Critical geopolitics

The basic concept behind critical geopolitics is that intellectuals of statecraft construct ideas about places; these ideas have influence and reinforce their political behaviors and policy choices, and these ideas affect how we, the people, process our own notions of places and politics.

Critical geopolitics sees the geopolitical as comprising four linked facets: popular geopolitics, formal geopolitics, structural geopolitics, and practical geopolitics. Critical geopolitical scholarship continues to engage critically with questions surrounding geopolitical discourses, geopolitical practice (i.e. foreign policy), and the history of Geopolitics.

Key ideas and concepts

Rooted in poststructuralism, critical geopolitical inquiry is, at its core, concerned with the operation, interaction, and contestation of geopolitical discourses.

This poststructuralist orientation holds that the realities of global political space do not simply reveal themselves to detached, omniscient observers. Rather, geopolitical knowledges are seen as partial and situated, emergent from particular subject positions. In this context, geopolitical practices result from complex constellations of competing ideas and discourses, which they in turn modify. Geopolitical practice is not, therefore, unproblematically 'right' or 'natural'.