Geopolitics and Connectivity
Geopolitics has traditionally been understood within International Relations as the study of space and power, particularly in relation to ideas of territory. Controversially, it has been assumed in specific historical settings to be a science that determines order in the world. Geopolitics is studied in this project in a rather different way. It is taken to be an effect of the power relations that constitute space(s) and frame the ways in which individuals and collectives live. In simple terms, geopolitics does not determine an order but expresses the ways in which the world is ordered.
Geopolitics is explored here as a connectivity effect around four interconnected problems, those of localisation, territorialisation, strategisation, and logisticisation of space. Each one of them is analysed in relation to a historical case: the making of the early Spanish Empire in America; the making of the Greenwich Meridian; the making of the Kiel, Panama and Suez canals; and the making of the contemporary Silk Road from and to China.
RUG investigator involved: prof.dr. Luis Lobo-Guerrero
Research themes: Historical Epistemology | The Politics of Global Connectivities | Modes of Reasoning
| Last modified: | 22 February 2017 2.59 p.m. |