Political Geography. Lecture Notes 1-16

Political Geography | Lecture Notes Week 1: Introduction/What is Political Geography? Definitions of Political Geography ● The study of relationships between politics (in its multiple forms) and space (notable forms like place, landscape, and territory) ● Political geographers study how geographic space mediates political action and also how it is transformed by it ● “The case studies and examples that we [textbook authors, and me, in this class] refer to are taken predominantly from books and journal articles published in the last twenty years, the most recent of which may be regarded as sitting at the ‘cutting edge’ of political geography research. However, current and recent work in political geography [...] does not exist in a historical vacuum. It builds on foundations of earlier research and writing, advancing an argument through critique and debate and through the exploration of new empirical studies that allow new ideas to be proposed” (Textbook pp. 3-4) A History of the Sub-Discipline ● A shifting discourse of/on Political Geography: ○ Political Geography is a discourse (p. 3), i.e., a set of statements with limited dynamism ○ If Political Geography is a discourse, it must have its outsides, so that would-be contributions to the literature are recognizable and can be policed ● From the late 19th Century to present: “Geopolitics” ○ Friedrich Ratzel and late 19th century German politische “ geographie,” and the characterization of the state as living organism ○ Halford Mackinder and early 20th century British geography, as politically useful ○ Political Geography as discipline providing logic for imperialism... then a mid-century crisis of legitimacy ● Mid-20th Century: the ‘functional’ approach ○ The valorization of “depoliticized” political geography, a Political Geography useful for administration – Political Geography rearticulated in the context of discourses on social progress, etc., which presume a conception of space ○ Empiricist pretense, and an implicit investment in a correspondence theory of representation; assumption that representations of the world can be value-neutral ○ Rostow’s Model of Development ● From the 1970s forward: the “era of revival” ○ Post-positivism (critique of the subject/object dualism) and the “linguistic turn” (that our experience is mediated by language) ○ An emerging concern with ‘cultural politics’ (and lowercase-p politics), and on embodied manifestations of power in spaces of everyday life ● Today: “post-disciplinary political geography,” evident in the pages of Geography Compass (personal significance) and all Political Geography journals 1 ○ Articles on the politics of “heritage” in cities of the Middle East, documentary film as a genre of geopolitical discourse, etc. Political Geography’s history is Social History ● Political geography is a field of study that responds to and is embedded in social life. ● Historical-geographical events may alter how we interpret the world or develop arguments as political geographers (e.g., 9/11) ● In small groups, get to know each other (5 min.): What areas of study do you expect may emerge as important in the years to come? Why? Territory ● “And the naturalization of violence” ● A lived experience: socially and geographically uneven exposure to discretionary use of force ● Its form is naturalized through: ○ The designation of problem areas (in Mexico City, 847 “ ” classified according cuadrantes to “risk”) ○ The allocation of responsibility for “risks” to the residents of so-called “exceptional” areas ○ The refusal, by agencies charged with ensuring public safety, of responsibility for the violence that can be seen to occur outside their jurisdiction Jurisdictional Boundaries ● Often described as the condition for criminal violence in particular locations, but better thought as a spatial order reproduced by agencies that are charged with public safety but which paradoxically incentivize criminal violence in peri-urban areas Week 2: Geopolitics, Geostrategy, and Regional Geography Geopolitics ● A 19th-century form of political geography from out of which “political geography” was named as such; a state-centered form of political geography concerned above all with the state’s “external relations” ● In its “classical” form and also in “neo-realism,” geopolitics is politicized knowledge about politics – it blurs the line between subject and object ● As a discourse, it stands as intellectual justification for territorial expansion (e.g., Ratzel’s Lebensraum), classically, the political-geographical promotion of the advancement of one nationrace over others (consider Ratzel, his student Kjellen). Geopolitics as a Discourse ● The world is scripted, our encounters with it are mediated by language or by “texts” 2 ● People produce these texts, and they are invested with authority by still other people to make claims that some audiences regard as true. In this way, certain individuals come to act as “intellectuals of statecraft,” i.e., people who, in their discourse, promote the apparent interests of the state. “Intellectuals of Statecraft” ● People in a wide variety of sectors might play this role, that is, might function as someone who is empowered to speak authoritatively to promote the interests of the state. A Contemporary Perspective on Geopolitics ● A deconstructive, critical perspective; scholars reveal unstated assumptions in scripts of conflict ● Implicit here: a ‘Cultural Turn’ in Political Geography – in parallel with other disciplines (e.g., the rise of “cultural history,” constructivism in Political Science, the emergence of Cultural Studies), an understanding of the world as mediated by language and representation ● Geopolitics is/was politically useful knowledge that is/was often harnessed for imperialism: ○ “The creation and maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural and territorial relationship, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination” (Clayton quoted in Jones et al., p. 136) ○ “Geography and geographical concepts have influenced the formation, reproduction, and dissolution of empires” (p. 137). ● The regional geography of empire, an institutionalized knowledge of “the Other” ○ A reductive vision of the world promoted by regional “experts” effectively constructs cultural difference as “a battlefront” (Said, p. 47). The Regional Geography of Empire ● The production, by foreign experts, of distinctions between areas, in a way that is amenable to empire ● Consider simplifications of regional difference in terms of binary distinctions (e.g., “western” and “non-western”) ● Or consider the attribution of intrinsic “backwardness” to regions, explained by reference to climate (p. 194) Classical Geopoliticians: Scripting a World of Intervention ● Mackinder as part of PG’s “era of ascendancy,” consistent with tendencies of the day to produce knowledge that serves territorial expansion, or spatial expansion of extra-territorial influence ○ Imperialism: a framework of ideas and practices for dispossessing others of land or resources that would be necessary for self-determination ● Ratzel, Kjellén, Haushofer, Mackinder ● ... Classical geopoliticians share a realist assumption (politics is competition for power), which is often complemented by other epistemologies (environmental determinism, social Darwinism) and “buttressed by reference to academic authority” (Jones et al. 2015, p. 191-192). 3 Seapower, Scripted by Alfred Mahan ● Alfred Mahan, head of the US Naval War College, author of The Influence of Seapower Upon History (1890) ● Mahan’s geostrategic writing takes physical form in the expansion of US territorial holdings in/facing the Pacific, and the creation of military bases in those colonies (e.g., Panama, the Philippines, Guam) Mackinder: Scripting his World of Intervention ● After Mahan’s promotion of “seapower,” Mackinder argues that railroads shift the locus of power toward the interior of Eurasia ● Mackinder, head of the LSE, promotes the idea of a strategic region (the “world island”) ● “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island commands the World.”