GEOGRAPHY 3601: GLOBAL POLITICS AND THE MODERN GEOPOLITICAL IMAGINATION GEOPOLITICS Autumn 2014

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1 GEOGRAPHY 3601: GLOBAL POLITICS AND THE MODERN GEOPOLITICAL IMAGINATION GEOPOLITICS Autumn 2014 The Rhodes Colossus Striding from Cape Town to Cairo. Punch, or the London Charivari, December 10 th

2 Instructor: Professor M. Coleman Office: 1156 Derby Hall Office Hours: Fridays 10:15-noon, and by appointment Class hours: M, W, F; 1:50-2:45pm Class location: Derby Hall (Please put Geography 3601 in subject line) Office Tel: (614) Students with disabilities Students with disabilities that have been certified by the Office for Disability Services will be appropriately accommodated, and should contact me as soon as possible in the quarter to discuss your requirements. The Office for Disability Services is located in 150 Pomerene Hall, 1760 Neil Avenue; telephone , TDD ; Course Rationale From the late 19 th century to 1945 geographers were at the forefront of conflict studies, albeit under the banner of geopolitics rather than foreign policy studies. This changed dramatically after WWII, as a result of geographers attempts to distance themselves from Nazi geopolitik. Although a small group of scholars maintained an interest in geopolitics during the Cold War, it was not until the late 1980s that the discipline returned publicly to geopolitical research and teaching. In an effort to explore this generally neglected and highly contested tradition of geopolitical research, this course will survey key geopolitical thinkers and theories in Geography over the past 150 years. Several themes will be emphasized, including: a) geopolitics as the strategic visualization of global space, which we will refer to as the modern geopolitical imagination ; b) the gap between globalizing visions of geopolitics and the everyday; c) the political, economic and social contexts of the geopolitics theory industry; and d) the general transformation of geopolitics as a subject from a handmaiden of the state to a more critical form. 2

3 We will explore a range of geopolitical theories relating to: social Darwinism, imperial geopolitics, Nazi geopolitics, Cold War geopolitics, core-periphery relations, Marxist geopolitics in France and the US after 1968, dependency theory in Latin America, as well as more recent critical approaches to geopolitics anchored in postmodern, postcolonial, post-marxist and feminist theory. As a complement to our exploration of the state-of-the-art field of critical geopolitics, we will explore a host of contemporary geopolitical issues regarding global environmental security, resource conflict, the war on drugs, popular geopolitical media (i.e. film and cartoons), refugee management, finance, terrorism and counter-terrorism, urban warfare, oil and US geostrategy, the rise of China on the world stage, immigration enforcement, and border control. No background in Geography is expected or required in order to enroll in this course. The course will appeal to a broad range of students across the arts and sciences. General Education Fulfillment Geography 465 will fulfill the above GEC expected learning outcomes by fulfilling the Social Sciences GEC Organization and Polities sub-categorization: 1. Students understand the theories and methods of social scientific inquiry as they are applied to the study of organizations and polities. In this class we will question the geopolitical sciences by looking at how particular geopolitical thinkers, representative of particular periods of geopolitical theorization, make sense of the world via often extra-scientific methods, rules, and postulates about conflict, membership, identity, power, politics, culture, and space. Particular attention will be given to the important role played by geopoliticians visualization of global space. By this is meant geopoliticians cartographic framing of the world as literally a picture an ordered, structured, and densely interconnected global totality, ostensibly separate from the person who is representing the world as such, and often colored by broad claims about dangerous and safe places and peoples. We will examine how this tactic of global visualization displaces the realities of geopolitical violence by virtue of its reduction of actually lived spaces to abstract, timeless, depopulated, and civilizational spaces, i.e. the Iron Curtain, the West, the South, etc. In order to problematize geopoliticians visualization of global space, we will emphasize how particular geopolitical theories, often presented as objective, empiricist, and disinterested, on closer examination reflect the geostrategic interests of very specific sets of actors, i.e. states, cities, organizations, firms, individuals, etc. We will refer to this as the politics of geopolitical science. At a more abstract level, we will consider how metatheoretical claims about how the world works (i.e. ontology) structures the acquisition, validation, and transmission of knowledge (i.e. epistemology) for particular schools of geopolitical thought at particular historical conjunctures. 2. Students understand the formation and durability of political, economic, and social organizing principles and their differences and similarities across contexts. In this class we will focus specifically on the intersection between geopolitical theories in the abstract and geopolitical conflict in the concrete. We will scrutinize the 3

