The Routledge Research Companion to Critical Geopolitics

Description

Since the late 1980s, critical geopolitics has gone from being a radical critical perspective on the disciplines of political geography and international relations theory to becoming a recognised area of research in its own right. Influenced by poststructuralist concerns with the politics of representation, critical geopolitics considers the ways in which the use of particular discourses shape political practices. Initially critical geopolitics analysed the practical geopolitical language of the elites and intellectuals of statecraft. Subsequent iterations have considered the role that popular representations of the international political world play. As critical geopolitics has become a more established part of political geography it has attracted ever more critique: from feminists for its apparent blindness to the embodied effects of geopolitical praxis and from those who have been uncomfortable about its textual focus, while others have challenged critical geopolitics to address alternative, resistant forms of geopolitical practice. Again, critical geopolitics has been reworked to incorporate these challenges and the latest iterations have encompassed normative agendas, non-representational theory, emotional geographies and affect. It is against the vibrant backdrop of this intellectual development of critical geopolitics as a subdiscipline that this Companion is set. Bringing together leading researchers associated with the different forms of critical geopolitics, this volume produces an overview of its achievements, limitations, and areas of new and potential future development. The Companion is designed to serve as a key resource for an interdisciplinary group of scholars and practitioners interested in the spatiality of politics. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents List of Figures Notes on Contributors Foreword: Arguing about Geopolitics Introduction: Geopolitics and its Critics Part I: Foundations 1 The Origins of Critical Geopolitics 2 Realism and Geopolitics 3 Text, Discourse, Affect and Things 4 Geopolitics and Visual Culture 5 Heteronormativity 6 Sovereignty 7 Radical Geopolitics 8 Neoliberalism 9 Reappraising Geopolitical Traditions 10 Violence and Peace Part II: Sites 11 Borders 12 The State 13 Militarization 14 Media 15 Resources 16 Environment 17 The Global South 18 Intimacy and the Everyday 19 Spaces of Terror Part III: Agents 20 Non-Governmental Organisations 21 International Organizations 22 Indigenous Geopolitics 23 Journalists 24 Artists 25 Evangelicals 26 Intellectuals of Statecraft 27 Women 28 Activists Index