AAG Pre-Conference at the University of Colorado at Boulder, CO.
April 3–5, 2005.
Conference Papers: Abstracts
Please submit abstracts via email to ibsnews@colorado.edu. Abstracts will be posted on this page as they become available.
For further information, please contact conference organizers John O’Loughlin or Lynn Staeheli.
Bachmann, Veit. Texas A&M University. Geopolitics or Local Development Cooperation? German efforts to fight AIDS in Kenya.
Abstract: With the end of the Cold War, the possibility of African countries affiliating with the “Eastern Bloc” ceased to exist and the interest of western countries in the African continent declined significantly. However, within a few years and accelerated globalisation, core countries realised that the situation in the African periphery does affect their national interests. Conflict related problems concerning the extraction of the continent’s vast resources, increasing numbers of migrants and refugees, the danger of international terrorism and failing states, and the rapid spread of diseases soon revitalised the core’s interest in Africa.
After the reunification in 1990, Germany went through a phase of political reorientation to find its place in the post-Cold War world. Eventually it sought to engage more actively in global politics and on the African continent. This geographical expansion of political concern and the increased interest in promoting development in Africa is largely due to its own political and economical interests. The German Minister for Development Cooperation considers "development politics as global structural politics". The policies are used to influence the situation in developing countries in a way that eventually pursues Germany’s own interest.
As the political and economical powerhouse in Eastern Africa, Kenya is a priority partner country in German development cooperation. After the last Kenyan election in December 2002, German ODA (official development assistance) increased significantly. However, one of Kenya’s largest problems and obstacles to development is HIV/AIDS, with a rate estimated to be at 15% for adults between 15 and 49. The new Kenyan government and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) have realised the weakening effect this has on development, social structure and political stability. Therefore in both countries the fight against HIV/AIDS is regarded as a development priority for Kenya. This study deals with the efforts of the official German development agencies and Kenyan authorities in the fight against HIV/AIDS, by exploring their differences and similarities in motivation, policies and spatial patterns.
Key Words: HIV/AIDS, Africa, Kenya, Germany, development politics
Bufon, Milan, University of Primorska and Julian Minghi, University of South Carolina. Our Boundary: A Fifty-Year Video Perspective on the Division of the City of Gorizia in 1947.
Abstract: Following the end of the Second World War, the boundary between Yugoslavia and Italy was drastically revised in favor of Yugoslavia. The growing tension between the US-dominated Western Europe and the USSR-controlled Eastern Europe had forced a temporary compromise in the Upper Adriatic region around Trieste with final settlement in 1954. To the immediate north, however, the new boundary was fixed on 16 September 1947 and cut through the city region of Gorizia, leaving the city center and the western suburbs in Italy but placing the railway station and eastern suburbs in Yugoslavia. Recently the Slovene language section of Italian State Television (RAI) produced a documentary entitled "Our Boundary" about the impact of this separation. Film footage from the late 1940's is used along with more contemporary scenes along with narratives from people whose daily lives were seriously disrupted by this new separation wall. The timing of this poignant work is made all the more urgent by the enlargement of the European Union in May 2004 to include Slovenia (the successor state to Yugoslavia in this region), thereby going full circle in functionally reintegrating the Gorizia urban region. As the video is dedicated to all those who live on either side of any painful border, the authors identify several points raised by the video that may have relevance to this broader context. Selected segments of the video are shown after a brief geopolitical context is given.
Crampton, Jeremy W. Georgia State University, USA. Political Geography and the Politics of the Map: a Call for Critical Re-Engagement.
Abstract: In 1992 Political Geography was able to editorialize that "despite the centrality of maps to the theory and practice of political geography, we have as a subdiscipline been neglectful of our critical duties towards the products of cartography" (Peter J. Taylor). On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Political Geography I take this opportunity to discuss whether and how much the relationship between political geography and cartography has changed. To what extent, and in what ways, has there been critical engagement between cartography and political thought in geography?
On the face of it, cartography's own historiographies such as the History of Cartography series, and the recent emergence of "critical cartography" suggest that a significant role is being allocated to the map in the construction of territory, boundary-making, and political identity. But this approach remains a marginalized and contested one in cartography as the Peters projection controversy revealed. On the other hand, while most political geographers would no doubt accept that the map is a form of geopolitical knowledge, very little research has been carried out by political geographers into how maps function in the construction of political thought.
The way forward from this position is unclear, but two developments seem worth highlighting. One is that there has been a collapse of the dominant post-war monoculture in cartography that reduced "being political" to bias, lies, propaganda or ideology. Second, geography, and political geography in particular, is well positioned to critically re-engage mapping as a political practice. The time seems ripe therefore to call for an increased critical engagement between political geography and mapping.
Davidson, Fiona M., University of Arkansas. Nationalism in the post cold war world.
Abstract: For much of the post WWII period the bi-polar power structure of the Cold War discouraged the development of most nationalist movements, other than the occasional anti-colonial resistance. By the early 1980s Hobsbawm had gone so far as to suggest that nationalism as a form of both political movement and personal identity was dying. Almost 25 years later it has become clear that predictions of the death of nationalism have been rather premature. With the end of the Cold War, the fall of the Soviet Union and the formation of continental economic blocs, the last two decades have seen a plethora of new state formations and separatist movements.
In this paper I intend to review the conditions that have created this revival of nationalist movements, and also the literature that has developed in political geography to explain this regeneration, and to account for the huge variety of forms that it has taken. It is no longer possible to use the 19th century typology of Kohn's East/West model, or the simple distinction between state and minority nationalism. Current work encompasses everything from changing borders and boundaries, through ethnic participation in voting to new models of substate fragmentation and the impact of a globalizing economy on identity and political representation and represent just a few of the multiple ways in which political geographers have begun to reconceptualize nationalism in the wake of post Cold war political fragmentation and global economic consolidation.
Keywords: Nationalism, Post cold war, identity politics
Dell'Agnese, Elena. Bollywood's Borderscapes
Abstract: Cinema's role in the building and maintenance of the nation as a communicative community is well known. Undeniably, mainstream cinema is a form of visual communication where nationalistic discourses and their constitutive elements can be powerfully displayed. War movies have been commonly stuffed with propagandistic contents since the beginning of the industry itself (see Zeitschrift für Geopolitik, 1928); while other cinematic genres, less overtly geopolitical in their tones, are variously employed in the production of "the nation as narration", that is in the making of hegemonic discourses about cultural homogeneity and national standards, both in western societies and in post-colonial realities.
Among the most prolific of cinema industries in the world, the Hindi film industry, commonly referred to as "Bollywood", produces about 800 feature movies at year. Since the production of its first feature film (1913), Bollywood has been developing from an imported art into an "indigenous" medium of entertainment, with its own specific languages and visual forms. Legitimizing narratives of India as a nation-state are variously filtered by different genres and subgenres, with epic narrations constructing legends and heroes, love triangles establishing roles and features for the Hindi femininity and masculinity models, and war movies locating the country's status on the scenes of international geopolitics. National landscapes of rural peace and perfect natural beauty, interchanged with images of urban opulence and monumentality, are the common setting for love stories and sentimental plots. While, unsurprisingly, the disputed area of Kashmir and its borderscapes are the obvious setting for war movies.
A part from early classics such as Haqeeqat (1964, dir. Chetan Anand), and Hindustan Ki Kasam (1973), most of Bollywood war movies belong to a relatively recent wave of patriotic productions, which includes titles such as Border (1995); L.O.C.: Kargil (1999); Maa Tujhe Salaam (2002); and Border Hindustanka (2003). Again with the exception of Haqeeqat, based on India's 1962 war with China, Bollywood war movies are generally related with the Indo-Pak conflict, with Pakistani military incursions, and with cross-border terrorism. And they are all set along the disputed India-Pakistan border.
Screened as a desert, as a desolated land almost uninhabited, or as a mountainous area covered with glaciers and snow, the borderscape of Bollywood war movies is never represented as an attractive landscape, nor as a settlement frontier. It is a zone of separation, and not a place for contact. Even so, it represents the symbolic limit of the Nation as Motherland. For this very reason, in spite of its being so hard and so difficult to love, it must be worshipped, and strenuously defended against any trespasser. Because, as stated in Maa Tujhe Salaam, "Live and let live" is India's National Philosophy. But, "whenever any country dared to put its unholy foot on India's Holy soil with bad intentions, we broke their foot".
de Socio, Mark, University of Cincinnati. Anchoring the City? Retail location and the politics of downtown development.
Abstract: The purpose of this study is to understand variations in the municipal use of subsidies to attract and / or retain traditional department stores to CBDs in cities in the United States. The approach taken is urban regime theory, which claims that local policy is shaped by particular regimes or political coalitions. Two hypotheses are proposed. First, it is hypothesized that cities whose governing regimes or political coalitions reflect characteristics commonly referred to as "developmental" are more likely to offer subsidies for attraction / retention of department stores than other regime or political coalition types. Second, it is hypothesized that the composition of corporate communities in cities influences the types of regimes or political coalitions that cities are likely to develop.
The study covers twenty-four cities across the United States. Utilizing lists of boards of directors across three major sectors, each city's composition of business and community elites are profiled. Utilizing factor analysis for sectoral categories, prototype profiles are generated for three major regime typologies identified in the literature. Each city's profile is then correlated with each of the three regime prototypes through scatter plots.
Concerning the first hypothesis, eight of the twenty-four cities are identified as having provided subsidies for the attraction or retention of a department store to their respective CBD. All but one of these are identified as having developmental-type regimes by previous case studies, confirming the first hypothesis. The second hypothesis likewise appears to be confirmed by the results of the study. Correlations of sixteen of the twenty-four cities with the markers for regime prototypes strongly match their expected regime type.
This study demonstrates the utility of fleshing out the corporate structures of cities to determine whether or not different mixes of economic activities predispose cities towards different regime types and policy agendas. Business elites afforded positions of influence may be biased in their expertise regarding urban development, thereby affecting urban policymaking in ways that could prove detrimental to the city.
Keywords: regime theory, urban politics, retail location, location incentives
Dittmer, Jason, Georgia Southern University. Popular culture and the geopolitics of 9/11.
Abstract: This paper introduces comic books as a medium through which national identity and geopolitical scripts are narrated. This extension of the popular geopolitics literature uses the example of post-11 September 2001 Captain America comic books to integrate various strands of theory from political geography and the study of nationalism to break new ground in the study of popular culture, identity, and geopolitics. The paper begins with an introduction to the character of Captain America and a discussion of the role he plays in the rescaling of American identity and the institutionalization of the nation's symbolic space. The article continues by showing how visual representations of American landscapes in Captain America were critical to constructing geopolitical "realities." Following this, a reading of post-9/11 issues of the Captain America comic book reveals a nuanced and ultimately ambiguous geopolitical script that interrogates America's post-9/11 territorialization.
Elden, Stuart, University of Durham. Territorial Integrity and the War on Terror.
Abstract: The geographical aspects of the war on terror raise a number of important issues. One that has received little attention is the notion of 'territorial integrity'. Territorial integrity is a term with two interlinked and usually compatible meanings. The first is that states should not seek to promote border changes or secessionist movements within other states, or attempt to seize territory by force. The second meaning is the standard idea that within its own borders, within its territory, a state is sovereign.
In recent years the second meaning has come under considerable scrutiny, with Blair using the notion of 'international community' to justify actions in Kosovo and Sierra Leone. Since the war on terror commenced, other examples have been given, notably Afghanistan and Iraq. But it is notable that the other meaning is continually stressed by Blair and others, and challenges to territorial integrity have frequently been identified as terrorism: China in Xinjiang; Russia in Chechnya; and India has long insisted on it in relation to Kashmir. The U.S. has generally gone along with these recodings. Most notably, the term has been insisted upon in relation to Iraq.
While dominant powers are therefore able to suggest that the precepts of international law should be revised in accordance to their values, it seems that the other side of the coin is that secessionist movements, that is those who want to challenge any notions of territorial integrity, are increasingly being recoded as terrorists. Weber famously said that "the state is that human community, which within a certain area or territory - this 'area' belongs to the feature - has a (successful) monopoly of legitimate physical violence". The point here is not just that standard discussion of the state neglects the territorial aspect; nor that this definition renders any use of violence by non-state actors necessarily illegitimate; but that under this understanding any potential redrawing of the borders of a state limits the extent of the state's ability to use violence, and is therefore, in itself, necessarily rendered violent and illegitimate.
Fahrer, Chuck. Georgia College & State University. Territorial Issues in the Classification of Insurgencies.
Abstract: This paper introduces a classification model for insurgencies that links political objectives with potential territorial changes. Political objectives include policy modification, rebellion, and revolution. The focus is on the degree of change without regard to specific political ideologies. Territorial aspects begin with those that do not seek any territorial changes (aterritorial) and proceeds to issues of regional autonomy, independence, and irredentism. Insurgencies can be classified according to the resulting matrix and analyzed to see which categories produce the longest or most lethal conflicts. The model can accommodate multiple insurgencies in a single country, but analysis of duration and lethality becomes increasingly difficult for situations involving overlapping insurgent territories.
Keywords: Devolution, Insurgency, Revolution.
Fall, Juliet, University of British Columbia. Les limites du pouvoir: boundaries and power in Francophone political geography.
While political approaches within geography have traditionally not enjoyed much success in the Francophone world for a variety of reasons, works such as Paul Claval's 'Espace et Pouvoir' (1978), Yves Lacoste's 'La géographie ça sert, d'abord, à faire la guerre' (1976) or Claude Raffestin's 'Pour une geographie du pouvoir' (1980) and 'Geopolitique et histoire' (1991), as well as Jacques Levy's more recent books on space and politics, have suggested potential paths for an alternative political geography. While Claval and Lacoste have occupied the terrain and have often stood in as the 'official' French political geography, best known abroad, this paper focuses more specifically on Claude Raffestin's much more original writings on power, territory and territoriality. In this, I explore his attempt to lay out a critical theoretical framework, inspired by a number of authors including Foucault, Lefebvre and Prieto, several years before these became fashionable among Anglophone geographers. However, more than just a tale of 'getting there first', this article focuses on the institutional, conceptual and personal factors have led this work to be largely ignored, and only selectively picked up among French-speaking geographers. I suggest that some of these adaptations deserve a better audience, as do the further 'second-generation' of geographers that are participating in unbending Francophone political geography.
Hayes, Tracey Michelle, Texas A&M University. The Role of Karl Haushofer and German Geopolitics on the Formation of the German-Japanese Alliance, 1909-1937.
Abstract: The purpose of this study is to analyze the influence of Karl Haushofer, former general and leader of the post-World War I German geopolitical movement, on the development of the alliance with Japan, culminating in the 1937 Anti-Comintern Pact. This relationship began when Haushofer was commissioned to serve as an Artillery Instructor to the Japanese Army from 1909 through 1911, resulting in a relationship that ultimately brought together two distant and aggressive dictatorships. This alliance created a critical shift in the hegemonic balance of power as Great Britain was in decline and the United States was in the transitional phase of becoming the hegemonic power of the twentieth Century. Professor Haushofer has been evaluated and discussed in many different lights. The discussions focused primarily on his influence on Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist party. While the majority of writings about Haushofer concern this influence, very few touch upon his passion, that foundation which gave his influential voice clout. For every article he wrote on German policy he wrote two promoting and admiring the Japanese political outlook. So while many authors mention the Japanese influence on Karl Haushofer, they do not, in my opinion, give proper, proportional weight to this influence and its direct relationship to the German-Japanese Alliance.
Heffernan, Mike, University of Nottingham, UK. Geography, politics and the media in Britain and France, 1870-1930.
The paper is concerned with journalistic geographies in Britain and France at the height of the imperial age before and after World War One. It is specifically concerned with the journalistic map as a device that was used increasingly in this period to communicate complex, and often contentious, information for mass consumption through the news media. Drawing on images from a range of national newspapers in both countries, this paper explores the changing role of newspaper maps in political debate and charts the uses and abuses of cartography in the news media. The paper is informed by a simple question: in what ways, and to what extent, did the newspaper map influence the geographical and political imaginations of the British and French reading publics?