4 historical-geographical formation of geopolitical theories as well as how particular geopolitical theories have been taken up by elites of statecraft in the context of states (and other organizations ) actual geostrategic practices. In the first instance, students will approach geopolitical theory as an embedded knowledge-making practice which reflects the particularities of both time and place. Differences between geopolitical theories will be explained by looking to the very specific social, political, and economic circumstances conditioning their emergence and formalization. For example, late 19th century British geopolitical theory will be examined in the context of Britain s imperial decline; likewise, the turn away from scholarly geopolitics in the U.S. after WWII will be explored as a product of Geography s fateful association with Nazi thought in the 1930s and 1940s. More recently, the revival of geopolitical thought in Geography in the post-cold War world will be tied to the scholarly emergence of globalization as an object of inquiry, which shares the latter s visualization of global space (see above). In the second instance, students will be exposed to geopolitical thought as powerful insofar as it guides statecraft as well as structures actually-existing social, political, and economic differences and inequalities. In other words, students will be encouraged to think of theory not simply as an abstract exercise but as having feedback effects in the realm of geopolitical practice. Explicit consideration will be given to the way in which context-dependent geopolitical thought is de-contextualized and rendered as durable extra-historical and extra-geographical truths which then structure the conduct of inter-state and intra-state conflict. 3. Students develop abilities to comprehend and assess the nature and values of organizations and polities and their importance in social problem solving and policy making. By focusing in the latter half of the course on critical, postcolonial, radical, and in particular feminist geopolitical thought, we will ask to what extent traditional as well as mainstream geopolitical theories solve or reproduce the geostrategic dilemmas they set out ostensibly to solve. Emphasis will be placed on the naturalization of race, class, gender, sexuality, and other social differences in mainstream geopolitical theory, and the production of social, political, and economic strife and inequalities through the enactment of such theories via the actual practice of statecraft. By introducing students to alternate (and frequently marginalized) theorizations of geopolitics, this course will help students understand how geopolitics is a contestable social product, rather than an objective and strategic response to an already and always conflict prone world economy. Geography 465 also fulfills the Diversity: International Issues GEC: 1. Students exhibit an understanding of some combination of political, economic, cultural, physical, social, and philosophical differences in or among the world's nations, peoples, and cultures outside the US. In this class a major topic will be the cardinal tension between the global vision of geopolitical theory and the lived contexts or everyday of geopolitical practice. We will draw predominantly on research by feminist geographers to explore the contradictions between the anemic and abstracted theorization and rationalization of geopolitics from within the most privileged spaces of the capitalist globe, i.e. the global North, and geopolitics as a practice remote from these centers of knowledge production. By putting 4

