Political geography in question

Political Geography, 2003

Political geography's problems, at the present, are both external and internal. Externally there are the challenges it faces as a result of recent changes in other sub-fields, particularly cultural and economic geography. There the post-positivist shift in human geography has resulted in a new interest in questions of power, which, arguably, has always been the focus of political geography. But if there are 'new' cultural and political geographies, arguably part of the newness of political geography itself has come from its contact with ideas of political economy and new, more critical concepts of the cultural. One might claim that the interest in power in political geography was in the past often rather submerged. This was certainly the case in early vintages of voting studies and in some of the work on welfare geography. Even so, in terms of political geography's identity, where does that leave us? How are we to be distinguished from cultural and economic geography, particularly in their more recent instantiations? What are the specific contributions we make to human geography on the one hand and to the understanding of the political on the other? These questions of identity are lent further urgency by the relative lack of internal cohesion in the field-always a problem in political geography. Political geographers study, seemingly, rather disparate things. There is a tremendous amount of theoretical work that needs to be done in the sub-field. For sure, one can point to a number of very lively and productive clusters of activity. But what do they all add up to? In consequence, and before addressing our relations to the rest of human geography, we need to consider just what it is we do in a coherent sense, in terms of overarching logics, even though I recognize that the latter term has become suspect and assimilated to the post-modern critique. I am going to argue that the specificity of political geography, our contribution to human geography's division of labor, lies in the exploration of our two big, twin concepts, territory and territoriality: territoriality as action to influence the content of an area; territory as the area in question. More concretely, the focus is on the

2022

Geographic space mediates political action and is transformed by it, and spatial forms are produced by governmental agencies that must respond or adapt to emerging patterns of political disruption and movements for social change. This course gives us tools to explain these social-spatial dynamics. Students in Political Geography learn to think about the relationship between politics and space at multiple scales and in global context. We examine selected themes in the sub-discipline, develop a historical understanding of intellectual and social change in the sub-discipline, and develop a capacity to use key concepts for political-geographical research and writing. Students come to the course while working on both undergraduate and graduate degrees. The course has been customized to appropriately address all students who are eligible to register for it. We begin the course by querying the practice of doing Political Geography, and we learn to recognize how norms of doing Political Geography have changed over time, even if some continuity (in concepts, methodology, and disciplinary identity, for example) extends over decades. In subsequent weeks, we attend above all to contemporary political-geographical approaches to key themes, including the state and state power, national identity and nationhood, forms of democracy and anti-democratic movements, geopolitics and international relations, political economy, and cultural politics. Through a mix of seminar-style discussion and lecture, as well as through the presentation of diverse texts for interpretation (films, fiction, examples of propaganda, and peer-reviewed scholarship in Political Geography and cognate disciplines), we develop shared understandings of key processes through which political geographies have been constructed.

Political Geography, 2009

O’Loughlin, John, Pauliina Raento & James D. Sidaway (2009). Editorial: Political Geography expands – both the medium and the message. Political Geography 28: 1, 1–4.

Political Geography, 1998

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.