Russian influence in Central Asia is waning. Since attaining independence, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan have forged their own paths - building relationships with outside powers and throwing off the last vestiges of Soviet domination. But in many ways, Moscow still sees Central Asia through the lens of the Soviet Union, and it struggles to redefine Russian relations with the region. In The Fight for Influence , Alexey Malashenko offers a comprehensive analysis of Russian policies and prospects in Central Asia. It is clear that Russian policy in the formerly Soviet-controlled region is entering uncharted territory. But does Moscow understand the fundamental shifts under way? Malashenko argues that it is time for Russia to rethink its approach to Central Asia.

China and Russia are rising economic and political powers that share thousands of miles of border. Despite their proximity, their interactions with each other - and with their third neighbour Mongolia - are rarely discussed. Although the three countries share a boundary, their traditions, languages and worldviews are remarkably different. Frontier Encounters presents a wide range of views on how the borders between these unique countries are enacted, produced, and crossed. It sheds light on global uncertainties: China's search for energy resources and the employment of its huge population, Russia's fear of Chinese migration, and the precarious independence of Mongolia as its neighbours negotiate to extract its plentiful resources. Bringing together anthropologists, sociologists and economists, this timely collection of essays offers new perspectives on an area that is currently of enormous economic, strategic and geo-political relevance.

It is increasingly accepted that "institutions matter" for economic organization and outcomes. The last decade has seen significant expansion in research examining how institutional contexts affect the nature and behavior of firms, the operation of markets, and economic outcomes. Yet "institutions" conceal a multitude of issues and perspectives. Much of this research has been comparative, and followed different models such as "varieties of capitalism," "national business systems," and "social systems of production."
This Handbook explores these issues, perspectives, and models, with the leading scholars in the area contributing chapters to provide a central reference point for academics, scholars, and students.

This work looks at how contemporary global economic policies are made: by which institutions, under what ideologies, and how they are enforced. The author reveals the central roles played by organizations such as the IMF and the World Bank in supervising the livelihoods of over 2.5 billion people. He shows that neoliberal economic policy is enforced by a few thousand unelected and unaccountable experts in the North and has failed to deliver tolerable living conditions for the poor. The book argues for a new geographic theory of power, exercised through dominant institutions, concentrated in hegemonic power centers. It seeks to transform the existing geography of policy-making power by exposing its structures, centers and mechanisms, critiquing its intellectual foundations, uncovering its un-democratic justifications, and passionately supporting its opponents. The conclusion makes a further positive contribution by exploring policy alternatives that point the way forward.

Our world of increasing and varied conflicts is confusing and threatening to citizens of all countries, as they try to understand its causes and consequences. However, how and why war occurs, and peace is sustained, cannot be understood without realizing that those who make war and peace must negotiate a complex world political map of sovereign spaces, borders, networks of communication, access to nested geographic scales, and patterns of resource distribution. This book takes advantage of a diversity of geographic perspectives as it analyzes the political processes of war and their spatial expression.
Contributors to the volume examine particular manifestations of war in light of nationalism, religion, gender identities, state ideology, border formation, genocide, spatial rhetoric, terrorism, and a variety of resource conflicts. The final section on the geography of peace covers peace movements, diplomacy, the expansion of NATO, and the geography of post-war reconstruction. Case studies of numerous conflicts include Israel and Palestine, Afghanistan, Northern Ireland, Bosnia-Herzogovina, West Africa, and the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Since the 1960s the per capita incomes of the resource-poor countries have grown significantly faster than those of the resource-abundant countries. In fact, in recent years economic growth has been inversely proportional to the share of natural resource rents in GDP, so that the small mineral-driven economies have performed least well and the oil-driven economies worst of all. Yet the mineral-driven resource-rich economies have high growth potential because the mineral exports boost their capacity to invest and to import. "Resource Abundance and Economic Development" explains the disappointing performance of resource-abundant countries by extending the growth accounting framework to include natural and social capital. The resulting synthesis identifies two contrasting development trajectories: the competitive industrialization of the resource-poor countries and the staple trap of many resource-abundant countries. The resource-poor countries are less prone to policy failure than the resource-abundant countries because social pressures force the political state to align its interests with the majority poor and follow relatively prudent policies. Resource-abundant countries are more likely to engender political states in which vested interests vie to capture resource surpluses (rents) at the expense of policy coherence. A longer dependence on primary product exports also delays industrialization, heightens income inequality, and retards skill accumulation. Fears of 'Dutch disease' encourage efforts to force industrialization through trade policy to protect infant industry. The resulting slow-maturing manufacturing sector demands transfers from the primary sector that outstrip the natural resource rents and sap the competitiveness of the economy. The chapters in this collection draw upon historical analysis and models to show that a growth collapse is not the inevitable outcome of resource abundance and that policy counts. Malaysia, a rare example of successful resource-abundant development, is contrasted with Ghana, Bolivia, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, and Argentina, which all experienced a growth collapse. The book also explores policies for reviving collapsed economies with reference to Costa Rica, South Africa, Russia and Central Asia. It demonstrates the importance of initial conditions to successful economic reform.

