Geopolitical Traditions - Critical Histories of a Century of Geopolitical Thought (Hardcover)

Condemned as an intellectual poison by the late American geographer Richard Hartshbornem, geopolitics has confounded its critics. Today it remains a popular intellectual field despite the persistent allegations that geopolitics helped to legitimate Hitler's policies of spatial expansionism and the domination of place. Using insights from critical geopolitics and cultural history, the contributors focus on how geopolitics has been created, negotiated and contested within a variety of intellectual and popular contexts. It argues that geopolitics has to take responsibility for the past whilst at the same time reconceptualizing geopolitics in a manner which accounts for the dramatic changes in the late 20th century. The book is divided into three sections: firstly "Rethinking Geopolitical Histories" concentrates on how geopolitical conversations between European scholars and the wider world unfolded; secondly "Geopolitics, Nation and Spirituality" considers how geopolitical writings have been strongly influenced by religions, iconography and doctrine with examples drawn from Catholicicsm, Judaism and Hinduism; and thirdly "Reclaiming and Refocusing Geopolitics" contemplates how geopoli