Heininen, Lassi, University of Lapland and Heather N. Nicol, University of West Georgia. Borders and the Circumpolar North: Boundaries, Geopolitics and the Arctic.
Abstract: This paper discusses circumpolar geopolitics, northern foreign policy, and the contributing role that borders play in this process. It begins with an exploration of the role of natural borders in the construction of a "circumpolar region" - a place set apart by the geographical idea and geopolitical discourse of "northerness" - and then turns to the consideration of how differences in foreign policy discourses have divided the region into a series of competing claims concerning all that northern dimensionality entails. In the final analysis, questions are raised concerning the definition of "northern dimension" - and the problems inherent in the internationalization of conceptual, social, economic and environmental frameworks and institutions inherent in the new circumpolar regional process.
Herr, J. Paul, Indiana University South Bend. Congressional Redistricting and Political Responsiveness.
Abstract: This paper examines the degree to which congressional election outcomes in districts drawn after 2000 reflect the proportion of votes cast for the Republican and Democratic parties and the degree to which those outcomes reflect changes in the proportion of the vote from 2002 to 2004. The analysis is conducted at the state level since redistricting is a state responsibility. Groups of states are evaluated separately depending on whether the redistricting in those states was controlled by Republicans, Democrats, was bi-partisan or was performed by a non-partisan entity. It is hypothesized that states in which redistricting was performed in abi-partisan process will be the least responsive to change and that states where it was performed by one of the two parties will be least likely to be proportional to the statewide congressional vote.
Honey, Rex, University of Iowa. Political Geography's Two Approaches to Public Policy.
Abstract: Geographers, particularly political geographers, address public policy in two quite distinct ways. One is geographical research designed to understand public policy, including how problems are construed, political preferences and struggles, and implementation of strategies. Generally this work is done in a "positive" sense in that it is aimed at understanding the geography of public policy, explaining what is going on. This I call The Geography OF Public Policy. The other is a normative, problem-solving approach, using the various tools available to a geography in order to improve public policy or solve a public policy problem. This I call Geography FOR Public Policy. I argue that a robust political geography should, inter alia, improve the quality of its work in both of these approaches to the geographical study of public policy.
Johnston, Ron, University of Bristol. Neighbourhood Social Capital and Neighbourhood Effects.
Abstract: Recent research has provide very strong circumstantial evidence of the existence of neighbourhood effects in voting patterns at recent UK general elections. The usual reason adduced to account for these spatial variations is the neighbourhood effect. This hypothesises that people are influenced in their decision-making and behavioural patterns by their neighbours, with inter-personal conversation being the main means of transmitting such influence. Although there is an increasing body of evidence showing the impact of such conversations - that people who talk together, vote together- relatively little of this has grounded the geography of such conversations in the individuals' local neighbourhoods. those who interact locally should show more evidence of 'neighbourhood-effect-like' patterns than those who do not. To inquire whether this is indeed so, this paper extends recent work on voting patterns in the UK by investigating the behaviour of individuals with different levels of participation in their local milieux - what we define below as neighbourhood social capital.
Kearns, Gerry , University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. Political Violence and the Construction of Territoriality in Britain and Ireland.
Abstract: Violence has been at the heart of the British and Irish political constitutions for several centuries. In this paper, I want to look at the forms of politics that have been recognised as violent. I want to show that the territorial structures of the two islands have repeatedly been adapted to prosecute or repress such violence. I want to show that these territorial structures remain sedimented into law-and-order, travel, and formal politics. The legal geography of what Agamben would term 'the exception' has been intrinsic to the mutual constitution of Ireland and Britain as inter-linked territories.
Kingsbury, Paul, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio and Owen Dwyer, Indiana University at Indianapolis. Outsiders coming in: The discursive quilting and affective extimacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the American Civil Rights Movement.
Abstract: What is the relationship between scale, subjectivity, and political transformation? How can we map them? For over a decade, geographers have empirically and theoretically reevaluated the concepts of scale and the subject to further theorizations about space and society. We propose to bring these two research projects further together by drawing on Lacan's concepts of "extimacy" and "quilting point." Specifically, we examine the scalar politics associated with the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s. Viewed through the lens of scalar politics, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Movement more generally, succeeded where earlier attempts had been ignored as a peculiarity of the South, a local, albeit tragic, problem best left alone. King was able to articulate the heretofore-local issue in a way that hooked up with so-called national and international discourses in the context of the Cold War, and, in so doing, he successfully assailed assertions of segmented, non-relational regional and racial identities. For us, extimacy and the quilting point help explain how King rescaled the discursive confines of previous campaigns. We argue that the Movement's success was partially borne out of the affects produced by the dissemination of a discourse of reputation and opinion, the scalar characteristics of which laid claim to widespread hopes and fears. We conclude that a thorough understanding of scalar politics must engage with the question of how discourses move and grip people, that is, how identifications are collectivized and how surplus enjoyment is organized.
Kofman, Eleonore, Middlesex University, UK. The End of Parallel Perspectives? Feminist and Political Geographies
Abstract: More than 20 years after the research agenda published in Political Geography Quarterly in 1982, when feminist perspectives and gender issues were singularly absent, it can be said that 'the sub-discipline has still to meet the challenge of feminist geography (Taylor 2000). The failure to engage with feminist theorisations is not confined to the journal Political Geography but can be found in other journals such as Space and Polity and Geopolitics. Key texts at best briefly mention feminism without asking what it actually has contributed to political geography or locate gender in a specific site such as the household, a formulation which reproduces the private/public divide that feminists have trenchantly criticised. So one might ask why feminist analyses continue to be so marginal compared to their influence in other areas of geography.