5 the messy realm of geopolitical practice alongside its theorization, an attempt will be made to unsettle and destabilize geopolitical theory from the standpoint of the everyday of the battlefield, for the most part beyond the global North. But these battlefields will be explored as unalike spaces, in contrast to the mostly uniform or singular spaces which feature in mainstream geopolitical theory. For example, by reading Joe Sacco s graphic novels on Bosnia as well as the Gaza Strip, students will be given the opportunity to ground the contradictions of U.S. geopolitics in very different everyday spaces, which will destabilize the global as simply beyond the U.S.. In addition, this class will put significant emphasis on the so-called boomerang effects of geopolitical theorization and practice. This phrase, boomerang effects, comes from a 1976 lecture by the French political theorist Michel Foucault, and is intended to speak to the way in which colonial institutions and techniques of power were brought back to the West during the classical imperial period to inaugurate forms of internal colonialism within Europe. This class will explore the boomerang effects of U.S. geopolitics in the war on terror, and as such encourage students to think twice about a basic differentiation of the Earth s population into domestic and foreign. 2. Students are able to describe, analyze, and critically evaluate the roles of categories such as race, gender, class, ethnicity, national origin, and religion as they relate to international/global institutions, issues, cultures and citizenship. In this class students will systematically examine the role of area studies to geopolitical practice. Area studies was developed in North America and Europe in the aftermath of WWII in order to document the diverse social and cultural values and practices in the world beyond these two continents. Because area studies is most developed in the U.S. context, students will explore in detail the relationship between area studies and U.S. geostrategy during the Cold War and post-cold War periods. Specifically, students will be encouraged to think about how area studies research, despite its nominal interest to destabilize Western-centric social science, deploys knowledge about race, gender, class, ethnicity and religion to other populations who are also at once populations of military interest to the U.S. We will discuss this, via Rey Chow s work on the politics of visuality, as the anthropological and military basis of area studies. Particular attention will be given to the strategic role played by the geographical and anthropological sciences in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Overall, students will be prompted to engage critically with categories of diversity and difference as elaborated and standardized in North American and European social sciences. 3. Students recognize the role of national and international diversity in shaping their own attitudes and values as global citizens. By reading and writing critically about diverse geopolitical events and concepts, students will be invited to recognize as well as challenge dominant tropes about dangers and threat in the global political economy. As a result, students will be urged to think outside the box about contemporary geopolitical problems. Course website The course syllabus, announcements, readings, notes, exam review guides and other useful resources will be available at Log in using your OSU Internet User Name and Password and then select Geography 465 from the list of 5

6 courses for which you are currently enrolled. It is recommended that you regularly check the web site for updates and news. If you have problems logging in, you are responsible for contacting Carmen and gaining access to the class website. Grading scale A A B B B C C C D D E EN Too many absences to permit a passing grade Course grade Grade item Details Weight Attendance Per class, converted into a 10% grade on 10% Written commentaries, 3 10% 30% based on small group activities each, choice of 3 of 4 although participation in all small groups required Midterm exams 40% Final exam 20% Details re written commentaries based on small group activities The 2 page written assignments will include: a full bibliography as well as proper in text citation, and 2 pages of creative critique/engagement/reactions. Late assignments will be subject to a 10% penalty per 24 hour period after the due date for each assignment. You have to write 3 commentaries from a choice of 4 potential topics. Class protocols This will be a rewarding and engaging class, but before we get started please read the following protocols which hold, without exception, for all enrolled students. These are designed to make your learning experience more enjoyable. I take teaching very seriously, and I want you to take learning equally so. Collegiality in the classroom requires that you turn off your cell phone. I will post a condensed version of the lecture slides at the end of every week. This does not mean that you are free to miss class. I will present examples and details in class that will not appear on the lecture slides. If you miss a class, it is highly recommended that 6

7 you get a full set of notes from one of your colleagues. The exams are designed explicitly for students who attend class regularly. Come and see me in office hours. I will be more than happy to answer questions and go over class material. If you cannot make posted hours, arrange an alternative appointment by . Texts I will provide copies of all the readings through Carmen but you will be required to purchase Joe Sacco s graphic novel Footnotes in Gaza. I will not be ordering this book through the university bookstore system as it will be cheaper online. You should be able to buy this for approximately $16. You are responsible for ordering the book in order to participate in the discussion during lectures 29, 30 and 32. You are also responsible for getting a copy of Sacco s graphic account of the war in Bosnia, Safe Area Gorazde. We will be discussing this text in lectures 31 and 32. You should be able to buy this for approximately $15. Academic integrity Academic integrity is essential to maintaining an environment that fosters excellence in teaching, research and other educational and scholarly activities. The Ohio State University and the Committee on Academic Misconduct (COAM) expects that all students have read and understand the University s Code of Student Conduct, and that all students will complete all academic and scholarly assignments with fairness and honesty. Students must recognize that failure to follow the rules and guidelines established in the University s Code of Student Conduct and in this syllabus may constitute Academic Misconduct. The Ohio State University s Code of Student Conduct (Section ) (oaa.osu.edu/coam/home.html) defines academic misconduct as: Any activity that tends to compromise the academic integrity of the University, or subvert the educational process. Examples of academic misconduct include (but are not limited to) plagiarism, 7

