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Approaches To Political Geography

The document discusses several historical approaches to the study of political geography: 1. Whittlesey's 1935 "law landscape" approach examined how politics can modify the physical landscape through features like boundaries, security, and government activity. 2. Hartshorne's 1950 "functional approach" focused on how states attempt to unify diverse internal regions through political, economic, and social control and organization. 3. Gottmann's work analyzed how the extent of accessibility and movement across space ("circulation") influences the political partitioning of territory. 4. Stephen's "unified field theory" viewed political areas as outcomes of "circulation fields" resulting from political ideas, decisions, and induced movements across space.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
604 views20 pages

Approaches To Political Geography

The document discusses several historical approaches to the study of political geography: 1. Whittlesey's 1935 "law landscape" approach examined how politics can modify the physical landscape through features like boundaries, security, and government activity. 2. Hartshorne's 1950 "functional approach" focused on how states attempt to unify diverse internal regions through political, economic, and social control and organization. 3. Gottmann's work analyzed how the extent of accessibility and movement across space ("circulation") influences the political partitioning of territory. 4. Stephen's "unified field theory" viewed political areas as outcomes of "circulation fields" resulting from political ideas, decisions, and induced movements across space.

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Viraj Patel
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Approaches to Political Geography

• Carl Sauer in 1927 defined political geography as “the wayward


child of the geographic family”
• Pol Geo lacked concrete methodological approaches
• The reason for the lack of methodological approaches to
contemporary pol geo may be attributed to the lack of
professionalism
• The organismic paradigm of the Ritter-Ratzel heritage did not
make any deep insight into the problem of approaches in the
contemporary politico-geographical scholarship
• It was until 1935 that Derwent S. Whittlesey came out with an
approach to the study of political geography
• 1. Whittlesey’s Law Landscape Approach
• Whittlesey’s approach to the study of political geography was contained
in an article entitled, “The impress of Effective Central Authority upon
the Landscape” in 1935
• By central authority is meant sovereignty over an area of marked
diversity
• To be effective, the central government must exert more than normal
control over its area. Today effective central authority is a function of
the nation-state”
• In this article Whittlesey examines various ways by which politics can
modify the landscape. He divides his treatment into four major sections
• Expression of security
• Special features of boundaries
• Expressions of government activity
• The effects of the legal system
• Wide scope of political impress on the environment.
Agents of political impress are the vehicles or means
by which political processes manifest themselves in
the environment
• This approach which was first of its kind in political
geography seems to have been drawn from the
contemporary American possibilist paradigm.
• It could not make any immediate breakthrough in the
contemporary politico-geographical studies but in the
latter decades it did inspire a lot of people to think in
terms of law-landscape change in political areas.
Hartshorne’s Functional Approach
• Richard Hartshorne offered yet another alternative approach which sought
to study the functions of politically organized areas i.e. the sovereign state –
the intrinsic fundamental function of the state is “to establish itself as an
effective unit, rather than merely in international law”.
• In 1950 Hartshorne attempts to present his approach in article “The
Fundamental Approach in Political Geography”
• Attempted to bring forward the regional paradigm in political geography
• “The fundamental purpose of any state, as an organization of a
section of land and section of people, as Ratzel first put it, is to
bring all the varied territorial parts, the diverse regions of the
State-area, into a single organized unit.”
• Internal Function:
• What does the state attempt to organize in all regions of the
state-area?
• In all cases, it attempts to establish complete and exclusive control
over internal political relations – in simplest forms, the creation and
maintenance of law and order.

