Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Political activity is as basic to human culture as language or religion. All indi-
viduals, groups, communities, nations, governments, and supranational organizations
engage in political activity. Each desires power and infl uence to achieve personal and
public goals. Whether or not we like politics, each of us is caught up in these processes,
with effects ranging from the composition of school boards to the conduct of war.
In this chapter, we examine how geographers study politics, the domain of polit-
ical geography. Like all fi elds of geography (and the social sciences, more generally),
political geographers used to spend a lot of time explaining why the world is the way
it is and trying to predict or prescribe the future. Today, political geographers spend
much more time trying to understand the spatial assumptions and structures under-
lying politics, the ways people organize space, the role territory plays in politics, and
the problems that result from changing political and territorial circumstances.
Key Questions
For Chapter 8
1.
How is space politically organized into states and nations?
2 .
How do states spatially organize their governments?
3.
How are boundaries established, and why do boundary disputes occur?
4.
How does the study of geopolitics help us understand the world?
5.
What are supranational organizations, and what is the future of the state?
organizing space (into states) that is less than 400 years
old. Just as people create places, imparting character to
space and shaping culture, people make states. States and
state boundaries are made, shaped, and refi ned by people,
their actions and their history. Even the idea of dividing
the world into territorially defi ned states is one created
and exported by people.
Central to the state are the concepts of
territory
and
territoriality. As geographer Stuart Elden has pointed out,
the modern concept of territory arose in early modern
Europe as a system of political units came into being with
fi xed, distinct boundaries and at least a quasi-independent
government.
Territoriality
is the process by which such
units come into being. Territoriality, however, can take
place at different scales. In a book published in 1986,
geographer Robert Sack defi ned
territoriality
as “the
attempt by an individual or group to affect, infl uence, or
control people, phenomena, and relationships, by delim-
iting and asserting control over a geographic area.” Sack
sees human territoriality as a key ingredient in the con-
struction of social and political spaces. He calls for a bet-
ter understanding of the human organization of the planet
through a consideration of how and why certain territorial
strategies are pursued at different times and across places.
Today, territoriality is tied to the concept of
sover-
eignty
. As Sack explained, territorial behavior implies an
expression of control over a territory. In international
law, the concept of sovereignty is territorially defi ned.
HOW IS SPACE POLITICALLY ORGANIZED
INTO STATES AND NATIONS?
Political geography
is the study of the political
organization of the world. Political geographers study
the spatial manifestations of political processes at various
scales: how politically meaningful spaces came into being
and how these spaces infl uence outcomes. At the global
scale, we have a world divided into individual countries,
which are commonly called states. A
state
is a politi-
cally organized territory with a permanent population,
a defi ned territory, and a government. To be a state, an
entity must be recognized as such by other states.
The present-day division of the world political map
into states is a product of endless accommodations and
adjustments within and between human societies. On the
conventional political map, a mosaic of colors is used to
represent more than 200 countries and territories, a visu-
alization that accentuates the separation of these countries
by boundaries (Fig. 8.3). The political map of the world is
the world map most of us learn fi rst. We look at it, memo-
rize it, and name the countries and perhaps each country's
capital. It hangs in the front of our classrooms, is used to
organize maps in our textbooks, and becomes so natural
looking to us that
we begin to think it is natural.
The world map of states is anything but natural. The
mosaic of states on the map represents a way of politically
