ABSTRACT
Geopolitics is the struggle over hegemony in places and spaces. More specifically, geopolitics relates to the control of territory as well as to the representation of spaces and places and their interpretation, for instance, as “last frontiers” or “military arenas” (→ Military, II/37). From a geopolitical perspective, the sovereignty over territory and the strategic relevance ascribed to places and spaces impacts political relationships. As a theoretical concept, geopolitics is examined in a cross-disciplinary field of area studies, political science, and political geography. In mass media (→ Cultural Industries, III/27), strategy and policy papers the term geopolitics is mostly used in a “classical” sense, meaning that it relates to the strategic aims of states (→ Nation State, II/38) ascribed to spaces and places (→ Political Communication, II/42). In this regard, the purpose of the concept has been discussed as being controversial because of its historical connection to colonialism (→ Conquest and Colonization, I/7) and imperialism and particularly due to its use in Nazi Germany. The approach of Critical Geopolitics, on the other hand, expands the understanding of geopolitics when considering political and cultural productions as well as the perception of geographical assumptions (such as the demarcation of national territories by borders). In critical geopolitical studies thus, a wider range of actors outside the military and political elites is taken into consideration as well as the distinct discourses to which they contribute (for the differences between Classical and Critical Geopolitics, see Ó Tuathail 1996, 21–74; for a short overview, see Dodds et al., 2013, 1–3).
