An Introduction to
Political
Geography
John Rennie Short
Second edition first published 1993
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003.
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue reference for this title is
available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Short, John R.
An introduction to political geography/
John Rennie Short.—
2. ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Political geography. I. Title.
JC319.S52 1993
320.1´2–dc20 92–24742
ISBN 0-203-41872-7 Master e-book ISBN
CONTENTS
Figures ix
Tables xi
Preface to the second edition xiii
Acknowledgements xv
INTRODUCTION 1
Part I The Political Geography of the World Order
1 UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT: THE CAPITALIST WHIRLPOOL 5
2 THE RISE AND FALL OF THE SUPERPOWERS: THE EAST-WEST FULCRUM 35
3 THE MULTIPOLAR WORLD 57
Part II The Political Geography of the State
4 THE STATE AND THE WORLD ORDER 71
5 THE NATION-STATE 91
6 THE STATE AS SPATIAL ENTITY 115
Part III The Political Geography of Participation
7 PEOPLE AND THE STATE 133
8 THE GLOBAL VILLAGERS 145
9 CITIZENS AND THE CITY 149
Postscript 167
Index 172
CONTENTS
The attempt is to find concepts and methods which cast light on the real world instead of codifying it into the obsolete categories of the academic establishment (Castells, 1980)
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
A full understanding of society can only be achieved through analysing the strands which link spatial structures, political processes and economic systems. The overall aim of the book is to analyse these connecting strands. The traditional subject matter of geography— the relationships between people and nature, people and space, people and places—cannot be separated from political considerations. The explicit focus on these considerations constitutes the general subject matter of political geography
THE BACKGROUND Peter Haggett once described geography as a Los Angeles of an academic city: all sprawling neighbourhoods and no centre. Like most big cities the neighbourhoods change over time, some retaining their exclusivity while others, once fashionable, become rundown and dilapidated. Political geography is an inner-city neighbourhood. It was important in the early development of a discipline but was bypassed by the growth of new suburbs. More recently, however, it has become fashionable again. Political geography is in the process of academic gentrification.
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries geography had a very strong political focus. Many of the early geographers such as Peter Kropotkin, Sir Halford Mackinder and Isaiah Bowman were explicitly concerned with the relations between politics and geography in both their published work and their public lives. Mackinder, for example, was a British MP, a High Commissioner in Russia and chairman of various government committees. Bowman was an adviser to US President Wilson at the Versailles Peace Treaty meetings. Sadly, this concern with the very stuff of politics waned after Mackinder and Bowman. Geo-politics became discredited and political geography became an ossified subdiscipline of a tired subject, often taught, never researched, a prisoner to outdated theories.
The surge of the new geography of the 1950s and 1960s bypassed political geography. With spatial analysis as its theme, neo-classical economics as its accounting frame, and logical positivism as its methodological underpinning, it could not accommodate a political geography. The emphasis of neo-classical economics on the economy as a harmonious, self-regulating system, where each factor of production receives its fair reward, ignored questions of conflict and inequitable distribution. The focus of logical positivism directed attention to verifiable empirical statements in particular and data analysis in general and away from the operation of the more incorporeal power relations within society. A truly political geography could not flourish in such a climate. The explicit analysis of politics was being taken over by another social science discipline, political science; a discipline which, in the words of Cobban (1953), was a device for avoiding politics without achieving science. Largely ignored by its discipline and lacking much theoretical sustenance from political science, it is little wonder that political geography was a moribund subject.
Things began to change in the 1960s and 1970s. The end of the post-war economic boom was reflected by the social sciences in the growth of approaches which focused on power, conflict and the inequitable distribution of life chances and resources. The change occurred in many disciplines—witness the resurgence of Marxist economies and the growth of radical sociology—and was seen in the emergence of interdisciplinary approaches which did not accept the artificial demarcation of knowledge suggested by traditional academic disciplines. Human geography was affected by these changes. The emergence of a radical geography and the development of a critical awareness amongst geographers led to important questions of ‘Who gets what?’ and ‘Why does who get what?’
The result was a new political geography, which consists of old topics re-examined and new areas of enquiry. This rekindled interest is evident in the growing number of textbooks devoted to the subject, and the establishment of such journals as Political Geography Quarterly in 1982 and Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy in 1983. In this book we will concentrate on three broad areas of interest of this new political geography: the international order, the nationstate and social movements.
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