In this paper I firstly explore some of the reasons for the continuing masculinity of political geography, the reluctance to acknowledge the relevance of feminist perspectives and the lack of dialogue between feminist and political geographies. Secondly I outline some areas where feminist and political geographers have much to say to each other and which might form the basis of a greater engagement between the two.
Leib, Jonathan, Florida State University and Gerald R. Webster, University of Alabama. The Stand in the Smokehouse Door: Maurice Bessinger, the Neo-Confederate Movement, and the Confederate Battle Flag in Columbia, South Carolina
Abstract: The past decade has seen the growth of the Neo-Confederate movement in the Southern United States. This growth has accompanied frequent debates in the region over interpretations of the meaning of the Confederate cause in the Civil War, its associated symbols, and their relevance for the region's identity today. Of these, the most vitriolic fights have pertained to control over the region's public memory centering on whether the Confederate cause was noble for defending home and honor from Northern invasion, or disgraceful for defending slavery at all costs. The principal symbol through which this dispute has been waged has been over public and private displays of the best known Confederate symbol, the battle flag. In this paper we examine this debate by focusing upon the boycott of Maurice Bessinger's Columbia, South Carolina barbeque restaurants. Bessinger is a well-known South Carolina personality who spearheaded the fight against the civil rights movement in Columbia in the 1960s. In August 2000, he lowered the American flags flying above his restaurants and replaced them with Confederate battle flags. This act was in reaction to the South Carolina legislature's removal of the battle flag from the top of the state's capitol dome. This paper examines 1) the unsuccessful attempts by local officials to have the battle emblem removed from his restaurants, 2) the resulting boycott of his restaurants and products, and 3) Bessinger's rise as a cause celebre among those in the Neo-Confederate movement.
Mamadouh, Virginie, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Emerging Forms of Geopolitical Actorness.
Abstract: While geostrategic studies were acknowledged as a research theme in the opening editorial of the first issue of Political Geography Quarterly in 1982, the founding editors could not anticipate the re-emergence of geopolitics as a major field of political geography. During the past twenty years, political geography in general and critical geopolitics in particular have shown the importance of geopolitical reasoning in international relations and domestic politics. In the same time the field of international relations underwent dramatic changes and evolved towards global governance, with non-state actors such as supranational institutions, international agencies and ngo's challenging state territoriality and sovereignty. This does not make geopolitical perspectives redundant, because nor actorness in international politics (i.e. geopolitical actorness), nor geopolitical visions are prerogatives of territorial states. There is no need to expand geopolitics to any combination of geography and politics, or space and power, to assess the geopolitical discourses of these non-state actors. Geopolitical visions do imply the reification of place and a representation of its relations to other places, but territorial states are not the only international actors articulating such visions to justify and perform actorness in global governance. The paper explores these new forms of geopolitical actorness with an analysis of emerging geopolitical visions for a supranational entity (the European Union), a subnational entity (Catalonia) and a translocal movement (Indymedia). While the first two have a territorial basis similar- up to a point - to that of a state, the third is a non territorial network of place-bounded collectives articulating the most innovative practices of geopolitical actorness.
Martis, Kenneth C., West Virginia University. "Value" Voting: How Democratic West Virginia Helped Elect Republican George W. Bush [Part II]
The 2004 election exit polling data reveals that "moral values" was the single most important issue on the minds of voters, surpassing questions such as the economy/jobs, terrorism, Iraq, and health care. The data further reveals that voters perceived Republicans and George W. Bush as much stronger on this issue area than Democrats and John F. Kerry. In addition, the data reveals that the moral values issue has a strong, even predictable, regional/geographic pattern. This paper is the fifth in a series of PGSG/AAG presentations examining the national geo-electoral strategy of the Republican Party versus the Democratic Party over the last few decades. The Republican geo-electoral strategy has partially led to its emergence as the majority political party in the United States, not only at the federal, but also at the state level. The Democratic geo-electoral strategy, including nominees and policies, has partially led to its relegation to being the national minority party. The case study for this presentation is West Virginia, perhaps the mostly consistently Democratic state in local, state and national elections since the 1930s. Although still overwhelmingly Democratic, in the last two presidential elections West Virginia has supported George W. Bush, giving him in 2000 the five electoral votes that were the actual margin of victory; more important even than Florida. If Democratic West Virginia is any indication, especially with respect to the fifth of the electorate who are "value voters", the Democratic Party must address the moral values issue if it is to be nationally competitive.
Key words: electoral geography, regional politics, United States.
Newman, David, Ben-Gurion University, Beershava, Israel. Crossing the Borders of the Discipline: Political Geography for Whom?
The renaissance of both political geography and geopolitics during the past two decades has been accompanied by the (welcome) blurring of the borders separating the relevant disciplines of Geography, IR and Political Science. Conferences, workshops and publications have increasingly taken on a multi-disciplinary dimension, while each has published in the journals of the "other". However, attendance at some of these cross-disciplinary sessions highlights the still different languages that we speak and the fact that we are not always comfortable with the concepts and terminology practised by those residing across the corridor divide. This is particularly true of the study of borders - which has become a truly multi-disciplinary discourse in recent years, reaching way beyond Political Science and geography and encompassing Sociology, Anthropology and International Law - and the study of territorial conflict. Political scientists (as contrasted with some of the more enlightened and theoretical IR scholars) are still very quantitative and deterministic in their approach to territorial issues, throwing back to an age in geography which has long since disappeared. But because of the relative status of these disciplines, it is still considered far more important by geographers to publish in Political Science and IR journals than it is the other way round. In fact nothing much has changed since a forum on this issue appeared some four years ago on the pages of Political Geography. I would like to raise some questions about this uneasy relationship. As a geographer who set up a Political Science Department in which he teaches political geography, and as an editor of a journal (Geopolitics) which attempts to reach out to both scholarly communities, I constantly ask the question of whether it matters? And if it does, then what can be done to create some form of joint terminology and mutual understanding of each others narratives, over and beyond the parallel meeting of people who continue to talk different languages.
