Geopolitical imaginations are constructed views of the world that reflect the vision of a place's, a country's or a society's role within world politics.Güney, Aylin & Gökcan Fulya, [“Greater Middle East as a ‘Modern’ Geopolitical Imagination in the American Foreign Policy”], Geopolitics, 2010. 15 (1): 22-38. Geopolitical imaginations are constituted by shared assumptions and representations of power relations and conflicts in world politics within a certain geographical territory.Latham, Andrew A., [“China in the Contemporary American Geopolitical Imagination”], Asian Affairs: An American Review., 2001. 28(3): 138-145. By critically analyzing how and why these imaginations are constructed, it is possible to reveal underlying power relations and to get a better understanding of various conflicts. Therefore, geopolitical imaginations are closely connected to the academic field of critical geopolitics.Toal, Gerard, [“Critical geopolitics: The politics of writing global space. Vol. 6”], University of Minnesota Press, 1996.
Concept Geopolitical imaginations are composed of the representation of a country's territorial limits and its geopolitical code which is “[...] a set of strategic assumptions that a government makes about other states”.Güney, Aylin & Gökcan Fulya, [“Greater Middle East as a ‘Modern’ Geopolitical Imagination in the American Foreign Policy”], Geopolitics, 2010. 15 (1): 22-38. These so-called geopolitical codes are based on national identity (particularly in ‘them’ and ‘us’ distinctions), emotional attachment to a place as well as national myths.Güney, Aylin & Gökcan Fulya, [“Greater Middle East as a ‘Modern’ Geopolitical Imagination in the American Foreign Policy”], Geopolitics, 2010. 15 (1): 22-38. Geopolitical imaginations provide the legitimisation for geopolitical actions or certain positions in foreign and domestic policy.Latham, Andrew A., [“China in the Contemporary American Geopolitical Imagination”], Asian Affairs: An American Review., 2001. 28(3): 138-145. Geopolitical imaginations are reflections of current discourses and therefore they are not fixed but rather vary over time and in different societies. Research has primarily analyzed geopolitical imaginations of European and North American countries, ignoring the fact that in other socio-political contexts there exist different ‘non-western’ geopolitical imaginations.Sharp, Joanne, ["”A subaltern critical geopolitics of the war on terror: Postcolonial security in Tanzania”"], Geoforum, 2011. 42: 297–305.
Hegemonic geopolitical imaginations in history The view of the world as two polarizing ideological blocs (western and eastern bloc) is a geopolitical imagination which was dominant during time of the Cold War. Designations such as the Iron Curtain (the boundary between the bipolar powers) helped to justify certain politics and policies, e.g. in the United States in foreign policy by containment (a military strategy to stop the expansion of the ‘enemy’) or in domestic policy with the expansion of homeland security which enforced technologies of control and disciplining.Reuber, Paul, ["Politische Geographie"], Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöning, 2012. Samuel P. Huntington made a draft of a fragmented conflicted world order. In his popular hypothesis called ”The Clash of Civilizations” (1996), he divided the world map geographically into rigid cultural entities, such as the Western bloc, the Islamic bloc or the African bloc, and proclaimed that the next major conflict will occur between these different cultures.Reuber, Paul, ["Politische Geographie"], Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöning, 2012. In the 21st century, “hegemonic geographical imaginations are dominated by the affective geopolitics of the War on Terror”.Sharp, Joanne, ["”A subaltern critical geopolitics of the war on terror: Postcolonial security in Tanzania”"], Geoforum, 2011. 42: 297–305. This has been a consequence of the synthesis between the Clash of Civilizations, the terror attacks of 9/11 and the following designations of rogue states (states which have been blamed for threatening the world peace) and the axis of evil (states which have been accused of supporting terrorism and aspiring to weapons of mass destruction).Reuber, Paul, ["Politische Geographie"], Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöning, 2012.
See also Critical geopolitics Geopolitics Imagined geographies
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