国家地缘脆弱性探索——缅甸案例及对中国地缘战略启示

当今国际地缘政治经济格局正处于剧烈变动中,并对缅甸地缘环境的复杂性及地缘脆弱性产生深刻影响。缅甸所在的大湄公河次区域日益成为世界重要地缘政治力量博弈前沿和焦点。系统研究缅甸国家地缘脆弱性,对于中国西部大开发、“一带一路”及周边地缘环境建设具有重要战略意义。本文基于地缘政治及人地关系地域系统等学科理论,规范分析与实证分析相结合,从暴露性、敏感性和适应性等方面构建了国家地缘脆弱性研究框架,系统探索了缅甸典型的国家地缘脆弱性特征。资源环境禀赋、内部地域结构等引致的经济政治体系、社会文化传承等方面是缅甸脆弱性的本底特征,而缅甸与中国的地缘关系及决策则从根本上影响其地缘战略位态。缅甸地缘政治脆弱性及其与中国的相互依赖使之成为西方“U型封堵大陆战略”的薄弱点和今后角逐的着力点,也是中国解围破局重要的地缘战略出口。近期中国应通过“一带一路”孟中印缅经济走廊建设,大力加强中缅之间政治、经济、文化等各方面友好关系。     

AMERICAN NATIONALISM,THE FLAG,AND THE INVASION OF IRAQ*

U.S. armed forces invaded Iraq in March 2003, claiming that the country had weapons of mass destruction (wmd ) which it intended to use against the United States Although evidence of the existence of these wmd was limited, President George W. Bush's administration faced little opposition in taking the United States to war. Using the concepts of “iconography” and “banal nationalism,” I argue that the events of 9/11 and the subsequent outpouring of nationalism dampened opposition to the invasion of Iraq. The increased display of the American flag in the aftermath of 9/11 was emblematic of this increase in nationalism and generated additional support for the Bush administration's decision to go to war. This nationalism further created a form of “collective amnesia” that limited the citizenry's receptivity to information contradicting the administration's narrative, which continues to linger.     

基于影视作品的情感地缘政治研究

以情感地缘政治为切入点,以三部中国海外军事行动题材的影视作品以及观众在“豆瓣电影”论坛影评为主要分析对象,通过视觉分析、叙事解构与NVivo分析的方法,探究了影视作品中的地缘政治叙事以及观众对于这类电影的情绪性“阅读”,尝试解构这类电影如何影响“情感”在地缘政治关系的认知中发挥作用。研究结论包括：首先,此类影视作品与现实中的地缘政治话题相契合,影视作品通过对地缘政治事件的改编与重塑将地缘政治情感放大与传递;其次,全媒体时代下影视作品正成为一种新的主流价值观的传播媒介,通过观众与影片叙事情节的互动产生意义,并作用于“情感”这一维度;最后,身体是民族情感重要的载体,影视作品的视听刺激以及观众网络媒介下的评论互动是唤醒与维持民族情感、生产地缘政治力量的重要方式。     

Simion Mehedinţi's Contribution to Modern Romanian Geography

Armed with a scholarship to find an answer to the question “What is geography?” Simion Mehedin?i's studies took him to continental Europe's three main centers of geographic thought: Paris, Berlin, and Leipzig. We explore how his innovative ideas flourished, especially in Leipzig under Ratzel. The first Romanian geographer, Mehedin?i, must be credited with having defined geography as a science of mutual relationships between geospheres. This thinking reached its pinnacle in two complex books, Terra and Ethnos, the contents of which we synthetically explore. We also trace the unfavorable historical and geopolitical conditions that led to this pioneering work being little recognized worldwide.     

地缘政治环境中的情景分析：中国的视角

地缘政治环境具有不确定性,难以用简约化理论和量化手段来应对,故尝试运用情景分析法来阐释其在地缘政治环境中的适用性。情景分析法是一种对未来可能出现的多种状况进行描述的方法,具有应对地缘政治环境的不确定性和弥补简约化理论解释和预测能力不足的功能。基于地缘政治想象,地缘政治行为主体进行的地缘政治实践改变了既有地缘政治状态的结果,从而引起地缘政治环境的变化。以此为背景将情景分析法应用于分析中国周边地缘政治环境,预测可能会出现中美竞合、中美俄日印五强博弈、部分周边国家游离于大国间、朝越菲等弱国逞强等四种常规情景和领土争端引发领土战争、美国军事手段消除朝鲜核威慑、朝鲜半岛冲突引发大国对抗等三种突发情景以及“一带一路”倡议下的周边命运共同体情景。     

Geopolitics of the energy transition

Geopolitics of energy transition has increasingly become the frontier and hot research area of world energy geography and global political science. Different historical periods are characterised by obvious differences in energy connotations, attributes, and geopolitical characteristics. In the new energy era, energy geopolitics becomes more diversified, complex, and comprehensive. In this paper, we compare the geopolitical characteristics of energy in the fossil fuel and renewable energy periods...     

Cross‐border Urban Governance in Hong Kong: The Role of State in a Globalizing City‐Region*

The rapid development in the Hong Kong‐Pearl River Delta (PRD) city‐region has taken place alongside complicated cross‐border governance. The framework of time‐space envelopes (TSEs) is adopted for a study of cross‐border governance in Hong Kong, especially in the role of the state, that is, the Hong Kong government, in cross‐border urban governance. This article argues that tension‐ free regional integration has never existed due to a complex governance network. The shift from “cross‐border protectionism” to “cross‐border free trade zone” in Hong Kong's cross‐border urban governance since 2001 is a result of the rearticulation of the state cutting through the geoeconomic and geopolitical TSEs.     

Troubling Positionality: Politics of “Studying Up” in Transnational Contexts

Drawing on research conducted in India's software industry in Bangalore, this article explores the multiple positionalities of differently situated people in the project—state officials, software firm managers and owners, software professionals, and researcher as critic. Challenging conventional notions of positionality centered on individual scholars' negotiations of their own identities, I trace the institutional, geopolitical, and social relations within which all participants are embedded. I argue that moments of tension and uncertainty are not just symbolic of multiple positionalities of both researcher and researched but also indicate the fraught nature of information technology–led development in neoliberal India. This article thus provides a particular opportunity to trouble notions of power, positionality, reflexivity, and feminist commitment to untangling the politics of knowledge production while “studying up” in transnational contexts.     

MAKING THE STRANGE FAMILIAR: GEOGRAPHICAL ANALOGY IN GLOBAL GEOPOLITICS*

ABSTRACT. In several publications in the 1950s, Donald Meinig raised two themes that are central to contemporary “critical geopolitics”: criticizing the idea of a determining global physical geography that directs global geopolitics, and suggesting that geographical labels and geopolitical concepts have political consequences. I take off from Meinig's insight about geopolitics as an active process of naming and acting by discussing the broad power of analogy in world politics and by examining recent use of two geographical analogies—the Macedonian syndrome and balkanization—as symptomatic of a wider process of making the strange familiar by recycling geographical analogies.     

Sisterhood and Seine‐Nets: Engendering Development and Conservation in Ghana's Marine Fishery

As processors and marketers of fish, women fishtraders in the Fanti town of Cape Coast, Ghana have become powerful financers and owners of canoes, nets, and other fishing equipment. Since the 1960s, when motors were first introduced to Ghana's artisanal canoe fleet, two interrelated processes have occurred in Cape Coast. First, Ghana's fisheries have become increasingly exploited and—in the case of some species—overfished. Second, the social relations of production in the artisanal sector have shifted from being socially embedded to being more market‐based and impersonal. I argue that two recent Women in Development (WID) projects in particular have contributed to the breakdown of fishtraders’ traditional economic networks and livelihood strategies: (a) loan schemes that target women's associations, and (b) the 1985 Intestate Succession Law, which reconfigured inheritance rights. These WID projects, based on western notions of gender and the household, have created disharmony and mistrust among Cape Coast's fishtraders rather than promoting their “development.” The breakdown of fishtraders’ labor and marketing organizations has resulted in increasingly desperate strategies to get fish, increased degradation of Ghana's marine environment, and uncertainty for the future of the coastal economy.     

Sustaining the “Societal and Scriptural Fence”: Cultural,Social, and Political Topographies of Same-Sex Marriage in Alabama

In June 2006, voters in Alabama overwhelmingly approved a statewide referendum that added a prohibition against same-sex marriage to the state's constitution. This research examines the Alabama vote by “placing” the politics of sexuality within the state's multifaceted web of cultural and social space. We fuse a traditional electoral geography approach with an overall postpositivist cultural and social perspective, beginning with an assessment of the politics of place by situating Alabama as a place with a long history of battles over the so-called culture wars. The cultural politics of the legislative debate and the geographic distribution of the actual vote are also examined within a socio-demographic context, drawing some comparisons from a similar vote in Georgia in 2004, another state in the American Deep South. Those opposed to same-sex marriage in Alabama made effective use of various social constructions that are deeply embedded within a “moral” geography, situating the state as a fenced-off bastion of “religious traditional values,” a common theme throughout the American South. In this vein, social boundaries and territory were demarcated as a powerful political act in Alabama, a strategy that situated the state as hetero-normatively “in place,” while deeming sexual minorities as “out of place.”     