• Local political institutions must conform with the concepts and


institutions of the central, overall, political organization.
• In many social aspects – class structure, family organization, religion and
education – a state may tolerate considerable variation in its different
regions. But because of the significance of these factors to political life,
there is a tendency to exert unifying control even over these institutions
• In the economic field, every modern state tends to develop some degree of
unity of economic organization. Every state must strive with any local or
provincial loyalties, and in definite opposition to loyalty to any outside
state unit.
• The geographer is primarily concerned with emphasis on regional
differences. The state is also no less concerned with establishing unity of
control over all classes of the population at a single place
• In political geography, the interest is in the problem of unification of diverse
regions into single whole; the degree of vertical unification within any
horizontal segment concerns not only as a factor aiding or handicapping
regional unification.
• The primary and continuing problem of every state is how to bind
together more or less separate and diverse areas into an effective whole.
• 1. regions that are more or less separated from each other by physical or human
barriers;
• 2. regions that in greater or lesser degree diverge in their relations with outside
states;
• 3. regions that differ among themselves in character of population, economic
interests, and political attitudes
• Centrifugal forces - Moving or tending to move away from a centre
• Physical features in handicapping communication between regions
• Since state organization requires communication not only from one region to the
next, but also from a central point to each peripheral region, distance itself is a
centrifugal factor
• Centrifugal forces that result from diversity of character of the population
• Where regions differ in social character, the tendency of the state to force some
degree of uniformity of social life meets with resistance – thus the very attempt to
produce unity may intensify disunity.
• Centripetal Forces: forces those lead to unity & coherence of the state
• Any force working to overcome the difficulties, anything tending to pull these
regions into a state
• The fact that a country has a name and a government, that an international treaty
recognizes its existence as a state and defines its territorial limits – all that does not
produce a state. To accomplish that, it is necessary to establish centripetal forces
that will bind together the regions of the state, in spite of centrifugal forces that are
always present.
• The state idea: the basic centripetal force must be some concept or idea justifying
the existence of this particular state incorporating these particular regions, the state
must have a raison d’etre or reason for existing
• What does this mean for the study of the political geography of a state?
• It means…we must discover the motivating centripetal force, the basic idea of the state. Under
what concept, for what purposes, are these particular regions to be bound together into one
political unit, absolutely separated from every other political territory. We must discover and
establish the unique distinctive idea under which a particular section of area and of humanity
is organized into a unit state…until we can determine for any particular state the idea under
which it is organized, we shall have no basis on which to analyze its political geography, we shall
not have started on the significant contribution that geography can make to the study of state
• To determine the distinctive idea of such a state, therefore, we must study the current situation
rather than the remote past.
Gottmann’s Political Partitioning Model
• Political world is a limited one; it extends only over the space accessible to men
• Accessibility is the determining factor; areas to which men have no access do not
have any political standing or problem
• Partitioning thus results from accessibility; all the vast globe was partitioned as it
was discovered and mapped
• The political units or territories, as they emerged, acquire a position in space
which became and remained a major characteristic of each unit
• The extent of accessibility is determined by an analysis of the existing status of
traffic, communications, transportation and trade.
• French language describes this set of movement across space by ‘circulation’. It
encompasses all the variety, the complexity and the fluidity of the exchanges
developing throughout the world. Movement seems to cover the flow of people,
armies, material goods, capital, messages, and ideas across the space open to
men’s activities, in all directions and for all purposes.
• Iconography: a psychological attitude resulting from a combination of
actual events with beliefs deeply rooted in the people’s mind…the world
iconography to describe the whole system of symbols in which people
believe. These symbols are many and varied
• A national iconography encompasses the national flag, the proud
memories of past history as well as the principles of prevailing religion,
the rules of economy, social hierarchy, heroes…
• A national iconography usually stops at a boundary; for any group of
people, the iconography is the common cherished heritage.
• Iconography is a force for stability and coherence where is circulation
leads to political change
Stephens Jones Unified Field Theory
• “A Unified Field Theory of Political Geography”

