Political Geography

Citation

Painter, J., & Jeffrey, A. (2009). Political Geography: An Introduction to Space and Power (2nd ed.). SAGE Publications.

Chapter Summary

The book is a compact text of about 250 pages: a preface to the second edition, an introduction, nine chapters and a bibliography. It continues Joe Painter's earlier single-author book Politics, Geography and Political Geography (1995), now written with Alex Jeffrey. In the introduction the authors say their aim is to bring ideas from social and cultural geography (meaning, discourse, subjectivity and identity, the critique of geographical knowledge, human agency) to the formal institutions of "Politics with a capital P", and they state that they do not offer a full account of every shift in the world's political geography but illustrate their approach through selected examples.

Introduction

Sets out the book's intellectual background in the blurring of human geography's sub-disciplines and the "cultural turn", describes the readership (students of political and cultural geography and anyone interested in space, place and political processes) and outlines the nine chapters. The authors note that the topics are conventional for political geography while their treatment is meant to be less so.

Chapter 1: Politics, Geography and Political Geography

The framing chapter. It distinguishes formal politics (government, parties, elections) from informal politics ("politics is everywhere"), introduces Michel Foucault's idea of power as diffuse and "capillary", and separates the material from the discursive aspects of social practice, illustrating the point with the invention of the "teenager". It then sets out a six-part framework used throughout: people and their competing needs, strategic action, resources and power, institutions, authority and sovereignty, and political identities. The authors present this as a way of thinking rather than a template. The chapter then relates politics to space, place, landscape and environment and places political geography within human geography.

Chapters 2–3: State Formation; From Welfare State to Workfare State

Chapter 2 treats the rise of the system of nation-states and the process of state formation, setting classical views beside recent work on governance and governmentality. Chapter 3 follows the shift of many liberal-democratic countries from a welfare to a "workfare" model of labour-market and social regulation, one example of the restructuring of state strategies.

Chapters 4–5: Democracy, Citizenship and Elections; Politics and the City

Chapter 4 looks at the changing organisation and role of the liberal-democratic state in the late twentieth century and at how its expansion reshaped political participation, with attention to the changing geographies of citizenship and elections and to models of democracy. Chapter 5 turns to contemporary urban change and the politics of urban infrastructures, gentrification and the public sphere.

Chapters 6–7: Identity Politics and Social Movements; Nationalism and Regionalism

Chapter 6 examines how identity politics relates to the development of social movements, charting the move from union-centred labour movements to new forms of grassroots action. Chapter 7 explores the political geographies of nations, nationalism and regionalism, treating supposedly fixed identities and territorialisations as socially constructed.

Chapters 8–9: Imperialism and Post-Colonialism; Geopolitics and Anti-Geopolitics

Chapter 8 covers imperialism and the continuing implications of colonialism for relations between the West, its former colonies and their peoples, with theory ranging from world-systems accounts to post-structuralist ones. Chapter 9 assesses the history of the term geopolitics and recent critical and feminist work that exposes the power/knowledge relations hidden in geopolitical ideas; the introduction notes that geopolitics has received the most attention since the first edition.

Key Concepts

Chapter 1: Framework

• Formal and informal politics: formal politics is the constitutional system and its institutions; informal politics runs through everyday life.
• Capillary power: Foucault's idea that in modern societies power operates through routine relationships rather than from a single centre.
• Material and discursive practices: social practice involves both the organisation of things and the ideas and meanings attached to them.
• Authority, legitimation and sovereignty: claims to rule are assertions that need to be made to seem legitimate.

Chapters 2–9: Topics

• State formation and governmentality: how the nation-state system arose and how governing works through institutions and techniques.
• Welfare to workfare: the restructuring of state strategies of social regulation.
• Citizenship and electoral geography: how participation and representation are organised in space.
• Social constructions of identity and territory: nations, regions and movements as produced rather than given.
• Critical and feminist geopolitics; anti-geopolitics: reading geopolitical ideas for the power they conceal and the resistance they provoke.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A clear stated approach. The introduction explains the angle taken (social and cultural geography applied to formal politics) and Chapter 1 gives a usable six-part framework that the authors say they use as a guide when assessing more specific theories in later chapters.
• Broad but organised coverage. The nine chapters run from the state and democracy through cities, movements and nationalism to empire and geopolitics; the publisher presents the book as systematically overviewing the whole discipline while keeping its focus on the social and cultural.
• Revised for a second edition. The publisher describes the edition as revised and updated, and the introduction notes that geopolitics, the area that has received the most attention since the first edition, is now assessed through critical and feminist work.
• Accessible to undergraduates. The publisher presents it as a core undergraduate resource, and a lecturer's comment on the publisher's page calls it a very good overview that covers the key topics in an accessible and engaging style.

Limitations

• Selective by design. The authors state that they do not give a full account of the political geography of the world; examples illustrate the framework. Readers who want regional or global-systems coverage need another text.
• No chapters on territory or borders as such. The contents contain no chapter devoted to territory, boundaries or the international system as a spatial order; territorialisation appears within the nationalism chapter and territory within the framework of Chapter 1, but neither is a topic of its own.
• Dated in its examples. The opening chapter surveys political change up to 2008, so recent developments are absent.
• Theory-first. Chapter 1 asks readers to take on Foucauldian concepts of power and discourse at the outset, which suits students with some social theory but can be demanding for beginners.

Where It Fits in the Course

Within the course's reading list, this is a concept-led textbook that sits between the brief introductions and the specialist monographs. Klaus Dodds's Geopolitics: A Very Short Introduction and Sara Smith's Political Geography: A Critical Introduction are the more concise starting points; Smith covers territory, sovereignty, nation and borders and brings in feminist and anti-colonial approaches. Flint and Taylor's Political Geography: World-Economy, Nation-State, and Locality is a broader textbook organised by a world-systems framework, and a useful contrast with Painter and Jeffrey's Foucault-influenced social theory.

Harm de Blij's Why Geography Matters More Than Ever makes a general argument about place, borders and resources rather than offering a framework. Stuart Elden's The Birth of Territory is a historical study of one concept and a natural follow-up, since territory is the topic that Painter and Jeffrey treat only indirectly.

How to Use This Book

The book suits second- and third-year undergraduates in geography, politics and international relations who have taken an introductory human geography or politics course. Some familiarity with basic social theory helps, although the text introduces its main terms.

A practical plan:

• Read the Introduction and Chapter 1 first, and return to the six-part framework when working through later chapters.
• Core chapters: 2, 4, 7 and 9 for a standard political-geography syllabus; add 3 for state restructuring and 8 for empire.
• Choose by interest: Chapter 5 for urban or planning students, Chapter 6 for those interested in social movements.
• Pair it with a text that covers territory and borders, such as Smith, and read Chapter 9 alongside Dodds.

Use the bibliography to find the original theoretical sources, and test the framework by applying its six elements to a current political dispute.