渤海海峡跨海通道建设与中国的地缘政治战略

回顾渤海海峡跨海通道建设研究的历史进程基础上,诠释了地缘政治理论与地缘政治战略,梳理了主要的中外地缘政治理论与地缘政治战略,明确指出地缘政治战略决定着大国竞争方向。中国是世界上地缘政治环境最复杂的国家,在中国周边长期存在着一个“V”字型地缘政治热点线,“V”字型地缘政治热点线贯穿中国周边的东南亚、东北亚、南亚、北亚、中亚五大地缘政治战略区,构成了中国的地缘政治“大棋局”。东南亚中国南海之争直接威胁到中国领土安全;目前东北亚已成为中国地缘政治关系热点中的热点;南亚存在着中印陆海长期之争;北亚俄罗斯将会成为战略合作伙伴;中亚复杂的地缘政治因素将长期影响着中国西北边疆的安全。研究表明,渤海海峡跨海通道建设对于中国实施地缘政治战略的重要意义在于：① 对下好中国的地缘政治“大棋局”起着重要的支撑作用;② 是“一带一路”战略破解美国亚太再平衡战略的重要构成要素;③ 对遏制东北亚局部战争、确保国家安全将发挥重要作用。渤海海峡跨海通道建设是一项世界级的大工程,投资建设的成本大,效益也大,同时风险也大。基于此,要汲取国内外世界级大工程建设的经验和教训,认真研究相关问题,不可急功近利草率上马。     

Contemporary Refugee‐Border Dynamics and the Legacies of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference

While the geopolitical legacies of the World War I peace negotiations are widely recognized, this article examines the often overlooked connection between the WWI Paris Peace Conference's spatial and geopolitical logics and contemporary refugee‐border dynamics. We argue that the spatial and geopolitical logics that framed the WWI Paris Peace Conference—the creation of new states, the propagation of the Western ideal of bounded sovereign states, the nationalist goals of self‐determination and homogeneous ethnic nations, and the establishment of a system of international governance—continue to impact refugee‐border dynamics and “crises” today. The categories, ideals, and practices of the international refugee regime that emerged over the last one‐hundred years stem in great part from these logics. In this paper, we urge critical contemplation about how these foundations—including the establishment of the post of High Commissioner for Refugees in 1921, the resultant Nansen Passports, the post‐WWI minority treaties, and lastly the 1933 Convention Relating to the International Status of Refugees—connect to contemporary human (im)mobility and border violence. We also introduce the articles in this special issue and highlight key themes and future directions for research in critical migration studies.     

Policy Boosterism,Policy Mobilities,and the Extrospective City

Abstract

This study develops the notion of “policy boosterism,” a subset of traditional branding and marketing activities that involves the active promotion of locally developed and/or locally successful policies, programs, or practices across wider geographical fields as well as to broader communities of interested peers. It is argued that policy boosterism is (1) an important element of how urban policy actors engage with global communities of professional peers and with local residents, and (2) a useful concept with which to interrogate and understand how policies and policy knowledge are mobilized among cities. A conceptualization of policy boosterism and its role in global-urban policymaking is developed by combining insights from the burgeoning “policy mobilities” literature with those of the longstanding literature on entrepreneurial city marketing. It is supported by illustrative examples of policy boosterism in Vancouver: the city's Greenest City and Green Capital initiatives, the use of the term “Vancouverism” among the city's urban design community, and demonstrations of new urban technologies during the 2010 Winter Olympics that were used to market a particular vision of the city's governance to people from elsewhere, but also—crucially—to local audiences. The article concludes by highlighting four foci that might frame future work at the intersections of policy boosterism and policy mobilities.     

HUMBOLDT AND THE HABITABILITY OF CANADA'S GREAT NORTHWEST*

ABSTRACT. Alexander von Humboldt's influence in British North America during the nineteenth century was filtered mainly through British imperial applications of “Humboldtian” sciences, including geomagnetism and biogeography. The best‐known examples include Edward Sabine and John Henry Lefroy, Royal Artillery officers who, during the 1830s and 1840s, transformed British North American outposts and territories, including Rupert's Land, into Humboldtian sites and regions in Great Britain's imperial “magnetic crusade.” Important groundwork had already been laid by John Richardson, who applied data accrued during John Franklin's overland Arctic expeditions during the 1820s to systematize Humboldtian inquiries into the habitability of Canada's Great Northwest. Despite both the relative decline of Humboldtian sciences by midcentury and Humboldt's own reservations about the political ramifications of his science, his “cosmic” outlook circulated in Canada to refine territorial expansionists' scientistic arguments justifying annexation of Rupert's Land after the monopoly of the Hudson's Bay Company expired in 1869.     