Geoffrey Ellis offers an up-to-date synthesis of recent research into the aims and effects of Napoleonic rule in France and in conquered Europe. Thoroughly revised, this second edition provides much more extensive coverage of Napoleon's treatment of the annexed lands and subject states of the "Grand Empire", as well as of military conscription and desertion, and the role of the Gendarmerie in the war against brigands and military defaulters. The legacy of Napoleonic rule is discussed in greater depth, and the book also features a more comprehensive bibliography.

This textbook is an introduction to some of the most important economic, social and political challenges that the EU currently faces. It covers the issues of competitiveness, cohesion, ageing, migration, employment and social polarization, enlargement, and the emergence of regionalism and nationalism. These structural challenges will in the medium-run determine the place of the EU in the world. Written by a single author, it has greater cohesion than many of the multi-contributor volumes available.

This book examines how governments in industrialised countries have engaged with the challenge of sustained development over the past decade. Analysis of initiatives undertaken by nine national governments and the European Union reveal important differences in the ways the international commitment to sustainable development has been received.

Hailed as a landmark in its field since its first publication in 1984, Denis E. Cosgrove's ""Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape"" has been influential beyond geography. It has continued to spark lively debate among historians, geographers, art historians, social theorists, landscape architects, and others interested in the social and cultural politics of landscape. This edition features a new introduction.

"Dynamics of Regional Politics" explores the patterns of international conflict and cooperation in four geographical subsystems: the Horn of Africa, the Persian/Arabian Gulf, the South Asian subcontinent, and Southeast Asia. Wriggins's book argues that to understand how the end of the Cold War will affect these areas, it is necessary to look closely at their individual dynamics over time, to differentiate characteristics that are intrinsic to the regions from those caused by the Cold War involvement of the United States and the Soviet Union. The book is structured to test hypotheses about international alignment and conflict across a number of Third World cases. It highlights areas where Third World realities - arbitrary colonial borders, weak state structures, civil conflict, ethnic/sectarian/tribal ties across borders - produce international outcomes different from those predicted by standard theories generated from European and North American cases. Each case study is written by a distinguished regional specialist familiar with the history and international politics of the region.

Significant changes are affecting coastlines around the world due to economic pressures and climate change. This book addresses the social, cultural and political context of the process of managed coastal realignment, the strategic abandonment of the coast, as a means of coping with these changes. With a specific focus on the Blackwater Estuary in Essex, Stuart Oliver analyses the cultural and social implications of managed retreat and proposes managed realignment as a practical way in which society can rethink itself, addressing the new realities of the environment and a move towards developing a more sustainable relationship with it.

The digital age is also a surveillance age. Today, computerized systems protect and manage our everyday life; the increasing number of surveillance cameras in public places, the computerized loyalty systems of the retail sector, geo-localized smart-phone applications, or smart traffic and navigation systems. Surveillance is nothing fundamentally new, and yet more and more questions are being asked: Who monitors whom, and how and why? How do surveillance techniques affect socio-spatial practices and relationships? How do they shape the fabrics of our cities, our mobilities, the spaces of the everyday? And what are the implications in terms of border control and the exercise of political power? Surveillance and Space responds to these modern questions by exploring the complex and varied interactions between surveillance and space. In doing so, the book also advances a programmatic reflection on the very possibility of a 'political geography of surveillance'.

