Transpolitical geography

As political geography searches in desperation for new (theoretical) directions to follow, this paper argues that the category of the ‘political’ has already curved back on itself, attaining the status of the ‘transpolitical’. Hereinafter, politics will never finish replaying its own disappearance as effect. This curvature is itself associated with profound shifts in the experience of history and time, of geography and space, and of the very ideas of theory, politics and events—shifts which continue to fascinate, haunt and transfix political geography in the enigmatic hereafter of the transpolitical. Adopting the motifs of s(ed)uction, transpearing, superficial abysses, and hypertelia (the ‘end of the end’), the paper assesses: the transpolitical figures of anomaly, ecstasy, obesity and obscenity; the irruption of the hyperreal (the more real than the real); the mutation of the political scene of representation into the transpolitical ob-scene of pornogeography; the fatal strategies pursued by the masses in relation to the spectre of the (trans)political; and the challenge of a transfinite universe for conjuring theoretical practice at the end(s) of political geography. Beginning with the transition from the political era—dominated by the transgressive figure of anomie and the emancipatory promise of revolutionary subl(im)ation—to the transpolitical simulacrum—characterized by the errant figure of anomaly and the superficial abyss of potentialization—the paper attempts to animate a transpolitical geography which affirms the s(ed)uction of superficial abysses and instantiates an ethics of the transpearing event.     

Conflict studies and critical geopolitics — theoretical concepts and recent research in political geography

The political and economic upheavals during the past two decades have led to a new social and political organization of space on all levels of scale. To deal with the obvious changes, political geography had to rethink and to extend its traditional concepts. Transcending its long taken-for-granted radical approaches, the Anglo-American geography developed two conceptional paths, both of which are still relevant for political geography today:— a new awareness of regional differences in political action and culture— a new, constructionist awareness of the instrumentalization of geographical discourses for geopolitical purposes.With these theoretical concepts, political geography is examining a number of both traditional and new fields of research. Their heterogeneity is once again evidence of postmodern diversity and difference. They are characterized by both a new awareness of differentiation and a widening of the traditional viewpoint in three closely related respects transcending the traditional topics of political activity, the traditional political actors and the established levels of scale of politics. Based on the current literature it is possible to outline some major themes and perspectives of current political geography that are closely linked together, like knots in thematic networks:1. ecological politics and resource conflicts 2. territorial conflicts and boundaries 3. geopolitics and the politics of identity 4. globalization and new international relations 5. the symbolic representation of political power 6. regional conflicts and new social movements.     

Jerusalem since 1967: A profile of a reunited city

Over a decade after the reunification of Jerusalem, two major issues arise concerning the urban reality created after 1967. First, the extent to which West and East Jerusalem in fact now form one urban unit and second, the nature of relationships which exist between Jews and Arabs, especially in the socio-economic area.The examination of the residential pattern, the provision of services and of employment, might provide us with some important insights.It may be stated that after reunification the once existent physical dividing line between West and East Jerusalem has virtually no significance, whether one considers the basic landuse pattern or the kind of movement of people, goods and services. However, there continues to be a line which separates the Jewish from the Arab population. Indeed, while segregation characterizes the pattern of residence, the location of private enterprise and the consumption of certain public services, mutual contact and interdependence do occur to a greater extent in various economic areas and particularly in the commercial and labour markets.In many respects this new urban reality resembles that which had existed before the city was divided. After 1967 as before 1948, it was the basically different socio-economic characteristics which distinguished between Jews and Arabs — as well as the particular political situation — which for the most part determined the patterns of co-existence of the two communities in Jerusalem.     

