Political Geography

(Ch. 6)
Week 12 Lecture
GEOG 129 Human Geography: Resources, Development
and Society

1 April, 2025
 Notices
 Reflection on Geopolitics and India-Pakistan geopolitical tension
 Feedback on Essay Two later this week
 Final Exam - April 17, 12.00noon
 Official course evaluation (SEI) - March 29 – April 10
 Office Hours:

Mine: Thursday, 11-12noon

Dina: Wednesday 11.30 - 12.00

Megan: Friday 2.30 - 3.00pm

 Tutorial Prep
1. Select a country, region or territory in which there is a boundary
ownership dispute. Outline the reasons for the dispute. How might
the dispute be resolved? Come to class prepared to discuss your
particular case.

2. Using the link below, read Walter Kemp’s article on Canada’s foreign
policy and answer the following questions:
a) What in the article do you agree with?
b) What in the article do you disagree with?
c) To what extent do you think Kemp’s ‘nice’ proposal will resonate
with average Canadians? What is the relevance of the proposal
today?
https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/september-2023/canada-is-lo
 Notices

Next Tuesday: Class overview, wrap-up & final exam prep

Courses by me next session

GEOG 280: Development

Geography (Geographies of
the Global South)
The course examines contemporary debates
in development geography, engaging core
concepts and theories. Students will
critically examine the economic,
environmental, cultural and political
dynamics shaping life experiences in the
Global South, touching on topics such as
governance, markets, resource conflicts,
urbanization, climate change, conservation,
and decolonization.
 Courses by me next session

GEOG 233: Climate Change

and Society

Climate Change and Society introduces

students to the major climate change themes,
concepts and debates, taking a critical
approach to climate change as a
fundamentally social, cultural and political
problem – in addition to being a physical
environmental problem. The course combines
a range of teaching resources and learning
approaches to foster critical thinking, reflexive
engagement, local-global connections and
attention to issues of justice.
 Courses by me next session

GEOG 445/ ANTH 445: Political

Ecology
…a critical, interdisciplinary approach to power,
marginality, conflict and social justice across scales of
human-environment interactions. It asks how unequal
access to resources, uneven patterns and impacts of
environmental change, and the dominance of particular
environmental ideas and practices are all linked to
political-economic structures and the struggles over
knowledge, meaning and representation. Drawing on
topics such as conservation, disasters, Indigenous
environments, resource conflicts, climate change, and the
non-human species, it examines cases across Canada, the
Global North and South
Other Geography Courses next Session

GEOG 250: Introduction to Urban Geography

GEOG 353: Geographies of Migration and Settlement

GEOG 354: Urban Canada: Growth, Form, and Structure

GEOG/GWST 426: Queer Geographies

GEOG 454: Geography of Housing

GEOG 438: Learning in Place: Exploring Community in British Columbia

GEOG 474: Qualitative Research in Human Geography

GEOG 480: Advanced Seminar in Critical Geography

 Other Geography Courses next Session

GEOG 257: Seeing our World: An Introduction to Visual Geographies

GEOG 217: Geographies of British Columbia

GEOG 255: Space and Culture

GEOG 270: Introduction to Cartography and Mapmaking

GEOG 351: Urban Social Geography

GEOG 359: Culture, Space, and Politics

GEOG 451: Urban Planning

GEOG 458: Population Geography

 Notices
Official course evaluation
(SEI)-- March 29 - April 10

SEI Time
Questions

Image: Pixabay
 Outline
 Intro

 Understanding states
 External state relations: Geopolitics
 Internal state relations: State (in)stability
 Grouping of States
 The Role of the State
 Elections


 Outline
 Explain concepts such as state, nation-state, nationalism, and multi
national state
 Discuss exploration, colonialism and decolonization
 Demonstrate an understanding of geopolitics and critical geopolitics
 Discuss intersection of nation and state in Africa and Europe
 Outline key issues in the groupings of states and the roles of the state
 Discuss the importance of geography in elections
 Demonstrate an appreciation of the geography of war and
peacemaking
Grouping of States
 Grouping of States

Integration of states

 Two divergent trends characterize the political world

 Contra instability and secession of groups, new states
 States are converging into regions
(supranational
sovereignties)

 Various motivations & degrees of integration

(cf. regional integration under globalization)

 EU is the most advanced form of integration

 Grouping of States

Example: EU and membership

 Antidote
to extreme nationalism
post WWII
 To counter two major threat states?
One economic threat, the other military
threat

 28 members until Brexit

 Exclusive,
Shared and Supporting
competences
Sovereignty in this case?
Source:
Grouping of States

Multiple
state
groupings
even within
the EU

Source: wikipedia
 Grouping of States

In groups

Think about the video and other contexts in which

sovereignty remains a central concept (e.g. the current
context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine).

