Ten maps that reveal the future of global power and politics: the much-anticipated sequel to the million-copy bestseller Prisoners of Geography

A beautifully presented gift for anyone with an intrigue for geographical curiosities. This beautifully designed book presents unusual borders, enclaves and exclaves, divided or non-existent cities and islands. Numerous conflicts have left countries divided and often shattered. Remnants of countries can by design or accident be left behind as a legal anomaly in this complex world. Most people believe that a country's borders are clearly defined: just lines that separate countries. Everything on one side of the line belongs to one country and everything on the other side belongs to another country. This might be the case most of the time, but there are unusual exceptions to this unwritten rule. Examples include: * Campione d'Italia where Italian residents have to travel 15km through Switzerland to reach the nearest available Italian territory * Tomb of Suleyman Shah which is a tiny Turkish enclave within Syria which was moved closer to Turkey when Lake Assad was created but still stayed in Syria * Pheasant Island which for half a year belongs to the Spanish city of Irun, and the remaining half, to its French twin-town, Hendaye * Canadian Stanstead and American Beebe Plain where the boundary line runs along the centre of the main street, so that the houses on one side of the street are in Canada and on the other in the United States These and many more instances are captured in this fascinating book full of strange geographical intrigue. International Cartographic conference 2021 overall winner of the atlas category and shortlisted for the 2020 Edward Stanford Travel Writing.

Elgar Research Agendas outline the future of research in a given area. Leading scholars are given the space to explore their subject in provocative ways, and map out the potential directions of travel. They are relevant but also visionary. This innovative Research Agenda draws together discussions on the conceptualization of territory and the ways in which territory and territorial practices are intimately bound with issues of power and control. Expert contributors provide a critical assessment of key areas of scholarship on territory and territoriality across a wide range of spatial scales and with examples drawn from the global landscape. After an introduction to shifting ideas of territory, territoriality and sovereignty, the book deals with territory in its more traditional macro-scale sense at the level of the nation-state before going on to explore questions of territory, identity and belonging at a more micro-scale focusing on issues of citizenship, inclusion and exclusion. A Research Agenda for Territory and Territoriality will be a key resource for scholars and students in geopolitics and social and cultural geography, whilst also being a thought-provoking read for those interested in nations and nationalism, sovereignty, conflict, citizenship, and territory, place and locality.

This timely book offers an in-depth exploration of state partitions and the history of nationalism in Europe from the Enlightenment onwards. Stefano Bianchini compares traditional national democratic development to the growing transnational demands of representation with a focus on transnational mobility and empathy versus national localism against the EU project. In an era of multilevel identity, global economic and asylum seeker crises, nationalism is becoming more liquid which in turn strengthens the attractiveness of 'ethnic purity' and partitions, affects state stability, and the nature of national democracy in Europe. The result may be exposure to the risk of new wars, rather than enhanced guarantees of peace. Included is a rare and insightful comparative assessment of the lessons not learned from the Yugoslav demise, the Czechoslovak partition, the Baltic trajectory from USSR incorporation to EU integration, and the impact of ethnicity in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Beyond their peculiarities, these examples are used to critically assess the growing liquidity of national identities and their relationship with democracy. Those seeking a deeper understanding of the European partition experience will find this an immensely valuable resource.

The war in Syria has put Russia at the centre of Middle Eastern politics. Moscow's return to the region following a prolonged period of absence has enhanced its geopolitical status at a time it has emerged as a rival to the West. Yet, contrary to the media hype, Vladimir Putin is not set to become the new power-broker in this strategically important part of the world. Co-authored by a team of prominent scholars and analysts from the EU, US, Russia and the Middle East, this book explores Russia's role in the Middle East and North Africa, the diverse drivers shaping its policy, and the response from local players. Chapters map out the history of Russian involvement, before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the impact on key issues such as security and defence, regional conflicts, arms trade, and energy, as well as relations influential states and country clusters such as Iran, the Gulf, Turkey, Israel, Egypt, and the Maghreb. It also looks at how the Middle East impacts on Russia's relations with the West. The book offers a balanced assessment of Russian influence, highlighting both the political, diplomatic and commercial gains made thanks to Putin's decision in September 2015 to intervene militarily in Syria and the constraints preventing Moscow from replacing the United States as a regional hegemon.

