Approaches in defining PolGeo

1st Approach – study abt political territorial units, borders and administrative (falls under
formal politics; e.g war on West Ph Sea)
2nd Approach – study of pol processes, differing from polsci only in the emphasis given
to geographical influences and outcomes and in the application of spatial analysis
techniques (e.g pagbibigay ayuda, centering the development to Luzon)
3rd Approach – polgeo should be defined in terms of key concepts, which the
proponents of this approach generally identify as territory and the state.

Political Geography
- Simply the study of how politics is informed by geography
- A discourse or a body of knowledge that produces particular understandings
about the world, characterized by internal debate, the evolutionary adoption of
new ideas, and dynamic boundaries
- A cluster of work within the social sciences that engages with the multiple
intersections of politics and geography, where these two terms are
imagines as triangular configurations.
Space – no boundary
Territory – defined boundary
PolGeo is not Geopolitics
- Geopolitics is essential a body of thought developed in a given territory which
seeks the maximization of its own ends.
- Geopoliticisn sees all other grps thru the spectacles of national interest, often
becoming selfish to the point of greed, lust and violence.
- Core of this discipline is power; the quest for power provides the guide to
method.
- More on state power
Brief History
Era of Ascendancy (1890s – WWII) – Lebensraum argued that state could be conceived
as a ‘living organism’ (expand the German territory for resources)
- Kjellen’s classification of state based on Linnean system – attempted to identify
the ‘world powers’ (establishment of colony of European powers); coincide with
Razel’s ‘living organism’
- Mahan: global military power was dependent on sea powers
- Halford Mackinderz; “who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; who rules
the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island
 commands the world” (meaning: who has more land power controls the world:
Heartland-Eurasia)
- WWII: The geopolitical ideas of Ratzel and Mackinder offered a blueprint for
Germany’s revival.
Era of Marginalisation (1940’s -1970’s) – Hartershorne attempt to ‘depoliticise’ political
geography and to put it on what he regarded as a more scientific footing through
‘functional approach’ to political geography
- He argued that political geography should not be concerned with shaping political
strategy, but rather with describing and analyzing the internal dynamics and
external functions of the state. (how the function of the state affect the people,
the way we think..)
- Fear about the fear of the sub-disciplines’ past made political geographers wary
of modelling and theorizing, such that research remained essentially descriptive
and empirically driven.
- Internal dynamics: how the people in the senate affects the decision making
Era of Revival (1970’s – Present) –revival of polgeo in the 70’s was driven by two
parallel processes – a re-introduction of theory into polgeo, and a political turn in
geography more broadly.
- Rise of quantitative electoral geography (e.g red state, blue state) from the late
1960’s onwards introduced the ‘systems approach’ to the sub-discipline. (how
geography affects voting behavior of the people)
- Positivist turn was challenged by the Marxist political economy within the political
geography.
- The cultural turn in human geography during the late 1980s-1990s expanded the
scope for political geography research by enlarging the understanding of ‘politics’
(where politics is everywhere)
- Emergence of a ‘post-disciplinary political geography’ w/c argued that there was
scope for polgeo to be further enriched by engagement with allied subjects.
(delves also in gender politics etc.)
21st Century Political Geography
Openness – polgeo will both remain open to new theoretical and methodological
influens and empirical topics, and continue to accommodate work on traditional themes.
Expansion – polgeo has continued to expand into new areas of enquiry, including,
perhaps most significantly, a growth of interest in the politics of the environment.
Activism – rise in a more activist political geography
State / Nation-State
State – is the central concept in political geography
During the 70’s – geographers provided descriptive approach of traditional political
georgraphy
Global Jigsaw – the political map of the world is completely divided into the territorial
areas called states
- Achieving statehood is the ultimate goal
- The process of becoming a state is not a natural process but a social process
- Constructing the theory of the state is difficult because it is political/social
process and deals with its ‘essense’
States (by Painter)
A complex networks of relations among a shifting mixture of institutions and social
groups; and
The product of their own processes of institutional development and historical change
as well as important
State and State Formation
Defining the state
- Difficult to define the state
- State is equal and or not equal to organization
- Does the state exist
- BOB JESSOP
- Strong and Weak Theories

Strong Theory

Weak Theory
A useful set of guidelines and principles which will assist analysis of particular states,
but which do not assume that everything can be explained by a single set of
mechanisms. (Proposition: State do not exists, but its present is present in our daily
lives.)