• He explains the geographical-political process that leads to the conformation of political space.
• Political idea means more than just the state-idea. It means any political idea.
• Both political scientists and geographers have studied the phenomena at the other end of
the chain—political areas.
• Political area means any politically organized area, whether a national state, a dependent area, a
subdivision of a state, or an administrative region – recognized limits
• Common characteristic of all political areas is that they have recognized limits, though not
necessarily linear or permanent.
• Every political decision involves movement in one way or another. These politically-
induced movements may be thought of as "circulation fields.“
• A political area in being is a condition of political ideas, decisions, and movements. The
unified field theory fits boundary studies into the general pattern of political geography.
• The theory is "geographical" in that it makes mappable the results of ideas and
decisions that are themselves not mappable.
• Idea-area chain: The theory simply states that ‘idea’ and
‘state’ are two ends of a chain.
• The chain is as follows: Political idea-decision-movement-
field-political area
• Process comprises five phases, which begin with the
political idea, followed by a decision-making, the
generation of a movement in the space, the creation of a
political action field, to finish with the political space
conformation.
• Jones uses the conformation of the State of Israel case (political space) from the political
idea represented by the Zionism. Since the State of Israel is in the middle of the fighting
that take place nowadays in one of the richest oil regions of the world
• Application of the theory to a case of one new national state: Zionism is the idea, the
Balfour Declaration is conspicuous decision, permitting migration and other
movements. A field of settlement, government activity, and war leads to the State of
Israel
• The Balfour Declaration was a public statement issued by the British
government in 1917 during the First World War announcing its support for
the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine,
then an Ottoman region with a small minority Jewish population.
• The theory seems to fit but it does not reduce political geography to five easy
steps
• The theory does not confined to politically organized areas. It is applicable to
an unorganized area like the Mediterranean. The ideas also vary: Mussolini’s
dream of a new Roman empire, Britain’s concern with sea command, the
American strategy of containment of communism…etc.
Political System Model
• Political geographers turn more directly to political process and to the spatial
consequences
• Process is the key to the spatial arrangements and relationships with which the
geographer is uniquely concerned
• This is not to say that the political geographer should less geographical or spatial, but
that without more attention to the political.
• Political geography is concerned with the spatial attributes of political process
• Political Process is the political system within which process operates – process and
systems are inseparable
• The bases for political systems are the societal forces that shape political institutions
and transactions through which the institutions operate
• Political system can be viewed as the end product of the processes by which man
organizes himself politically in his particular social and physical environment and in
response to outside political systems with their unique environment
• Open and closed systems
• Relationship of the political system to the landscape is direct and
far-reaching
• Spatial is defined as the distributional patterns of political processes
• Interaction between process and geographical space in the context
of political systems – within a political system landscape and area
changes may take place as a result of population growth, economics
of scale etc.
• Political processes are inseparable from the overriding societal forces by
which man order his political life. Formal political institutions and social
structures such as kinship, class, status, authority, communication, elitism
and bureaucracy are mechanisms by which man makes operational such
forces as nationalism, imperialism, federalism, capitalism, religion and
racism.
• Casting of political process within the context of societal forces
• A basic objective of analyzing process in a spatial context is to examine man’s
behavour in space.
• Spatial is defined as the distributional patterns of political processes and the
spatial relations of these patterns with pertinently related phenomena
• Man’s political role in society and the relation of that role to the land
• Interaction between the several facets of main political role and the
multidimensional aspects of the land.
• Political action area is often a mosaic of the conflict between territoriality and
political place perception, and the action area may be confined to, or may go
beyond, the original political area and the system or systems under which that
area is organized.
• Dissolution of the political area or resolution of the conflict occurs when the
area coincides with the original political area, that is when territoriality,
political perception of a place and functional organization are coincident with
the legally defined area.
Wallerstein’s World System Approach
• Wallerstein’s World System Approach (1970s and 80s)
• Attempts to combine selectively critical elements of Brandel’s materialist history with Fran’s neo-Marxist
development studies as well as adding several new features to develop a comprehensive ‘historical social
science’.
• Wallerstein explicitly brings history back in to social science and also with the incorporation of Frank’s ideas
he attempts to bring geography back in to social science.
• Questions the whole system of concepts and categories employed by modern social science
• Challenges modern social science on the following three basic grounds
• The myth of universal laws – for all times and places
• The poverty of disciplines – increasing complexity of the modern world with massive growth of
sate activity, it is becoming increasingly difficult to identify problems as distinctively economic,
social or political. By studying events separately in disciplines the type of solutions to problems
that can by found is severely curtailed. Therefore, there is increasing awareness that the
disciplines are more a hindrance than a help to understanding our world
• Error of developmentalism – states or countries are inappropriate units for studying change.
They are not self contained systems developing separately from one another but are all part of a
larger whole. To treat them separately and to model change accordingly is to make the
fundamental error of developmentalism.
• The error of developmentalism can be avoided by choosing the
correct object of analysis. For the study of contemporary social
change there is one such entity – the world economy.

• World system approach allow us to specify much more than the


study of contemporary social change.
• Study the basic elements of world economy
• Concept of core and periphery

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