Domesticating Geopolitics

This book explores the ways in which the study of the domestic and the international, far from being separate spheres, are in fact woven together in multiple ways. The chapters in this volume seek to question this traditional domestic/international binary and approach their entanglement through a range of different empirical settings and methodological approaches. Inspired by a recent turn towards recognising the importance of the home, the intimate, and the everyday in the construction of geopolitical worlds, this book captures a broad range of agents, practices, objects, performativities and discourses that contribute to how geopolitics is rendered familiar, sanitised, embodied and enacted, and the ways in which ‘the home’ and the ‘traditional’ terrain of the geopolitical (the international sphere) are in fact folded into each other in multiple ways. Domesticating Geopolitics will be of great use to students and researchers interested in geography and politics including popular geopolitics and human geography. This book was originally published as a special issue of Geopolitics.

This new updated edition presents the overarching themes of geopolitical structures and agents in an engaging and accessible manner, which requires no previous knowledge of theory or current affairs. It helps readers understand the geopolitical implications of COVID-19, China’s pronounced role in the world, the relative decline of the US, and the Black Lives Matter movement. Using new pertinent case studies and guided exercises, the title explains the contemporary global power of the United States and the challenges it is facing, the changing foreign policy of China and other countries, the persistence of nationalist conflicts, migration, cyberwar and cyberactivism, terrorism, energy geopolitics, and environmental geopolitics. Expanded case studies of the South China Sea disputes and China’s Belt and Road Initiative emphasize the multi-faceted nature of conflict. The book raises questions by incorporating international and long-term historical perspectives and introduces readers to different theoretical viewpoints, including feminist contributions. The new edition features fresh discussion of island geopolitics, the Anthropocene age, and geoeconomics. Introduction to Geopolitics will provide its readers with a set of critical analytical tools for understanding the actions of states as well as non-state actors acting in competition over resources and power. Both students and general readers will find this book an essential stepping-stone to a deeper and critical understanding of contemporary conflicts. The companion website will enable readers to apply the themes of the book to the constant shifts in current affairs to enable deeper understanding. It will provide access to weekly essays showing how the themes explain current events.

Rethinking Geopolitics argues that the concept of geopolitics needs to be conceptualised anew as the twenty-first century approaches. Challenging conventional geopolitical assumptions, contributors explore: * theories of post-modern geopolitics * historical formulations of states and cold wars * the geopolitics of the Holocaust * the gendered dimension of Kurdish insurgency * the cold war world * political cartoons concerning Bosnia * Time magazine representations of the Persian Gulf * the Zapatistas and the Chiapas revolt * the new cyber politics * conflict simulations in the US military * the emergence of a new geopolitics of global security. Exploring how popular cultural assumptions about geography and politics constitute the discourses of contemporary violence and political economy, Rethinking Geopolitics shows that we must rethink the struggle for knowledge, space and power.

This innovative and thought-provoking text will teach you about the diverse and increasingly expansive sub-discipline of geopolitics. Divided into three sections, Political Geography draws on case studies from a diverse range of scales, contexts, and demographics, to introduce you to the key approaches, concepts, and futures of geopolitics. You will cover an extensive range of key topics in Political Geography, from feminist geopolitics to non-human worlds, and nationalism to peace and resistance. Throughout this first edition you will apply various theoretical lenses, utilise a wide range of examples both past and present, and draw on cutting edge scholarship to reinvigorate your understanding of important themes such as the state, borders, and territory. Based on the award-winning course at RHUL, Politcal Geography includes a variety of sites, spaces, materials, and images alongside ‘In the field’ tips, ideas for practical dissertation research, and tasks to facilitate active follow-on learning. Case studies, key terms, key questions and learning exercises, and annotated readings are included throughout every chapter to aid understanding and help you to engage and reflect on the content. Designed as a core text for undergraduates and an introductory text for postgraduates with an interest in Political Geography. Rachael Squire is lecturer in Human Geography at Royal Holloway University of London Anna Jackman is lecturer in Human Geography at University of Reading

