Graduation Date
Spring 2022
Document Type
Thesis
Program
Master of Arts degree with a major in Sociology
Committee Chair Name
Anthony Silvaggio
Committee Chair Affiliation
HSU Faculty or Staff
Second Committee Member Name
Michihiro Sugata
Second Committee Member Affiliation
HSU Faculty or Staff
Subject Categories
Sociology
Abstract
Economic Sanctions have been imposed on nations throughout the Global South during the post-World War Two era. This led to the “Sanctions Decade” of the 1990s which saw the most devastating impacts on civilians in nations like Haiti and Iraq. The 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea resulted in sanctions being imposed on Russia by the European Union (EU), and retaliatory counter-sanctions from Moscow ensued shortly after. The Russian counter-sanctions banned the importation of certain agricultural foodstuffs from the EU, and this ban had significant implications for farmers in the EU who were now unable to sell to the large Russian market.
This thesis seeks to understand how counter-sanctions from Moscow impacted the West, and created conditions for protest. Case studies of farmers protests in France and Poland will be used to understand the impacts of the counter-sanctions and the response from both civil society and their governments. This thesis will use scholarship from World-Systems Analysis and Transnational Social Movements to situate these protests as the result of a unique case of economic sanctions being imposed by a core nation on another core nation. We conclude with a reflection on the 2022 Russia/Ukraine conflict and what impact this may have in a world with rapidly developing economies growing across the globe threatening the hegemony of the West.
Citation Style
ASA
Recommended Citation
Cunha, Travis, "A theater of the absurd: economic sanctions in the emerging age of multipolarity" (2022). Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects. 540.
https://digitalcommons.humboldt.edu/etd/540