Chapter 1 Flashcards
What other 3 subjects does political geography primarily tie into?
Cultural geography, international relations, & most of all, cultural studies
Who said that culture is ordinary but varies everywhere?
Raymond Williams
Who said this? “Culture is the best which has been taught & said in the world. This idea is associated with specific time & place
Matthew Arnold
Idea that powerful groups in society (what we used to call ruling class) maintain the status quo (even though they do not benefit from it) by attempting to make the worldview that best benefits them seem natural & correct
Cultural Hegemony
Ideas or images that appear natural but that lend support or credence to a particular worldview
Ideology (similar to cultural hegemony)
An arena where power relations are both established & potentially unsettled.
Terrain of Struggle
Naturalize the status quo, inequalities between people & the way different people are hierarchized (who is at top of the social ladder, who is on the bottom)
Hegemonic Cultural Forms
De-naturalize the status quo, & suggest that inequalities that exist are not natural but the result of particular histories & contemporary practices. Reveal & challenge the fact that hegemonic cultural forms create desires, worldviews, & identities that serve status quo
Counter-Hegemonic Cultural Forms
Seeks to create different desires, worldviews, identities
Counter-Hegemonic Cultural Forms
Cultivate desires, worldviews, & identities that serve or at least do not threaten the status quo & those who benefit from them
Hegemonic Cultural Forms
Used Darwin’[s writings to generate an “organic theory of the state” & geopolitics as applied political geography
Frederick Ratzel
Blind to how their own subject’s positions may have influenced what they saw when they looked at world affairs.
Environmental Determinism
Populations draw strength from territory; expansion of the state a sign of strength
Organic theory of the state
Living space, taken by strong culture from weaker ones
Lebensraum
Primary division within geography; one emphasizes environmental processes while the other focuses on social processes
Physical & human geography
Theory that the environment determines cultural behavior
Environmental determinism
Alliance founded to fight against the soviet union during the cold war
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)
Belief that during the Cold War that if one country becomes Communist its neighboring states will as well
Domino Theory
Form of geography associated with quantitative analysis of locations & distributions
Spatial Science
2D surface with location finding grid associated with it
Cartesian plane
Political economic theory & practice that argues that economic exploitation is at the root of society
Marxism
Body of thought that takes meaning as not pre-given
Post-structuralism
Intellectual movement dedicated to questioning the geographic assumptions of global politics
Critical geopolitics
A way of talking & thinking about a subject
Discourse
The assumption that states are the natural unit of analysis in geopolitics
State-centrism
Organizations dedicated to policy analysis
Think tanks
Societies brought into existence by the use of common literature & media
Imagined communities
Belief that there is a fundamental distinction (& opposition) between western & eastern societies
Orientalism
Person’s (or society’s) constellation of taken-for-granted truths about the world & the way in which power should be utilized in the world
Geopolitical imagination
Everyday ways in which citizens are reminded of their national affiliation; a reservoir that can be drawn on in times of crisis
Banal nationalism