The emerging Islamic State: Terror,territoriality, and the agenda of social transformation

The world has recently been witness to the emergence of a new contemporary geopolitical phenomenon: the declaration of Islamic States by specific Islamic organizations. This phenomenon has the potential to dramatically transform the geopolitical setting of the Middle East and to have farreaching effects on a global level. Of these most prominent, however, has undoubtedly been the June 2014 declaration by the “Islamic State” organization of a “caliphate” covering large areas of the two war-torn states of Syria and Iraq. The aim of this article is to interrogate the territorial aspects of the Islamic State and to discern what makes it unique and exceptional in comparison to the many other Islamic political organizations that have emerged in recent years. In order to facilitate a better understanding of territoriality, I distinguish here between two major dimensions: conceptions of territoriality and tactics of territoriality. My working assumption is that by distinguishing between conceptions and tactics of territoriality, we can compare the exercise of territoriality by states and, in the present case, organizations. In this article, I argue that the Islamic State poses a challenge to both the conceptual and tactical dimensions of the contemporary territory and territoriality of modern states. Yet, while its conception of territoriality may be widely shared by other political Islamic organizations, its uniqueness lies in its tactics and strategies. Indeed, it is the brutal tactics of the Islamic State that are less acceptable to many Muslims around the world, not its political conception, which enjoys considerable support in the Muslim arena. Yet, when comparing it with modern states, the Islamic State poses a challenge to the territory and territoriality in both conception and tactics.     

Territoriality of negation: Co-production of “creative destruction” in Israel

Based on an examination of Israel’s territorial conceptions, strategies, and achievements since the establishment of the state, this article shows how state territoriality subsumes ideology and political agendas and may, under certain circumstances, lead the state to negate its very self-conceptions and harm its own perceived interests. Its analysis pays special attention to the state’s inadvertently produced territories of negation, which run counter to its own conception of territoriality, and considers the kind of social–spatial entities produced by the state. It also considers Israeli territoriality’s more recently asserted goal of shaping Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, in addition to the goals of controlling Jerusalem and Judaizing the Galilee and the Negev. To illustrate the theoretical assertion that discriminatory and marginalizing state territoriality has the distinct potential to bring about its own negation, the article concludes with two prominent expressions of this phenomenon. The first is manifested in green-line Israel, where the state’s territorial policies and the resulting marginalization of the Palestinian minority has resulted in collective resistance against the state and its policies, basic Jewish-Israeli symbols such as the anthem and the flag, and Israel’s very definition as a Jewish State. The second is manifested in Israel’s inadvertent creation of bi-national spaces both within Israel proper and in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, indirectly promoting the solution of a single bi-national state and posing a serious challenge to the very goals that Israeli territoriality has consistently strived to achieve.     

Development of recreational geography in the USSR

Specific features of development of recreation geography in the USSR are, first of all — combination of the deliberate outstripping theoretical research based on the systems approach with the traditional techniques of field investigation of actual dhenomena, and second — combination of scientific activities with active interference into practical territorial organization of recreation of different groups of population. Development of recreation geography has influenced the other branches of geography, as well as the theory of project-design and architecture. Rapid growth of a new branch of science is considered as an illustration of high integrating potentialities of modern geography, which is now based not only on the empirical studies, but on the theoretical search as well.     

The Quebec question and the political geography of Canada

The Quebec-Canada problem arises some ambigious and contradictory issues with Quebec itself being the source of the current facets of the crisis. Political geography is able to contribute to a greater understanding of the crisis by clearly demonstrating some of the classig concepts drawn from the discipline: geography of federalism, political viability and centrifugal forces, ethnic separatism, territorial integrity and linguistic territoriality, nationalism, and regionalism, territorial ideology, international frontiers... Evermore, Quebec appears to be the unique case of a national state. The gravitation of Canada's population towards the West has a direct impact upon the Quebec situation, with the eventual independence of the Province bringing about ipso facto a Pakistanisation of the country as a whole. Currently, one may observe an ever-widening lack of communication between Quebec and the rest of Canada. In order that Europeans (and many others) may fully understand the Quebec situation, a sort of mental debriefing must take place.     