This Handbook offers a comprehensive overview of media geography, focusing on a range of different media viewed through the lenses of human geography and media theory. It addresses the spatial practices and processes associated with both old and new media, considering "media" not just as technologies and infrastructures, but also as networks, systems and assemblages of things that come together to enable communication in the real world. With contributions from academics specializing in geography and media studies, the Routledge Handbook of Media Geographies summarizes the recent developments in the field and explores key questions and challenges affecting various groups, such as women, minorities, and persons with visual impairment. It considers geographical aspects of disruptive media uses such as hacking, fake news, and racism. Written in an approachable style, chapters consider geographies of users, norms, rules, laws, values, attitudes, routines, customs, markets, and power relations. They shed light on how mobile media make users vulnerable to tracking and surveillance but also facilitate innovative forms of mobility, space perception and placemaking. Structured in four distinct sections centered around "control and access to digital media," "mass media," "mobile media and surveillance" and "media and the politics of knowledge," the Handbook explores digital divides and other manifestations of the uneven geographies of power. It also includes an overview of the alternative social media universe created by the Chinese government. Media geography is a burgeoning field of study that lies at the intersections of various social sciences, including human geography, political science, sociology, anthropology, communication/media studies, urban studies, and women and gender studies. Academics and students across these fields will greatly benefit from this Handbook.

This volume takes an enlightened step back from the ongoing discussion of globalization. The authors reject the notion that globalization is an analytically useful term. Rather, this volume shows globalization as merely the framework of the current political debate on the future of world power. Some of the many other novel ideas advanced by the authors include: the explicit prediction that East Asia is not going to become the center of the world; the contention that the USSR collapsed for the same reasons that nearly brought down the United States in 1973; and the notion that the regional economic networks that are emerging from under the modern states are in fact rather old formations. The articles in the volume are organized around three main themes. Part One explores both the changing patterns of global power from the viewpoint of geopolitics and the Gramscian approach to the study of international relations. Part Two further develops the debate among a number of eminent historians and sociologists challenging both the apologists for and the opponents of globalization in new and unexpected ways. Part Three traces the emergence of regional economic networks and explores the ambiguous problems of security and identity posed by the old-new transborder formations.

Young people, and in particular children, have typically been marginalised in geopolitical research, positioned as too young to understand or relate to the adult-dominated world of international relations. Integrating current debates in critical geopolitics and political geography with research in children’s geographies, childhood studies and youth research, this book sets out an agenda for the field of children’s and young people’s critical geopolitics. It considers diverse practices such as play, activism, media consumption and diplomacy to show how children’s and young people’s lives relate to wider regional and global geopolitical processes. Engaging with contemporary concepts in human geography including ludic geopolitics, affect, emotional geographies, intergenerationality, creative diplomacy, popular geopolitics and citizenship, the authors draw on geopolitical research with children and young people from Europe, Asia, Australasia, Africa and the Americas. The chapters highlight the ways in which young people can be enrolled, ignored, dismissed, empowered and represented by the state for geopolitical ends. Notwithstanding this state power, the research presented also shows how young people have agency and make decisions about their lives which are influenced by wider geopolitical processes. The focus on the lives of children and young people problematises and extends what it is we think of when considering ’the geopolitical’ which enriches as well as advances critical geopolitical enquiry and deserves to be taken seriously by political geographies more broadly.

Geopolitics is the study of how the projection of power (ideological, cultural, economic, or military) is effected and affected by the geographic and political landscape in which it operates. Despite the real world relevance of geopolitics, a common understanding of what classical geopolitics is and how it works still lies beyond the reach of both researchers and practitioners. In Classical Geopolitics, Phil Kelly attempts to build a common theoretical model, incorporating a host of variables that reflect the complexity of the modern geopolitical stage. He then analyzes thirteen pivotal but widely differing historical events stretching from the Peloponnesian War to World War II, from the fall of the British and Soviet empires to the contemporary diplomacy of South America. Through this analysis, Kelly tests the efficacy of his model as a comprehensive geopolitical analytical tool that can be used across a broad spectrum of geopolitical contexts and events.