The digital age is also a surveillance age. Today, computerized systems protect and manage our everyday life; the increasing number of surveillance cameras in public places, the computerized loyalty systems of the retail sector, geo-localized smart-phone applications, or smart traffic and navigation systems. Surveillance is nothing fundamentally new, and yet more and more questions are being asked: Who monitors whom, and how and why? How do surveillance techniques affect socio-spatial practices and relationships? How do they shape the fabrics of our cities, our mobilities, the spaces of the everyday? And what are the implications in terms of border control and the exercise of political power? Surveillance and Space responds to these modern questions by exploring the complex and varied interactions between surveillance and space. In doing so, the book also advances a programmatic reflection on the very possibility of a 'political geography of surveillance'.

The arrival of the aerostatic balloon at the end of the nineteenth century ushered in a new perspective on the battlefield, taking over from the mount - the hill at the edge of the field of combat - and the fortified tower positioned within it. Since then there has been no perspective more culpable in war, violence and security than the aerial one. From Above explores the aerial view in new depth and clarity. It draws in vivid detail on studies of the aerial perspective today and on rich empirical investigations of the aerial view from the past. Chapters examine a range of case studies and examples, from Vietnam and the balloon prospect, camouflage, colonial policing, to today's drone wars. The contributors draw on perspectives from history, international relations, political geography and cultural studies in order to provide a truly interdisciplinary perspective on the view from above. They also consider the view from above in relation to its technologies, legalities, practices, doctrines, and visual culture. Among the contributors are renowned international experts such as Derek Gregory, Trevor Paglen, Caren Kaplan, Klaus Dodds and Priya Satia. The aerial view is a perspective that can no longer be ignored, one that is of growing significance for those interested in geopolitics, militarism and conflict.

"Ugo Rossi and Alberto Vanolo take us on a journey around the ascent and crisis of urban liberalism, providing a clear and highly readable analysis of key issues and debates in the field of urban political geography." - Ola Soederstroem, Universite de Neuchatel "It is in the city trenches that the crises, contradictions, and counterpolitics of neoliberalization are finding some of their most vivid and consequential expressions, where new worlds are being imagined, made, and unmade. This has yet to be mapped. But in Urban Political Geographies, we have a timely and astute field guide to this unfolding process." - Jamie Peck, University of British Columbia How can we think about the urban within a political and geographical framework? This compelling textbook scrutinizes urban politics through a theoretical and empirical lens to provide readers with a clear understanding of the relationship between political, spatial and economic issues relating to the urban environment. Taking a truly global analysis, the book uses international comparative case studies from cities across the world including, London, Beijing, Austin and Vancouver. It draws on ideas and theories from human geography, politics, sociology, economics and development. Engaging in style and thorough in its coverage of the key issues, the book is essential reading for students and scholars looking for a book that deals with contemporary urban debates from a political, economic and geographical perspective.

"A comprehensive reader for my political geography course. Good summaries at the end, and articles include effective case study examples." - Rachel Paul, Western Washington University "A very useful and comprehensive introduction to key concepts in political geography. This book provides useful context not just for 'traditional' political geography modules, but also those examining broader issues of power, resistance and social movements." - Gavin Brown, University of Leicester "Vital for introducing basic concepts and terminology in a clear and concise fashion. The short chapters are accessible and well supplemented with pertinent examples." - Daniel Hammett, Sheffield University "I found the book to be very useful in a supplemental capacity, full of information that would be useful for an undergraduate or early graduate student." - Jason Dittmer, University College London This textbook forms part of an innovative set of companion texts for the human geography subdisciplines. Organized around 20 short essays, Key Concepts in Political Geography provides a cutting-edge introduction to the central concepts that define contemporary research in the field. Involving detailed yet expansive discussions, the book includes: An introductory chapter providing a succinct overview of the recent developments in the field Over 20 key concept entries covering the expected staples of the sub-discipline, such as nationalism, territoriality, scale and political-economy, as well as relatively new arrivals to the field including the other, anti-statism, gender, and post-conflict A glossary, figures, diagrams and further reading. It is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students of political geography.

"A very good overview. Covers the key topics well and in an accessible and engaging style." - Dr Daniel Hammett, Department of Geography, Sheffield University This is a revised and updated edition of a core undergraduate resource for political geography. Focusing on the social and cultural while systematically overviewing the entire discipline, Joe Painter and Alex Jeffrey explain: Politics, geography, and 'political' geography: power, resources, institutions, and the history of the field State formation: classical views alongside recent work on governance and governmentality Welfare to workfare state: the restructuring of present state strategies Democracy, citizenship and law: different models of democracy in European and global contexts Identity and social movements: the relation between identity and political action Nationalism and regionalism: ethnicity, national identity and "otherness" Imperialism and post-colonialism: from world systems theory to post-structuralist accounts Geopolitics: the political, economic, and strategic significance of geography. Comprehensive, accessible and illustrated with real world examples, Political Geography provides undergraduates with a thorough understanding of the relationship between geography and politics.