(Democratic Ideals and Reality, 1919) Classical → Neo-Realist Geopolitics ● Again, characterized by a blurry line “between the analytic lens used to study objects – in this case, the state – and the objects themselves” (p. 190). Still, the contributors speak with the authority of authoritative figures who ask us to ‘face facts’ ● Simplistic accounts of regional difference, between friends and enemies, create conditions for conflict as well as blunder Mackinder’s Argument ● What does Mackinder mean by the “post-Columbian” age? How does his concern with conditions of the “post-Columbian” age echo concerns of other “classical” geopoliticians? ● Why, for Mackinder, would “Euro-Asia” be the geographical pivot of history? What regional distinctions does it imply, and what does Mackinder claim about relationships between the people of these regions? ● How is space characterized, as part of Mackinder’s declarations about imperial strategy? Revealing Passage from Mackinder ● On Russia and “land power,” as one representative of “the competing peoples” (p. 437): ○ On page 436: “Russia replaces the Mongol Empire. Her pressure on Finland, [...], and on China, replaces the centrifugal raids of the steppemen. [...] The full developments of her modern railway mobility is merely a matter of time. Nor is it likely that any possible social revolution will alter her essential relations to the great geographical limits of her existence.” Anticipating McNamara (Rule #11): “You can’t change human nature” ● But might this statement be more prescriptive than descriptive? 4 ○ Consider Gerry Kearns: Perhaps Mackinder’s work [like McNamara’s wisdom] embodies a particular “style of geography” that prepares the ground for war, and justifies war in advance ○ Mackinder and other classical geopoliticians (McNamara too?) assumed a particular form of “human nature” as the foundation for their analyses• This continues today (in “geographical determinism” [Kaplan] as an update of “environmental determinism”) Classical Geopolitics and its Legacy ● Sharing a realist epistemology, “buttressed by reference to academic authority” (Jones et al. 2015, p. 192) ○ Consider Gerry Kearns on three “central features” of Mackinder’s thought: “the belief ...; the argument ...; and the claim ...” (Kearns 2010, p. 188) ○ “The belief that the environment shapes cultural identity in ways that produce a world that is a patchwork of mutually hostile peoples; the argument that international relations are primarily based upon force and to suggest otherwise is foolish idealism; and the claim that while often force is deployed for aggressive territorial gain, one’s own state, uniquely, is driven by a defensive desire to spread freedom and democracy abroad in the face of the selfish aggression of others” (p. 188). Mackinder as an Analysis Grounded in a Sense of Exceptionalism ● Kearns: “[Mackinder] identified a distinctive English race with the inhabitants of ‘the English Plain,’ a group whose pure blood was the ‘fluid essence’ of ‘John Bull’ (Mackinder 1931, 326), and who had a talent for responsible government. This talent was ’something physical, and therefore not wholly transferable except with the blood’ (Mackinder 1925, 726), a blood that had moved with British emigrants to the colonies and ex-colonies inhabited or ruled by the larger family of Britons” (pp. 188-189). Gerry Kearns on Halford Mackinder ● Mackinder’s work embodies a particular “style of geography” that prepares the ground for war, and justifies war in advance ○ Mackinder sidelines another sensibility, a geographical practice premised upon recognition of our inextricable entanglement with all that exists (Kearns 2010, p. 188), and upon “cooperation” (p. 196) ● “The world is not only to be apprehended through force” (Kearns 2010, p. 201) ● Implied by this critique: 1.) Language is not merely descriptive 2.) Geography is not only a practice of producing representations of the world that “correspond” with perceived realities; that there are also ethical and an aesthetic considerations that must inform our practice. Critical Geopolitics 5 ● 1990s-present: Reframing classical geopolitics as interested, reflecting particular subject positions, despite authors’ pretense to “objectivity” ● A concern with how the world is “scripted” (a conversation beyond political geography) ○ Persistent challenge to neo-realism (p. 199), e.g., Huntington’s post Cold War “clash of civilizations” thesis, i.e., that future conflicts will be “cultural,” which was a response to the creation of “a ‘new’ set of enemies [...]” after the Cold War (Toal and Agnew 1992, p. 202) The Role of Regional Geography ● ... “as if a billion people were really only one person and western civilization was no more complicated a matter than a simple, declarative sentence” (Edward Said) ● Regional geography as an example of how “Geography and geographical concepts have influenced the formation, reproduction, and dissolution of empires” (Jones et al., p. 137), in particular, simplifications of regional difference that define, as a matter of the state’s interest, where an enemy is and who they are. Week 3: The Fog of War, the Discourse of Geopolitics Jim Glassman, on the blurry line between “popular” and “classical” geopolitics ● “Themes developed in Cold War propaganda campaigns during the 1950s to promote the development of the South East Asia Treaty Organization [SEATO] also appeared within the work of Southeast Asianist Geographers” (Glassman 2005, p. 784) ● This is not unique. Many “classical” and “neo-realist” geopoliticians draw rhetorical power from assumptions they share with popular audiences, and/or from the simplicity and reductive abstraction of their representations of the world. ● Of interest for Glassman: the production of “Southeast Asia,” with a unity of interest, distinct from China but presumably vulnerable to its influence Less concern for correspondence with reality than for tracing structures of Cold War rhetoric ● Related to pre-film question: on how popular assumptions about relationships between places influence decisions about going to war or about how to wage war ● Southeast Asianist “experts” purify would-be “unruly hybridities” that had only been defined in relative terms (e.g., “Indo-China”) (see Jim Glassman, pp. 788-790). ● And they construct their object as intrinsically “distinct and discrete” from a regional force (China) qua Cold War threat (p. 788). The “domino theory” makes sense in a world scripted this way Tracing the Structures of Cold War Rhetoric 6 ● Glassman looks at the role of geographers in constructing “imaginative geographies” (p. 789) – spatial objects that are overcoded by tropes and stereotypes international/interregional relations ● The production of knowledge about these “imaginative geographies” have truth effects because they are institutionalized (as “area studies”) and operationalized (through foreign policy) ○ Consider: knowledge produced by Office of Strategic Services, anticipating the CIA (p. 786); knowledge produced by the Army Specialized Training Program, at universities across the US The Substance of Cold War Southeast Asianist Geography ● Sharing two key assumptions: “ ○ (1) the assumption that the Chinese Cold War Other is a distinct and discrete entity centered on the other side of an identifiable boundary; and ○ (2) the assumption that the Southeast Asian ‘we-self’ defined in relation to that bounded Cold War Other is—or can be made into—an equally distinct and discrete entity” (p. 788) ● The ‘we-self’ as a simplified image of national identity, which allows for the identification of would-be subversives as “appropriate targets of violence” (p. 789) ● This effectively opens Southeast Asia to Cold War-era “proxy” conflict in the name of that ‘weself.’ It promotes intervention because, otherwise, “the newly independent states of South-east Asia will fall [...] like a row of dominoes before the advent of some new Asian imperialism” (Fisher, quoted on p. 793). Foreign Policy Expertise in The Fog of War ● Film essay, based on an interview with Robert McNamara: Secretary of Defense (1961-’68), appointed by JFK, promoted US war in Vietnam until he didn’t, then resigned, to become the President of the World Bank (1968-’81) ● Exhibiting the role of geographical knowledge production in geostrategic, and in waging war ● 43:15: “What makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?” Week 4: Critical Geopolitics, Popular Culture, Scripting Politics “Classic” geopolitics, as practice: ● “The production of knowledge to aid the practice of statecraft and further the power of the state (Toal and Agnew) ● “Geography as a discourse is a form of power/knowledge” 7 Licensing the exercise of state power ● Geographical knowledge license the exercise of state power vis-à-vis “the foreign” ● Jones et al., concerned with knowledge that “underpin the process of imperialism” ● Geographical knowledge also underpin international relations more generally ○ The iron curtain being replaced almost but a social/religious/political curtain now “Geopolitical assemblage” Concept ● The idea that multiple discourses converge on and are implicated in the dynamics of a given place ● Adoption of the concept as part of a rejection of “classical” tendencies to script global space in terms of an overarching, organizing, or transcendent people ● Instead, multiple discourses are seen to converge on a given case of “external relations” ● Intertextuality facilitates the dissemination of “practical geopolitical reasoning” in inter-relating discursive fields; “resonances require the repetition and recycling of certain themes and images even though the socio-historical context of their use may have changed dramatically” (Toal and Agnew) ● In the writings of Florence Nightingale, “Egypt’s landscape was shorn outfits contemporary population, only to be repopulated by an imaginary population draw from Egypt’s distant past” ○ Egypt is opened for the expansion of imperial reach from the British Popular Geopolitics ● A sub-field of the wider Critical Geopolitics scholarship-- discussed in a moment, focusing on “the practices and representations of global political space” that “do not reside exclusively in political elite cultures ● A concern about how these ideals continue to shape foreign discourses and relations ● Battleship Potemkin (Soviet propaganda): ○ Line of anti-Southern Ukraine -- a representation of the Cossacks being those who are massacring, showing the Ukrainians enacting violence ○ Popular power put down by authoritarian powers ○ Tsar Nicholas II sends a convoy of warships to destroy the Potemkin but the sailors on board refuse to fire on their fellow seamen and the rebellious ship sails through the convoy and into history - Communist history, that is. ... "There was no uprising [in Odessa] and there was certainly no massacre on the steps. ○ Sailors collectively organized against those private groups, showing the state willing to put down worker-ownership protests for private rights Critical Geopolitics ● It is “the study of the sociocultural resources and rules by which geographies of international politics get written” (Toal and Agnew, p. 193) ● Toal/Agnew are post-structuralism ○ These structures are a facilcy, and ones that individuals can make and remake Toal and Agnew (1992) on Geopolitics as a Discourse 8 ● It is only through discourse that the building up of a navy or the decision to invade a foreign country is made meaningful and justified. It is through discourse that leaders act, through the mobilization of certain simple geographical understanding that foreign policy actions are explained, and through read-made geographically infused reasoning that ware are rendered meaningful.” (p.191) ● “The notion of intellectuals of statecraft refers to a whole community of state bureaucrats, leaders, foreign policy experts and advisors throughout the world who comment upon, influence and conduct the activities of statecraft (p. 193) Intellectuals of Statecraft ● “IoS” expands our sense of whose voice may count in the construction of a world for political engagement, and the aesthetic function of heretofore seemingly marginal voices ● Aesthetics/aesthesis: the matter of what is given to our senses ○ How individuals can shape our feelings and views upon the world ○ What is allowed to make sense based on previous discourses and our understandings ● Social categories are created in the form of social statistics -- to build the world in which some issues come up and some don’t (the root of statistics is state) ○ Making the world simplified and administrate Conditions for thinking “geopolitics as discourse” ● Geopolitics conceived, in terms of the “linguistic turn”, as a discourse that represents, and makes actionable, a world for political engagement ● In the original work” that discourse is to be examined for the social interests that are embodied ○ e.g. , which how geopolitical discourse might be influenced by a command-in=chief’s financial interests in a region at war ● The “linguistic turn” in the study of geopolitics, against a background of traffic between geography and imperialism ● Engagement with post-colonial theory and post-structuralism ○ Michelle Foucault on the nexus of power and knowledge in institutions and governance ○ Edward Said on the role of geographical imaginaries in facilitating governance (Jones et al., pg. 142, Toal and Agnew, p. 194) ○ Jacques Derrida on deconstruction and constitutive “margins” of authoritative discourse ■ These individuals wouldn’t have said their arguments without what is in the margins (their background knowledge, footnotes) but never on the page A Deconstructive insight harnessed towards writing new scripts ● “The irony of practical geopolitical representations of places is that, in order to succeed, they actually necessitate the abrogation of genuine geographical knowledge about the diversity and complexity of places as social entities (Toal/Agnew p. 202) ● Let’s not just deconstruct the current political geographies, but script new ones emphasizing cooperation and mutual interests instead of intrinsic competition 9 ● For this reason: “critical geopolitics can help create descriptions of the world based not on reductive geopolitical reasoning but on critical geographical knowledge (Toal/Agnew) Debates in Critical Geopolitics ● Subaltern Geopolitics: ○ People dominated/dependent—Franz Fanon ○ Scripting the world in support of lived alternatives -- of people historically deprived of the power to present international political space (Toal/Agnew p. 195) to being dominated and dependent ● Feminist Geopolitics: ○ A rescaling of geopolitical discourse, to “make manifest the ‘place’ of traditionally disempowered people” (Jones, p. 201), especially people experiencing gendered vulnerability ○ Highlighting social differences and how experiences shape what is said about international relations ○ Emphasis on bringing the lived experiences and humanity of individuals sometimes only counted as collateral damage ● Posthuman Geopolitics: ○ “Displacing the sovereignty of the human”, so that the geography becomes ethically attuned to the non-human bodies with which its authors are entangled (recall Kearns on Mackinder) Grad Lecture: Critical Geopolitics in Pop Culture and Play Screening Geopolitics: James Bond and the Early Cold War Films (Dodds) ● “Accessing visual culture through popular films allows us to consider connections between IR theory and our everyday lives. Using popular films in this way helps us get a sense of the everyday connections between ‘the popular’ and ‘the political’” (Cynthia Weber) ● “How popular culture might influence/shape/reproduce the foreign and security policies of governments.” (267 Dodds) ● Highway of Death perception in Call of Duty? Week 5: The State and Territory For Political Geography, the State ● “...like the air we breathe” ○ Also, an organization, endowed with exceptional authority, by which social life is governed and administered ● Geographers ask questions of the spatially of the state (and state power): 10 ○ Of regional variation of the state form ○ Of geographical unevenness (at multiple scales) in the exercise of state power ○ Of state power in relation to territory ● On the state as an “organization” ○ A post-Westphalian, and, in the first lines of textbook chapter 2, an implicitly Weberian theory of the state ■ As a “human community” with popularly acknowledged monopoly on the legitimate use of force” (p. 17) ■ As distinct from “civil society” (p. 