The embodied directedness of human practice has long been neglected in critical socio-spatial theory, in favor of analyses focused upon distance and proximity. This book illustrates the absence of a sense for direction in much theoretical discourse and lays important groundwork for redressing this lacuna in socio-spatial theory. Many accounts of the social world are incomplete, or are increasingly out of step with recent developments of neoliberal capitalism. Not least through new technological mediations of production and consumption, the much-discussed waning of the importance of physical distance has been matched by the increasing centrality of turning from one thing to another as a basic way in which lives are structured and occupied. A sensibility for embodied processes of turning, and for phenomena of direction more generally, is urgently needed. Chapters develop wide-ranging and original engagements with the arguments of Sara Ahmed, Jonathan Beller, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Virginia Held, Bernard Stiegler, Theodore Schatzki, Rahel Jaeggi, Hartmut Rosa and David Harvey. This book reinterprets practice, embodiment, alienation, reification, social reproduction and ethical responsibility from a directional perspective. It will be a new valuable resource and reference for political and social geography students, as well as sociologists and anthropologists.

The embodied directedness of human practice has long been neglected in critical socio-spatial theory, in favor of analyses focused upon distance and proximity. This book illustrates the absence of a sense for direction in much theoretical discourse and lays important groundwork for redressing this lacuna in socio-spatial theory. Many accounts of the social world are incomplete, or are increasingly out of step with recent developments of neoliberal capitalism. Not least through new technological mediations of production and consumption, the much-discussed waning of the importance of physical distance has been matched by the increasing centrality of turning from one thing to another as a basic way in which lives are structured and occupied. A sensibility for embodied processes of turning, and for phenomena of direction more generally, is urgently needed. Chapters develop wide-ranging and original engagements with the arguments of Sara Ahmed, Jonathan Beller, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Virginia Held, Bernard Stiegler, Theodore Schatzki, Rahel Jaeggi, Hartmut Rosa and David Harvey. This book reinterprets practice, embodiment, alienation, reification, social reproduction and ethical responsibility from a directional perspective. It will be a new valuable resource and reference for political and social geography students, as well as sociologists and anthropologists.

An Introduction to Political Geography continues to provide a broad-based introduction to contemporary political geography for students following undergraduate degree courses in geography and related subjects.

The text explores the full breadth of contemporary political geography, covering not only traditional concerns such as the state, geopolitics, electoral geography and nationalism; but also increasing important areas at the cutting-edge of political geography research including globalization, the geographies of regulation and governance, geographies of policy formulation and delivery, and themes at the intersection of political and cultural geography, including the politics of place consumption, landscapes of power, citizenship, identity politics and geographies of mobilization and resistance.

This second edition builds on the strengths of the first. The main changes and enhancements are:

• four new chapters on: political geographies of globalization, geographies of empire, political geography and the environment and geopolitics and critical geopolitics
• significant updating and revision of the existing chapters to discuss key developments, drawing on recent academic contributions and political events
• new case studies, drawing on an increasing number of international and global examples
• additional boxes for key concepts and an enlarged glossary.

As with the first edition, extensive use is made of case study examples, illustrations, explanatory boxes, guides to further reading and a glossary of key terms to present the material in an easily accessible manner. Through employment of these techniques this book introduces students to contributions from a range of social and political theories in the context of empirical case study examples. By providing a basic introduction to such concepts and pointing to pathways into more specialist material, this book serves, both as a core text for first- and second- year courses in political geography, and as a resource alongside supplementary textbooks for more specialist third year courses.

An Introduction to Political Geography continues to provide a broad-based introduction to contemporary political geography for students following undergraduate degree courses in geography and related subjects.

The text explores the full breadth of contemporary political geography, covering not only traditional concerns such as the state, geopolitics, electoral geography and nationalism; but also increasing important areas at the cutting-edge of political geography research including globalization, the geographies of regulation and governance, geographies of policy formulation and delivery, and themes at the intersection of political and cultural geography, including the politics of place consumption, landscapes of power, citizenship, identity politics and geographies of mobilization and resistance.

This second edition builds on the strengths of the first. The main changes and enhancements are:

• four new chapters on: political geographies of globalization, geographies of empire, political geography and the environment and geopolitics and critical geopolitics
• significant updating and revision of the existing chapters to discuss key developments, drawing on recent academic contributions and political events
• new case studies, drawing on an increasing number of international and global examples
• additional boxes for key concepts and an enlarged glossary.

As with the first edition, extensive use is made of case study examples, illustrations, explanatory boxes, guides to further reading and a glossary of key terms to present the material in an easily accessible manner. Through employment of these techniques this book introduces students to contributions from a range of social and political theories in the context of empirical case study examples. By providing a basic introduction to such concepts and pointing to pathways into more specialist material, this book serves, both as a core text for first- and second- year courses in political geography, and as a resource alongside supplementary textbooks for more specialist third year courses.