8 collusion (unauthorized collaboration), copying the work of another student and possession of unauthorized materials during an examination. Ignorance of the University s Code of Student Conduct is never considered an excuse for academic misconduct, so I recommend that you review the Code of Student Conduct and, specifically, the sections dealing with academic misconduct. If I suspect that a student has committed academic misconduct in this course, I am obligated by University Rules to report my suspicions to the COAM. If COAM determines that you have violated the University s Code of Student Conduct (i.e., committed academic misconduct), the sanctions for the misconduct could include a failing grade in this course and suspension or dismissal. If you have any questions about this policy or what constitutes academic misconduct in this course, please contact me. From Footnotes in Gaza From Safe Area Gorazde 8

9 Weekly lectures Week 1 Lecture 1 Aug 27 Lecture 2 Aug 29 Week 2 Lecture 3 Sept 1 Lecture 4 Sept 3 Lecture 5 Sept 5 Introduction, detailed review of syllabus and class expectations World as Picture: The Modern Geopolitical Imagination Reading: Cosgrove, D. (2001). Imperial and poetic globe in Apollo's Eye: A Cartographic Genealogy of the Earth in the Western Imagination. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, LABOR DAY, NO CLASSES World as Exhibit: Orientalism and Geopolitics Reading: Gregory, D. (2004). The colonial present and Architectures of enmity in The Colonial Present. Oxford: Blackwell, 1-16, Social Darwinism and fin de siècle anxiety Reading: Kobayashi, A. (2004). Geography, spatiality, and racialization: The contribution of Edward Said. The Arab World Geographer, 7, Listen to podcast on Berlin Week 3 Lecture 6 Sept 8 Lecture 7 Sept 10 Lecture 8 Sept 12 Theories of Imperialism Reading: Domosh, M. (2007). Gender, race, and nationalism: American identity and economic imperialism at the turn of the 20 th century in A Companion to Feminist Geography. Oxford: Blackwell, Geopolitics as Biogeography Reading: Bassin, M. (1987) Imperialism and the nation state in Friedrich Ratzel's political geography. Progress in Human Geography, 11, Men Climbing Mountains I: Sir Halford Mackinder and the Problem of Global Closure Reading: Blouet, B. W. (2004). The imperial vision of Halford Mackinder. The Geographical Journal, 170,

10 Week 4 Lecture 9 Sept 15 Men Climbing Mountains II: Sir Halford Mackinder s Pivot Theory of Global Politics Reading: Mackinder, H. J. (2004 [1904]) The geographical pivot of history. Geographical Journal, 170, Lecture 10 Sept 17 SMALL GROUP ACTIVITY #1 Mackinder s Pivot Theory Today Website: Reading: Robert Kaplan, The revenge of geography, Foreign Policy (May/June 2009). Revenge of the geographers : Critiques of Kaplan by Gearóid Ó Tuathail, John Morrissey, Simon Dalby, Christian Caryl, David Polansky and Gerry Kearns at age=0 Kaplan s response at age=7 Please listen: e_heartland_theory/ (BBC Sunday Feature on Halford Mackinder s legacy in German and US geopolitics, Oct 4 th 2009, 57 minutes) Lecture 11 Sept 19 Race, Space, and National Socialism: Karl Haushofer and Plan For Destruction Reading: Bowman, I. (1942). Geography vs. geopolitics. Geographical Review 32, Week 5 Lecture 12 Sept 22 American Lebensraum : Eugenics, Isaiah Bowman and Remaking the Racial Map of Europe in 1919 Reading: Crampton, J Maps, race and Foucault: Eugenics and territorialization following World War 1. In Space, Knowledge and Power: Foucault and Geography eds. J. Crampton & S. Elden, Aldershot: Ashgate. Lecture 13 Sept 24 MIDTERM EXAM # 1 Short answer and ID questions 10