32) ● Civil society is defined as not being part of the state ■ As implicated in governing a demarcated territory (state Space) and deciding who or what prevails in that territory On the Geography of the State ● Evident in the construction of certain geographical forms (e.g. infrastructure) that ensures national or sub-national well being and/or the functioning of an integrated economy (That is, across a national territory) Territory ● Defined: the spatial extent of the land across which the authority of the state is exercisable or can be expressed; or the demarcated physical limits of state power ○ The emergence of the “modern” states as the process through which territory, thus defined, has been more and more precisely delineated ● Territory can also be sub-national or sub-municipal, for purposes of taxation, for example ● In geographical representations, territory has an ideological function, obscuring the presence of an authority in our lives to which we give away our power Geographical Knowledge, State Consolidation ● Mapping private property or the nation’s resources “so that the process of state consolidation could proceed through the modern period” (textbook p. 21) ● Part of a wider historical development of different rationalities of government Techniques or “technologies” of government within a territory ● Anthony Giddens (p. 21): “as good a single index as any of the movement from the absolutist state to the nation-state is the initiation of the systematic collection of “official statistics”, and the creation of categories to be counted ○ A sense of a social problem is being produced, made available for governing On the Geography of the State, Continued ● Evident in the visibility of areas of administration (e.g. school districts), of law enforcement, etc. 11 ● Evident in the production of a “problem” space, and landscapes that justify sovereign authority Producing “state space” or “legibility” ● James Scott on the role of geographical techniques in making social life visible, functional to state power. How is visibility ensured? ● Examples: place names, declaration of an official language in which society operates, shared spelling (regardless of linguistic diversity), standardization in qualitative and quantitative means ● Another example: ejidos (Mexico) and the implementation of neoliberal reforms (privatization, and promotion of land markets) in the early 1990s ● In what circumstances might a sovereign authority decide to promote illegibility, or seek to obscure social order? ○ Domestically as well with obscuring it ■ Nixon and then Reagan Ignoring consumption in the US and instead trying supply-side interventions ○ When it benefits them, potentially in a time of conflict when it’s easier to be illegible to promote state activities ■ Obscuring social order is a constructive choice ■ Examples of this could be Drug War or Cold War when illegibility-wise it was easier to act under the guise of eligible activities -- although they could be considered illegible in the rule of law ● Not valuing Westphalian state society ● Promotion of one’s own political economy ● Not acknowledging ways/customs/governments of different nations, agrarian reforms, etc. The “Ideological” Function of Territory ● Territory often stands in, discursively, for the people being governed ● References to territory can obscure the presence of an authority in our lives to which we give away our power, and to which we might otherwise project ● Territory stands in discursively for people being governed ● Territory also binds ‘nation’ and ‘state’ ○ “Territory is the concept that unites the bureaucratic and impersonal organization of the state and the political and cultural community of the nation.” (textbook p. 30) So what happens when territorial integrity is perceived to be compromised? Towards “State Formation” ● The state demands “performances” of authority. These performances are concretely enacted by people. The state as such “has no power -- it is merely an institutional ensemble; it has only a set of institutional capacities and liabilities that mediate that power; the power of the state is the power of the forces acting in and through the state (p. 33) ○ How can we explain transformations in the exercise of state power? Through reference to what imperatives? Capital accumulation? State legitimacy? 12 Thinking the state geographically: On the spatially of state power ● How do our definitions matter practically, in terms of how we related to the state? ○ By Painter’s definition, everything is basically a government institution, everything around you is a state institution (Prosaic) ○ Whether trust or distrust of the state, it is an integral role in our lives ○ If the state is all including society, we need to ensure it best represents us ○ If it is separate as Painter, then this entirely redefines how we look at and interact with the state ■ With the Mexico grad reading, we can now look at the state to impact everyday lives, can create fears and situations in which people haven’t felt previously without this connection between the state a society ● Painter on ‘the state’ ○ “It makes sense to define the state as an imagined collective actor in whose name individuals re interpellated [that is, made to self-identify], and which is imagined as the source of central political authority for a national territory” (p. 758) ● State formation ○ A focus on transformations is how state power is exercised ○ Performances of state authority are concretely enacted by the people ○ Given this, how should we explain transformations of ‘the state’ and/or of the exercise of this power? ● Social Imperatives? ○ We can explain transformations of the state, or of the exercise of state power, through reference to felt imperatives -- does the state change to discourse ■ Instability provokes transformation ● Painter ○ Paint explicitly targets a ‘separate spheres’ assumption that permeates popular and scholarly debate -- refined understandings that view the state as a differentiated institutional realm separate from civil society ● Promote an emphasis on practices: ○ “A particular emphasis on the practices through which such efforts arise” (p.759) ● The “practice turn” in state theory ○ Analytic focus on “state effects”, challenging the taken for grantedness of the state as a mode of organization ■ Questions for state actors become that of who is acting in the name of the state ○ Asking who makes decisions attributed to the state ■ Who acts in the name of the state? Or who exercises state power? Who is “sovereign” in one or another place, and through which social relations does their authority emerge? ● Contra Weber’s definition of the state as: ○ An organization with a popularly acknowledged monopoly on the legitimate use of force ○ Distinct from civil society 13 ○ And necessarily implicated in governing a demarcated territory ● Of practiced “techniques” of government ○ Disparate practices assemble around a phenomenon that accordingly emerges as a problem, or is made a problem through the production of knowledge ■ Foucault: “There is no question of deducing practices from a supposed essence of the state in and for itself … the state does not have an essence” (2008) ● The state is invented every day through the technique of governance, the social world is made legible for intervention which optimizes that society’s sense of what should be, makes it achievable ● Statization: is “the intensification of the symbolic presence of the State across all kinds of social practices and relations” (Painter, p. 758) ● State power as being exercised ○ And not just held ○ So, instead, state power is conceived as exceeding “the sphere of the state”, which implies understanding the state as a social relation, not as a thing ○ The state is called upon in order to correct perceived problems in our social lives ● “Prosaics” is a challenge to the assumption of autrhotative monological master subject, the state is not solo-authored ● Instead people who are often not recognized as agents of the taste may nonetheless contirnbute a diverse set of assuemblages that aeffectuate particular kinds of state effects (p. 767) ○ Pg. 767 paragraph on the ASBO Week 6: State Formation and Political Economy