Using a geographic lens to examine the adoption and dissemination of, and attention to 'fake news', this timely and important book explores how misinformation in the digital age calls attention to the multiple geographic dimensions of online fictions, conspiracy theories and political disinformation. Chapters delve into how social and digital media have rescaled and disrupted relations of trust and authority in the (mis)information age. The book draws on quantitative data and qualitative cases to shed light on the geographies of misinformation, covering urban legends, political rumors, information weaponization, and Climategate, as well as trade and financial fictions. The book explores in depth climate change misinformation, conspiracy theories and other critical contemporary events such as Pizzagate, Russian-led overseas political interference campaigns, and Cambridge Analytica. Geography and environmental studies scholars will benefit from the analysis of the denial of global climate change and geographic lens the book uses. It will also be an important read for practitioners and policy makers looking for a helpful reference summarizing interdisciplinary work on misinformation in accessible prose.

Encompassing papers form the 2019 Water and Society Conference, this book is a collection of latest trans-disciplinary research on issues related to the nature of water, and its use and exploitation by society. This book demonstrates the need to bridge the gap between specialists in physical sciences, biology, environmental sciences and health. Over the centuries, civilisations have relied on the availability of clean and inexpensive water. This can no longer be taken for granted as the need for water continues to increase due to the pressure from growing global population demanding higher living standards. Agriculture and industry, major users of water, are at the same time those that contribute to its contamination. Water distribution networks in urban areas, as well as soiled water collection systems, present serious problems in response to a growing population as well as the need to maintain ageing infrastructures. Many technologically feasible solutions, such as desalination or pumping systems are energy demanding but, as costs rise, the techniques currently developed may need to be re-assessed. The research contained in this book addresses the interaction between water and energy systems. The socio-political implications of a world short of clean, easily available water are enormous. It will lead to realignments in international politics and the emergence of new centres of power in the world. The following list covers some of the subjects included in this book: Water resources management; Agribusiness; Water as a human right; Water quality; Water resources contamination; Sanitation and health; Water and disaster management; Policy and legislation; Future water demands; Irrigation and water management; Management of catchments; Groundwater management and conservation.

Contested Waters provides an in-depth analysis of trans-boundary water conflict involving the Indus Basin in Pakistan. The book focuses on both national scale and local scale case studies to illustrate how these water conflicts are both discursively and materially driven by human institutions and politics. Through case studies of controversy over large dams, local flooding and irrigation methods, Daanish Mustafa highlights the various deeply political and institutional factors driving water conflict - specifically the disparity between national scale strategies of water politics and local scale water politics - and calls for engagement with water conflict in political terms.

Boundaries--lines imposed on the landscape--shape our lives, dictating everything from which candidates we vote for to what schools our children attend to the communities with which we identify. In "Creating the American West," historian Derek R. Everett examines the function of these internal lines in American history generally and in the West in particular. Drawing lines to create states in the trans-Mississippi West, he points out, imposed a specific form of political organization that made the West truly American.

Everett examines how settlers lobbied for boundaries and how politicians imposed them. He examines the origins of boundary-making in the United States from the colonial era through the Louisiana Purchase. Case studies then explore the ethnic, sectional, political, and economic angles of boundaries. Everett first examines the boundaries between Arkansas and its neighboring Native cultures, and the pseudo war between Missouri and Iowa. He then traces the lines splitting the Oregon Country and the states of California and Nevada, and considers the ethnic and political consequences of the boundary between New Mexico and Colorado. He explains the evolution of the line splitting the Dakotas, and concludes with a discussion of ways in which state boundaries can contribute toward new interpretations of borderlands history.

A major theme in the history of state boundaries is the question of whether to use geometric or geographic lines--in other words, lines corresponding to parallels and meridians or those fashioned by natural features. With the distribution of western land, Everett shows, geography gave way to geometry and transformed the West. The end of boundary-making in the late nineteenth century is not the end of the story, however. These lines continue to complicate a host of issues including water rights, taxes, political representation, and immigration. "Creating the American West" shows how the past continues to shape the present.