11 Lecture 14 Sept 26 Week 6 Lecture 15 Sept 29 Lecture 16 Oct 1 Containment and Cold War Borders Reading: N/A Regional Studies and Cold War Geopolitics Reading: Chow, R. (2010). The age of the world target: Atomic bombs, alterity and area studies in P. Bowman (Ed.), The Rey Chow Reader. New York: Colombia University Press, SMALL GROUP ACTIVITY #2 Geodesy and Missiles: Earth Sciences at Ohio State during the Cold War Reading: Cloud, J. (2000). Crossing the Olentangy River: the figure of the Earth and the military-industrial-academic complex, Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 31, Lecture 17 Oct 3 Week 7 Lecture 18 Oct 6 Vietnam, 1968 and the Society of the Spectacle Reading: Ross, K. (1995). Introduction in Fast Cars, Clean Bodies. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, La Géopolitique de la Gauche: Yves Lacoste and French Geopolitics in the Wake of 1968 Reading: Lacoste, Y. (1973). An illustration of geographical warfare: Bombing of the dikes on the Red River, North Vietnam. Antipode 5, Lecture 19 Oct 8 Neoconservatism and the Second Cold War: Setting the Stage for Critical Geopolitics Reading: N/A Lecture 20 Oct 10 Critical Geopolitics and the Problem of Geopolitical Discourse and Identity Reading: Sharp, J. P. (1996). Hegemony, popular culture and geopolitics: the Reader's Digest and the construction of danger. Political Geography, 15, Week 8 Lecture 21 Oct 13 Environmental Security I: Population Growth and Conflict at the End of the Cold War Reading: Kaplan, R. D. (1994). The coming anarchy: How scarcity, crime, overpopulation, tribalism and disease are rapidly destroying the social fabric of our planet. Atlantic 11

12 Monthly, 273, Lecture 22 Oct 15 Environmental Security II: The Anthropocene Reading: Browse articles at either news/2011/111012/full/478171a.html or Listen to Science podcast on Lecture 23 Oct 17 Week 9 Lecture 24 Oct 20 Lecture 25 Oct 22 Lecture 26 Oct 24 Week 10 Lecture 27 Oct 27 Lecture 28 Oct 29 Feminist Geopolitics I: Scale and Embodiment Reading: Hyndman, J. (2007) Feminist geopolitics revisited: Body counts in Iraq. Professional Geographer, 59, Feminist Geopolitics II: Rethinking the State and Statecraft Reading: Marston, S. A. (2004). Space, culture, state: Uneven developments in political geography. Political Geography, 23, Feminist Geopolitics III: Everyday Militarism Reading: Woodward, R. (2005). From military geography to militarism's geographies: disciplinary engagements with the geographies of militarism and military activities. Progress in Human Geography, 29, MIDTERM EXAM # 2 Short answer and ID questions Urban Geopolitics I: Rethinking the Where of War Reading: Katz, C Banal terrorism in D. Gregory & A. Pred (Eds) Violent Geographies: Fear, Terror, and Political Violence. London: Routledge, Urban Geopolitics II: Warrior Cops and the Geopolitics of the Police Reading: Mitchell, K. (2010). Ungoverned space: Global security and the geopolitics of broken windows. Political Geography, 29,

