Critical geopolitics

The basic concept behind critical geopolitics is that intellectuals of statecraft construct ideas about places; these ideas have influence and reinforce their political behaviors and policy choices, and these ideas affect how we, the people, process our own notions of places and politics.[1]

Critical geopolitics sees the geopolitical as comprising four linked facets: popular geopolitics, formal geopolitics, structural geopolitics, and practical geopolitics. Critical geopolitical scholarship continues to engage critically with questions surrounding geopolitical discourses, geopolitical practice (i.e. foreign policy), and the history of geopolitics.

Key ideas and concepts

Rooted in poststructuralism, critical geopolitical inquiry is, at its core, concerned with the operation, interaction, and contestation of geopolitical discourses.

This poststructuralist orientation holds that the realities of global political space do not simply reveal themselves to detached, omniscient observers. Rather, geopolitical knowledges are seen as partial and situated, emergent from particular subject positions. In this context, geopolitical practices result from complex constellations of competing ideas and discourses, which they in turn modify. Geopolitical practice is not, therefore, unproblematically 'right' or 'natural'.

Further, since geopolitical knowledge is seen as partial, situated and embodied, nation-states are not the only 'legitimate' unit of geopolitical analysis within critical geopolitics. Instead, geopolitical knowledge is seen as more diffuse, with 'popular' geopolitical discourse considered alongside 'formal' and 'practical' geopolitics. These three 'strands' of geopolitical thought are outlined below:

Popular geopolitics

Popular geopolitics is one of the ways in which geopolitical knowledge is produced. It argues that geopolitical ideas are not only shaped by the state, intellectual elites and politicians. Rather, it is also shaped and communicated through popular culture and everyday practices.[2]:208 Popular culture construct a common sense understanding of world politics through the use of movies, books, magazines, etc.[2]:209

Political geographers have widely studied the role of popular culture in shaping the popular understanding of politics.[2]:209 Klaus Dodds, a political geographer, studied the conveyance of geopolitical ideas through movies.[2]:209 While analyzing James Bond movies, he discovered a recurring message of Western states' geopolitical anxieties.[2]:209 For example, the movie From Russia with Love conveyed United States' anxieties as a result of the Cold War and The World Is Not Enough conveyed the threats posed by Central Asia.[2]:209

Structural geopolitics

Structural geopolitics is defined as contemporary geopolitical tradition.

Formal geopolitics

Formal geopolitics refers to the geopolitical culture of more 'traditional' geopolitical actors. Critical accounts of formal geopolitics therefore pay attention to the ways in which formal foreign policy actors and professionals - including think-tanks and academics - mediate geopolitical issues such that particular understandings and policy prescriptions become hegemonic, even common-sense.

Practical geopolitics

Practical geopolitics describes the actual practice of geopolitical strategy (i.e. foreign policy). Studies of practical geopolitics focus both on geopolitical action and geopolitical reasoning, and the ways in which these are linked recursively to both 'formal' and 'popular' geopolitical discourse. Because critical geopolitics is concerned with geopolitics as discourse, studies of practical geopolitics pay attention both to geopolitical actions (for example, military deployment), but also to the discursive strategies used to narrativize these actions.

The "critical" in critical geopolitics therefore relates to two (linked) aims. Firstly, it seeks to 'open up' Geopolitics, as a discipline and a concept. It does this partly by considering the popular and formal aspects of geopolitics alongside practical geopolitics. Further, it focuses on the power relations and dynamics through which particular understandings are (re)constructed. Secondly, critical geopolitics engages critically with 'traditional' geopolitical themes. The articulation of 'alternative' narratives on geopolitical issues, however, may or may not be consistent with a poststructuralist methodology.[3]

Key texts

The emergence of critical geopolitics

Critical geopolitics is an ongoing project which came to prominence when the French geographer Yves Lacoste published 'La géographie ça sert d'abord à faire la guerre' ('geography is primarily for waging war') (1976) and founded the journal Hérodote. The subject entered the English language Geography literature in the 1990s thanks in part to a special "Critical Geopolitics" issue of the journal Political Geography in 1996 (vol. 15/6-7),[4] and the publication in the same year of Gearóid Ó Tuathail's seminal Critical Geopolitics book.[5]

The subdiscipline is most commonly associated with a group of 'dissident' academics including John Agnew, Simon Dalby and, primarily, Ó Tuathail. Ó Tuathail's 1996 book Critical Geopolitics defined the state of the subdiscipline at the time, and codified its methodological and intellectual underpinnings. Subsequently, the definition of critical geopolitics has been broadened such that the project is no longer associated solely with the works of a small number of scholars.From different parts of the world, a new generation of scholars follows the principles of Critical Geopolitics to deconstruct classical theories while showing how they served the very interests of the Great Powers in many regions of the world like Central Asia.[6]

Critical Geopolitics texts

Critical geopolitics-based work has been published in a range of Geographical and trans-disciplinary journals, as well as in books and edited collections. Major journals in which critical geopolitics work has appeared include:

Elsewhere, critical geopolitics-derived studies have been published in journals specializing in popular culture, security studies, borderstudies (such as in the Journal of Borderlands Studies) and history, reflecting the breadth of subject matter subsumed under the critical geopolitics headline.

Texts in Critical Geopolitical theory

Critical geopolitics 'theory' is not fixed or homogeneous, but core features - especially a concern for discourse analysis - are fundamental.

Popular engagement with the geopolitical, as (re)presented in popular culture, is a major area of research within the critical geopolitics literature:

Notable people

See also

References

  1. ↑ Fouberg, Erin H.; Alexander B. Murphy & H. J. de Blij (2012). Human Geography: People, Place, and Culture (10 ed.). Wiley. p. 535. ISBN 1118018699.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Painter, Joe; Jeffrey, Alex (2009), "Geopolitics and anti-geopolitics", in Painter, Joe; Jeffrey, Alex, Political geography: an introduction to space and power (2nd ed.), Los Angeles: Sage, ISBN 9781412901383.
  3. ↑ Dalby, Simon (July–September 1996). "Writing critical geopolitics: Campbell, Ó Tuathail, Reynolds and dissident skepticism". Political Geography, special issue: Critical Geopolitics. Elsevier. 15 (6–7): 655–660. doi:10.1016/0962-6298(96)00035-2.
  4. ↑ Various (July–September 1996). "Special issue: critical geopolitics". Political Geography. Elsevier. 15 (6–7): 451–665.
  5. ↑ Tuathail, Gearóid (1996). Critical geopolitics: the politics of writing global space. London: Routledge. ISBN 9780415157018.
  6. ↑ Okur, Mehmet Akif (Winter 2014). "Classical texts Of the geopolitics and the "Heart Of Eurasia"" [Jeopolitiðin Klasik Metinleri ve “Avrasya’nýn Kalbi”]. Journal of Turkish World Studies. Ege University. XIV (2): 73–104. doi:10.13062/tdid.201428262 Via Academia.edu. Pdf.

External links

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