1. How should we understand sovereignty of states?

2. How important is state sovereignty?
3. What are the limits of sovereignty?
Grouping of States
The Role of the State
 The Role of the State

Governing populations: Forms of government

 Democracy

 Monarchy

 Oligarchy

 Dictatorship

 Fascism

 Anarchism

 Maoism
The Role of the State

Source: corporate finance institute

 The Role of the State

Socialism and Capitalism

 Human nature & ‘The Good’: freedom through the

marketplace, growth through competition
 Socialand economic system in which the means,
process and profit from production are privately
controlled by few capitalist individuals & companies,
and not by the people whose labour and time are
enrolled … from early 17th century British merchants doing foreign
trade, 18th century Industrial Revolution
 The Role of the State

Socialism and Capitalism

 Some basis in basic commodity exchange and

more recent philosophies
 Basedon continuous ‘capital accumulation’
which drives the pursuit of profit: Money –
Commodity – Money
 Competitive markets, price system, private
property, property rights recognition, voluntary
exchange, and wage labor
 The Role of the State

Socialism and Capitalism

 Assumes people are naturally

competitive, seeking self-
interest
 Different
forms: e.g.
competitive, organized and
disorganized
Source: corporate finance institute
 Contradictions of capital and
its discontents?
Difference between capitalism and
 The Role of the State

Socialism and Capitalism

 Human nature & ‘The Good’: individuals live

and work in cooperation not isolation, all
products are thus social, and benefits are
socialized
 economic system in which the whole
community of people — not just bosses or
private companies — control the means of
production equally…
 The Role of the State

Socialism and Capitalism

 Assumes humans are naturally cooperative

 Human creativity and ‘free individualities’ are
best expressed where unhindered by ‘material
scarcity, coercive social institutions, and necessary
labour time’
 Seeks an egalitarian society run by all or
democratically elected representatives in the
interest of all
 The Role of the State
Socialism and Capitalism
 Various philosophical foundations
 Longhistory of socialist & communist
economies across the world
 Earlier
on in newly decolonized countries
across Asia and Africa countries? Why?
 Failures, contradictions and discontents?

Difference between socialism and communism?

Today:

US, UK, Germany -- capitalist

states

Nordic countries, Canada –

combine capitalist and
socialist elements

Cuba, China, Vietnam and

some countries of Latin
America align more with
socialism
 Think, pair, share

Is there a difference between the theory and

the practice of these two systems? How?

Should we understand the practice of

capitalism and socialism as two polar
opposites or as a continuum?
Geography in Elections
 Geography in Elections

Geographers’
interest in
elections: role of
space and
boundaries,
temporalities
and variations in
voting pattern
 Geography in Elections

 Electoral
districts as ‘meaningful spatial unit in a
human geographic context’ e.g. relatively
homogenous population
 Orelectoral districts should be as diverse as
possible
 The number of voters in each district should be
as close to equal as possible
 Electoral districts should be continuous
 Geography in Elections

Manipulating
boundaries, creating
electoral biases

Gerrymandering:
reconstituting
boundaries of
electoral districts to
favour certain
parties/interests

Massachusetts
Source: Mercier and Norton
Governor in 1812,
Geography in Elections

Congressional districts in
Mississippi showing
percentage of Black voters.
a.) Pre-1966 showing one
Black majority district; b.)
post-1966 showing
deliberate redistricting that
made all the districts Black
 Geography in Elections

Election and place

Where people live shapes how they vote, in addition to class;
implications?

Ron Johnston, elections geography

 Sectional effect – differences in local and regional political culture
 Environmental effects – social issues e.g. unemployment,
incumbency
 Campaign effects – vote switching in safer seats, long-established
parties win marginals
 Contextual effects – social contacts such as neighbors, coworkers
etc.
War and Peace
 War and Peace

 War and peace became philosophies in European thought in

the 18th century, with the rise of capitalism and nationalism
 Systematic programs of war-making and peace,
military/defence expenditure and research
 From territorial wars of states to ideological wars beginning
after 1918
 From global (European?) wars to relatively local wars after
1945
 1945 and the UN’s role in conflict resolution, intervention in
war, and adjudication in war crimes (ICJ’s ICC)
The Role of the State: War and Peace
 War and Peace

Categories of conflict

1. Traditional conflicts between states

2. Independence movements against foreign domination

or occupation

3. Secession conflicts

4. Civil wars seeking regime change

5. Action against states that support terrorism?

 War and Peace

Drivers of conflicts
 Power: political and economic power, domination
 Environment: natural resources <=> territory
 Culture:
ethnic, religious and other cultural
variables
 War and Peace

Civil Wars:
 Less disruptive than interstate wars,
 most common types of war in recent times
 Assumptions about ethnic and religious hatred VS development
 The role of natural resource
 Cause displacement (refugee) and decimation (including
genocide)
 Illicit activities flourish in conflict areas
 Certain actors benefit from wars. E.g?
 War and Peace

Read up on
 Terrorism

 Competing for resources

 Geography of Nuclear Weapons

Our Geopolitical Future
 Our Geopolitical Future

What are the

possibilities for the
world’s geopolitical
future?

1. Democracy and the

possibility of
perpetual peace?
(e.g. Fukuyama,
1992)
 Our Geopolitical Future

What are the

possibilities for
the world’s
geopolitical
future?

2. Clash of
Civilizations?
(e.g. Huntington,
1993)
 Our Geopolitical Future

What are the

possibilities for the
world’s geopolitical
future?

3. World Order or
Disorder?
End