving in schools where elements of the Grand Mobilisation were carried out, I show how they push back against the overarching narratives that characterize the initiative and in so doing construct localized and nuanced understandings of the laïque social pact.
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Lizotte C, 'Where are the people? Refocusing political geography on populism'
Political Geography 71 (2019) pp.139-141
ISSN: 0962-6298 eISSN: 1873-5096Published here -
Cohen D, Lizotte C, 'Teaching the market: Fostering consent to education markets in the United States'
Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 47 (9) (2015) pp.1824-1841
ISSN: 0308-518X eISSN: 1472-3409AbstractPublished hereMarked-based reforms in education have garnered the support of politicians, philanthropists, and academics, reworking the nature of public education in the United States. In this paper we explore the methods used to produce consent for market-based reforms of primary and secondary (K-12) schooling in the United States, focusing on two case studies to interrogate how this consent is generated as well as how these reforms are resisted in place. In doing so we illustrate how market-making in public services is a contested terrain and the importance of understanding the nature of their roll-out at the local level.
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Mitchell K, Lizotte C, 'The grassroots and the gift: Moral authority, American philanthropy, and activism in education'
Foucault Studies 18 (2014) pp.66-89
ISSN: 1832-5203 eISSN: 1832-5203AbstractPublished hereParental activism in education reform, while often portrayed as an exemplary manifestation of participatory democracy and grassroots action in response to entrenched corporate and bureaucratic interests, is in fact carefully cultivated and channeled through strategic networks of philanthropic funding and knowledge. This paper argues that these networks are characteristic of a contemporary form of neoliberal governance in which the philanthropic “gift” both obligates its recipients to participate in the ideological projects of the givers and obscures the incursion of market principles into education behind a veneer of progressive activism. Drawing on archival research as well as personal interviews with Seattle-based reform advocates, representatives of philanthropic organizations, and school administrators, the paper points to the need to critically evaluate the “roots” in grassroots movements and trace their connections to larger institutions and agendas.
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Lizotte C, 'The moral imperatives of geographies of school failure: Mobilizing market-based reform coalitions'
Canadian Geographer 57 (3) (2013) pp.289-295
ISSN: 0008-3658 eISSN: 1541-0064AbstractPublished hereSchool reform efforts in the United States often declare the entire institution irreparably unresponsive to student needs and in need of a fundamental overhaul. Consequently, coalitions that incorporate business and philanthropic actors have advocated strongly for the introduction of market logics into the public system. I argue that these movements are facilitated by creating a sense of obligation that is mapped onto the space of the urban or metropolitan area. I draw on archival research and open-ended interviews to demonstrate the degree to which this moral obligation dominates reform efforts in the Seattle area through two coalitions: the first, made up of local business, philanthropic, and citizen groups that advocate for introducing market logics of choice and accountability, and the second, made up of parents who advocate for a network of alternative schools that meet the needs of students not served by the public system. Based on these differences, I argue that the former coalition's greater influence is in part due to its ability to mobilize an image of urgency around school reform that is geographically specific even as it glosses over differences in the spaces of education quality within the larger Seattle area.
Books
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Moisio S, Koch N, Jonas A, Lizotte C, Luukkonen J, (ed.), Handbook on the changing geographies of the state, Edward Elgar (2020)
ISBN: 9781788978040 eISBN: 9781788978057AbstractPublished hereThis authoritative Handbook presents a comprehensive analysis of the spatial transformation of the state; a pivotal process of globalization. It explores the state as an ongoing project that is always changing, illuminating the new spaces of geopolitics that arise from these political, social, cultural, and environmental negotiations.
Drawing together a diverse set of expert contributors, this book showcases compelling scholarship on the changing geographies of the state. Chapters examine the state from a range of theoretical angles and analyse a variety of relevant themes, including feminist geographies, the relationship between state and environment, urbanization, security geographies, nation-building, and geographical political economies. The book considers the state as spatial in both form and outlook, illustrating how it occupies existing and constantly changing political geographic conditions, and how it is maintained by the practices of categorizing and managing territory.
Taking a multidisciplinary approach, this Handbook will be a valuable resource for academics and students across a range of subjects, including human geography, international relations, political science, spatial planning, and urban studies. The key case studies explored will also provide valuable examples for scholars and policy makers seeking a better understanding of the broad scope of geopolitics in a globalizing world.
Book chapters
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Lizotte C, 'Populism and geography' in Barney Warf (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Human Geography, Springer Nature (2024)
Open Access on RADAR -
Lizotte C, 'Introduction. Security and the state' in Handbook on the Changing Geographies of the State, Edward Elgar (2020)
ISBN: 9781788978040 eISBN: 9781788978057AbstractPublished hereSecurity is, as Marx notes, the ‘highest social concept’ of capitalist society. It is a term that describes an intuitive and visceral sense of personal safety as well as a highly technocratic apparatus carrying out the dictates of an unelected bureaucracy. It is concerned with physical well-being, ontological wholeness and economic functioning. And it is inherently spatial: to be secure is to possess an inviolable core defended by clearly demarcated boundaries, whether at the scale of the body politic or the human body.
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Lizotte C, Mitchell K, 'Governing through failure: Neoliberalism, philanthropy, and education reform in Seattle' in Governing Practices: Neoliberalism, Governmentality, and the Ethnographic Imaginary, University of Toronto Press (2016)
ISBN: 9781487500832 eISBN: 9781487511913Published here
Further details
Other experience
- Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Helsinki (2017-2020)
Previous education
- BA Geography and Architectural Studies, Middlebury College (magna cum laude), 2007
- MA Geography, University of Washington, 2012
- Ph.D Geography, University of Washington, 2017