Travelling through various historical and geographical contexts, Social Imaginaries of Space explores diverse forms of spatiality, examining the interconnections which shape different social collectives. Proposing a theory on how space is intrinsically linked to the making of societies, this book examines the history of the spatiality of modern states and nations and the social collectives of Western modernity in a contemporary light. Debarbieux offers a practical exploration of his theory of the social imaginaries of space through the analysis of a number of case studies. Advanced geography scholars will find the analysis of space and its impact on societies a valuable tool in understanding the ways in which space, culture and behaviour interact. Historians of Western modernity will also benefit from Debarbieux's analysis of case studies that impact modern life.

A leading group of scholars examine the circumstances under which central states might change their shape in responding to ethnic upheavals and regionalist demands. A systematic approach is applied to a country-by-country approach examining in turn most of the key areas of state boundary disputes in the contemporary world.

The "European Capital of Culture" initiative offered dazzling programmes at the RUHR.2010 and Marseille-Provence 2013 locations; these programmes also claimed to have cultural-political sustainability. The study examines to what extent the concepts of the two cities contributed to processes of cultural policy transformation at the locations in terms of sustainable governance structures in the cultural sector. It also shows how intrinsic identities affected a culturally shaped transformation of the two sites. The need to reform the ECoC initiative is also discussed.

As international political and economic relations have become increasingly complex, so have the pressures on international boundaries and the borderlands which surround them. Although there are still many examples of "traditional" boundary problems associated with disputes between states concerning control over territory and maritime space, the papers in this volume demonstrate the vulnerability of borderlands to other forces, most notably illegal immigration and cross-border crime. This study aims to investigate the causes and implications of borderland stress. The first section explores changing concepts of sovereignty and their impact on the meaning and functions of international boundaries. The contributions in the second and third sections offer a combination of regional appraisals and individual case studies highlighting the range of problems affecting borderlands around the world, together with an assessment of some of the initiatives launched in response to those problems. While many of the conclusions drawn are rather sobering, it is clear that in some parts of the world new and imaginative approaches to territorial organization and management are helping to create safer, more dynamic and more prosperous borderlands. The papers in this volume represent the proceedings of the fifth International Conference of the International Boundaries Research Unit, held at the University of Durham on 15-17 July 1998.

Since the 1960s the resource-poor countries have grown much faster that the resource-rich ones. This reflects basic differences in the speed of industrialization and the nature of the political state that are rooted in the natural resource endowment. Most resource-rich countries experienced a growth collapse in the 1960s and 1970s. This book shows how policies for economic recovery must be adapted to reflect differences in the natural resource base and type of political state.

The so-called ?'spatial turn?' in the social sciences has led to an increased interest in what can be called the spatialities of power, or the ways in which power as a medium for achieving goals is related to where it takes place. This unique and intriguing Handbook argues that the spatiality of power is never singular and easily modeled according to straightforward theoretical bullet-points, but instead is best approached as plural, contextually emergent and relational. The Handbook on the Geographies of Power consists of a series of cutting edge chapters written by a diverse range of leading geographers working both within and beyond political geography. It is organized thematically into the main areas in which contemporary work on the geographies of power is concentrated: bodies, economy, environment and energy, and war. The Handbook maintains a careful connection between theory and empirics, making it a valuable read for students, researchers and scholars in the fields of political and human geography. It will also appeal to social scientists more generally who are interested in contemporary conceptions of power. Contributors include: J. Agnew, J. Allen, I. Ashutosh, J. Barkan, N. Bauch, L. Bhungalia, G. Boyce, B. Braun, M. Brown, P. Carmody, N. Clark, M. Coleman, A. Dixon, V. Gidwani, N. Gordon, M. Hird, P. Hubbard, J. Hyndman, J. Loyd, A. Moore, L. Muscara, N. Perugini, C. Rasmussen, P. Steinberg, K. Strauss, S. Wakefield, K. Yusoff

Sicker explores the political history of the Middle East from antiquity to the Arab conquest from a geopolitical perspective. He argues that there are a number of relatively constant environmental factors that have helped "condition"-not determine-the course of Middle Eastern political history from ancient times to the present. These factors, primarily, but not exclusively geography and topography, contributed heavily to establishing the patterns of state development and interstate relations in the Middle East that have remained remarkably consistent throughout the troubled history of the region.