Jewish settlement of Hebron: The place and the other1

Kiryat-Arba and Jewish Hebron are communities planted in the most heated front of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This paper examines how the Hebron Jewish settlers' collective memory interprets the `truth' of Hebron as a typical Israeli Place that reveals Zionism in its purest form. Today the populations of Kiryat-Arba and of the Hebron Jewish enclaves number about 5,000 and 500, respectively. Kiryat-Arba functions as an economic and educational centre for the nearby Jewish settlements in the region. Rejecting the segregative concept of a separate Jewish settlement overlooking Hebron, the settlers treat Kiryat-Arba as part of Hebron. Some 70,000 Palestinians live in Hebron, many more residing in neighbouring towns and villages, cutting Hebron – Kiryat–Arba off from the nearest Jewish urban centres of Jerusalem and Beer-Sheva. The settlers initiated the narrative of `Return' to the city after the massacre of Jews in 1929 in the city, as the key symbol Symbolically, the first place Hebron Jews reidentified with was its ancient Jewish graveyard. Today, IDF soldiers protect settlers and their visitors who want to tour Hebron. The huge gulf between `metaphorical Hebron' as a symbolic centre and `actual Hebron' as a poor development town creates tensions fuelling violent events. The Jews in Hebron take the Israeli logic of `Place' making to its extreme, thus testing concepts of Israeli territoriality. If Israeli society rejects Hebron as a `Place' constructed from intense memories and violent national encounters, it would leave the Hebron Jews out of the so-called Israeli normalcy.     

A new view on neotectonics

Conclusion Neotectonics — the discipline examining the youngest history of the Earth in terms of geotectonics — should be complemented by aspects based on other geological sciences (geochemistry, geophysics) as well as geography and geodesy. From the viewpoint of the Earth's history, neotectonics can be regarded as a discipline studying, above all, the Earth's crust and the changes that occurred there in the time span from the Badenian to the Recent. For this reason, the last phase of the Alpine geotectonic stage, which extended from the Oligocene to the base of the Lower Badenian, should be termed pre-neotectonics.     

The Upper Adriatic borderland: From conflict to harmony

The paper presents an overview of the Upper Adriatic as a contact area between different cultural, social, economic and political entities, producing potential conflicts in the last century. The first part of the 20th century represented a classic example of geopolitical conflict through two World Wars and their related Peace Conferences that deeply impacted the region. Conflicts arising from the mid-century solution of the Trieste question transformed the Upper Adriatic into a laboratory of contemporary political geographic transformation. Changing geopolitical patterns have also modified the political, social and ethnic construction of the Upper Adriatic. The process of creating new international boundaries in the region ended in 1991 with the independence of Slovenia and Croatia. Through these geopolitical transformations in the Upper Adriatic, new political geographic attitudes evolved. Early on, Ratzel's geopolitical principles of defining borders as power barometers between neighbors dominated. More recently, attitudes have reflected modern integrative ideas with a focus on looking for harmony and the elimination of international conflicts. Greater attention has thus been given to the political geography of `everyday life', inter-ethnic relations, and cross-border contacts. Hence, `new' borderlands of the Upper Adriatic are more receptive to integration because they seek to overcome conflicts caused by the division of traditionally homogeneous spaces as local level political and ideological hindrances disappear. The region divided among Italy, Slovenia, and Croatia is becoming a new and special type of European borderland in the new century.     

Political geography in the time of cyberspaces: New agendas?

This review paper aims to offer a contribution to debates over theory and subject for political geography. Following a brief review of histories of political geography, the main (though not exclusive) focus is on the way that political geography may confront ‘globalization’ and the multiplicity of flows that constitute ‘cyberspaces’. Notwithstanding the consequences of the resulting transformations, the paper argues that a number of traditional subjects of political geography should remain central to the field. In particular, it is argued that a degree of state-centric focus continues to be a valuable critical project. However, such a focus needs to be supplemented by a stress on the dialectical relationships between the state, territory, culture and economy. The approach taken to this in World Systems-Theory is critiqued and some alternatives are explored. In these explorations the paper also argues for an increased engagement and cross-fertilization between political, economic, social and cultural geographies, and with critical work in political science and international relations.     

