Unit 8: Political Geography: Vocabulary

Question 1

In the context of political power, the capacity of a state to influence other states or achieve its goals through diplomatic, economic, and militaristic means.

Answer 1

ability

Question 2

Vertical plane between states that cuts through the rocks below, and the airspace above the surface.

Answer 2

boundary

Question 3

Economic model wherein people, corporations, and states produce goods and exchange them on the world market, with the goal of achieving profit.

Answer 3

capitalism

Question 4

forces that tend to divide a country (such as internal religious, linguistic, ethnic, or ideological differences)

Answer 4

centrifugal

Question 5

forces that tend to unify a country (such as widespread commitment to a national culture, shared ideological objectives, and a common faith)

Answer 5

centripetal

Question 6

Rule by an autonomous power over a subordinate and alien people and place. Although often established and maintained through political structures, colonialism also creates unequal cultural and economic relations. Be cause of the magnitude and impact of the European colonial project of the last few centuries, the term is generally understood to refer to that particular colonial endeavor.

Answer 6

colonialism

Question 7

The process through which something is given monetary value. This occurs when a good or idea that previously was not regarded as an object to be bought and sold is turned into something that has a particular price and that can be traded in a market economy.

Answer 7

commodification

Question 8

Processes that incorporate higher levels of education, higher salaries, and more technology; generate more wealth than periphery processed in the world-economy.

Answer 8

core

Question 9

Process by which geopoliticians deconstruct and focus on explaining the underlying spatial assumptions and territorial perspectives of politicians.

Answer 9

critical geopolitics

Question 10

Government based on the principle that the people are the ultimate sovereign and have the final say over what happens within the state.

Answer 10

democracy

Question 11

The movement of economic, social and cultural processed out of the hands of states.

Answer 11

deterritorialization

Question 12

The process whereby regions within a state demand and gain political strength and growing autonomy at the expense of the central government.

Answer 12

devolution

Question 13

A political-territorial system wherein a central government represents the various entities within a nation-state where they have common interests–defense, foreign affairs, and the like–yet allows these various entities to retain their own identities and to have their own laws, policies, and customs in certain spheres.

Answer 13

federal

Question 14

Political boundary defined and delimited (and occasionally demarcated) as a straight line or arc.

Answer 14

geometric boundary

Question 15

redistricting for advantage, or the practice of dividing areas into electoral districts to give one politic;l party an electoral majority in a large number of districts while concentrating the voting strength of the opposition in as few districts as possible.

Answer 15

gerrymandering

Question 16

A geopolitical hypothesis, proposed by British geographer Halford Mackinder during the first two decades of the twentieth century, that any political power based in the heart of Eurasia could gain sufficient strength to eventually dominate the world. Mackinder further proposed that since Eastern Europe controlled access to the Eurasian interior, its ruler would command the vast “heartland” to the east.

Answer 16

heartland theory

Question 17

In the context of determining representative districts, the process by which a majority of the population is from the minority.

Answer 17

majority-minority districts

Question 18

In a general sense, associated with the promotion of commercialism and trade. More specifically, a protectionist policy of European states during the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries that promoted a state’s economic position in the contest with other countries. The acquisition of gold and silver and the maintenance of a favorable trade balance (more exports than imports) were central to the policy.

Answer 18

mercantilism

Question 19

State with more than one nation within its borders.

Answer 19

multinational state

Question 20

Nation that stretches across borders and across states.

Answer 20

multi-state nation

Question 21

Legally, a term encompassing all the citizens of a state. Most definitions now tend to refer to a tightly knit group of people possessing bonds of language, ethnicity, religion, and other shared cultural attributes. Such homogeneity actually prevails within very few states.

Answer 21

nation

Question 22

Theoretically, a recognized member of the modern state system possessing formal sovereignty and occupied by a people who see themselves as a single, united nation. Most nations and states aspire to this form, but it is realized almost nowhere. Nonetheless, in common parlance, ______-_____ is used as a synonym for country or state.

Answer 22

nation-state

Question 23

Peace negotiated in 1648 to end the Thirty Years’ War, Europe’s most destructive internal struggle over religion. The treaties contained new language recognizing statehood and nationhood, clearly defined borders, and guarantees of security.

Answer 23

Peace of Westphalia

Question 24

Processes that incorporate lower levels of education, lower salaries, and less technology; and generate less wealth than core processes in the world‐economy.

Answer 24

periphery

Question 25

Political boundary defined and delimited (and occasionally demarcated) by a prominent physical feature in the natural landscape—such as a river or the crest ridges of a mountain range.

Answer 25

physical-political boundary

Question 26

A subdivision of human geography focused on the nature and implications of the evolving spatial organization of political governance and formal political practice on the Earth’s surface. It is concerned with why political spaces emerge in the places that they do and with how the character of those spaces affects social, political, economic, and environmental understandings and practices.

Answer 26

political geography