Political Economy ● A focus on how capitalism is governed and managed to ensure its endurance, and on how capitalist social formations have emerged and are changing Situating us in Political Geography ● The work on political economy as part of political geography’s “Era of Revival” (1970s → present) ○ Thinking places in terms of their capitalism to describe geographies saturated by class, corporate and state power, and forged through political conflict” (Jones, p. 10) Theory: Historical Geographical Materialism ● Geographical conditions and consequences of capitalism 14 ○ Dispossession is the foundation for a labor relation that facilitates profitability for people who own productive infrastructure through the exploitation of wage labor; this requires producing spaces for in which would-be labor can be accessed ○ Private property (the commodity form) is created through enclosure and dispossession (above) ○ Capitalism, as a mode of production, demands constant overcoming of limits it is also crisis prone ■ David Harvey: The Limits of Capital ○ The question is of how to regulate the economy for growth, not of whether or not to regulate. ○ At the fundamental level, capitalism requires private property, the state must be there at the very least to enforce private property rights The Production of Space for Capital Accumulation ● Lefebvre on space as both “a product to be used” consumed and “a means of production” (The Production of Space) ● Or Neil Smith on the “transformation of the earth into a universal means of production” (In Economic Geography, 1982) ● Examples: ○ Territorial authorities providing an “atmosphere for economics development” (p. 42) DOD contracts in Silicon Valley ○ Or the “domestication of geographical space” (pp. 39-40), as US territorial authorities promoted the extension of railroads ● Distinct “regimes of accumulation” are “associated with particular modes of state intervention” (p. 39) ● For instance, after the US Civil War, the assumption by policymakers of “a territorial ideology called the ‘frontier principal’: would secure economic growth through territorial expansion for agricultural production and the creation of trade centers (cities) Regulation Theory ● Examination of how and to what effect modern territorial authorities (states) are entangled in wider economic, social, and political process ● Scholarly focus on what is done to relieve or defer crises of capital accumulation ○ A “regime of accumulation” a coherent phase of development, or an enduring “structural coupling”; “accumulation system” and a production-consumption relationship, and; ○ A “mode of regulation” an approach and set of institutional forms that guarantee stability → Demands rethinking capitalism as contingent, focusing on concrete practices that constitute the ground for “capital” as a real-world process; focusing on specific actors and relations that make possible forms of calculation directed towards the realization of profit in practice. 15 ● Through a focus on the production of a commonsense according to which a crisis of accumulation must be resolved; a focus on spaces and spatial practices in/through which people maintain that commonsense as a necessary logic of governance… ● F.A. Hayek → neoliberalism/ post-Fordism ● J.M. Keynes → state-led development/ Fordism From Dr. Candella (GMU): Concluding Remarks ● Fundamentally, the socialist calculation debate was a controversy over the nature and role of competition in the market process ○ The Marxists condemned competition for wastefulness ○ The Austrians (Mises and Hayek) asserted its information necessity ○ The market socialists thought assumed it easy or failed to recognize the consequences of its introduction into their models without the institutional prerequisite of private property ● Whereas the Marxists and Austrians understood competition as a verb (a process of equilibrium), the Market Socialists understood competition as a noun (an equilibrium state of affairs) ● What is an example, in your life (at any scale), of a territorial authority using its influence to facilitate one or another form of economic development? ○ The notion of online advertisements being space Of Tendencies: Crises and Restructuring ● From the Kynesian/Fordist consensus: ○ Class compromise -- mass production meeting demand from consumers who were employed in stable jobs ○ Welfare state (securing consumption) ● … to after-Fordism/”neoliberalism” (p. 47) ○ Trade liberalization; privatization; roll back with reference to efficiency and roll out with reference to competition and securing conditions for profitable production (Peck & Tichell 2002) ■ Anti-union laws, ways to compete Defining Neoliberalism ● Post-1973, promotion of “liberal” principles in response to an emerging crisis; a resolution of ideological struggle in favor of key principles: ○ Privatization ○ Promotion of competitiveness ○ Cuts to “inefficiencies” ● Initially deregulation (roll back neoliberalism) and later re-regulation (roll out neoliberalism) 16 ○ And now through expanded deployment of discretionary, punitive force to maintain social order (e.g. private security companies, expansion of private owned prisons) ● …to after-Fordism/Neolioberalism (p.47) ○ Trade liberalization privitazation, roll back with reference to efficiency and roll out with reference to competition and securing conditions for profitable prduciton ● The example of the NHS and the provision of public schools in the UK Week 7: Identity, Difference, and Spaces of Cultural Politics Reasons for uneven development in political geography ● Political geographers have not thoroughly recognized the importance of culture to state formation beyond nationalism and citizenship ● Political and cultural geographers have largely talked past each other State Formation & The “Cultural Turn” ● Philip Abrans (1977): state is not material object, but rather an ideological construction ○ Absent of human agency and its relevance to understanding state power ● Michel Foucault: “... state is not the source of power but its effect? ● Gramsci: state’s stability depends on hegemonic power dynamics ● Philip Corrigan: key question is not who rules but how rule is obtained and how “patriarchy, racism, nationalism, homophobia, and classism became visible as fundamental features of rule” ● There is no one correct perspective from which to view the state ● Painter: culture is incorporated into state formation through social practices ○ Three ways in which state formation is cultural ● Actors through their daily lives are acting and reproducing state power Space, Culture, State according to Marston ● Marston: how cultural questions of identity are connected to political geographical questions about space and the role of the state ○ St. Patrick’s Day parade conflict ○ Massachusetts state courts: parades are public accommodation and not expressive conduct ○ US Supreme Court: parade is a form of speech and is protected under the 1st amendment ● State constructed its own narrative of what culture is when in reality, culture is being constantly negotiated Politics of Public Space though lived experiences 17 ● Lynn Staheli: What movements have in common are the political claims they make based on recognition, and sometimes fear, of identity and difference (pg. 561) ○ What would be an example of a political claim based on the fear of identity and difference? ● These claims are not made in a vacuum, they are made in contest terrains ● Politics of Recognition : highlights the importance of difference that affects the positionality of individuals in the public sphere. And how this positionality impacts what kinds of goals these individuals want to achieve. ● Politics of Recognition clashing with Liberalism ○ Universalism ○ Individualism ○ Conflict Resolution Terrain of Difference ● Politics of recognition is not a new understanding or construction ● In an effort to eliminate difference, the state inevitability exposes difference ● While states attempt to muffle difference within the country, at the borders this difference is exploited Political Claims-Making Related to Culture ● Politics of recognition “often focus on political issues related to culture and social positioning, rather than on