Social geography in France — heritages and perspectives

Attention has long been given by French geographers to social factors; one of the first overt attempts at a french social geography were made by Abel Chatelain and Pierre George. Their lead was not immediately followed, but another isolated attempt to develop social geography was made by Renée Rochefort. The gap left by French geographers was to some extent filled by sociologists and ethnologists until the 70s. Pierre Claval then sought to use social factors as a means of unifying human geography, but at the same time rejecting marxist interpretations and moving towards behaviourism. A further nucleus of development was established at Lyons around Renée Rochefort; yet other geographers approached social geography by emphasizing social factors in urban studies etc. An aspect of this development was the formation of affiliations of various social scientists to study social change. All the major currents of thought are now present — humanistic, marxist, positivist — and a wide range of themes examined, but without any agreed definition of social geography. Attempts are here made to work towards a definition, emphasizing the relationship between social factors and spatial factors, and between economic infrastructure and juridicial, political and ideological superstructure; recognizing that there is often an hiatus between change on the infrastructure and change in the superstructure.translated by editor     

American geographers and the geography of East Central Europe

In the context of American geography's distinguished record in area studies around the world, East Central Europe stands out as a region that has attracted particular scrutiny over the time-span of activity by the Association of American Geographers. While the work done prior to 1918 was inevitably cast in an imperial framework with some hints of environmental determinism, the subsequent emergence of a new Europe — along with more explicitly humanistic perspectives in a discipline that was continuing to grow rapidly — led to a surge in field activity which was maintained through the communist years despite the formidable restrictions of the early post-war years. While there is a great diversity in the contributions made it is evident that there has been a continuing preoccupation with political power and the region's geopolitical significance evaluated in the context of changing great power relations. Also the big questions of economic and social geography — resources, culture and planning systems — have been examined; while a number of geographers have dedicated significant proportions of their total career activity to in-depth primary research on their chosen specialisms.     

The Influence of American geography on Korean geography

Korean modern geography emerged from the dark age of unfortunate Japanese colonial rule after liberation in 1945, and has grown rapidly since the 1960s. Modern geographical theories and methodologies were introduced to Korea by the Korean geographers who received PhD degrees in the United States and returned home to teach at universities in Korea, especially in the 1970s and early 1980s. American geography has influenced the progress of the modern geography in Korea in various ways — education systems, curricula for college students, training graduate students — and research methodologies in Korean geography during the last half-century have been directly and indirectly influenced by American geography. The influence has had, however, both positive and negative effects in the development of Korean geography. There is a tendency in recent years to reinterpret Western theories and concepts in the Korean context, considering distinctive regional and cultural characteristics.     

The aspiration towards universality in political theory and political geography

This paper seeks to trace and re-evaluate the convergence between political geography and contemporary political theory regarding the normative ascendancy of the local, contingent, concrete and particular over universal, abstract and general theories of justice. The search for universal norms has been roundly critiqued, principally by postmodern, communitarian and feminist authors, and in part this has paved the way for a recovery of content and context that appeals to political geographers. It is argued, however, that the wholesale rush to what is called here a persistent localism—in the form of the promotion of the claims of particular communities, partial and situated knowledges, the politics of difference—is premature. The dangers and inconsistencies of the latter may be avoided it is claimed by reiterating the minimal universalism contained in Habermas's theory of the public sphere. The theory is discussed and illustrated, compared to more aggressive proponents of universal standards of justice, and argued to be both normatively defensible and potentially geographically sensitive. The paper concludes that the aspiration to universality may be maintained within political geography.     

‘Competing Regionalisation’ Through Territory and Cluster Networks: Experiences from Post-Socialist Eastern Germany

