Approaches To Political Geography
Approaches To 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.