In addition to geography and topography, the implications of which are explored in depth, religion has also played a major political role in conditioning the pattern of Middle Eastern history. The Greeks first introduced the politicization of religious belief into the region in the form of pan-Hellenism, which essentially sought to impose Greek forms of popular religion and culture on the indigenous peoples of the region as a means of solidifying Greek political control. This ultimately led to religious persecution as a state policy. Subsequently, the Persian Sassanid Empire adopted Zoroastrianism as the state religion for the same purpose and with the same result. Later, when Armenia adopted Christianity as the state religion, followed soon after by the Roman Empire, religion and the intolerance it tended to breed became fundamental ingredients, in regional politics and have remained such ever since. Sicker shows that the political history of the pre-Islamic Middle East provides ample evidence that the geopolitical and religious factors conditioning political decision-making tended to promote military solutions to political problems, making conflict resolution through war the norm, with the peaceful settlement of disputes quite rare. A sweeping synthesis that will be of considerable interest to scholars, students, and others concerned with Middle East history and politics as well as international relations and ancient history.

Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences, business and law, expertly written by the world's leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive and policy issues associated with discrete subject areas. The Advanced Introduction to Marxism and Human Geography explores the fundamental aspects of Marx's conceptualization of capital and of capitalist development, including value theory, the class relation, accumulation and the development of the capitalist division of labor. Kevin Cox goes beyond simplistic analysis to further engage with key concepts, and how their relationships with one another can illuminate the human geography of the world. Key features include: Comparative insights into human geography and Marx's theory A detailed discussion of capitalism and Marxism, covering topics such as capitalist geography, the capitalist city and urbanization A focus on core concepts of the field as well as looking more broadly at Marxist approaches to topics such as geopolitics and difference and uneven development. This engaging work will be valuable reading for students and scholars of human geography and Marxist geography.

First published in 1940 and this edition in 1987, this book is a comparative study of African political institutions. It describes different types of social organisation that are found in a number of African societies and analyses the principles underlying these traditional forms of government. The volume represents the results of field studies carried out by trained investigators in a number of areas, and was compiled and edited under the auspices of the International African Institute. It will be of interest to students, anthropologists and administrators.

It is difficult to speak about Europe today without reference to its constitutive regions-supra-national geographical designations such as "Scandinavia," "Eastern Europe," and "the Balkans." Such formulations are so ubiquitous that they are frequently treated as empirical realities rather than a series of shifting, overlapping, and historically constructed concepts. This volume is the first to provide a synthetic account of these concepts and the historical and intellectual contexts in which they emerged. Bringing together prominent international scholars from across multiple disciplines, it systematically and comprehensively explores how such "meso-regions" have been conceptualized throughout modern European history.

It is difficult to speak about Europe today without reference to its constitutive regions-supra-national geographical designations such as "Scandinavia," "Eastern Europe," and "the Balkans." Such formulations are so ubiquitous that they are frequently treated as empirical realities rather than a series of shifting, overlapping, and historically constructed concepts. This volume is the first to provide a synthetic account of these concepts and the historical and intellectual contexts in which they emerged. Bringing together prominent international scholars from across multiple disciplines, it systematically and comprehensively explores how such "meso-regions" have been conceptualized throughout modern European history.

This uniquely interdisciplinary volume analyzes the challenges posed by the heterogeneity of the world where radically different players are crammed into increasingly limited political, commercial, social, and ecological space. The rapid rise of Communist Party-ruled China is posing serious challenges to the postwar politico-economic architecture dominated by the United States. Russia, once expected to become a partner of the liberal Western international order, has started behaving in an increasingly unilateral fashion. The developing world is more characterized by failed governance rather than convergence to liberal democracies as was hoped by many Western authors. Given links provided by low-cost carriers, the Internet, and trade and investment, we simply cannot shield ourselves from influences, whether benign or malign, from neighbors on this planet.The authors, including political scientists, economists, social physicists, and experts on complexity theory and informatics, examine how interactions among actors with different properties can cause problems, and they analyze risks resulting from the interactions. While employing a variety of approaches to address topics such as economic interdependence among democracies and authoritarian states, the development assistance regimes, internal conflicts in developing countries, and cyber security, the whole volume presents a clear overview of challenges and risks the world is facing. This work makes a valuable contribution to students of social sciences as well as to practitioners interested in the emerging global order.