James D. Sidaway

Sovereign excesses? Portraying postcolonial sovereigntyscapes

Abstract This paper is offered as a contribution to postcolonial criticism of a central object of political geography: conceptualisations of sovereignty and the territorial state. To that end, the paper reflects primarily on the consequences and nature of connections between Africa and the West as an entree to rethinking wider representations of sovereignty. From this it argues that the supposed ‘weakness’ of certain African states might be interpreted as arising less from a lack or absence of authority and connection (including the presence of the West), but rather as an excess of certain forms of them. Through accounts focused on the trajectories of Angola and the Congo, the paper offers a deconstruction of the notion of failed or weak states and of sovereignty as an essence.

The Degeneration of Tropical Geography

Abstract How did colonial and tropical geography as practiced in the aftermath of World War II become development geography by the 1970s? We excavate the genealogy of development geography, relating it to geopolitical, economic, and social traumas of decolonization. We examine how revolutionary pressures and insurgencies, coupled with the eclipse of formal colonialism, led to the degeneration and displacement of a particular way of writing geographical difference of “the tropics.” A key objective here is to complicate and enrich understandings of paradigmatic shifts and epistemological transitions, and to elaborate archaeologies of development knowledges and their association with geography. While interested in such a big picture, we also approach this story in part through engagements with the works of a series of geographers whose scholarship and teaching took them to the tropics, among them Keith Buchanan, a pioneering radical geographer trained at the School of Geography of the University of Birmingham, England, who later worked in South Africa, Nigeria, London, Singapore (as an external examiner), and Aotearoa/New Zealand.

Locating Critical Geopolitics

The authors review and locate the emerging literature of critical geopolitics, They illustrate some of the main lines of development within a rapidly expanding literature. This literature analyses geopolitics as discourse and also deconstructs policy texts to examine the use of geographical reasoning in statecraft. Critical geopolitics also links up with critical work in geopolitical economy and development studies. Areas are identified in which critical geopolitics could engage productively with research and scholarship in related fields.

Rebuilding Bridges: A Critical Geopolitics of Iberian Transfrontier Cooperation in a European Context

In the context of approaches to understanding the European Union (EU) and ‘critical geopolitics’ which traces the construction of geopolitical narratives, the author writes about the imaginations of European society and space as harmonised and networked which are associated with visions of governance for ‘an ever closer union’. This is done through a critical examination of the European Commissions project of sponsoring cross-border cooperation. Drawing on a case study from the Portuguese — Spanish frontier, he examines contradictions that have arisen and are mediated through an unresolved dispute concerning the demarcation of a short section of what is the longest, poorest (in terms of material underdevelopment), and oldest (in terms of relative stability) border between two EU member states. Focusing on the EU-funded (re)construction of a ruined bridge across the border, he examines the way in which the boundary dispute (and attendant Portuguese irredentism) has become enfolded within and disrupts the strategic visions of the EU Working with a mixture of historical and contemporary documents, media accounts, archival records, and interviews relating to this case study, the author reflects on and elaborates broader understandings of the spatiality of power in the EU.

Geography, globalization, and the problematic of area studies

There has been considerable debate about the challenges and opportunities posed for geographical scholarship by globalization. In similar contexts, however, the disciplines relationship to area studies merits careful review and reworking. Three prospective pathways through this are presented here: the status of geographical knowledge in the aftermath of the critique of orientalism and associated postcolonial departures, debates about language and translation, and attention to the situatedness and operation of perspective in geographical imaginations. Charting these tracks, the article notes obstacles and highlights opportunities.

Photography as Geographical Fieldwork

Photography has a long history in geographical fieldwork. This paper reports on a student project that recovers this history and uses photography and commentary to represent the city of Barcelona. The place of the project within the broader (second-year undergraduate) fieldcourse and curriculum is described. The paper concludes with considerations of the way that photography lends itself to raise issues of representation evident in contemporary human geography. Since it is accessible to students, and offers practical examples, photography is a good way to approach and introduce more complex questions of method, epistemology and representation.

Constructing Knowledges of ‘Emerging Markets’: UK-Based Investment Managers and Their Overseas Connections:

We seek to trace the construction and circulation of the investment category of ‘emerging markets’, reflecting on the geographies contained therein. To this end, drawing on face-to-face interviews, we investigate the production and circulation of specialist expertise and knowledge amongst British-based managers and analysts. This involves starting to trace networks of information, movement, and command that connect fund managers and analysts in global financial centres such as the City of London with emerging market economies. We conclude with reflections on the distinctiveness of emerging markets analysis, arguing that these lie in the rhetorical strategies used to promote emerging markets investments and the ways that these are internalised and enacted by analysts.

On the nature of the beast: Re-charting political geographies of the European Union

Abstract This review paper begins with the premise that since the European Union remains a process of construction with no agreed or pre‐designated end‐point, its power structure is open to a diverse range of interpretations. Moreover, the apparent novelty of the EU renders it hard to characterize according to familiar taxonomies. The novelty lies in part in the complex territorial configurations of authority in the EU. Different conceptualizations of the EU are varied readings of the structure, balance and scales of authority — which thereby invoke different actions and spaces of possibility.

‘The Tears of Portugal’: Empire, Identity, ‘Race’, and Destiny in Portuguese Geopolitical Narratives

Geopolitical discourses are constitutive moments within the expression and construction of ‘national’ identities. Approaching geopolitics and identities as contested and fluid domains, we examine the relationships between geopolitical narratives and visions of Portugueseness (Portugalidade). The focus is on the frames of geopolitical thought developed in 20th-century Portugal, with particular reference to the post-1945 period and with some consideration of the transformations since 1974 accompanying the collapse of what was both the first and the most enduring European overseas empire. This study of Portuguese geopolitical discourses leads to a conclusion in which we reflect on the significance of relations between the ‘colonial’ and the ‘postcolonial’ and the articulations of East–West and North–South in geopolitical discourses. This permits wider critique concerning the location of geopolitics within 20th-century and contemporary imperialisms.

Territorial Tactics: The Socio-spatial Significance of Private Policing Strategies in Cape Town

This paper analyses the policing strategies of private security companies operating in urban space. An existing literature has considered the variety of ways that territory becomes of fundamental importance in the work of public police forces. However, this paper examines territory in the context of private security companies. Drawing on empirical research in Cape Town, it examines how demarcated territories become key subjects in private policing. Private security companies are responsible for a relatively small section of the city, while in contrast the public police ultimately have to see city space as a whole. Hence, private policing strategy becomes one of displacement, especially of so-called undesirables yielding a patchworked public space associated with private enclaves of consumption. The conclusions signal the historical resonances and comparative implications of these political–legal–security dynamics.