Klaus Dodds

Popular Geopolitics Past and Future: Fandom, Identities and Audiences

This short and hopefully provocative paper serves as both a retrospective of the past twenty years of critical work on so-called popular geopolitics and also an impetus for a more theoretical connection to related areas within cultural studies, such as fan studies. An overarching theme of the history of popular geopolitics has been a concern over geopolitical representation and discourse, which is only now beginning to shift towards audience interpretation, consumption and attachment. This shift in focus parallels a similar move in cultural studies made several years prior. Therefore, this paper advocates combining theories from cultural studies with empirical studies of concern to popular geopolitics to further our understanding. Specifically outlined as a possibility in this paper is the viewing of nationalism and religion as forms of fan-based identities, in that both can be understood as adherence to serial narratives. This perspective carries several corollaries regarding methodology and object of study, most notably a concern with the making of geopolitical meaning by audiences as they consume popular culture and related texts.

Political geography III: critical geopolitics after ten years

Nearly ten years ago, Gearoid Ó Tuathail and John Agnew published a paper ‘Geopolitics and discourse: practical geopolitical reasoning in American foreign policy’ (1992) in Political Geography.1 Their analysis precipitated a research agenda, which conceptualized geopolitics as a form of political discourse rather than simply a descriptive term intended to cover the study of foreign policy and grand statecraft (see Ó Tuathail, 1986; Dalby, 1988; and indirectly Waterman, 1998). This paper in alliance with an earlier geo-economic analysis of the world economy (Agnew and Corbridge, 1989), urged political geographers to investigate not only the politics of geographical knowledge but also the geographies of the changing world economy. They argued that geopolitics’ close association with Halford Mackinder and others had obscured the extent to which all models of global politics are informed or even guided by geographical understandings (see Agnew, 1983). As a then doctoral student at the University of Bristol, I read this paper with great excitement. Enriched with a critical geopolitical appreciation, I returned to my archival material and (over the next eight years) investigated how the Falklands/Malvinas and Antarctica were represented within British and Argentine geopolitical cultures (see Dodds, 2000a; 2000b). Recently, scholars such as Neil Smith, Nigel Thrift and Peter Taylor have raised some pertinent issues for the Anglophone field of critical geopolitics (see Heffernan, 2000a; Roberts, 2000; Smith, 2000; Sparke, 2000; Taylor, 2000; Thrift, 1999; 2000). While studies of geopolitical reasoning and accompanying representations of global political space have been accumulated, constructive scholarly criticism relating to this subfield of political geography has also amassed. The recent symposium chaired by Susan Roberts and published by Political Geography is a case in point (Roberts, 2000). My final progress Progress in Human Geography 25,3 (2001) pp. 469–484

The 1982 Falklands War and a critical geopolitical eye: Steve Bell and the if… cartoons

Abstract This paper is a further contribution to the critical geopolitical literature on war and the representational practices of international politics. By concentrating on the work of the cartoonist Steve Bell during the Falklands War, the paper argues that these images constituted a powerful critique of the Thatcher government and the decision to despatch a task force. It is suggested that Bells critique of the Falklands campaign operates at two levels. First, it refuses to separate events in the South Atlantic from domestic developments within Britain. The rigid realist separation of the domestic and the foreign is refused. Second, his work highlighted the importance of historical and cultural fantasy in shaping state identities and international politics. Three recurring themes of his work are used to illustrate those points. Finally, some conclusions are offered relating to the importance of cartoons and other forms of popular geopolitics.

Licensed to Stereotype: Geopolitics, James Bond and the Spectre of Balkanism

This article explores the geopolitical and post-imperial significance of Ian Flemings famous spy, Commander James Bond RN/007. By drawing on two films, From Russia with Love (1963) and The World is Not Enough (1999), it is argued that these productions not only contest Britains post-1945 decline in international influence but also actively subvert the binary politics of the Cold War and its aftermath. The actual location of the filming (in Turkey and Central Asia) is also significant in this representational process, however. Turkey was a vital element in NATOs containment of the Soviet Union and the unexploited oil fields of Central Asia have become a major geo-strategic concern in the post-Cold-War era. Arguably, the films (and Flemings novel From Russia with Love 1957) also draw, in order to be politically effective, upon long-standing colonial and European stereotypes regarding the reputation of the Balkans for violence, instability and claustrophobia. In so doing, countries such as Turkey and Azerbaijan are on the one hand simply represented as security- and or resource-based commodities which the West (in the form of the UK in the main rather than the USA) have to contain or selectively exploit but also as places that have witnessed prior infiltration and intrigue. These characterisations of place deserve serious attention because as recent research in film studies and popular geopolitics has demonstrated, fictional referents such as James Bond and Rambo play their part in the cultural re-production of world politics.

Radio geopolitics: broadcasting, listening and the struggle for acoustic spaces

This paper considers some of the interdisciplinary scholarship on radio and sound more generally for the purposes of considering how geopolitical scholarship might reconsider its predominantly visual focus. The first part considers radio and its relationship to studies of propaganda, international diplomacy and even everyday life. Thereafter, attention is given to new themes such as researching radio cultures, broadcasting infrastructure and technology and, finally, the affective impacts of radio on audiences. The conclusion of this paper urges further critical consideration of radio, sound and broadcasting/listener engagement with the well-established geographical literature on music.

