Global Political Geography beyond Geopolitics

Abstract

Resisting the Bomb. A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1954–1970. Vol. 2 of The Struggle Against the Bomb, Lawrence S. Wittner (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997). 641 pp., cloth (ISBN: 0-8047-2918-2), $65.00; paper (ISBN: 0-8047-3169-1), $24.95. Domestic Society and International Cooperation: The Impact of Protest on U.S. Arms Control Policy, Jeffrey W. Knopf (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 287 pp., cloth (ISBN: 0-5216-2240-9), $59.95; paper (ISBN: 0-5216-2691-9), $19.95. Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940, Stephen I. Schwartz, ed. (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1998). 680 pp., cloth (ISBN: 0-8157-7774-4), $59.95; paper (ISBN: 0-8157-7773-6), $24.95. Global political geography is undergoing a revival of scholarly interest after years of relative neglect. The three books under review provide a good cross-section of recent thinking, addressing three of its primary concerns: the role of geographical scale (local, regional, national, global, etc.) in establishing political identities; geopolitical practice as a form of power/knowledge; and shifts in the “mix” of geographical scales at which the world economy and, increasingly, world politics are organized. Herb and Kaplan claim that political identities can no longer be equated with fixed or stable national ones. AŇ Tuathail argues that geopolitical content is implicit in the very practice of foreign policy. Scott suggests that the world is in a period of transition from a political geography based primarily on a mosaic of state territories to one organized with reference to an emerging network of global city-regions. Each book offers an approach to contemporary international studies that scholars largely ignorant of the revival of political geography may find interesting and useful. Books reviewed in this article: Herb, Guntram H. and Kaplan, David H. (eds.) Nested Identities: Nationalism, Territory, and Scale Tuathail, Gearoid O. Critical Geopolitics: The Politics of Writing Global Space Scott, Allen J. Regions and the World Economy: The Coming Shape of Global Production, Competition, and Political Order