Geopolitics & Statecraft

Question 1

Describe the Marxist conception of geopolitics?

Answer 1

Political geography has become too obsessed with language and representation.
It has also forgotten how to be normative and how to unearth causal relations
More recognition needed that class relations determine state relations
States can be tools of capital (think of Iraq war as blood for oil war)

Question 2

Describe the Feminist conception of geopolitics?

Answer 2

Geopolitics as a masculinist discourse.
Problematic binary between domestic and foreign (mirrors private/public).
Focus on everyday and popular geopolitics
Contra disembodiment - Geopolitics provides a view of the world that reveals everything ‘god trick’
Write the women into geopolitics.

Question 3

What is critical geopolitics?

Answer 3

States act in geopolitical arena because of particular imaginative geographies.
Focuses on thoughts and discourses of geopolitics and how they trickle into popular geopolitics (e.g. movies).