Postcolonialism and geography are imtimately linked through the spatiality of colonial discourse as well as the material effects of colonialism and decolonization. Geographical ideas about space, place, landscape and location have helped to articulate different experiences of colonialism both in the past and present and the 'here' and 'there'. At the same time, whilst spatial images such as mobility, margins and exile abound in postcolonial writings, more material geographies have often been overlooked. Postcolonial Geographies presents the first sustained geographical analysis of postcolonialism. Exploring and developing the connections between postcolonialism and geography, the essays in this book - ranging across Europe, Australia, Asia, Africa and North America - investigate the geographies of postcolonialism and chart the contours of a postcolonial geography.

As the twentieth century drew to a close, the rich were getting richer; power was concentrated within huge corporations; vast tracts of the earth were being laid waste: three-quarters of the world's population had no control of its destiny and no claim to basic rights. There was nothing new in this. What was new was the virtual absence of any political will to do anything about it. Spaces of Hope takes issue with this. David Harvey brings an exciting perspective to two of the principal themes of contemporary social discourse; globalization and the body. Exploring the uneven geographical development of late twentieth-century capitalism , and the working body in relation to this new geography of production and consumption, he finds in Marx's writings a wealth of relevant analysis and theoretical insight. In order to make much needed changes, he maintains, we need to become the architects of a different living and working environment and learn to bridge the micro-scale of the body and the personal and the macro-scale of global political economy. Utopian movements have for centuries tried to construct a just society. David Harvey looks at their history to ask why they failed and what the ideas behind them might still have to offer. His devastating description of the existing urban environment (Baltimore is his case study) fuels his argument that we can and must use the force of utopian imagining against all who say 'there is no alternative'. He outlines a new kind of utopian thought, which he calls 'dialectical utopianism' and refocuses our attention on possible designs for a more equitable world of work and living with nature. If any political ideology or plan is to work, he argues, it must take account of our human qualities, the capacities and powers inherent in nature, and the dynamics of change. Finally, Harvey dares to sketch a very personal utopian vision in an appendix, one that leaves no doubt about his own geography of hope.

From the author of the bestselling The State of the World Atlas, here is an essential tool for understanding the Middle East and its pivotal role in global politics. As Western powers attempt to redraw the map of the region, Dan Smith uses his forensic skills to unravel the history of this arena of confrontation and instability, from the Ottoman Empire to the present day. With customarily acute analysis, he highlights key issues and maps their global implications to explain why the Middle East has become, and will remain, the focal point for foreign policy. The atlas covers a wide range of topics, including: * imperial legacies * ethnic and religious differences * US presence and policies * Arab-Israeli wars * Israel and Palestine * Iran and Iraq * military spending * the Kurds * Libya and the USA * oil and water.

"Union and Devolution" provides a thorough analysis of the origins of devolution and its implications for the U.K. as a whole, as well as its constituent parts. Using a thematic approach and focusing on the years post 1979, Jonathan Bradbury gives equal emphasis to Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and the English regions and introduces the main theoretical schools of thought and research debates.

Southwestern archaeologists have long pondered the meaning and importance of the monumental 11th-century structures in Chaco Canyon. Now, Stephen H. Lekson offers a lively, provocative thesis, which attempts to reconceptualize the meaning of Chaco and its importance to the understanding of the entire Southwest. Chaco was not alone, according to Lekson, but only one of three capitals of a vast politically and economically integrated region, a network that incorporated most of the Pueblo world and that had contact as far away as Central America. A sophisticated astronomical tradition allowed for astrally aligned monumental structures, great ceremonial roads and-upon the abandonment of Chaco Canyon in the 12th century-the shift of the regional capital first to the Aztec site, then Paquime, all located on precisely the same longitudinal meridian. Lekson's ground-breaking synthesis of 500 years of Southwestern prehistory-with its explanation of phenomena as diverse as the Great North Road, macaw feathers, Pueblo mythology, and the rise of kachina ceremonies-will be of great interest to all those concerned with the prehistory and history of the American Southwest.