GEOG 33.01 Geopolitics and Third World Development
Political geographers have recently recovered a critical understanding of "geopolitics" in order to highlight how geographical representations - and the construction of spaces and places - are a constitutive part of politics from the global to the local scale. In keeping with this, this course will examine the mutual constructions of places, identities, and politics from a Third World perspective. The course will begin with an overview of geopolitical discourses that underpinned the processes of Western imperialism and colonialism such as "civilization" and "social darwinism." It will then examine contemporary geopolitical (dis)orders through the lens of topics such as globalization, gender, environmental security, humanitarian aid, and terrorism. Finally, the course will examine alternative geopolitical imaginations as constructed through social movements and grassroots politics.