Popular Geopolitics,Audiences and Identities: Reading the ‘War on Terror’ in the Philippines

Audience research has traditionally been neglected within the subfield of popular geopolitics. However in recent years, geographers are increasingly focusing on the making of geopolitical meanings by audiences as they consume popular culture and related texts. Drawing on recent assemblage thinking in geopolitics, this paper argues that audiences form part of the animators of a network that links the human body with places, environments, objects and discourses related to geopolitics. By investigating Filipinos’ critical readings of and engagements with the ‘war on terror’ in Mindanao as represented through the national newspaper, the Philippines Daily Inquirer, the agency and power of audiences in the creative enactments of geopolitics and geography are illuminated. As such, understanding the complex interactions between popular media and its audiences can prove useful in casting insights into the everyday, geopolitical ‘playing out’ of issues of terrorism, violence and peace in the Philippines context and beyond.     

Networked Assemblages and Geopolitical Media: Governance,Infrastructure and Sites in BBC Radio

ABSTRACT

The development of radio as a communication and broadcasting technology has been vital to popular, formal and practical geopolitics. This paper contributes to the nascent literature on assemblage thought in geopolitics by considering radio as a historical iteration of “the media”. Through this dialogue, it is suggested that British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) radio is both a material and discursive assemblage, operating at multiple scales, sites and intensities of governance. The paper argues that radio cannot be seen simply as a vehicle for producing popular geopolitical imaginaries, nor as a neutral military or cultural diplomatic tool. Contributing to the use of assemblage and actor–network thought in historical-popular geopolitics, the paper begins by articulating the benefits of certain elements of these theoretical registers to the sub-field in general, before moving onto a series of empirical fragments from the archive to illustrate these abstractions in a more concrete manner. First, it does so by considering the early governance and regulation of radio in the 1920s, then the forces producing the BBC’s Middle Eastern Relay network during the late 1960s. The paper concludes with a further call to take materiality seriously, particularly in future popular geopolitical research dealing with media networks.     

A Geopolitical Analysis of Popular Songs in the CCTV Spring Festival Gala, 1983–2013

Based on the notions of ‘popular geopolitics’ and ‘practical geopolitics’, this article explores how China’s geopolitical strategies are represented and reproduced by the popular songs in the CCTV (China Central Television) Spring Festival Gala during the past thirty years (1983–2013). Drawing on the (con)textual and visual analysis of 539 popular songs, how geopolitical knowledges are represented and reproduced by these songs and how these songs are involved with China’s geopolitical strategies are analysed. The main argument of this article indicates that the official regulated popular songs in the annual Gala can be considered as important constitutions of China’s state apparatus which aim at propagandising and legitimating the official geopolitical strategies on both internal and international affairs. As research of the geopolitical engagements of China’s popular music, this article might also be read as a contribution to wider literatures on popular and practical geopolitics from a non-Western perspective.     

The Good Wife’s (Geo)Politics Between Originality and Stereotypes: A New Wine or Just a New Bottle?

In the last 15 years, a new generation of TV series based on complex storytelling and frequently focused on politics has emerged. Critics and commentators have identified this as a new golden age for television, frequently emphasising the accuracy and originality of this generation of TV series, and highlighting its capacity to represent different aspects of our world in an effective and innovative manner. Peculiar and original characters in political TV series are also being recognised in academic studies; in particular, these programs have attracted diffused interest in cultural and political studies and more recently also in popular geopolitics. The aim of this article is to contribute to this debate by analysing the ambivalent geopolitical perspectives transmitted within these forms of contemporary media products. By focusing on the political and legal series The Good Wife, produced by CBS between 2009 and 2016, the paper shows how original and challenging representations of politics and society pair well with very traditional and stereotyped geopolitical representations. Consequently, the paper suggests that in many cases, the acclaimed originality in the form of TV series conceals old and stereotyped contents.     

It's Not a Laughing Matter: Critical Geopolitics,Humour and Unlaughter

This paper explores the possibilities of considering humour and laughter as a serious matter of concern for critical geopolitics and political geography more generally. While there has been some interest in this topic, there is scope to devise a more expansive research agenda. Using both laughter and Michael Billig's notion of unlaughter, the paper considers how these visceral expressions contribute, often in subtle ways, to the making of geopolitical subjectivities. The final part of the paper considers some possibilities for future research.     

Undead Spaces: Fear,Globalisation, and the Popular Geopolitics of Zombiism

In recent years, zombies have enjoyed a dramatic renaissance in various forms of popular culture. This essay argues that the current obsession with the walking dead, and particularly the looming threat of human-zombie conflicts, is a reflection of the dangers of invasive alterity associated with uncontrolled spaces in a globalised world. This shift is especially prevalent in the United States following 9/11, as zombies have become phantasmal stand-ins for Islamist terrorists, illegal immigrants, carriers of foreign contagions, and other ‘dangerous’ border crossers. Through three case studies which examine zombie ‘outbreaks’ on the local, national, and global levels, respectively, I discuss the importance of borders and geopolitical spaces in recent fictional depictions of human-zombie conflicts. As metaphors for illicit globalisation, zombies have emerged as a key pop-culture referent of the porous nature of socio-cultural, political, and physical boundaries in a global age defined by an emotional geopolitics of fear.     

Battle Scars: Wonder Woman,Aesthetic Geopolitics and Disfigurement in Hollywood Film

ABSTRACT

Wonder Woman (2017) has been one of the most lucrative entries in the recent superhero film canon. With a female lead and director, it has also proven a rich text for feminist analysis. Here, the film’s engagement with questions of gender, aesthetic judgment and disability is explored through the lens of feminist geopolitics, and connected to the alignment between immorality and disfigurement in Hollywood more broadly. It is suggested that aesthetic value is used in the film as a key organizing principle for spatial and geopolitical claims. Through this analysis, the paper suggests the potential for further studies of disability, including disfigurement, in popular geopolitics.     

Švejkian Geopolitics: Subversive Obedience in Central Europe

This article uses the character of Josef ?vejk from the popular Czech novel The Good Soldier ?vejk and his Fortunes in the World War to illuminate the subversive effects of irony and self-deprecating humour on dominant geopolitical narratives. Empirically, my examples focus on the coverage of NATO invitation in major Estonian newspapers in 2002. Theoretically, these examples highlight the subtlety of resistance and the central role of irony in it. By foregrounding ?vejkian absurd obedience, which is nonetheless highly subversive, the article contributes to a better understanding of popular geopolitics, resistance geopolitics, and more broadly, the role of human agency in geopolitical discourses.     

The Shifting Geopolitics of Water in the Anthropocene

This forum responds to recent calls to hypothesize a geopolitics of the Anthropocene by examining how our notions of geopolitics of water may shift in the context of this new and, at times, divisive framework. The Anthropocene describes the geological epoch in which humans are the dominant actor in the global environmental system and has been a concept that is not without controversy. Taking the Anthropocene as an epistemological divergence where nature can no longer be viewed as separate from humanity, this forum asks how moving away from understanding hydraulic systems as essentially stable to understanding them as unstable and profoundly influenced by humans changes our understanding ofthe geopolitics of water. Collectively the contributions to this forum illustrate that formulating a water geopolitics of the Anthropocene requires 1) moving beyond a focus on fluvial flows to consider other forms of water; 2) broadening our understanding of the actors involved in water geopolitics; 3) examining new geopolitical tactics, particularly those grounded in law; 4) engaging critically with new and emerging forms of visualization and representation in the geopolitics of water, and; 5) examining how the notion of the Anthropocene has been used towards geopolitical ends and worked to elide different positionalities.     

Geopolitics of the Cosmopolis

Through an analysis of a speech held by Finnish Minister of Defence Jyri Häkämies at CSIS in Washington in 2007, the article scrutinizes the new emergence of “geopolitics” in international politics. Although its novelty is debatable, in this new geopolitical discourse the main focus is not related to the spatial borders of a nation state but instead to securing territory beyond these borders. It seems that “common values”, basically undefined but allegedly including such ideas like democracy, are related to this new form of “geopolitics”. In contrast to traditional geopolitics and identity politics, the global or cosmopolitical “us” defending common values seems to be a changing coalition and other countries appear only as objects of its operations. Only Russia, waking from its decade-long hibernation, emerges as a potential challenge to “us”. Curiously enough, its awakening also brings geopolitics back. The analysis of the speech reveals that the “new situation” requires choosing friends and enemies that are not clearly defined in the classical geopolitical sense. Even in the traditional sense of protecting the borders etc., the geopolitical security of Finland is best protected through acting for the geopolitical security of the whole world, no matter where or when that might require our presence. But from where does, for instance, the legitimacy of the operations of “us” derive? In the speech of minister Häkämies, many of the classical themes of political theory reappear, though in a new form. It is guided by geopolitical concerns, but the geopolitics it entails is rather different from the traditional way of thinking about it. This also creates a need to rethink some central concerns of political theory.     

