6. Objects

Geopolitics is often imagined through objects, but it is also exercised with objects. Objects can shape geopolitical relations and illuminate state authority. So, flags can be powerful and hyper-visible expressions of state security, while at other times they are barely noticed in everyday life. Objects play a key role in securitizing, regularizing, and disciplining our lives. Whether we choose to ignore them, play with them, accept them, and/or break them, they help to bring the human and non-human elements of geopolitics into contact with one another. ‘Objects’ considers a range of objects—pipelines, maps, waste, and action toys—and discusses their roles and significance in geopolitics.

5. Identities

‘Identities’ discusses identity politics, because geopolitics is at its heart about imagining and articulating differences between selves and others. What binds the two together is emotion and affect: the powerful forces of feeling that shape how we feel about others. Emotion and affect can also be manipulated; media reporting can inflame, political leaders can and do distort and exaggerate, and publics may be eager to engage with emotions such as fear, dread, hope, and peace. Identity narratives are not restricted to the level of the nation state, but can and do operate at a variety of geographical scales, from the individual and subnational to the pan-regional and finally to the global.

4. Popular geopolitics

‘Popular geopolitics’ considers the interconnection between popular culture and geopolitics. It focuses on the sensorial nature of popular geopolitics—the power and politics of images and sound. Social media in particular reminds us that images and stories can amplify and exaggerate the controversial and emotive qualities of geopolitics. Film and television have been judged to be significant interventions in the making of geopolitical cultures. While established media forms such as newspapers, television, and radio remain highly significant in producing and circulating news worldwide, it is new media forms such as the internet and social media practices, such as blogging and podcasting, which will command increasing attention from those interested in popular geopolitics.

1. What is geopolitics?

‘What is geopolitics?’ explains that geopolitics involves three qualities. First, it is concerned with questions of influence and power over space and territory. Second, it uses geographical frames to make sense of world affairs. Third, geopolitics is future-oriented. It offers insights into the likely behaviour of states because their interests are fundamentally unchanging. States need to secure resources, protect their territory including borderlands, and manage their populations. Two fundamental ways of understanding the term geopolitics are offered: classical geopolitics that focuses on the interrelationship between the territorial interests and power of the state and geographical environments, and critical geopolitics, which tends to focus more on the role of discourse and ideology.

2. Intellectual poison?

The notion of geopolitics has not always been well received. It has been accused of being intellectually fraudulent, ideologically suspect, and tainted with associations with Nazism and fascism. ‘Intellectual poison?’ charts a brief history of geopolitics from before World War II to the present day, looking at its origins, development, and reception. It also considers critical geopolitics. Geopolitics has attracted a great deal of academic and popular attention, often with little appreciation of its controversial intellectual history. Presidents and political commentators seem to love using the term: they associate it with danger, threats, space, and power. It is often used to make predictions about the future direction of politics.

3. Architectures

The term ‘geopolitical architecture’ is used to describe the ways in which states and non-state organizations access, manage, and regulate the intersection of territories and flows, and in so doing establish borders between inside/outside, citizen/alien, and domestic/international. Historically, there has been a series of such geopolitical architectures that rejig the relationship between spaces and flows. In order to understand the shifts and the implications for geopolitical theorizing, ‘Architectures’ considers two fundamental subjects: first, sovereignty and how it informs the activities of the territorial state/border; and second, the geopolitical architecture of the 20th and 21st centuries, which highlights how states in particular attempt to control and regulate spaces judged to be disorderly and ungoverned.