Local Uniqueness in the Global Village: Heritage Tourism in Singapore

It is commonly assumed that the development of tourist attractions, the formulation of tourism policies, and the marketing of destination areas are dictated by the needs and interests of foreign visitors. What is ignored is the role that local factors and agencies play in these processes. This paper explores the way local and non-local factors are responsible for shaping the form and function of tourism development. Drawing upon the case of Singapore, I examine the country's heritage tourism phenomenon as the outcome of “local” and “global” forces. This argument is elaborated along three lines of enquiry. They include: (a) a study of the government's tourism policies; (b) an examination of marketing and promotional strategies; and (c) a look at a particular urban landscape—the Little India Historic District. To conceptualize the global-local nexus, the paper embraces two bodies of theory. They are the “locality concept” advanced by industrial geographers in the 1980s, and writings on “globalism/localism” by cultural/economic geographers in the 1990s. Both theoretical discussions reinforce the argument that place uniqueness need not be sacrificed as a result of globalization. They also provide a way of viewing tourism geographies as the product of global and local forces.     

Fieldwork and Tropicality in French Indochina: Reflections on Pierre Gourou's Les Paysans Du Delta Tonkinois, 1936

This paper examines the fieldwork undertaken by the distinguished French geographer Pierre Gourou (1900–99) in the Tonkin Delta (Red River Delta) of northern Vietnam in the 1920s and 1930s, and his wider configuration of “the tropical world” as a distinct space of knowledge and radical otherness. Gourou's fieldwork endeavours in French Indochina are interpreted in the light of recent work on “tropicality”: the idea that “the tropics” need to be understood as a western cultural construction and colonising discourse that essentialised the hot, wet regions of the world, and exalted the temperate world over its tropical counterpart. The paper focuses on Gourou's monumental 1936 study Les paysans du delta tonkinois, étude de géographie humaine. It is argued that in this study, and his later comparative work on the tropics, Gourou elaborated a distinct geographical variant of tropicality, but one that, ultimately, reinforced the essentialist logic and momentum of this discourse. Particular attention is paid to the geographical ideas, fieldwork techniques and discursive strategies that Gourou used in his 1936 study, and the French colonial context in which he worked. The article shows how Gourou appealed to western reason and science as tools of study, identified overpopulation as the key problem facing the Tonkin Delta, and suggested that colonial practices of modernisation had a limited place and ineffectual role in the rice plains of the region.     

Re-interpretation of the classical geopolitical theories in a critical geopolitical perspective

Struggling for supremacy between great powers and the rise or fall and regime change of great powers are all subject to the Geopolitical Law. Geographers should keep in step with the times, accurately grasp the national interests, and seize the opportunity to contribute to the great rejuvenation of our nation. However, due to lack of criticism on the history and philosophy of geopolitics, we can neither accurately understand the geopolitical theory, nor effectively put the geopolitical theory into practice. This paper introduces the development of critical geopolitics, summarizes the three characteristics of critical geopolitics, and interprets the four classical geopolitical theories accordingly. In order to simplify the interpretation process, this paper firstly presents an analytical framework for interpretation of four classical geopolitical theories; secondly, focuses on interpretation of “The Geographical Pivot of History” put forward by Mackinder according to the analytical framework; finally, critically summarizes the four classical geopolitical theories. Through the critical interpretation, this paper draws a conclusion that there are the scientific, hypothetical and conceptual classical geopolitical theories. The construction of classical geopolitical theories is based on the international geopolitical structure, spatial distribution of national interests and inter-state spatial conflict, in order to show the identity of theoretical constructor, so as to reflect the historicality, sociality, situationality and geographical knowledge–power structure of geopolitical theories.     

NEGOTIATING DUALISMS: WOMEN, LOCALITY AND EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES IN OAXACA CITY, MEXICO

This paper examines the validity of the public/private and reproductive/productive dichotomies commonly adopted in the analysis of gender and employment. It considers three aspects of the dualisms: spatial division, activity patterns and the construction of identities. The discussion is based on fieldwork undertaken in three districts of Oaxaca City, Mexico, between 1992 and 1995. While recognising the usefulness of spatial dualisms within Mexican cities, the paper seeks to identify the ways in which class and location within the urban space affect the construction of the boundary between “public” and “private”, women's “employment” experiences, and women's identities.     

THE ODYSSEY OF JAPANESE COLONISTS IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC*

ABSTRACT. In an agreement formalized with the Japanese government in 1956, Generalissimo Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina of the Dominican Republic extended an offer of refuge for Japanese immigrants seeking to improve their fortunes in the late 1950s by taking up residence in Trujillo's vaunted “Paradise of the Caribbean.” The provision of sites ultimately unfavorable for colonization, lack of infrastructure, failure of the Japanese government to address the complaints of the colonists, and political instability within the Dominican Republic led to the abandonment of five of the eight colonies. By 1962 only 276 of the 1,319 original colonists remained; the rest had either returned to Japan or sought refuge in South America. Although the fortunes of these Japanese families fell far short of their expectations, Trujillo could hardly have envisioned the contributions to Dominican society to be made by their descendants. The experiences of this relatively small number of migrants reflect the difficulties encountered when racial and geopolitical concerns take precedence over judicious plans for colonization.