13 Lecture 29 Oct 31 Urban Geopolitics III: Sacco s Graphic Israel-Palestine Reading: Sacco, J. (2009). Footnotes in Gaza. New York: Metropolitan Books. NB: Lecture and interview w/ Joe Sacco at Powell s Books in Week 11 Lecture 30 Nov 3 Urban Geopolitics IV: Sacco s Graphic Israel-Palestine Reading: Sacco, J. (2009). Footnotes in Gaza. New York: Metropolitan Books. NB: Lecture and interview w/ Joe Sacco at Powell s Books in Lecture 31 Nov 5 Lecture 32 Nov 7 Urban Geopolitics V: Sacco s Graphic Bosnia Reading: Sacco, J. (2002). Safe Area Gorazde: The War in Eastern Bosnia Seattle: Fantagraphics Books. SMALL GROUP ACTIVITY #3 Graphic novels, the everyday, and anti-geopolitics Said, E. (2002). Homage to Joe Sacco in Palestine. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, i-v. Chute, H. (2010). Women, comics, and the risk of representation in Graphic Women: Life, Narrative and Contemporary Comics (pp. 1-28). New York: Columbia University Press. Week 12 Lecture 33 Nov 10 Immigration Enforcement I: the Militarization of the US- Mexico Border Reading: Wright, M. W. (2011). Necropolitics, narcopolitics, and femicide: Gendered violence on the Mexico-U.S. border." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society 36, pp Lecture 34 Nov 12 Immigration Enforcement II: the Detention and Deportation Boom in the U.S. Reading: Hyndman, J. and Mountz, A. (2008). Another brick in the wall? Neo-Refoulement and the externalization of asylum by Australia and Europe. Government and Opposition 43 (2):

14 Lecture 35 Nov 14 Week 13 Lecture 36 Nov 17 The War on Drugs Geopolitics of (Uneven) Development: Bretton Woods and Its Collapse Reading: N/A Lecture 37 Nov 19 Geopolitics of Energy I: David Harvey and the New Imperialism Watch webcast and carefully read Lecture 38 Nov 21 Geopolitics of Energy II: China, Iraq, and US Oil Power after 9/11 Jhaveri, N. J. (2004) Petroimperialism: US oil interests and the Iraq war. Antipode, 36, Huber, M. T. (2009) The use of gasoline: Value, oil, and the "American way of life". Antipode, 41, Week 14 Lecture 40 Nov 24 The War on Terror I: From Territories to Population and Back Again Reading: N/A Lecture 41 Nov 26 Lecture 42 Nov 28 Week 15 Lecture 43 Dec 1 NO CLASS, THANKSGIVING NO CLASS, COLUMBUS DAY OBSERVED The War on Terror II: The Fuzzy Boundary between Law and Violence Watch raits_of_post_9_11_us_citizens and read about the I Am An American 14

15 Lecture 44 Dec 3 SMALL GROUP ACTIVITY #4 Using Geography to Kill? Geographic Information Science (GIS) and the Hunt for bin Laden Readings: Beck, R.A. (2003). Remote sensing and GIS as counterterrorism tools in the Afghanistan war: A case study of the Zhawar Kili region. Professional Geographer 55, pp O Loughlin J. (2005). The war on terrorism, academic publication norms and replication. Professional Geographer 57, pp Shroder, J. (2005). Remote sensing and GIS as counterterrorism tools in the Afghanistan war: Reality, plus the results of media hyperbole. Professional Geographer 57, pp Beck, R.A. (2005). Reply to commentaries by O Loughlin and Shroder. Professional Geographer 57, pp Lecture 45 Dec 5 Anti-Geopolitics Said, E. (1985) Orientalism reconsidered. Cultural Critique, 1, Tyner, J. A Toward a non-killing geography: deconstructing the spatial logic of killing. In Nonkilling Geography, eds. J. A. Tyner & J. Inwood, Honolulu: Center for Global Nonkilling. Week 16 Lecture 46 Dec 8 FINAL EXAM CLASS REVIEW TBD 15