10-25-2006, 07:23 PM
Political geography
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Jump to: navigation, search
Political geography is a field of human geography that is concerned with politics. It is closely related to geopolitics, which is seen as the strategic, military and governmental application of political geographies. It is also closely related to International Relations.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Areas of Study
* 2 History
o 2.1 Pre-World War Two
o 2.2 Cold War Geopolitics
o 2.3 Critical Political Geography
* 3 Notable Political Geographers
* 4 Further reading
* 5 See also
[edit] Areas of Study
Political geography is interested in the relationship between political power or politics and geography. Geography often influences political decisions and vice versa political power influences geographical space. It is often associated with the study of the practices of sovereign states, but it considers politics of all scales, from those of the United Nations to those of day-to-day life.
In particular, then, modern political geography often considers:
* How and why states are organized into regional groupings, both formally (e.g. the European Union) and informally (e.g. the Third World)
* The relationship between states and former colonies, and how these are propagated over time through neo-colonialism
* The relationship between a government and its people
* The relationships between states including international trades and treaties
* The functions, demarcations and policings of boundaries
* How imagined geographies have political implications
* The influence of political power on geographical space
* The study of election results (election geography)
[edit] History
[edit] Pre-World War Two
The term political geography was first used by Friedrich Ratzel in his book 'Politische Geographie', published in German in 1897. Geopolitics was then coined by the Swede Rudolf Kejell.
The discipline gained attention largely through the work of Sir Halford Mackinder in England and his formulation of the Heartland Theory in 1904. This theory involved concepts diametrically opposed to the notion of Alfred Thayer Mahan about the significance of navies (Mahan coined the term sea power) in world conflict. The Heartland theory, on the other hand, hypothesized the possibility for a huge empire to be brought into existence which didn't need to use coastal or transoceanic transport to supply its military industrial complex, and that this empire could not be defeated by all the rest of the world coalitioned against it.
The Heartland Theory depicted a world divided into a Heartland (Eastern Europe/Western Russia); World Island (Eurasia and Africa); Peripheral Islands (British Isles, Japan, Indonesia and Australia) and New World (The Americas). Mackinder claimed that whoever controlled the Heartland would have control of the world. He used this warning to politically influence events such as the Treaty of Versailles, where buffer states were created between the USSR and Germany, to prevent either of the them controlling the Heartland.
Ratzel, at the same time, was creating a theory on states based around the concepts of Lebensraum and Social Darwinism. This stated that states were 'organisms' that needed sufficient room in which to live. Expansionist inclinations - such as the British of French empires were a result of this. Both these two writers created the idea of a political and geographical science, with an objective God's Eye View of the world.
Pre-World War Two political geography was concerned largely with these issues of global power struggles and influencing state policy. The above theories were both taken on board by German geopoliticians (see Geopolitik) such as Karl Haushofer who - they claim inadvertently - greatly influenced Nazi political theory. The politics that were legitimated by 'scientific' theories such as a 'neutral' requirement for state expansion are those that were engaged in during World War Two. Though modern geographers have been more sympathetic to the likes of Haushofer, suggesting that he and his colleagues actually did believe that they were conducting neutral scientific study, it is also almost impossible that they could not have foreseen how their results would be used; Haushofer, in particular, actually tutored Rudolf Hess and is anecdotely said to have passed a copy of Ratzel's Politische Geographie onto Adolf Hitler, whilst he was writing Mein Kampf.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Political geography is a field of human geography that is concerned with politics. It is closely related to geopolitics, which is seen as the strategic, military and governmental application of political geographies. It is also closely related to International Relations.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Areas of Study
* 2 History
o 2.1 Pre-World War Two
o 2.2 Cold War Geopolitics
o 2.3 Critical Political Geography
* 3 Notable Political Geographers
* 4 Further reading
* 5 See also
[edit] Areas of Study
Political geography is interested in the relationship between political power or politics and geography. Geography often influences political decisions and vice versa political power influences geographical space. It is often associated with the study of the practices of sovereign states, but it considers politics of all scales, from those of the United Nations to those of day-to-day life.
In particular, then, modern political geography often considers:
* How and why states are organized into regional groupings, both formally (e.g. the European Union) and informally (e.g. the Third World)
* The relationship between states and former colonies, and how these are propagated over time through neo-colonialism
* The relationship between a government and its people
* The relationships between states including international trades and treaties
* The functions, demarcations and policings of boundaries
* How imagined geographies have political implications
* The influence of political power on geographical space
* The study of election results (election geography)
[edit] History
[edit] Pre-World War Two
The term political geography was first used by Friedrich Ratzel in his book 'Politische Geographie', published in German in 1897. Geopolitics was then coined by the Swede Rudolf Kejell.
The discipline gained attention largely through the work of Sir Halford Mackinder in England and his formulation of the Heartland Theory in 1904. This theory involved concepts diametrically opposed to the notion of Alfred Thayer Mahan about the significance of navies (Mahan coined the term sea power) in world conflict. The Heartland theory, on the other hand, hypothesized the possibility for a huge empire to be brought into existence which didn't need to use coastal or transoceanic transport to supply its military industrial complex, and that this empire could not be defeated by all the rest of the world coalitioned against it.
The Heartland Theory depicted a world divided into a Heartland (Eastern Europe/Western Russia); World Island (Eurasia and Africa); Peripheral Islands (British Isles, Japan, Indonesia and Australia) and New World (The Americas). Mackinder claimed that whoever controlled the Heartland would have control of the world. He used this warning to politically influence events such as the Treaty of Versailles, where buffer states were created between the USSR and Germany, to prevent either of the them controlling the Heartland.
Ratzel, at the same time, was creating a theory on states based around the concepts of Lebensraum and Social Darwinism. This stated that states were 'organisms' that needed sufficient room in which to live. Expansionist inclinations - such as the British of French empires were a result of this. Both these two writers created the idea of a political and geographical science, with an objective God's Eye View of the world.
Pre-World War Two political geography was concerned largely with these issues of global power struggles and influencing state policy. The above theories were both taken on board by German geopoliticians (see Geopolitik) such as Karl Haushofer who - they claim inadvertently - greatly influenced Nazi political theory. The politics that were legitimated by 'scientific' theories such as a 'neutral' requirement for state expansion are those that were engaged in during World War Two. Though modern geographers have been more sympathetic to the likes of Haushofer, suggesting that he and his colleagues actually did believe that they were conducting neutral scientific study, it is also almost impossible that they could not have foreseen how their results would be used; Haushofer, in particular, actually tutored Rudolf Hess and is anecdotely said to have passed a copy of Ratzel's Politische Geographie onto Adolf Hitler, whilst he was writing Mein Kampf.