State formation as a social process

- The state is constantly becoming
- It is a byproduct of other activities
- Institutional materiality (political actors) will rise
High and Low Politics
High Politics – state security
Low Politics – social security
Informal politics
Formal politics
From High to Low
There is always an alteration between high and low politics
Foucault – government of self-control

Claiming Sovereignty
- Modern world, states are the foremost claimers of authority, an authority which is
simultaneously claimed to be legitimate.
- Joseph Camilleri and Jim Falk argue: … sovereignty is not a fact. Rather it is a
concept or a claim about the way political power is or should be exercised.
- A claim to sovereignty is a claim to being the highest authority within an area, or
over a particular group.
- Modern states’ claims to sovereignty are conventionally recognized
Challenges to the sovereignty of the states
1. Globalization of economic processes
2. Growth of new forms of political authority and governmentality

Origins of modern claims to sovereignty

- Power was exercised through a highly hierarchal, but simultaneously
decentralized system
- A state’s claim sovereignty is made to stick as it were by showing that other
states regard it as
Nation – imagined community
Sovereignty and Territory
Sovereignty – ultimate authority to rule within a polity.
2 types of authority
- Internal or Domestic Sovereignty – full control over territorial boundaries
- External or International Sovereignty – free to act on its own without external
influence
Sovereignty is both an ambitious and a vague team
- Issue on Hobbesian Sovereignty and Modern Democratic Government
- Right of non-interference

Geographical arguments
1. Conventional approach
2. De jure and De facto sovereignty
3. De facto sovereignty is all there is
4. States are never as much in control of their affairs and territory
5. Territories are not rules by states, but by other non-state entities

4 ideal types of sovereign regime

1. classical
2. imperialist
3. integrative
4. globalist

Territory – came from Proto-Indo-European word ‘ters,’ meaning ‘to dry’

- “terra” (land)
- If joined by the suffix ‘ory’. Creates the word ‘territory’, which means ‘having to do
with land’
What territory according to…
Plato – resource of necessary materials to live
Aristotle – fourth element of the state
 - Essential in guaranteeing security and wealth
Value of territory/short Background
Hellenistic and Roman Empires did not approve of ‘territory as a basis of political power’
Treaty of Wesphalia - a way of ‘spatially delimiting’ sovereignty
Territory as defined by contemporary orgs
Territory as land claimed by the state, and recognized by others.
1. the land’s subsoil
2. internal and adjacent waters
3. the airspace
The concept of territorial state – result of Europe’s experience on state building
- Res nullius (any unclaimed land is up for the taking)
- Res communis (antartica; free for all)
Ways for states to add territory
Conquest – acquiring land by military force
Treaties of Cession – giving up land to the other party
Evolution and Debate: Complicating Territory
Three problems that have spurred
1. Territory is too often approached as a static object, a backdrop to human events.
2. Territory is mistaken for normative arguments about the organization of politics.
Territory tray, as John Agnew terms it, leads to a state-centric vision of politics
with three assumed features of the international state system.
- Understanding of power within the state as simply coercive; forcing its subjects to
comply with sovereign authority.
- Relations between states are also based on coercive power, although foreign
relations are thought to be different from domestic ones.
- It tends to ignore the role of state institutions in the creation and extension of
capitalist relations both within and beyond state boundaries.
3. The territorial state is declining in significance as a geopolitical actor
- Demise of what one author called the hard shell protecting the nation-state are
not new
- These political units are thus reterritorialization not only of non-state and quasi-
state entities, but of our notions of states as well.
Liberalism – we are becoming borderless because of capitalism
Realism – who is the strongest country has the strongest sovereignty (US has a lot of
military camps in the world)

Liberal Democracy
Enlightenment
 Intellectual movement
 Challenged traditional ideas of feudal society in Europe
 Critiqued superstitions and conventional ideas
 Valued more rationality and human mind
 Valued scientific reasoning for social progress
Enlightenment Project
 Philosophies challenge to traditional ideas and fo

