Political Geography - Geography 4712

Spring Semester 2008

Instructor:

Ted Holland

314 Guggenheim

303-492-4347 or 303-492-3671

email: hollande@colorado.edu

Office Hours: M 3-5pm or by appt.

Teaching Assistants:

Adam Levy Andrew Linke

312 Guggenheim 312 Guggenheim

303-492-3728 303-492-3728

email: adam.levy@colorado.edu email: andrew.m.linke@colorado.edu

Office Hours: MW 3-4pm Office Hours: M 1-2pm and W 3-4pm

This course focuses on the international and cross-national perspectives of political geography. It deals with political, economic and social aspects of international relations from a geographical perspective and examines societies in transition in the post-Cold War and 9-11 world. As such, the course has an integrative character and requires basic knowledge about international affairs. Frequent reading of a substantive newspaper or magazine, such as The New York Times, The Guardian, Christian Science Monitor, or the Economist would help significantly to further develop knowledge of global locations and current events.

The course is designed for the upper-division level. It surveys some important aspects of the discipline of political geography but does not engage in a systematic survey of regional issues and conflicts. Instead, contemporary developments in the world’s regions (especially the former Soviet Union bloc, the Middle East and Africa) are used to illustrate the concepts from the lectures and readings.

Overall, our goals for this course are as follows:

- To explain (a) the historical development of the study of the international system through the geographic lens; (b) the theories that support why the nation-state system remains the dominant way to organize territory; (c) how this historical legacy and these theories shape contemporary international events.

- To strengthen your ability to apply theoretical concepts from political geography in order to understand real-world problems.

- To help you improve your reading, analytical, and writing skills.

- To further cultivate an interest in how societies’ organization and control of territory shapes human identities across geographies.

Course Overview:

The course will be divided into three distinct sections. We will begin with a short review of the history of political geography as practiced through the art of statecraft known as geopolitics, with particular emphasis on how the field developed in the U.S. before and after the Cold War. We will then examine relevant political geographic theories, which provide a framework for understanding contemporary global economic and political changes. Finally, we will analyze pertinent topics in political geography, applying the theoretical frameworks previously developed in the course to investigate the selected topics. In concluding the course, we will look at some considerations of how the political geography of the post 9-11 world might evolve.

Readings will closely follow the course outline. Students should expect to read 50-60 pages per week.

Grades are assigned on the basis of 30% midterm; 30% final examination; 30% term paper and 10% discussion section performance. The midterm will be held on 3 March in class. Proposals for the paper are due on 10 March. The paper must be submitted by 5pm to www.turnitin.com on 14 April. A hard copy is due in the TA’s mailbox by 6pm on 14 April. The final examination will be held on Saturday 3 May, 1:30pm-4pm (the first day of final exams).

There is no text though we will read various text-like chapters as well as research articles on electronic reserve. Details on accessing the electronic files are given on the course webpage -

http://www.colorado.edu/geography/class_homepages/geog_4712_s08/

PDF files of the class materials (lecture slides and key diagrams/maps) used in lecture are also available via the website for pre-lecture printing; this should help to alleviate frantic note-taking. These resources will be available 24 hours before class, i.e. 2pm on Tuesday for Wednesday’s lecture. Please note that some of the information will be deliberately left off of the slides to ensure attendance at lectures. As always, use of the lecture notes from the website is no substitution for class attendance. The username for these notes is geog4712 and the password is xxxxxx.

Success in this course is a function of the usual formula (class attendance, staying current with the readings, and asking for help when needed). The TAs will take weekly recitation attendance.

Recitation:

In response to student requests, we restructured the course in 1996 as two lectures-one discussion period per week. (Formerly we had 3 lectures per week). This experiment is successful when all students come to the discussion sections having already read the material and with questions. The TA will pass out a list of key concepts/terms from the readings and lectures and will organize discussion around them.

Further details will be provided in the first recitation section meeting. Details about the format and requirements of the research paper will also be given in the discussion sections.

It is imperative that all students come prepared to the discussion section with the weekly reading completed. The same readings will be the basis for questions on the mid-term and final exams

Course Schedule and Readings:

	Lecture Topic	Readings

1/14	Introduction
1/16	What is Political Geography?	Dahlman/O Tuathail, “Broken Bosnia: localized displacement” (BROKEN BOSNIA)

	Recitation	Agnew, “Contemporary Political Geography” (CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY)

Part I: History of Political Geography

1/21	MLK Day – No Class
1/23	Classical Geopolitics	Agnew, “Three Ages of Geopolitics” (THREE AGES)

	Recitation cancelled for all sections

1/28	Heartland Theory	Taylor and Flint, “Geopolitics Revived,” pp. 49-62 (TF GEOPOLITICS 1)
1/30	German Geopolitik	1) Bassin, “Politics from Nature” (POLITICS FROM NATURE) 2) Haushofer, “Why Geopolitik?” (WHY GEOPOLITIK)

	Recitation	Sachs, “The Geography of Poverty and Wealth,” (GEOG OF POVERTY TEXT ONLY)

2/4	Cold War Geopolitics	Kennan, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” (SOURCES OF SOVIET CONDUCT)
2/6	U.S. Geopolitics and the promotion of democracy	O’Loughlin, “Ordering the Crush Zone” (CRUSH ZONE)

	Recitation	Ignatieff, “The American Empire – The Burden” (AMERICAN EMPIRE; THE BURDEN)

2/11	Critical Geopolitics	Roberts, Secor, and Sparke, “Neoliberal Geopolitics” (NEOLIBERAL GEOPOLITICS)
2/13	Post 9/11 Geopolitics	Secor, “Islamism, democracy, and the headscarf” (HEADSCARF)