direct claims on the state for changed policies or for redistribution of social resources.” (Staheli p. 565) ● Why would a group focus on issues related to culture and social positionality as opposed to making a direct political claim to the state, such as to change a policy or distribute more resources, etc.? Political Geography and “Culture” ● Marston (2004): an observable tendency to examine culture only when intuitively related to the nation-state, e.g., in the study of nationalism ● Culture long tended to be treated as an effect of an object most consistently preoccupying political geographers (the state) or as “derivative of the state” (pg. 2) ○ The inherent moment of identification and dis-identification ● In this ignorance of culture was once observable, political geography has now clearly correct this tendency; see the last ~20 years of publishing ● This correction in the wake of conceptual advancement in related fields of study, treatments of the state as “an effect” of wider social processes of governmentalization; or the state as a contest product of “multiply situated subjects” (Marston, p.5) ○ Witness the “practice turn” in political geography ○ Wide spread governmentalization, think about the creation of agencies to address problems, e.g. space force with a social shift which leads to a political focus and therefore 18 into the state necessitating how these concerns are relevant to the state for security concerns Cultural Politics and Political Geography ● Political geographers now frequently examine collective claims to social difference, and also impositions of a sense of social difference ○ Rights-based claims, or collective demands for recognition that require spaces of politics ○ Impositions of a sense of social difference, creating spaces that require governance ● Geographers show us that cultural politics produces spaces, including territories wherein authorities may deny the existence of meaningful difference and/or seek to flatten it ● Social difference produces spaces of politics ● Gökariksel and Secor (p. 28): “The political is not entirely public” → How do “private” matters impinge upon the political? “Contested Terrains” of Cultural Politics ● In contrast with traditional concepts of the “public sphere”, for participation in which subjects of deliberation over common issues will check their differences at the door … ○ The privation of the public sphere, the public is shrinking ● “Contested terrains” (Staeheli): socially-historically constituted spaces, produced by “multiply situated subjects” within which cultural-political claims are made; these spaces will shape the cultural-political claims themselves ○ The conformity for the continuation of secularism ● How might “contested terrains” shape the cultural-political claims that take place within them? ● “The public sphere” is socially and geographically differentiated; There accordingly are multiple ”publics” ○ There is pluralism within any given public sphere and the public sphere means something different depending on context (p. 23) ● Against claims of universality (e.g. of authorities speaking for a nation-state), people assert difference and collective identity, but not always as part of a demand for “inclusion” Challenging the “Contested Terrain” ● Beyond inclusion: “This is the democratic theme: making a claim to be the whole, not to be precisely is not the inclusion for included in the whole. In other words, the democratic theme the excluded; it is the posture of the redefinition of the whole” (Dikeç in Staeheli, p. 53) ○ Being tolerable/respected instead of just being a part of the public/society ○ The transformation of the “social whole” both socially and geography ○ You’re not just welcome, but society transforming for you to be included ● “Inclusion” can still be mode of exclusion, minoritization of minorites ● Claiming instead to embody the social whole requires transformation of the society in question and transformation of the spaces of social life Defining “culture” in urban Turkey 19 ● Example of Turkey and the bottom-up reassertion of the role of religion in the public life, but on a contest terrain that has been constituted in party of policies of “strong secularism” since 1923 ● The particularity of this contest terrain for negotiation social; difference is a product of Turkification (e.g. in the populist strategy of party politics” in the mid-20th century ● Nationalism remains, but its relationship with religion has changed and is being negotiated ● “Religious ways of being and other moral systems interact within and are constitutive of pluralistic public spheres” (p.23); this interaction “shapes public life in Turkey” ● Put differently, these negotiations are redefining “the whole” and the spaces within which people perform their part in that whole ○ Brining together economic liberalism and Islam ● “It matters when and where an act is taken and by whom” (Staehli, p. 566) Week 9: Grad Lecture - Nationhood & Belonging in Global Text Unifying Experiences and Comradery: Stressful situations COVID-19 Pandemic Concerts Areas of study/majors/cohorts Full-car road trips Cars stuck, helping each other Planes/Transportation Foster quicker relationships between people -- this at a global scale Common areas of interest Consideration of everyone in a situation People always go to help, no understanding Bags, natural conversations Nation as an idea, produced through nationalist practices ● The power of the “nation” as an idea depends upon assumptions about internal social norms and external limits of the nation ● Nationhood is defined by limits ● The power of the idea is contingent upon shared assumptions about: ○ International social norms -- about who can reasonably claim to be a member of the nation, and who is convincingly embodying those norms ○ External limits -- about the social and geographical boundaries that define who is and isn’t part of the nation Nation-Day Parades & Performance of National Identity ● Parades produce an image of “Sameness.” while highlighting certain differences (Gabriel, 3) ● Provides a identity on a national level while also creating an assumption that it is built off “internal” social norms ● Performances of national identity attempt to make individual differences irrelevant ● Assumption that national identity is built upon internal social norms 20 Case Study: Burkina Faso ● Celebration of heterogeneous cultures ● Strict order and appearance help create the image of sameness ● Dress during parade reflects institution, tradition, and nation-day ● Rehearsals bonded participants together Nation-Day Parades & Performance of National Identity ● Reflection: ○ National identity as a social construct ○ Geographical features as an influence on national identity ○ “Othering” of different cultures and nationalities ● Parades represent the history and culture of a nation, but also are an attempt to influence how citizens of the nation define themselves Doren Massey: Space, Place, & Identity ● How do we understand the significance of space with globalization? ● Globalization has not been homogenizing ● “How to hold on to that notion of geographical difference, of uniqueness, even of rootedness if people want that, without it being reactionary” (Massey, 152) Globalism:“The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move … Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you.” *nationalism with globalization is rooted in a sense of co-implication and mutually dependent interrelations (Massy, 153-155)* Political Geography of online space -- the Metaverse’s political geography? 