Popular Geopolitics: Plotting an Evolving Interdiscipline

Description

This book brings together scholars from across a variety of academic disciplines to assess the current state of the subfield of popular geopolitics. It provides an archaeology of the field, maps the flows of various frameworks of analysis into (and out of) popular geopolitics, and charts a course forward for the discipline. It explores the real-world implications of popular culture, with a particular focus on the evolving interdisciplinary nature of popular geopolitics alongside interrelated disciplines including media, cultural, and gender studies. Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents List of figures List of tables Foreword: an odd couple? Popular culture and geopolitics by Iver B. Neumann Introduction: theorising the realm of popular geopolitics 1 Why popular culture? Why now? 2 Reconfiguring the direction of the interdiscipline3 3 Popular culture and the state: a changing dynamic 4 From global citizenship to global structures of knowledge 5 Volume outline, or possible ways of engagement Notes References Part I: Mapping the (inter)discipline of popular geopolitics Chapter 1: The origins and evolution of popular geopolitics: an interview with Jo Sharp and Klaus Dodds Introduction Notes References Chapter 2: Popular geopolitics and popular culture in world politics: pasts, presents, futures Introduction Popular geopolitics: the awakening Similar streams/converging currents? Engaging with the interdisciplinary: a friendly critique Incorporating the aesthetic turn Popular geopolitics as assemblage Conclusion References Chapter 3: Towards a new paradigm of resistance: theorising popular geopolitics as an interdiscipline Introduction: speaking in metaphors, or the problem of self-definition Twinning knowledge, or the third phase of popular geopolitics The imagination of power versus the power of imagination Contested spaces: popular geopolitics and postcolonial studies Is post-identity politics really possible? Conclusions, or an argument in favour of resistance politics Notes References Chapter 4: Gender studies and popular geopolitics: indispensable bedfellows for interdisciplinarity Introduction An overview of aims and approaches Interdisciplinarity, intertextuality, and the margins of disciplines The spaces of gender and gendered spaces Queering popular geopolitics Embodying geopolitics Conclusion Notes References Chapter 5: Crossing the boundary: ‘real-world’ geopolitical responses to the popular Introduction The ‘Hollywood’ culture industry as an interlocutor in world politics6 Novel geopolitical responses to filmic pop culture: Borat (Kazakhstan), 300 (Iran), Red Dawn (China), and The Interview (North Korea) Big world/small screens: television, videogames, YouTube, and social networking sites in world affairs What does it all mean? Geopolitics, popular culture, and the codes we live by Notes References Part II: Popular geopolitics goes global and looks into the future Chapter 6: The convenient fiction of geopolitics: rethinking ‘America’ in the geopolitical imagination of Yugoslav culture Introduction From language to geopolitics (and back again) ‘Bandit boogie-woogie civilisation’ ‘Socialism on American wheat’ ‘Coca-Cola socialism’ Political crisis and a requiem for American (and Yugoslav) dreams Lessons from the Cold War Notes References Chapter 7: Beyond brand Bollywood: alternative articulations of geopolitical discourse in new Indian films Introduction Bollywood’s outer narrative and India’s inner reality Court: an independent cinematic investigation of local level legal and social space Breaking the Bollywood barrier: PK’s dismantling of religious dogma Connecting the dots Notes References Chapter 8: ‘Directed by Hollywood, edited by China’? Chinese soft power, geo-imaginaries, and neo-Orientalism(s) in recent U.S. blockbusters Introduction Accommodating and endorsing Chinese strategic narratives Sinological-Orientalism: discreetly safeguarding U.S. positional superiority U.S. ‘smart’ narratives and China Concluding remarks Notes References Chapter 9: ‘Warning! Zombies Ahead …’: determinate negation, predatory capitalism, and globalised place-making Introduction Zombies and determinate negation Cinematic zombies in the history of modern capitalism Zombies and predatory capitalism Conclusion Notes References Chapter 10: Popular geopolitics and the landscapes of virtual war Introduction Landscapes, videogames, and geopolitics The geographies of Modern Warfare Landscapes of the ‘other’ Landscapes of the ‘homeland’ Conclusion Notes References Conclusion: further conceptualisations of the interdiscipline The state, global threats, and the logic of participatory popular culture (Jason Dittmer) Temporal ruptures, or how the popular culture of the past informs the politics of the future (Kyle Grayson) Back to modernity (?), or re-mediating the logic of resistance in popular geopolitics (Vlad Strukov) Looking for and seeing diversity: gendered discourses of popular geopolitics (Federica Caso) From graffiti to social media: the (geo)political writing on the wall of everyday politics (Robert A. Saunders) Consumerism and popular imagination: neo-liberalism and popular geopolitics (Maša Kolanović) Between tradition and modernity, local, and global: popular geopolitics and its silent discontents (Ashvin Devasundaram) Comic power: popular geopolitics and the question of Western hegemony (Chris Homewood) (In)visible agency: urban spaces, human interventions, and the dominance of capital (Roxanne Chaitowitz and Shannon Brincat) Ludic spaces of popular geopolitics: from experiencing warfare to imaging warfare in the twenty-first century (Daniel Bos) Contributors Index