Norman, Emma, University of British Columbia. Social Construction of Nature - 'Saving' Luna the Whale.
In this paper I explore the transgressions and unexpected "messiness" of Luna's story by focusing on how Luna acts as vehicle to subvert nature-culture dualism, challenge myths of the "ecological Indian", and test Western concepts of Science as Truth. I do this by drawing on social construction of nature debates (Braun, Cronon, Worster, Haraway) and Foucauldian methods of genealogy of science epistemes. The paper is organized into three sections. In the first section I show how nature is socially constructed by historicizing the changing roles of whales in western society. I then show how Luna subverts the socially constructed concept of whales, by collapsing nature-culture dualisms and rejecting its constructed place in nature. In the last section, I explore how Luna challenges anachronistic, yet widely held, views of indigenous communities as a "cultural artifacts" or "ecological Indians".
Painter, Joe, University of Durham and The Australian National University. Prosaic States
Abstract: Despite longstanding calls to rethink the state 'as a social relation', the modern state is still most often defined as a differentiated institutional realm, distinct from civil society. By contrast, in this paper I will focus attention on the myriad ways in which everyday life is permeated by the social relations of state formation (and vice versa) to an extent largely unrecognized by both mainstream social science and the people whose lives are thus affected. The problem is partly terminological: we lack an established vocabulary of process and practice with which to describe the state 'as a (set of) social relation(s)' without reification. The concept of 'the' state has a history and a geography that can be traced genealogically. Current processes of restructuring (including privatization, de- and re-regulation, transnationalization, and the rise of NGOs) may make the inadequacies as well as the power of the idea of a separate institutional realm called the state more apparent, but both the inadequacies and the power long predate such changes.
Re-imagining social life as thoroughly suffused by state relations (even in an era of neo-liberalism) challenges the idea that the state is being (or could be) 'rolled back'. However, this does not mean that states are always 'totalitarian', nor that the mutual permeation of state and society is geographically even or ubiquitous. If anything, the notion of 'prosaic states' offers the scope to write more nuanced political geographies that are attentive to the always uneven, provisional and artefactual character of state relations.
Popescu, Gabriel, Florida State University. Caught between the Scales of European Union Expansion: East European Borderlands between the Supranational and the National.
Abstract: This research aims to contribute to an understanding of how transborder regions, commonly known as Euroregions, will be affected by future EU membership or non-membership in Eastern Europe. In the context of the European Union's enlargement it is as yet less evident how the State-Euroregions-European Union nexus will play out in Eastern Europe. In the EU, significant progress has been made toward establishing viable transborder regions, largely due to the existence of the supranational EU framework that favors transnational cooperation. Over the last decade, Euroregions have been established in Eastern European borderlands as well. Here, a supranational framework such as the EU does not exist, yet transborder regions have the same goals as the ones existing under the EU umbrella: to diminish the barrier function of state borders in order to enhance European integration. Ironically, the EU today indirectly hinders development in the Euroregions that are established across its eastern boundary-to-be. In the light of possible EU membership of Romania by 2007, the border of Romania with Ukraine and Moldova will become the border of the EU for some time to come, since Ukraine and Moldova do not have a timeframe established for EU membership. In this context, in 2004, the EU required Romania to introduce travel visas for citizens of Moldova and Ukraine. This measure disrupted the momentum for cross-border cooperation in Romania's eastern Euroregions.
Prout, Erik, Texas A&M University. Democracy on the Square: Political Iconography of County Courthouses in Texas.
Abstract: Courthouses in America are multifaceted symbols somewhat reflecting the complexity of democracy itself. Rural courthouses and their surrounding squares or plazas are often the commercial and social centers for their counties, but the actual sites contain numerous historical monuments and markers that can be interpreted for their political meanings. After the recent presidential election with its constant red-blue analysis, these rural Texas counties are the archetype of Bush voters and present me with an unusual opportunity to discuss "Red America" from the perspective of landscape analysis and ethnographic techniques. I argue that county courthouses are an ideal icon of rural America because they represent the hopes and failures of communities undergoing modern changes, so why not try to expand this into electoral understanding. These communities have embraced their courthouses as places for patriotism, (Texas) republicanism, and local/rural identity, which seems to correspond well with the stereotypical Bush voter.
Keywords: political culture, county courthouses.
Raleigh, Clionadh, University of Colorado, Boulder and International Peace Research Institute, Oslo. Introducing ACLED: An Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset.
This paper presents ACLED, an Armed Conflict Location and Events dataset building on the Uppsala/PRIO armed conflict dataset. ACLED codes the exact location and specific information on individual battle events, transfer of military control from governments to rebel groups and vice versa, and the location of rebel group strongholds. In the current version, the dataset covers 8 conflict countries in West and Central Africa from 1960 through 2004.
