1. GEOGRAPHIES OF SPACE AND POWER
Monday, 28 January, 13

2. Origins of Political
Geography
Territory Nationalism Realism
Monday, 28 January, 13

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. Treaty of Westphalia
All 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

8. Critical Political
Geography
Gender/
Feminist
Political
Geography
Marxist
political
economy
Critical
geopolitics
Monday, 28 January, 13

9. Foucault...again
Critical 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

10. Getting beyond the state
Gender/
Feminist
Political
Geography Body Gendered
politics spaces
Performativity
Migration and Domesticities,
(of nation,
mobilities spaces of care
identity)
Monday, 28 January, 13