The Dictionary of Human Geography

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approaches. Its focus became a functional

view of the state that promoted national inte-

gration and theaccumulation ofcapital.

Two types of states were identified; independ-

entsovereignstates and dependent countries

(colonies and other possessions) (Hartshorne,

1950). The latter were largely ignored as were

the power relationships between rich and

poor, or colonized and colonizing states.

Without the previous environmental frame-

work and with little political purpose, political

geography lost its coherence and relevance

(Claval, 1984). Instead, political geographers

described political events (such as elections)

or features (such as boundaries)inan

attempt to oil the wheels of state integration

and capital growth. Political geography

remained state-centric, but inward-looking

rather than geo-strategic, and normative

rather than prescriptive.

Political geography, as with all academic

studies, is a product of its social and intellec-

tual contexts. Global competition between

states and concepts of social Darwinism

stimulated Mackinder and Ratzel, and post-

war prosperity fuelled the blandness offunc-

tionalism. In the 1960s the global politics of

the Vietnam War and internal crises mani-

fested inraceriots were linked to a growing

intellectual engagement with the work of Karl

Marx (seemarxism). Political geography was

not immune, and over time a critical political

geography began to emerge. The process was a

step-by-step identification of social issues and

marginalized groups, adoption of new and

fertile social theoretical frameworks, and the

recognition of different useful methodologies.

Initially, two broad themes were explored,

both relying on spatial analytical techniques:

the distribution ofresourcesand opportun-

ities in cities (Cox, 1973), andelectoral

geography (Taylor and Johnston, 1979).

Both branches brought the belated introduc-

tion of analytical techniques to political geog-

raphy. However, these were seen as

inadequate in discovering the causes of social

inequality. The parallel emergence ofradical

geographywas seen by some as a means of

identifying underlying structures that were

producing social inequality and related polit-

icalconflicts.

The urban problems of racial strife and eco-

nomic disparity and the global problems of

war and gross economic inequality provoked

different uses of radical literature. David

Harvey’s (1999 [1982]) Limits to capital

deployed the work of Karl Marx to explain

how the production of urban spaces was a

necessary and contested part ofcapitalism.

On the other hand, Peter Taylor (1985)

adopted the neo-Marxistworld-systems the-

oryof Immanuel Wallerstein to situate states

within the dynamics of the capitalist world-

economy. The product was a concentration

on the political geography of geographical

scalewith the local/urban, nation-state and

global scales being identified as interlinked.

Institutional support for political geography

blossomed to match the changing intellectual

climate. The journal Political Geography

Quarterly(laterPolitical Geography) was estab-

lished in 1982. The first edition of Peter

Taylor’s (1985) textbookPolitical geography:

world-economy, nation-state and localityand a

host of conferences and related edited volumes

(Burnett and Taylor, 1981) identified the sub-

discipline as a reinvigorated component of

human geography.

However, in the 1990s human geography

took what has been labelled the ‘cultural

turn’ and engaged with social theorists other

than Marx (seesocial theory). The result

was a challenge to what was perceived as the

existing reification of scale and the concentra-

tion upon economic structures. The politics of

the production of scale was theorized with

increasing sophistication, and feminist geo-

graphers and queer theorists (see feminist

geographies; queer theory) demanded

focus upon thescalesof thebodyand the

household. Political geography became

increasingly eclectic ascultural geography

emphasized the political conflicts inherent in

cultural constructs and political geography

included the cultural representation of polit-

ics. The boundaries of the sub-discipline

became increasingly blurred (Painter, 1995).

One outcome was a renewed interest in the

topic ofgeopolitics. Since the Second World

War, political geography had defined itself as

different from geopolitics. The topic ofcrit-

ical geopolitics(O ́Tuathail, 1996b) focused

on the existing geopolitical practices of states

anddeconstructedthe rhetoric of politicians

and ‘experts’ to illuminate the underlying

powerpolitics. Critical geopolitics also pro-

moted a concentration on non-state actors,

such associal movementsand indigenous

groups, which also reflected calls for increased

study of race, gender and sexuality

(Kobayashi and Peake, 2000; Staeheli,

Kofman and Peake, 2004); though these topics

and theoretical perspectives are not yet fully

integrated into political geographical analyses.

The concentration upon the state,nation-

alism and international politics, or formal

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POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY