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The question of how individuals produce and reproduce geopolitical ideologies is central to critical geopolitics, but there is little consensus on how this process works or what methods can meaningfully interrogate it. This article brings together methods from critical geopolitics, history, and sociolinguistics to assess the development, dissemination, and trajectory of Anglo-Saxonism, a late-nineteenth century movement which sought to unite the white English-speaking peoples of the world based on the racial heritage and democratic socio-political institutions they allegedly shared. We investigate the archival material of two prominent historians central to this movement—E.A. Freeman and H.B. Adams—to examine their own statements about their work, introducing the concept of "geopolitical metanarratives" to link between intention and discourse. We find that as Freeman and Adams intentionally worked to advance the movement, they relied on a spatial imagination that emphasized the historical continuity of socio-political institutions as the key racialized geopolitical metanarrative that served to underpin their efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the location of violent events and their propensity to cluster together in space is increasingly well known, a deeper exploration of their spatiality and spatial evolution over time remains an emerging frontier in "Big Data"-driven conflict studies. The new Spatial Conflict Dynamics indicator (SCDi) introduced in this article contributes to fill this gap, by measuring both the intensity and spatial concentration of political violence at the subnational level. Articulating between point pattern and areal spatial analyses, the SCDi allows conflict researchers and analysts to not just map which regions experience the most violence but to track how the geography of conflict evolves over time. The SCDi identifies four spatial typologies of violence and can leverage political event data from most datasets with locational information and can be used for analyses across large multi-state regions, within a single state, or in more localized contexts. In this paper, we illustrate the SCDi with an application to the case of North and West Africa, analyzing over 30,000 discrete events through a twenty-two-year time span and across a twenty-two-state geographical area. We perform a longitudinal analysis of the SCDi typologies to show how the indicator can inform a theory of the spatial lifecycle of violence in the region. The indicator, therefore, has potential as both an analytic tool and a window on conflict episodes, showing how they can change from conflict initiation through resolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two North American political geographers situate contemporary terrorism in the world within broad historical trends and geopolitical structures. They employ Rapoport's 'four waves of terrorism' to illustrate the changing geography of terrorism (from an intrastate to an international phenomenon) and place it within the context of broad historical shifts in modes of warfare that envisages terrorism as a form of war stemming from imperialism and state-building. The authors broaden the structural setting of terrorism to include geo-economics and the concept of relative deprivation, using empirical analysis to argue that contemporary terrorism is primarily a feature of the semi-periphery of the world-economy (middle-income countries). Specific characteristics of the Global War on Terror are interpreted by relating processes of imperialism and state-building to a situation in which the U.S. is facing geopolitical challenges and a possible decline in global-power status. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: 1390, O100, Y900.3 figures, 1 table, 52 references. Key words: terrorism, al-Qaeda, Global War on Terror, political geography, world-systems theory.

Territory is a persistent concern in international politics but is unevenly explored in the terrorism literature. We argue that territory has salience for terrorist actors and apply our argument to Rapoport's influential "four waves" thesis of the modern history of terrorism. By examining the key ideologies and groups associated with each historical era, we find that territory was a crucial element to each wave even when it took on different forms. We conclude by calling for additional concern for territory in terrorism studies, which promises to yield new insights into pressing questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An immediate political geographic consequence of the global pandemic is the rapid imposition of national and subnational borders, particularly where cross-boundary openness and integration was prevalent. Borders are being reinvigorated as a strategy to contain the virus, which securitizes daily life beyond traditional border sites. We see this resurgence as indicating a new global border regime which is manifest at a variety of scales and will likely outlive the pandemic. Our discussion centers on several possible implications of this process, including further restrictions on immigration and movement, a heightened politics of regionalism, and an expansion of geographic tracking and surveillance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds upon studies employing a syllabi‐based methodology that suggest a tendency for critical geographic information science (GIS) courses to emphasize reading/discussion about GIS without actually doing GIS, and for traditional GIS instruction courses to emphasize the technical capacities of GIS software without incorporating critical theory in substantive ways. However, through ethnographic evidence we reveal that there is likely more innovative theory‐practice transcending pedagogies being utilized than would necessarily show up in such a syllabi‐based methodology. There are also very real and differentially manifest pragmatic, departmental, and institutional barriers in place to effectively incorporating critical social theory into courses that actually do GIS. We first catalogue these barriers as a means of ascertaining what can (and cannot) be done to overcome them through GIS pedagogic innovation. We then outline the (often‐veiled) pedagogic strategies deployed by critical GIS scholars today to navigate and circumvent these barriers. Key Messages: Many traditional GIS courses do little to teach GIS critically and critical GIS courses are relatively rare.Several scholars are interviewed to identify key barriers to teaching GIS critically.Pedagogic strategies are presented to navigate and circumvent these barriers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participatory GIS (PGIS) emerged from the contentious GIS debates of the 1990s as a means of political intervention in issues of social and environmental justice. PGIS has since matured into a distinct subfield in which GIS is used to enhance the political engagement of historically marginalized people and to shape political outcomes through mapping. However, this has proven to be difficult work. We suggest that this is because PGIS, particularly in its community development incarnations, though well-intentioned in endeavoring to enhance the voices of the excluded, is inherently limited because it primarily aims to enhance the inclusion and participation of the historically marginalized by working within established frameworks of institutionalized governance in particular places. This, we suggest, has left this mode of PGIS ill-equipped to truly challenge the political-economic structures responsible for (re)producing the very conditions of socio-economic inequality it strives to ameliorate. As a result, we argue that PGIS has become de-politicized, operating within, rather than disrupting, existing spheres of political-economic power. Moving forward, we suggest that PGIS is in need of being retheorized by engaging with the emergent post-politics literature and related areas of critical social and political theory. We argue that by adopting a more radical conception of democracy, justice, and 'the political', PGIS praxis can be recentered around disruption rather than participation and, ultimately, brought closer to its self-proclaimed goal of supporting progressive change for the historically marginalized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]