	Recitation	Barnett, “The Pentagon’s New Map” (PENTAGON’S NEW MAP)

Part II: Political Geographic Theories

2/18	World-Systems Theory – Wallerstein	Flint and Taylor, “A World Systems Approach to Political Geography,” pp. 1-65, (WORLD SYSTEMS)
2/20	World-Systems Theory – Modelski	Flint and Taylor, (WORLD-SYSTEMS)

	Recitation	Flint and Taylor, (WORLD-SYSTEMS)

2/25	Critiques of World-Systems Theory	No new reading
2/27	Theories of the State	Taylor, “The State as Container” (STATE AS CONTAINER)

	Recitation	Fukuyama, “The End of History?” (END OF HISTORY)

3/3	MIDTERM EXAM – IN CLASS	No new reading
3/5	Borders and Territoriality in the Post-Cold War World	Newman, “The Lines that Continue to Separate Us” (LINES THAT CONTINUE TO SEPARATE)

	Recitation	Newman, (LINES THAT CONTINUE TO SEPARATE)

3/10	PAPER PROPOSAL DUE, 2 PM

3/10	Theories of Nationalism	Taylor and Flint, “Nation and Nationalism,” pp. 192-234 (TF NATIONALISM)
3/12	Applications of Nationalism Theories	Taylor and Flint, “Nation and Nationalism” (TF NATIONALISM)

	Recitation	Hobsbawm “Inventing Traditions” (INVENTING TRADITIONS)

3/17	Regionalism as a challenge to the nation	Knight, “Identity and Territory” (IDENTITY AND TERRITORY)
3/19	Globalization and its Effects	Tesfahuney, “Mobility, Racism and Geopolitics” (MOBILITY, RACISM AND GEOPOLITICS)

	Recitation	Friedman, “It’s a Flat World, After All” (IT’S A FLAT WORLD AFTER ALL)

Part III: Topics in Political Geography

3/31	US Hegemony and Conflict	Agnew, “American Hegemony into American Empire?” (AMERICAN HEGEMONY)
4/2	The North-South Divide: Uneven Development	Grant and Nijman, “Re-Scaling of Uneven Development in Ghana and India,” (RESCALING OF UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT IN GHANA AND INDIA)

	Recitation	Kaplan, “The Coming Anarchy” (COMING ANARCHY)

4/7	The Political Geography of Civil Wars	O’Loughlin “The political geography of conflict,” (CONFLICT)
4/9	Quasi-States	Kolstø, “The Sustainability and Future of Unrecognized Quasi-States” (SUSTAINABILITY AND FUTURE OF UNRECOGNIZED QUASI STATES)

	Recitation	O’Loughlin, “The political geography of conflict” (CONFLICT)

4/14	Failed States	Kapuściński, “The Cooling Hell” (COOLING HELL)
4/16	Geopolitics and Genocide	Wood, “Geographic Aspects of Genocide” (GEOGRAPHY ASPECTS OF GENOCIDE)

	Recitation	Power, “Dying in Darfur” (DYING IN DARFUR)

4/18	FINAL PAPER DUE, 5 PM

4/23	Non-Western Geopolitical Traditions	Said, “Orientalism Reconsidered,” (ORIENTALISM RECONSIDERED)

	Recitation	Kaplan, “How We Would Fight China” (HOW WE WOULD FIGHT CHINA)

4/28	The Nature of Future Conflicts	The Economist, “The New Wars of Religion,” (NEW WARS OF RELIGION)
4/30	Chaos and Cosmos in the World System	Dalby, “’Global’ Geopolitics” (GLOBAL GEOPOLITICS)

	Recitation	Final Exam review

Reading References

Agnew, J. Geopolitics: Revisioning World Politics. London: Routledge, 2003.

Agnew, J. “Contemporary Political Geography: Intellectual Heterodoxy and its Dilemmas,” Political Geography 22 (2003) 603-606.

Agnew, J. “American Hegemony into American Empire: Lessons from the Invasion of Iraq” Antipode 35 (2003) 871-885.

Barnett, T.J. “The Pentagon’s new map: It explains why we are going to war and why we will keep going to war.” Esquire (March 2003) 174-179, 227-228.

Dahlman, C. and G Ó Tuathail “Broken Bosnia: The Localized Geopolitics of Displacement and Return in Two Bosnian Places”, Annals, Association of American Geographers 95 (2005) 644-662.

Dalby, S. “Global Geopolitics” in K. Cox, M. Low and J. Robinson (eds) A Handbook of Political Geography. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2007, ch. 25.

Dowler, L. and J. Sharp “A Feminist Geopolitics?” Space and Polity 5 (2001) 165-176.

The Economist “The New Wars of Religion” (November 3, 2007) ss. 11-13.

Flint, C. and P.J. Taylor, Political Geography: World-system, nation-state and locality. 5^th ed. New York: Pearson, 2007.

Friedman, T. “It’s a Flat World, After All” The New York Times Magazine, (April 3, 2005)

Fukuyama, F. “The End of History?” In G. Ó Tuathail, S. Dalby and P. Routledge (eds) The Geopolitics Reader. 2^nd edition. London: Routledge, 2006, pp. 114-125.

Grant, R. and J. Nijman, “The Rescaling of Uneven Development in Ghana and India”, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 95 (2004) 467-481.

Haushofer, K. “Why Geopolitik?” In G. Ó Tuathail, S. Dalby and P. Routledge (eds) The Geopolitics Reader. 2^nd edition. London: Routledge, 2006, pp. 33-35.

Hobsbawm, E. “Introduction: Inventing Traditions,” In E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger (eds) The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

Ignatieff, M. “The American empire: The burden.” In G. Ó