Corey Johnson

The Internal Other: Exploring the Dialectical Relationship between Regional Exclusion and the Construction of National Identity

Societies have historically sought to spatialize difference—to other—even within the boundaries of supposedly unified polities. Drawing on previous scholarship on the spatialization of difference in published case studies, we examine the dialectical relationship between the formation and institutionalization of regions, on the one hand, and the nation-building process more broadly on the Other. Certain regions become repositories for undesirable national traits as part of a dialectical process of nation and region building. The processes of othering are rarely as linear and tidy as proposed in some current formulations of the theory; rather, othering involves a host of concomitant processes that work together to produce economically and culturally differentiated regions. The processes by which particular places or regions become “othered” are not only interesting in the abstract but also carry with them enduring material consequences. To demonstrate this effect, we visit two historical case studies that examine the formation of internal Others in nineteenth-century Europe (Italy and Germany).

Want, Waste or War? The Global Resource Nexus and the Struggle for Land, Energy, Food, Water and Minerals

In addition to environmental change, the structure and trends of global politics and the economy are also changing as more countries join the ranks of the world’s largest economies with their resource-intensive patterns. The nexus approach, conceptualized as attention to resource connections and their governance ramifications, calls attention to the sustainability of contemporary consumer resource use, lifestyles and supply chains. This book sets out an analytical framework for understanding these nexus issues and the related governance challenges and opportunities. It sheds light on the resource nexus in three realms: markets, interstate relations and local human security. These three realms are the organizing principle of three chapters, before the analysis turns to crosscutting case studies including shale gas, migration, lifestyle changes and resource efficiency, nitrogen fertilizer and food systems, water and the Nile Basin, climate change and security and defense spending. The key issues revolve around competition and conflict over finite natural resources. The authors highlight opportunities to improve both the understanding of nexus challenges and their governance. They critically discuss a global governance approach versus polycentric and multilevel approaches and the lack of those dimensions in many theories of international relations

A Splintered Heartland: Russia, Europe, and the Geopolitics of Networked Energy Infrastructure

Much has been made about a revival of Mackinderian geopolitics in Eurasia, largely centred on struggles over access to energy resources and rooted in a territorial understanding of space. This paper proposes that the conceptual political cartography of Eurasia is indeed largely being rewritten, but conventional understandings of space, territory, and resources are insufficient in providing insight into a changing geopolitics. We interrogate the geographical logics of Russias role as energy provider to Europe by focusing specifically on the provision of gas to Europe via Nord Stream, a new underwater pipeline that is scheduled to go online by late 2011. Drawing on debates in human geography on relational/topological views of space, and on the “splintering urbanism” thesis, the paper describes a rapidly evolving networked space that effectively “splinters” the territorial integrity of the region and thereby complicates notions of Eurasian geopolitics that emphasise proximity, territorial hegemony, and state-centric international relations.

The biopolitics and geopolitics of border enforcement in Melilla

ABSTRACT The biopolitics and geopolitics of border enforcement in Melilla. Territory, Politics, Governance. This article uses the multiple and contradictory realities of Melilla, a pene-enclave and -exclave of Spain in North Africa, to draw out the contemporary practice of Spanish, European Union, and Moroccan immigration enforcement policies. The city is many things at once: a piece of Europe in North Africa and a symbol of Spain’s colonial history; an example of the contemporary narrative of a cosmopolitan and multicultural Europe; a place where extraterritorial and intraterritorial dynamics demonstrate territory’s continuing allure despite the security challenges and the lack of economic or strategic value; a metaphorical island of contrasting geopolitical and biopolitical practices; and a place of regional flows and cross-border cooperation between Spain, the EU, and Morocco. It is a border where the immunitary logic of sovereign territorial spaces is exposed through the biopolitical practices of the state to ‘protect’ the community from outsiders. In light of the hardening of borders throughout European and North African space in recent years, this article offers a rich case study of our persistently territorial world.

Competing Para-Sovereignties in the Borderlands of Europe

ABSTRACT This article is broadly concerned with how we conceptualise the geography of the tensions between the nominally stable orders of the modern state system against the turbulence of the past few decades in relation to that order, especially in the realm of border controls. Specifically, it considers the rescaling and relocation of border enforcement in the European Union in relation to state sovereignty. The article argues that existing “soft” conceptualisations of the EU’s relationship to sovereignty and bordering—“shared,” “joint,” “multi-level,” “consociational”—are inadequate to understand the transformations of exercises of sovereign power in European borderlands. Instead, we are witnessing the emergence of competing para-sovereignties acting within the same spaces, with both traditional states and the incipient state-like EU fulfilling particular bit roles in realms that were traditionally viewed as the exclusive responsibilities of modern, sovereign, territorial states. This dynamic is made visible in recent years in observing individual humans negotiate and subvert the fluid political geographies of European border space. Examples are taken from the activities of the EU border agency Frontex in southeastern Europe.

Mezzogiorno without the mafia: Modern-day meridionalisti and the making of a 'space of backwardness' in eastern Germany

Practices of spatial representation can be revealing indicators of particular brands of nationalized discourse. In this article, the prevalent use of a comparison between eastern Germany and the Italian Mezzogiorno by a specific set of German elites is examined. Anxieties about Germanys place in the European and global economies are accompanied by a spatial vocabulary that uploads these anxieties onto the ongoing project of German unification. Eastern Germany, painted as a homogenized ‘space of backwardness,’ is thereby made out as a key factor inhibiting competitiveness and modernization of the economy.

A Review of “Nordic Landscapes: Region and Belonging on the Northern Edge of Europe”

Mexico and the United States, although the Guatemalan population in Mount Pleasant is estimated to be significantly smaller than the Salvadorian population. Thus, Salvadorans make up the most significant population in the neighborhood with origins in Latin America, although there are smaller populations with origins in Guatemala, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and other Latin American countries. In addition to these populations, populations in Mount Pleasant with a recent or relatively recent past outside the United States include Vietnamese, Ethiopians and Eritreans, Koreans, and Iranians. As is characteristic of the United States, the Anglo-American population is deeply divided between one segment that is American black (“African American”) and another, more diverse grouping, which is commonly viewed as white. It is apparent from the information provided by Modan that the area’s black population is generally of low to middle income, whereas a substantial sector of so-called whites are of middle and upper middle income, many from the professional class. Whereas the American black population is overwhelmingly comprised of renters, some more affluent and socially engaged elements of the white population are collectively the driving force behind the “gentrification” wave that is sweeping Mount Pleasant and—increasingly—the District as a whole. Turf Wars makes a valuable contribution to the sociological and geographical literature on urban America. This book is thus highly recommended for those with an interest in the urban geography of major U.S. cities. Despite the fact that it lacks a systematic analysis of the cultural geographic, sociological, and political development of Mount Pleasant, a unique, sometimes colorful, and valuable picture does emerge from the data used by Modan, including the interviews, the bibliographic references, and the published data.