Screening Geopolitics: James Bond and the Early Cold War films (1962–1967)

This paper seeks to extend the remit of popular geopolitics by considering the role and significance of places and their inhabitants in shaping the narrative structures of films. By using the example of the James Bond series from the 1960s, it is suggested that there is more complex series of geographies to be acknowledged. Arguably most of the trade press reviewers were largely content to argue that places were simply ‘exotic locations’. With a detailed examination of screenplays from five Bond films, it is shown that United Artists and Eon Productions played an important and creative role in shaping the geographies of dangers and threats confronted by James Bond. Moreover, austere and or remote locations also played important roles in generating a sense of climax between the British secret agent and his enemies regardless of whether they were part of a criminal network or an evil genius. Finally, the paper concludes with an assessment of some of the outstanding challenges facing a popular geopolitics.

Post-colonial Antarctica: an emerging engagement

This paper outlines an emerging post-colonial engagement with Antarctica. Although ‘post-colonialism’ is a term that covers a great diversity of theoretical and political perspectives, it is generally agreed that it is united in its critical evaluation of colonialism and associated practices. Antarctica, thus far, has not attracted a great deal of attention from post-colonial scholars. By drawing on the limited engagement with Antarctica thus far, it is proposed that there are the intellectual resources for a deeper interrogation of polar colonialism and associated practices such as territorial claiming and base construction. The paper is intended to be a starting point for a more sustained and potentially unsettling engagement with post-colonial Antarctic projects.

Hollywood and the Popular Geopolitics of the War on Terror

In the past couple of years several Hollywood films have been released which have explicitly addressed the USA and its varied involvement with the war on terror. They include ‘war’ films (eg Redacted, 2008), surveillance/spy films (eg The Bourne Ultimatum, 2007), action-thrillers (eg Syriana, 2005; The Kingdom, 2007, Rendition, 2007), allegorical accounts (eg Good Night and Good Luck, 2005; War of the Worlds, 2005), historical futuristic fantasies (300, 2007; The Dark Knight, 2008), techno-thrillers (Iron Man, 2008) and those that blur a number of generic categories including comedy and drama (eg Charlie Wilson’s War, 2007; Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?, 2008). While some have been more commercially successful than others, these films and others provide opportunities for people to watch and reflect on contemporary international politics. As an immensely popular form of entertainment, films are highly effective in grabbing the attention of mass audiences. The power of film lies in not only in its apparent ubiquity but also in the way in which it helps to create (often dramatically) understandings of particular events, national identities and relationships to others. As Mark Lacy has noted, ‘The cinema becomes a space where ‘‘commonsense’’ ideas about global politics and history are (re)-produced and where stories about what is acceptable behaviour from states and individuals are naturalised and legitimated’. Image making has been central to the war on terror—from the burning towers of the World Trade Center to the ‘mission accomplished’ moment of May 2003 and, more recently, the exposure of prisoner abuse and rendition in a variety of locations around the world. Indeed, in the aftermath of 9/11, Karl Rove, then special advisor to the George W Bush administration, held a summit at Beverly Hills where representatives of the entertainment industry joined him to consider how they might contribute to the war on terror. While pledging their artistic independence from the Bush administration, directors such as Oliver Stone (who had made films critical of US foreign

Screening terror: Hollywood, the United States and the construction of danger

This paper is concerned with how and with what consequences Hollywood studios have approached the issue of terrorism. By drawing on the literatures of critical terrorism studies and critical geopolitics, a number of films are analysed for the purpose of considering the nature and motivation of terrorists, the objects of their assaults, the geographical location of the actual dramas, and the responses deemed necessary in the face of such apparent dangers. Finally, the paper briefly considers how one segment of film audiences, namely, participants (usually avid fans) who engage via online forums such as the Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb), engage and contest the movies themselves. The movie Rendition (2007) provides a brief example of how fans respond to a film explicitly concerned with terrorism and torture. This is important for considering how people make sense of films above and beyond their role as a highly successful form of entertainment.

The Geopolitical Audience: Watching Quantum of Solace (2008) in London

This article argues for the intersection of popular geopolitics and audience studies in audience power. This is demonstrated through a survey of viewers attending the James Bond film Quantum of Solace (QoS) at three theatres in the greater London area. Geography emerged as relevant to audiences in three forms. First, geography was understood as a catalyst for resource-based wars, providing an opportunity to reflect on these conflicts and their future likelihood. Second, geography serves as a difference engine for producing tension and excitement. Finally, geography emerged through the situatedness of viewing and rhizomatic nature of subjectivity. However, these geographies must be understood as part of a larger geopolitical assemblage that is animated by audience power. In conclusion, we argue for an understanding of geopolitical space as constituted through audiences’ constituent power to produce topologies. While audiences did not transform QoS into a radical text, this potential remains latent.