GEOGRAPHIES OF SPACE AND POWER

Monday, 28 January, 13

Origins of Political Geography

Territory Nationalism Realism

Monday, 28 January, 13

Origins of Political Geography

Ratzel Mackinder Bowman

ALL THREE ‘FOUNDING FATHERS’ FOLLOW A SIMILAR APPROACH, PRIORITIZING TERRITORIAL CONTROL AS EMBLEMATIC OF POWER

Monday, 28 January, 13

Friedrich Ratzel (1844-1904)

Ideas form the basis for German geopolitics

(Geopolitik), notably his concept of Lebensraum, or living space, which served as the basis for expansion policies under the

Nazi regime.

Monday, 28 January, 13

Halford Mackinder (1861-1947)The Heartland Theory (similar to Ratzel’s Lebensraum) mapped power in relation to a ‘pivot area’.

Like Ratzel, having space is significant--power is manifested through territorial control.

A Conservative MP in the House of Commons 1910-1922

Monday, 28 January, 13

Isaiah Bowman (1878-1950)“Chief Territorial Advisor” to President Roosevelt

Canadian-born, American-educated

Like the other ‘founders’ conceptualizes the world as blocks of nation-states

Monday, 28 January, 13

Treaty of WestphaliaAll of the ‘founders’ are working off a Westphalian vision of the world.

Based on the Treaty of Westphalia, Westphalian sovereignty stresses nationalism and national control of territory.

Globalization, global capital, global terrorism seen as challenged to the superiority of this approach.

Monday, 28 January, 13

Critical Political Geography

Marxist political

economy

Gender/Feminist Political

Geography

Critical geopolitics

Monday, 28 January, 13

Foucault...againCritical geography is interested in moving beyond space as container and site of power.

Foucault’s conception of power as operating at the ‘capillary’ level is a useful way to think beyond states.

Interested in techniques of power; the how versus the why of power

Power as productive

“The modern state is born, I think, when governmentality became a calculated and reflected practice” (STP, p. 165).

Monday, 28 January, 13

Getting beyond the stateGender/Feminist Political

Geography Body politics

Gendered spaces

Performativity (of nation, identity)

Migration and mobilities

Domesticities, spaces of care

Monday, 28 January, 13