The Scale of Political Geography: An Historic Introduction

2011

Contemporary world is changing at an incredibly fast pace. IT revolution and globalization processes have led to a deep transformation of our social life and the change of relations between human activity and space in which this activity takes place. Growing correlation on a global scale, mutual conditioning of what is global (external) and what is local (internal), high mobility of people, capital, ideas flowing freely on a global scale affect the increasing permeability of borders, which to a lesser extent perform their functions. Political geography, which as a scientific discipline focusing on the spatial aspects of human activity, must find an answer to the question how to analyze spatial systems in their relation to power in the world where majority of processes assumes global character, spatial distances in their current meaning lose their importance, and human activity is often separated and independent from a specific location in space. In the submitted article the author a...

Geopolitica. Orientarsi nel grande disordine internazionale, 2019

The aim of this book is to present geopolitics as a method for studying current international affairs – i.e., the historical phase characterized by a shift of power from the old industrialized countries to the newly emerging ones – through their geographical, historical, economic, demographic, and cultural roots. Geopolitics analyzes how all these features condition the political action of every actor, whether a state, a region, a corporation, an organization, a religion or even an individual. This book does not attempt to explain what geopolitics is, because every geopolitical scholar answers that question differently. Rather, the book seeks to explain what geopolitics is for. Geopolitics should offer the best available analytical tools to help one find one’s bearings in today’s “new international disorder” – that complex system of interconnected phenomena, characterized by shifting economic and political global axes, that has upended every benchmark of international politics that existed in the 20th century, particularly during the Cold War. The book deals with traditional issues of political science (the state, democracy, collective security, the military, strategy, geography, etc.), but also with topics at the center of today’s political debate (demography, immigration, populism, religion, war, climate, terrorism, etc.). These subjects are analyzed in their geopolitical depth, that is, detached from their day-to-day immediacy and inserted into a wider historical, economic, geographical, and cultural framework. However, we study these and other phenomena not because they are topical today but because they will be structurally topical in the years to come. The geopolitical approach lets us impart order and meaning to what appears to be inconsistent and chaotic. This book is intended for use by scholars and practitioners, by college students (graduate and undergraduate), and even by high school students, but also by the average lay reader of political affairs. It could prove highly useful in courses on geopolitics, international relations, history of political doctrines, and general political science.

2010

Antipode, 2009

This paper makes two central arguments. First, the popular language of geopolitics needs to be understood as historically emerging from and helping create a "geopolitical social", which both crosses and crafts traditional borders of internal and external to the national state. Second, we suggest that geoeconomic social forms are gradually supplanting this geopolitical social. After establishing the geopolitical social associated with traditional geopolitics, from Ratzel to Bismarck, we examine the erosion of geopolitical calculation and the rise of the geoeconomic. We trace emerging geoeconomic social forms in three domains: the reframing of territorial security to accommodate supranational flows; the recasting of social forms of security through the market; and the reframing of the state as geoeconomic agent. Neither an exercise in "critical geopolitics" nor an endorsement of Luttwakian style geoeconomics, this paper assumes no straightforward historical succession from geopolitical to geoeconomic logics, but argues that geoeconomics is nonetheless crucial to the spatial reconfiguration of contemporary political geography.

Progress in Human Geography, 2013

This first of three progress reports on the subdiscipline of political geography reviews recent scholarship on the transformation of geographies of sovereignty. The piece offers a review of major analytical themes that have emerged in recent geographical analyses of sovereignty. These themes include the design of spatial metaphors through which to conceptualize sovereignty, US exceptionalism and the influence of Agamben’s work, productive blurring of onshore and offshore operations and productions of sovereign power, and debate about the kinds of power operating through these newly constituted global topographies of power. The text also visits five kinds of sites where contemporary struggles over sovereignty manifest: prison, island, sea, body, and border. After reviewing recent trends, themes, and locations in studies of sovereign power, recommendations for future research topics are made.

European vector of development of the modern scientific researches, 2021

One of the most promising areas of modern science is geopolitics, which determines the main trends of today's social life. The research pays detailed attention to the theoretical aspects of the development of geopolitics as an important area of modern social geography. The main geopolitical trends of the twentieth century and the brightest representatives of each of them are described. The purpose of this study is to systematize the existing geopolitical schools and demonstrate the peculiarities of the formation of each of them. Geopolitics has existed since the existence of states. Whether small or large, states are always worried about their borders, while others express a desire to expand to countries with which they border. But beyond the natural and demarcated borders of each country, there are other geographical factors that favor or discourage the development of a country into a Great Power. It seems, therefore, that over the centuries geography has been a common denomina...

Statsvetenskaplig Tidskrift, 2011

Research problem What do states have in common with municipalities, the Catholic Church, criminal MC gangs, virtual communities, nomadic peoples, and corporate empires? My contention is that a degree of autonomy within some form of territory is a common goal for such, in other respects, very different entities. I also argue that in a globalized world, alternative forms of territories are emerging and gaining in significance, a development largely overlooked by the literature on globalization as well as by traditional state-centric perspectives. Perspectives on the significance of political territories are highly polarized, which has implied a lack of problematization (Brenner & Elden 2010). In a traditional perspective influenced by (neo)realism, it is held that the territorial dimension of politics is crucial for autonomy and political power (Mearsheimer 2001), but this reflects postulation rather than problematization. From this perspective, globalization and transnational networks are not considered to be sufficiently challenging to call for theoretical and conceptual revision. State territory is believed to be largely unaffected by globalization, and is considered to continue to be the basic units of the international system. Theories of globalization and transnational networks, on the other hand, hold 1 Projektet bedrivs vid Utrikespolitiska institutet. Johan Eriksson är även verksam vid Södertörns högskola.