‘New regionalism’ has become a buzzword in current debates on regions and regional governance. Much of this discussion revolves around the ‘right’ scale and structure of regional governance, implying changes to the ways in which the conventional main variables institutions, hierarchy and territoriality interact to circumscribe ‘regions’. The main difference between ‘old’ and ‘new’ regionalism is the degree of variability and responsiveness to locational strategies by businesses, i.e. essentially relative regional competitiveness, and thus by implication the question of territoriality and boundedness. Evidence ‘on the ground’ among policy makers, however, suggests that the changes may go further than theoretical arguments with their emphasis on territory and scale (Brenner, 2000, 2003) are suggesting. Much of the difference revolves around the distinction between technocratic, planning focused and firmly institutionalised understandings of territorially fixed regions within a government structure on the one hand, and more purpose driven, flexible, and inherently temporary and variable arrangements outside fixed government structures, whose territoriality is composed of the varying spatial background of the participating actors. Here, regional territoriality is an incidental rather than determining factor. The cleavage between ‘old’ and ‘new’ regionalism has become particularly obvious in post-socialist eastern Germany, where staid forms of traditional institutionalism and territorial governance had been transferred from ‘west’ to ‘east’. Increasingly, these arrangements appeared inadequate to respond to the vast and spatially widely varying challenges of post-socialist restructuring. The result has been a tentative emergence of new forms of regionalisation in between, and in addition to, the established ‘old regionalist’ approaches. Evidence from eastern Germany suggests that ‘new’ is not necessarily replacing ‘old’ regionalism’ in the wake of a shift in paradigm, but rather that the two coexist, with new forms of regionalisation sitting within established conventional territorial-administrative arrangements. This points to the emergence of a dual track approach to regionalisation, sometimes covering the same territory, more often relating to variably sized areas that overlap. Both forms of regionalisation aim at an internal and external audience, using varying images and employing different sets of actors when dealing with the two main sources/directions of consumption: internal (local) and external (corporate, competitive). By their very nature, however, these processes are varied and differ between places, rooted in particular local-regional constellations of policy-making pressures, actor personalities and established ways of doing things. This paper examines such processes for two regions in eastern Germany, both with distinctly different economic traditions and geographical contexts, aiming to illustrate the multi-layered process of regionalisation and region making. Inevitably, within the scope of this paper, the study cannot cover all possible models and regionalisation approaches across eastern Germany, because they not only differ between places, but also over time.     

Social geographical research in Germany — a balance sheet for the years 1950–1980

Theory and practice in German social geography reflect back on thirty years of an arduous search for identity as a discipline. Both its friends and its adversaries are in agreement that this identity has yet to be achieved. The development of the foundation phase of the 1950s — late because of specifically German conditions — led to the rapid growth of several distinctive research lines. Thereafter the pace of development slowed as various concepts were abandoned, accompanied by hesitancy over material questions, especially as some were revealed to be impractical by completed research. Up to the present there appear to be thresholds that cannot be crossed even by informed geographers. Since 1980 social geography in Germany has stagnated, and become absorbed in behavioural research. This article has attempted a balance of the more important contributions that have tried to develop themes dealing with the social complex from the geographical viewpoint.Translated by editor     

Round sky and square earth (Tian Yuan Di Fang): ancient Chinese geographical thought and its influence

Round sky and square earth is a basic concept in the tradition of ancient Chinese geography. It appeared at least two thousand years ago and has influenced Chinese geography significantly — both for good and for ill. As an academic subject in China, the history of geographical thought is new. It has become the center of geographical history (Yang 1989, p. 7; Wang 1982, p. 4). This transformation began in the 1980s. Earlier studies of the history of ancient Chinese geography paid more attention to the history of exploration, cartography, and geographers themselves. It neglected serious study of the concept and influence of the idea of round sky and square earth. This paper discusses this concept, its influence on ancient Chinese cartography, and its significance in early geographical literature, specifically the Geographical Society Yu Gong (Tribute of Yu).     

Response to Thrift's “The future of geography”

Reviews and observations about the status of the discipline of geography, no matter how positive, invariably raise programmatic concerns. These concerns have a long history that arise from geography's struggles to find an identity that embraces its many parts and yet are consistent with the logic by which the academy partitions knowledge. Pedagogy and research historically claimed by geography is currently being reinvented and relabeled under such headings as “integrated environmental science” and “spatial science”, and these developments have the potential to change the breadth of the “geographic imagination”. Several observations about dominant explanatory perspectives and substantive domains of geographic enquiry are also provided.     

Gezira Scheme between state and market: some remarks on the privatization of irrigation in Sudan

This paper is a study of so-called privatization of the great Sudanese Gezira Scheme, under the structural and budgetary problems of the country. Nothwithstanding the official declaration, in reality privatization affected the project just in nominal way. Indeed, two factors play against it: the resistance of the State, which wants to hold the management of the national strategic resources, and the resistance of the territory itself which — as autopoietic system — reacts against any attempt to change its own structure. The islamic renewal(tajdid) can be considered as a way to solve the dilemma between development and social consent, under these new conditions.