21 Nationalism Gone Right vs. Nationalism Gone Wrong ● Case Study in Turkey ● At its core, nationalism is not intrinsically exclusionary ● What are some examples from the readings of where nationalism “went right”? ● Areas of where nationalism “went wrong”? Guest Lecture - Fulbright John A Reese- Constructions of Australian Nationhood: Continuity and Change in Comparative Perspective Australia & Federalism ● 1901 is established as a “bonafide state” ● Late enlightenment had a heavy effect on the establishment of the nation-state ● Population between and equivalent to Texas and Florida ● The central government is referred to as the commonwealth ● Continued debate in the high power court over state and commonwealth power debate. ● Healthcare system is based on the northern European system ○ Natinalistic identities as Austrailians: It is said if your from Sydney and your asked where you live they say austria. While other territories will say exactly where. Washminster: A Hybrid Inheritance ● The political system is a hybrid of two other systems ○ Westminster's system (UK) two houses of parliment ○ Federal system (USA)-State power in relation to federal power ● Required voting-fined if not voted/ There is the Queen here power is not above the constitution. She can fire the head minister though (1975 example) The Geopolitics of Covid-19 ● Controlling of national borders (Sovereignty) ● Controlling state borders (Mini-sovereignty) ○ Even people who commuted 30 mins between to states for work and home weren't allowed to travel between state. This brought a question of space to the power of geopolitical power between state and federalism ● There is a continued proportion of Australian population born overseas, how does the effect culture and space geopolitically Construction of an Australian National Identity ● Colonial beginnings (1788) ● First Nation and terra nullius 22 ○ The proclamation of Governor Bourke, 10 October 1835 is historically significant. It implemented the doctrine of terra nullius upon which British settlement was based, reinforcing the notion that the land belonged to no one prior to the British Crown taking possession of it. ● Federation 1901 and the ‘White Australia' immigration policy ● Post-war migration and the emergence of multiculturalism ● First nation and Australia in the 21st-century Australian Relations with the World ● The national identity was formed by four geopolitical factors (or at least more prominent) 1. Shaped by the relation with the British Empire (Commonwealth of Nations) 2. Immigration influenced by intrinsic issues 3. Geostrategic status as a middle power in relationship with superpowers (e.g. US cultural and security ties;China economic and regional ties) 4. Complicated relationship with Asia Week 11: Making “the people” and the Geography of Elections “The people” not as “what we are…” ● “The people are a moving target: they are an object of contestation and therefore a consistuviely impure entity on the verge of becoming other” (Arditi 2015) ○ “Populism is a ghost which haunts liberal democracies” ● On polemicization: that representation is never adequate to that which is being represented. Representations always re-present or make a claim on reality, construct our experience of it ● Again, ambiguity is structural, not a passing, feature of the vocabulary of politics (Arditi) ● Political action of all sorts is enacted with reference to “the people”, a name adopted by people of all ideological variations ● Every iteration of “the people” reconfigures the world of politics: ○ These re-presentations “make the absent presence of the people appear” ● “Acting for others [as a defining feature of modern, liberal political representation] highlights the fact that representation is always an action, an activity that connects representatives with the represented without every dissolving the distance between them” (Arditi) Week 12: Geographies of Social Movements Geography & Social Movements ● Critical to understanding how social movements are formed, organized, and achieve their goals ● Movements bring together people from different places through shared concerns and identities Local and Higher Scale Social Movements 23 ● Local Scale ○ Can come together through community mobilization to represent the identities of that neighborhood or community to fights smaller things like ■ Fighting closures of institutions (schools, hospitals, programs, etc.) ■ Campaigning against new developments (factories, malls, etc.) ■ Environmental improvements Public and Private Spaces ● Social movements can use interventions in the public sphere to affect changes in private spaces ○ Gender equality, gay rights, domestic violence ○ What other examples are there where a social movements’ goal is to affect change in private spaces and how space mattered? ● Occupation of public spaces can involve the creation of temporary private space for social movements ● Public and private spaces are interconnected and cannot be separated Space and Territories of Alternative Politics ● “For decades the alter(anti)globalization movements were nomadic” ● Activists migrated from one summit meeting to next ● They followed annual meetings of global institutions such as the: IMF, World Bank, G8, G20 in more wealthy cities ● Privatizing public space in order to provide “security” and exclusivity ● Ecclesiastical power Democracy, haunted by contentious politics ● What qualifies a society as democratic? ○ Rule of law, and institutionalized processes for socially relating, founded in a constitution? ○ Even if the existence of institutions and legal frameworks may be necessary for representative democracy this may not be a sufficient condition for democracy as such ● Democracy-in-practice, when people demand to be heard and be engaged in decision-making, despite sometimes lacking faith in nominally democratic institutions, elections, political representation? ○ Consider “contentious politics” Anti-Austerity in Lebanon, Oct. 2019 ● More than 1million demonstrators go to the streets against the “WhatsApp tax” ● High dept to GDP and protests in Lebanon ● Protests across the country, not only against symbols of the ruling party but also against symbols of political power for opposition parties Expressions of frustration with “liberal democracy” 24 ● Liberal democracy as representational democracy that accommodates inequality: an individualistic political order that -- with reference to individuals -- theoretically guarantees equality, but also brackets consideration of social inequality Social Movements ● Contentious politics; people seeking more direct engagement in the political process, as an alternative to hegemonic state policies ● Social movements: “a network of informal interactions between a plurality of individuals, groups and/or organizations, engaged in political or cultural conflict on the basis of a shared collective identity” Intellectual and Social History ● The field of “social movement studies” tends to develop its models from the experiences of the 1960s identity-based movements (the “movement family”) as well as twentieth century antcolonial movements ● Scholars focus on protest waves and movements that do not necessarily have leaders, but certainly do have emergent spokespeople ● Methodologically diverse (e.g. quantitative studies on instances of protest) Social Movement and Place ● The mobilization of people that has been invested with meaning ● Sometimes the transformation of that palace (sit-ins, squats, protest camps; occupy protests) ● Occupations and encampments become sites for experimentation with new ways to live. Social reproduction of relations in the camp becomes crucial to its longevity. The Patterns of Urban Rage ● “Urban rage is not about isolated cases of bad practice. It is a rage against systematic, sustained oppression with many sources -- not an individual wire, but intertwined wires” (Dikeç, 11) ● Why are we seeing violent reactions to the structural violence of liberal democracy? ○ Because these situations produce discontent that “cannot be accommodated in noncoervice ways” ● Contemporary liberalism -- “since especially the 1970s”: ○ Protects conditions for growth even as it cuts social services that might ameliorate the effects of income inequality; ○ Generates exclusions at the intersection of economic inequality and political representation ○ Creates conditions for violent responses to structural and sometimes corporeal violence Liberalism and the “State of Emergency” 25 ● Consider John Stuart Mill (1891) on authoritarianism: “not as a counter to liberty, but as the very condition out of which liberty is bound”: ○ “In cases of extreme exigency, Mill argued, deposition was a “necessary medicine…” ● Authoritarianism amidst, or because of contradictions in “liberal democracy”: ○ Generalization of security logic in governance, accelerated by an incentive structure that makes innovations in the production and insecurities profitable Week 13 - “Urban Rage” and the UK/Turkey AKP rises to power in 2002, a democratic party that has overseen backsliding ● The AKP rises to power, as a self-consciously moderate Muslim democratic party in a context of secular intolerance, promoting popular “Muslim values” not necessarily “political Islam” ● The AKP promises an end to political alienation for historically peripheral social groups; retains dominance in electoral politics because of sustained economic growth ● “It was not only the society itself that could feasibly mount any oppositional challenges to Erdogan’s rule” Week 15 - Globalization Back to Turkey: 2018-2019 More democratic backsliding, emerging opposition ● 2018: the end of the emergency rule, but legal criminalization of dissent ● Erdoğan paranoid style shapes how Turks relate to one another in every day and institutional life ○ Guzman kills suspected “Gulenisits” in offices at Osmangazi in Eskisehir ● 2019: Emerging challenges in electoral elections' politics evident in local elections e.g. Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu A general election in near future ● Erdoğan facing growing opposition, possible electoral defeat in June 2023 (assuming an early election is called ○ 2022:support for the AKP hovers around 31% from 42.6 in 2018; AKP depends upon an alliance with the nationalist MHP ● A time of political potential ○ Circumstances are social political: blow back from the government withdrawal from the Istanbul convection on violence against women scrutinized internationally ○ Additionally, economic-intense inflation (annual rate at 61%) Turkey, shaped by global tendencies with consequences for globalization ● If a weakened Erdoğan loses in 2023 ○ What happens to Turkey attempts at regional hegemony leadership? ○ What comes of this? Globalization is defined, socially materially 26 ● The integration of people and places-”time-space compression” ● When people think of globalization what type of discourse do they think ○ Whole group question: other ways of interpreting the Russian invasion and geopolitics around it, other than as the “end of globalization ○ Re-alignments of the west, in relation to the “global threats” ○ Observable effects of greater global interconnection diplomatic leverage this provides eg sanctions (SWIFT) ○ Transformation of geostrategic positions (EG around the black sea) More globalization discourse ● 1990: globalization stories: as a wave steamroller (p.159) ● Challenges to the centrally of nation states: National economies less a function of the nation state (164) as corporatizes elude regulation by the national government, global institutions define norms and advocate Globalization as a project ● The particular shape of global integration is a produced through decision that are located ○ Example: Conditionality of structural adjustments in the developing world in the 80s produced in Washington as the Washington Consensus (SAPs) ● So it may not be “at higher scales” that this project is articulated instead “globalization” happens through places ○ Example: Showcase and downtowns in large cities across the world, policed in accordance with “broken windows: ideas that first take place in the 1990s New York Geopolitics of capitalism ● If entangled in capitalism, nation states are competitively related enraptures ● Capitalism demands constant reabsorption of surpluses of capital and labor in order to survive, which places that nation states facilitate Neo Lib and Place ● Glob as grounded in and the contested through the particular places (158) ● Capitalist globalization carries tendencies of homogenization as well as differentiation ○ Countervailing tendencies will tend to endure in parallel, as places are entangled in a mode of production that incentivizes competition Local places in the production of the global ● If glob as a social-historical process brings distant places into relation with each other ○ Political geographers must ask how relations between places emerge and are enacted in practices 158 Place Based geopolitics ● Politics of propinquity: the struggles over what can express itself in a place-what values, what social relations, what identities and what are the social differences (p. 161) Another form of place based politics: Within and between places ● October 2019: GM Mexico closes the silo assembly plant because Mexican workers were refusing to be pitted against workers in the US, refusing speedups and overtime ● On a political of connectivity: David Harvey (989, p 16) calling for a geopolitical strategy of inter-urban linkage that mitigates inter-urban competition and shifts political horizons 27 Week 16 - Globalization Contd’ Recall from last week… ● Contra “globalization” discourse, globalization, as a social-historical process, works through places ● Globalization is not imposed from above, in a top-down fashion ● The particular shape of global integration is affected by decisions made, and norms enacted, in particular places ● What does this conceptual corrective -- of globalization not as a steamroller but as emergent process, enacted through places imply about agency? What does it imply about who can act to affect globalization and where? The Belt and Road Initiative ● The BRI is an expression of China’s larger “going out strategy”, investment in overseas markets that is interpreted to displace hegemony of the West ● Sometimes characterized, in the mode of “classical geopolitics”, as a return of great game politics ● Away from the “Liberal International Order” (and foreign assistance conditional on one set of norms and global integration) and economic cooperation and more explicit liberalization ● Not just economic; also political, an “order” organized around principles: ○ Intervention to course correct, to “modernize” ○ Respect for human rights (unless obstacle to modernization) ○ Democracy (when not an obstacle to modernization) ○ Conditional foreign aid ● Part of a long history of “opening up” ○ Late 1970s and 80s: economic reforms, and the expansion of export-orientated manufacturing ○ 2000s: the expansion of China’s financial sector, and the government strategy of investment in overseas markets (the going out strategy) ● The BRI as “co-produced” ○ As a multiplicity of actors, involved in both informal and formal processes ○ As a “bundle of diplomacy and lobbying efforts, financial and technical resources, converging and conflicting interests across China, Latin America, and beyond ○ Work done in parallel with cultural politics of “south-south” cooperation ○ Nicaraguan canal in contrast to Panama Fairtrade ● An organized norm of global integration, ideally promoting an empowerment of producers ● What does this form of marketing do for relationships of trade, in particular places? How does the marketing, and the imposition of forms of Fairtrade more generally, affect producers? 28 Final Paper Workshopping: ● Political geography shaping social relations in the example of: migration from Central America, and the social relations between immigrants/migrants in the U.S. ○ Spacialization of Central America ○ Spacializatoin of the U.S.-Mexico Border ● Social differentiation? ● How space impacts border politics and the social relations between Chomsky’s thinking? Spacialization of Israel/Palestine Borders Spacialization of Korean DMZ South China Seas -- Specialization which impacts social and international relations Seapower, Scripted by Alfred Mahan ● Alfred Mahan, head of the US Naval War College, author of The Influence of Seapower Upon History (1890) ● Mahan’s geostrategic writing takes physical form in the expansion of US territorial holdings in/facing the Pacific, and the creation of military bases in those colonies (e.g., Panama, the Philippines, Guam) Mackinder: Scripting his World of Intervention ● After Mahan’s promotion of “seapower,” Mackinder argues that railroads shift the locus of power toward the interior of Eurasia ● Mackinder, head of the LSE, promotes the idea of a strategic region (the “world island”) 29 ● “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island commands the World.”(Democratic Ideals and Reality, 1919) 30