The dataset is part of the larger GROW-NET project. The raison d'etre of the GROW-Net project is to create indices and data to answer a number of geography related questions currently debated within the civil war literature. In addition to containing more precise information on the total extent of the conflict zone than previous datasets, the dataset also codes changes over time in the location and expansion of the civil war. This allows testing a new set of hypotheses regarding the escalation of civil war, how stalemates are reached, and other dynamic aspects of civil war.
Rankin, Kieran, University College, Dublin and R. Schofield, King's College, London. The Troubled Historiography of Classical Boundary Terminology.
Abstract: This paper seeks to explore the evolution and mutation of terms and concepts in boundary studies. It re-examines the context and actual letter of some items of classical boundary terminology, developed largely within the half-century period following the appearance of Friedrich Ratzel's Politische Geographie in 1897. While traditional political geography's coverage of territorial questions was substantial, the conventional wisdom holds that, in academic terms at least, it was far from enlightened - and has justifiably been criticised for its lack of objectivity, imagination and focus. Just as Mackinder is accused of providing ideological justifications for expansionism, so Lord Curzon and his fellow imperial administrators would retrospectively endorse the basis by which they themselves had drawn colonial boundaries. Yet to dismiss the contributions of this period collectively as negative and deterministic is clearly too simplistic. Many individuals were more far-sighted than is generally recognised - Ratzel himself identified the essential premise of borderland studies some 70 years before it was developed more fully when commenting: "der Grenzraum ist das Wirkliche, die Grenzlinie die Abstraktion davon."
The pioneering attempts made to develop a specialised vocabulary for the study of international boundaries and territorial questions have not always been represented as accurately or fairly as they might have been by generations of succeeding academics and policy makers. Ideas, good and bad, have been distorted through phraseology, poor translation and simple errors and corrupted for political means - in the latter instance, particularly the pursuit of questionable analogies and ideals, such as the living state organism and 'natural' boundaries. This paper re-examines the rudiments of early territorial conceptions, while acknowledging the historical paradigms in which they originated.
Schrijver, Frans, University of Amsterdam. Regionalism after Regionalisation: Regional identities, political space and political mobilisation. Full Text
Abstract: Many States have introduced regional layers of government, often as a response to demands for autonomy made by nationalist or regionalist movements. Although regional autonomy is often presented as a way to accommodate ethnoterritorial conflict, and both regionalism and regionalisation have been important research themes over the past decades, empirical research on the effects of those decisions is sparse. This paper analyses the aspects of regional autonomy that affect regionalist politics through a comparison of three regions in European States where relatively recently regional autonomy was introduced: Galicia, Brittany and Wales. The states they are part of, Spain, France and the United Kingdom, introduced regionalisation in different ways: in degrees of regional autonomy, asymmetry between regions, and consideration of historical and cultural territories. A comparison between regions taking types of regionalisation into account will further enable an explanation of the effects of regional autonomy on regionalism. This paper concentrates on the development of regionalism within the political parties within the three regions mentioned. It discusses trends after regionalisation in the representation of and utilisation of regional identities in political discourses, ideological developments, particularly on the issue of regional autonomy, and reactions to the political opportunities for mobilising support offered by the introduction of a regional political space after regionalisation. The paper analyses those elements with respect to regionalist parties, but also for regional sections of statewide political parties, which will be affected by regionalisation as well, and might adopt regionalist arguments. The paper concludes with a discussion of the effectiveness of regional autonomy as a means to accommodate regionalist and nationalist conflict.
Keywords: political geography, regionalism, Galicia, Brittany, Wales, regional autonomy
Shin, Michael E., University of California, Los Angeles. To vote or not to vote: The case of Italy.
Abstract: At the beginning of the twenty-first century, it appears that elections are relatively regular, if not frequent, events. With the number of democratic elections increasing in each and every decade since 1940, more people have the right to vote currently than in any other time in history. Yet in established and new democracies alike, multitudes of voters choose not to vote. This paper examines questions surrounding electoral participation and abstention in geographic perspective. First, global trends and patterns of voter turnout are reviewed, as are explanations for the recent decline in electoral participation around the world. Second, voter turnout in Italy, a democracy that is renown for its remarkably high (but falling) levels of electoral participation, is examined with spatial and statistical analyses. Finally, the implications of turnout and abstention are discussed with regard to the Italian case and contemporary global trends.
Sidaway, James D., National University of Singapore. The Geography of Political Geography. Full Text
Abstract: This paper first examines the ways that recent anglophone political geography has (notwithstanding an expansion in breadth and many theoretical inspirations from elsewhere) less sense of being in a dialogue with and building upon continental European political geographies than its early and mid twentieth century antecedents. In part as a counter to this relative anglo-american neglect of other traditions, the paper examines translations of some key political geography concepts into other languages. This is a tentative move however, for it is less a detailed account of other academic political geographies (a task beyond the scope of the paper) than of the popular conceptions of some political geography terms and categories as they operate in a limited selection of other languages. Moving beyond Europe and beyond written and spoken language into a range of other discourses and modes of representation, the paper argues that there is something more at stake than supplementing the range of case studies and terminologies that characterise anglophone political geography. In particular, it is argued that (frequently taken-for-granted) assumptions about universality in political geography are themselves products of particular circumstances.
Steinberg, Philip E. and Thomas Chapman, Florida State University. The Mind of the State or a State of Mind: Constructing Sovereignty as Connectedness in the Conch Republic.
