Making Political Geography, Second Edition

A compelling book which inquires into the history of the subfield and sketches the intellectual horizon of the future of political geography. * Progress In Human Geography * This informative and well-written book carefully scrutinizes both the complex history of political geography and the contemporary challenges the field faces in a globalizing world. Offering current and versatile examples, the authors usefully problematize how politics, identities, and power relations are informed by geography and how geography is in turn informed by politics. This will be a major text for both students and researchers of political geography. -- Anssi Paasi, University of Oulu, Finland This engaging book uses the revealing history of Political Geography to explore a broader canvas of geopolitics and politically framed geographic knowledge from the imperialist age through the Cold War to the present. Illustrated with fascinating vignettes and everyday examples, this is an ideal text with which to think through the vertiginous dilemmas of our time. If Political Geography had an app, this would be it. -- Gerard Toal, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Now thoroughly revised and updated, this concise text offers a deeply knowledgeable and balanced history and overview of political geography since its inception in the late nineteenth century. Rather than trying to impose a single "fashionable" theory, leading geographers John Agnew and Luca Muscarà consider the underlying role of changing geopolitical context for understanding the evolution of the discipline. The authors focus especially on reinterpretations of the post-Cold War period, exploring the renewed questioning of international borders, the emergence of the Middle East and displacement of Europe as the center of global geopolitics, the rise of China and other new powers, the reappearance of environmental issues, and the development of critical geopolitics. Offering more flexibility than a traditional core text, this book will be a valuable resource for all courses in political geography.