Identity Politics and Social Movements

Identity – qualities, beliefs, personality traits, appearance, and/or expressions that
characterize a person or group
Identity Politics – when group identity difference is a source of conflict or becomes the
focus of efforts to bring about social change.
Social Movements
Painter: groups of people pursuing shared goals that require social or political change
Blumer: collective enterprises to establish a new life
Nicholls: social movements are contentious (always in disagreement with benefactors of
status quo)
Social Movements and Political Parties from social movements to political parties.
Usually, social movements are characterized being concerned with a single issue only.
On the other hand, political parties are perceived to be related with different sets of
issues.
But there’s more to these.
The Need for Strategies to Achieve Change Anthony Gidden: Reflexive Monitoring of
Action
2 Important Characteristics of Social Movements
1. They are networks of organizations and individuals, rather than a single institution.
Further, their geographies may be more diffuse than formal organizations that tend to
operate within fixed locales.
2. They use ‘non-traditional means’ rather than conventional electoral politics.
So, between formal and informal politics where do we social movements belong?
NEITHER
Social movements blur the distinction between the formal politics of official and the
informal politics of everyday life.
Many social scientists believe that social change is a result of social struggle.
EX: Late 1970s concept of ‘urban social movements’ developed by Manuel Castells
Understanding Social Movements
2 Broad Approaches to Interpret Social Movements:
Objective Approach: conditions that gave rise to social movements
Limitation – hard to explain why social movements rise in some situations but not in
others that appear to be similar
Subjective Approach: experiences which prompt people to join and participate in social
movements
Limitation – fails to address how those ideas and perceptions are formed in the first
place
Remember, combining the insights of both POVs may aid you in understanding why
social movements cease to exist.
Identity Politics and Social Difference
The personal identities of the participant and their politicization are deeply linked to
numerous social movements, however;
Some social movements’ link with personal identity is more diffuse
Competing Paradigms of Liberation
Ideal of Assimilation: liberation from oppression will be achieved when social differences
cease to have political significance
Ideal of Diversity: respect for difference rather than its erasure.
Differences are a positive aspect of society and should not be the basis of systematic
discrimination
This view, for some writers, are risked of being essentialist
Young held out by insisting that emphasizing that group formation is a flexible affair
We have all multiple sources of identity
Discourses and Resources
Discursive construction – an iconic event that provides a spark that ignites a movement
Discursive development – narratives about their own history, their ‘great thinkers,’
important activists, tragic defeats, and glorious victories
There are many different kinds of resources, including money and material resources,
symbolic resources, organization capacity, and people’s time and commitment.
Resource Mobilization Theory
Success of a social movement also depends on the available resources of the
movement.
 Material Resources (tangible)
 Symbolic Resources (intangible)
Rational Choice Theory
 The resource mobilization approach was grounded in rational choice theory
 It assumes that people act on the basis of rational calculations about the
costs, benefits, and likely outcomes of different course of action. (way of thinking
or behavior how we manage our actions)
Sydney Tarrow: Political Opportunities
Political opportunities are also central to growth or decline of social movements.
Social movements operating in a favorable political environment can expect to grow as
the risks associated with participation in the movement are reduced.
EX – Leni: Pink Movement/Angat Buhay NGO)
Walter J. Nicholls: “Social movements as developing on the head of a pin.”
Every social movement has a geography but differs in several ways.
But the problem is: the role of geography in the studies of social movements (and in
itself) are seen little.
But in reality, geography affects social movements and vice versa.
How do Geographical Factors affect social movements?
  Identity is shaped by geographical contexts. Thus, social movements and group
identities have geographical differences and variations as well.
 Resources vary among geographical variation.
 Distribution of social movements (and other influences) vary across geographies.
This affects their impacts on their specific places.
 Social movements operate at different geographical scales – local, national,
continental, and worldwide/global
At least 3 ways How Social Movements is Composed Geographically:
1. Every social movement develops in a particular geographical context, which provides
the resources and opportunities for its development
2. Considerable variations in the characteristics of social movements in different regions
of the globe
3. Geography as means to further objectives (scaling up your game)

Class, identity, and trade unionism

 Trade unions – are collective organizations of workers acting together to further
their interests as workers.
 The main function of many trade unions is bargaining with employers over wages
and terms and conditions of employment.
 The origin of trade union lie in a social movement made up of workers
 The labor movement is based on identities linked to employment and social class
 Participation in the labor movement depends on at least a minimum sense of
occupational identity.
Space, Place, and Labor Movements
 Shift from traditional ways of living to industry
 Global network of capitalism
 Trade Unionism
Feminism in Geography
Mona Domosh – geographical knowledge itself is gendered
Gillian Rose – geographical though is masculine