A Popular Geopolitics of the Refugee Crisis in Europe: The Re-actualization of Identity-driven Geopolitical Narratives in Estonia

ABSTRACT

The article examines the question of how the refugee crisis in Europe re-actualizes the existing national geopolitical narratives and affects the border-(re)drawing of European political communities. I particularly refer to the Estonian experience, which I examine through two different case studies. The first one focuses on the refugee issue as seen from the perspective of fostering a less nationalistic and more heterogeneous identity in Estonia, expressed in the language of contemporary art. The second one addresses the perceptions of the refugee debate by Russian speakers in Narva who directly relate this question to their personal experiences with integration into Estonian society since the fall of the Soviet Union. I analyse both issues within the framework of popular geopolitics that tackles cultural representations of territories, spaces, and identity politics from the viewpoint of vernacular, home-grown, and routine meanings, to bring this culturally focused approach to the foreground of research into politically sensitive phenomena.     

Geopolitics of Affect and Emotions in a Post-Conflict City

This paper aims to advance our knowledge of the relationships between emotions, affect, and geopolitics. For, among several criticisms of affect’s non-representational theories, is the claim that it has not been used to understand problems of real social and political importance. What is crucially lacking in this important body of work on the nexus between affect and politics is empirically grounded research that examines these processes, especially in situations of geopolitical instability and conflict. In this paper, I seek to address this gap by attending to the geopolitical role of feelings in the volatile political climate of a post-conflict city. Specifically, my work examines the emotional and affective landscapes of daily life in the city of Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina which, twenty years after the war officially ended, continues to experience divisions between its Croat/Catholic and Bosniak/Muslim populations.     

Geopolitics and territorial issues: Relevance for South America

This paper surveys the impact of geopolitical thinking as applied to issues of territory in Latin America, with special emphasis upon its Southern Cone. The relevance of geopolitics is examined as an ideological doctrine and as a normative framework to understand territorial changes, territorial conflicts that have not escalated into fully‐fledged wars, and rare cases of actual wars fought in the twentieth century in South America. I question the changing meaning of geopolitical doctrines following the ‘third wave’ of democratization in Latin America by suggesting more ‘positive’ avenues for the former pernicious “implications of geopolitical doctrines, including economic development and regional integration. Finally, I juxtapose ‘conventional’ geopolitics with more recent ideas of ‘critical’ geopolitics and its potential implementation in the region.     

‘Wiped From the Map of the World’? Zanzibar,Critical Geopolitics and Language

This essay uses the case of Zanzibar in its complicated relationship with the United Republic of Tanzania (of which it is a part) as a lens on debates in political geography on empirical and conceptual approaches to critical geopolitics. We test the veracity of a multi-faceted critical geopolitics in the contemporary public contestation of Zanzibar's place in the United Republic from 2008–2012. We analyze Tanzanian media, the speech acts of Tanzanian leaders, and the key events and processes related to what is termed the ‘Zanzibar problem’ during the selected years, to make two points about a critical geopolitics approach: to strengthen critical geopolitics by broadening the analysis of language to engage political acts and languages beyond the Global North; and taking ‘subaltern geopolitics’ more seriously via engagement with critical geopolitical voices on discourses, events and processes from the Global South.     

Interpreting the Crisis,Envisioning the Future

ABSTRACT

What role do the historic identity tropes associated with being an island play in the foreign policy of contemporary Britain? To answer this underexplored question, this article utilises theories of critical geopolitics and ontological security to analyse a series of recent parliamentary debates and reveals the continuing importance of geopolitics to British foreign policy. This entails a conceptualisation of the role that discourses of island geopolitics played in the British Empire, giving rise to a set of tropes that I call island identity. Many studies emphasise the enduring pragmatism of British foreign policy; by contrast, my framework allows a foregrounding of how foreign policy-makers seek ontological security through the use of the established discursive tropes of island identity which establish Britain in subject positions of geopolitical relevance relative to novel contexts. The case studies focus in particular on globalisation and the EU –two issues of particular relevance, especially since the Brexit vote. This article allows a deeper understanding of both by contextualising them within British traditions of geopolitical discourse.     

The New Geopolitics of Disease: Between Global Health and Global Security

This article describes the emergence of a new geopolitics of disease following the end of the Cold War and offers a framework for thinking about it. Three main questions are asked. First, why is disease now a geopolitical issue? Second, how has this new geopolitics emerged? And third, what are the implications of the emergence of disease as a geopolitical issue for the meaning and practice of global health? It is argued that disease is now seen as a geopolitical issue in terms of four main dimensions: destabilisation, sovereignty, the instrumentalisation of health, and geopolitical economy. Second, this new geopolitics has emerged in the context of larger debates about globalisation, development and security, and has emanated primarily from Northern institutions. Third, drawing on critical approaches to security, it is suggested that while the securitisation of health offers certain benefits, it also carries risks. The article identifies a number of critical tensions in the new geopolitics of disease as a way of negotiating these risks and anchoring the concept of global health security in a larger vision of health in an era of globalisation.