Paul Reuber

Conflict studies and critical geopolitics — theoretical concepts and recent research in political geography

AbstractThe political and economic upheavals during the past two decades have led to a new social and political organization of space on all levels of scale. To deal with the obvious changes, political geography had to rethink and to extend its traditional concepts. Transcending its long taken-for-granted radical approaches, the Anglo-American geography developed two conceptional paths, both of which are still relevant for political geography today:— a new awareness of regional differences in political action and culture— a new, constructionist awareness of the instrumentalization of geographical discourses for geopolitical purposes.With these theoretical concepts, political geography is examining a number of both traditional and new fields of research. Their heterogeneity is once again evidence of postmodern diversity and difference. They are characterized by both a new awareness of differentiation and a widening of the traditional viewpoint in three closely related respects transcending the traditional topics of political activity, the traditional political actors and the established levels of scale of politics. Based on the current literature it is possible to outline some major themes and perspectives of current political geography that are closely linked together, like knots in thematic networks:1. ecological politics and resource conflicts 2. territorial conflicts and boundaries 3. geopolitics and the politics of identity 4. globalization and new international relations 5. the symbolic representation of political power 6. regional conflicts and new social movements.

Empirical verve, conceptual doubts: looking from the outside in at critical geopolitics

When critical geopolitics entered German political geography, its empirical verve helped crank up a discipline which had diminished into an academic backwater. Soon, however, conceptual doubts began to supersede the initial enthusiasm with which critical geopolitics had been welcomed into political geography. Critical voices in German geography highlight the conceptual heterogeneity of critical geopolitics which engenders clashes between different, partly incommensurable epistemologies. Our paper traces the empirical and conceptual trajectory of critical geopolitics and the multifarious critique of it in German geography, before venturing to take a fresh look at poststructuralist, postcolonialist and systems theoretical approaches which, in the German context, are discussed as conceptual avenues that might usefully inform the further development of critical geopolitics.

Book review: Dark Territory in the Information Age. Learning From the West German Census Controversies of the 1980s

chapters are oriented towards the Asia-Pacific region (those by Hugo, Elliot, Campbell and McAdam). This focus is clearly a reflection of the editor’s own interests and networks (many of the contributors are based in the region). Yet Pacific people in particular are drawing attention to the need to understand climate change and migration through their own ontologies and epistemologies. Such perspectives require significantly more research attention, particularly as the same peoples describe their participation in climate change dialogue as minimal, and call for greater ownership of responses to their apparent vulnerability in the face of climate change. This is an aspect of climate migration discourse paid too little attention in the current volume. Until such work is included in collections such as this, the cynics among us might conclude that policy-makers, and their advisors, do not want interference in their attempts to manage climate migration from precisely those they are trying to manage.

Iconic architecture and place-specific neoliberal governmentality: Insights from Hamburg’s Elbe Philharmonic Hall:

As a global travelling idea, iconic architecture plays an increasingly important role within transnational urban policy discourses. Nonetheless, the locally specific geographies of governmental rationalities and technologies often remain vague and inexplicit, although they have a profound impact on the powerful processes of iconic architectural production. This aspect can be made particularly clear with regard to the case study of Hamburg’s Elbe Philharmonic Hall – the new iconic concert hall on Hamburg’s redeveloped waterfront. Thus, the case study on hand emphasises the locally distinct ways in which place-specific ‘arts of government’ are tied to contemporary processes of neoliberal urbanisation. Drawing on the Foucauldian notion of governmentality, the paper first lays open the contingent rationalities of the Elbe Philharmonic Hall project and discloses how fundamental transformations within geopolitical and geo-economic discourses gave rise to local policy objectives that emphasise the need to translate Hamburg’s urban change into an ‘adequate’ urbanistic shape. Second, the paper reflects on how place-specific discourses and practices of civic commitment and patronage become instrumentalised for the public legitimation and political enforcement of the project and thus become integral parts of a post-political regime of neoliberal governmentality.

Geopolitische Weltbilder als diskursive Konstruktionen — Konzeptionelle Anmerkungen und Beispiele zur Verbindung von Macht, Politik und Raum

Das Ende des Kalten Krieges hat die altvertrauten Kategorien der globalen Geopolitik einschneidend verandert. Die damals konstruierten, sehr eingangigen Gegensatze wie „West“ vs. „Ost“ oder „Kapitalismus“ vs. „Kommunismus“ waren uber Nacht verschwunden und machten einem Geflecht differenzierterer politischer Zusammenhange Platz. Neue Leitbilder entwickelten sich, die sich als Denkschablonen fur diese geopolitische Unubersichtlichkeit auf der Weltbuhne anboten. „Vereinfachte Landkarten sind fur das menschliche Denken und Handeln unentbehrlich“, meinte beispielsweise Samuel Huntington, dessen Vorstellungen vom „Kampf der Kulturen“ sich seit Mitte der neunziger Jahre zu einem zentralen Leitbild der Weltpolitik entwickelte. Doch wie problematisch und verfuhrerisch die Konstruktion eines solch einfachen Weltbildes sein kann, zeigte sich spatestens wieder nach den Anschlagen von New York und Washington (vgl.Reuber/Wolkersdorfer 2002). Gerade die daran anschliesenden Kriege in Afghanistan und im Irak machten deutlich, wie wichtig die Konstruktion geopolitischer Leitbilder fur die Ordnung von Gesellschaften ist, und welche Bedeutung dem Raum, oder besser gesagt der raumlichen Reprasentation, bei der Strukturierung von Gesellschaften zukommt. In diesem Beitrag werden nun verschiedene Aspekte des Nexus von Macht, Politik und Raum betrachtet und die jeweiligen Folgen fur die Konstruktion geopolitischer Weltbilder debattiert.