Long associated with total and institutionalized control of a single territory by a single entity, sovereignty is now typically viewed as relative and systemic. This perspective is summed up by Robert Keohane in his assertion that "sovereignty is less a territorially defined barrier than a bargaining resource for a politics characterized by complex transnational networks." Sovereignty is thus constructed and expressed not through the erection of boundaries but through the establishment of relations of connectedness. A sovereign nation declares its status so that it may enter into interchange with others from a position of relative power, or at least respect.
These aspects of sovereignty are apparent in the case of the Conch Republic, the semi-farcical political entity that was declared in the Florida Keys in 1982, when the U.S. Government established a border crossing between the Keys and the Florida mainland. The Conch Republic's cry for freedom was, from the start, less a proclamation of independence than an assertion of connection, but with the caveat that interaction was to take place in an atmosphere of mutual respect. Since 1982, proclamations of Conch Republic sovereignty have been used as a tourism marketing tool, as outsiders are invited to become members of the Republic, whether temporarily, while traveling to the Keys and enjoying the Caribbean lifestyle, or permanently, by obtaining a Conch Republic passport. By providing a platform for Keys residents to assert their guiding principles (a respect for diversity and openness to outsiders) while also sending "foreign" authorities the signal that the community will stand united to fight off what it perceives as acts of disrespect, Keys sovereignty has achieved its goal, even as the Conch Republic's leaders simultaneously declare their allegiance to the United States. Although the Conch Republic's declaration of independence was intended as a humorous attempt to address a specific political grievance, it has morphed into a genuine expression of sovereignty because, as the Conch Republic's motto proclaims (and Robert Keohane implies), "Sovereignty is a state of mind."
Wagstaff, Jeremiah, Texas A&M University. A More Human Military Geography.
Abstract: Military geography has traditionally been concerned with studying the influence of terrain on military operations and providing military decision makers with geographic information. In this sense the sub-discipline has focused on the physical and cartographic aspects of geography as they apply to military operations. My interests on this topic are two-fold: first, I would like to demonstrate the importance and viability of a military geography which incorporates cultural, historical, and humanistic geography; second, the application of these geographical approaches requires a more theoretical military geography which relinquishes its narrowly practical approach. Military geographers are almost entirely concerned with generating knowledge and information intended for military consumption in a manner completely different from the way in which military historians approach the study of warfare. Although I will stress the importance of human approaches within military geography, this does not mean I wish to denigrate the more traditional approaches. On the contrary, I intend to incorporate cultural and humanistic discourses into a slightly modified version of the conventional, physical-based understandings of military geography. By means of a variety of conceptual techniques I hope to demonstrate the uncharted frontiers of military geography.
Walker, Johnathan, James Madison University, Harrisonburg VA. Beyond One China: the machinations of the PRC and Taiwan in the global contest for recognition/survival.
Abstract: Political recognition of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and attempts at similar recognition carried out by Taiwan have continued more or less since creation of government in exile on Taiwan in 1949. The two powers are engaged in recognition/annihilation battle that is that is waged at a global scale. The PRC has countered Taiwan's pro-active offense and continues to challenge Taiwan sovereignty. This paper chronicles the attempts at creating a separate and de facto independent Taiwan and responses of the PRC to quash such attempts. Taiwan's attempts include international moves to bolster recognition that exceeds present global economic like the WTO, and regional economic memberships like APEC, the Asian Development Bank, the Central-American Bank for Economic Integration (CBIE). The paper focuses on two areas: policies employing monetary incentives used by both states to create or foil official Taiwan recognition, and the battle over recognition as exemplified by Taiwan's participation in international sport as the ambiguous "Chinese Taipei."
Key Words: Taiwan, political recognition
Xierali, Imam, University of Cincinnati. Foreign Diplomatic Interaction with the United States, 1990- 2000: A Gravity Model Approach. Full Text
Abstract: This research studies diplomatic interaction among nations by incorporating distance factors along with national power via the gravity model. The gravity model, simply put, says that the bigger the masses, the greater the interaction between them; distance between them impedes the interaction. The number of diplomatic personnel one nation sent to the United States is taken as the proxy measurement for the diplomatic interaction between the two nations. My previous application of the model to year 1999 yields promising result. The model explained 83 per cent of variation in the number of diplomats 141 nations sent to the United State in 1999. Territorial size, population size, and GDP of the diplomat-sending nations turn out to be the deciding factors. Physical distance as impediment to interaction, however, had minimal effect on the dependent variable for 1999. This research, built upon my previous study, expands the research scope by incorporating data for 1990-2000 and taking more subtle measurements of distance, tests the generalizability of the model application, and asks if the effect of the factor of distance on diplomatic interaction has been declining over the years.
Keywords: gravity model, diplomatic interaction, distance
Yamazaki, Takashi and Mika Kumagai, Osaka City University, Japan. A Geography of Political Geography: The Journal's Impact on Japanese Human Geography. Full Text
Abstract: This paper evaluates the expansion of the readership of Political Geography in Japan in comparison to the journal's theoretical and empirical impacts on Japanese human geography. After Political Geography was founded in 1982, Japanese university libraries subscribing to the journal increased in number from the late 1980s to the early 1990s. This tendency was in parallel with the increase of political geographic studies in Japan. However, compared with other "international" geographical journals widely subscribed to in Japan, the foundation of the journal seems to have had limited impact on this "political turn" of Japanese human geography. By analyzing how Japanese human geographers cited articles in the journal, this paper examines the role of the Anglophone journal in the reconstruction of a sub-discipline in Japanese human geography.