GHY 3230 Exam 1 Study Guide (POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY & SOCIETY)

According to Painter & Jeffrey, what is “informal politics”? Define and give an example.

Informal politics is the idea that “politics is everywhere.” It involves forming alliances, exercising power, influencing others, and advancing goals outside formal government. An example is office politics, where people form alliances or use influence to accomplish their goals.

Explain “politics is about power,” including Foucault.

Politics is about who has power, how power is exercised, and how power affects people’s everyday lives. Foucault emphasized that power is not only held by governments; it operates through everyday relationships, institutions, and social practices.

List six key elements of Political Geography.

Six major concepts emphasized in the study materials are:

1. Scale

2. Place

3. Power

4. Sovereignty

5. Nation

6. State

These help political geographers understand how political systems, identities, territories, and power are organized spatially.

What is discourse, and what are its implications for Political Geography?

The way ideas and meanings are produced and communicated. Political geography examines how discourse shapes ideas about places, people, nations, and political events—and whose perspectives are included or excluded.

What are redistricting and gerrymandering?

Redistricting is the process of redrawing electoral district boundaries, generally after the census to account for population changes. Gerrymandering is the manipulation of district boundaries to create an electoral advantage for a particular group or party.

What guidelines or strategies can parties use when creating districts to gain an electoral advantage?

District boundaries can be manipulated by grouping voters together or separating them among districts. Important ideas from the exercise include continuity, compactness, manipulation of boundaries, and party advantage.

Explain the Colorado/Pikes Peak congressional district example.

The example demonstrates how changing the geographic boundaries of a district can change the political outcome. The exercise focused on whether districts were continuous, compact, and politically advantageous, showing how geography can affect elections.

How did Dr. Theobald create a new district in her Massachusetts example?

She used a mapping tool to experiment with district boundaries and see how different configurations affected representation. The exercise showed that drawing boundaries is a geographic process that can have important political consequences.

What is the role of Political Geography in redistricting?

Political geography helps explain how space, boundaries, population distribution, and political power interact. Changing boundaries can change who is represented and how political power is distributed.

What is redlining, and what is its relationship to housing segregation?

The practice of treating certain neighborhoods as risky for investment and restricting or disadvantaging access to mortgages and other financial services there. It contributed to and reinforced patterns of racially segregated housing.

What happened with the National Housing Act and HOLC maps in the 1930s?

The federal government created housing programs during the Great Depression. HOLC was created in 1933 and produced residential security maps that classified neighborhoods according to perceived investment risk. Areas considered risky were often marked red, and these classifications became associated with discriminatory lending practices.

If studies showed redlined residents were not more likely to default, how did redlining still make these areas harder places to buy homes?

Redlining caused neighborhoods to be treated as risky investments, which restricted access to mortgages and investment. This made it harder for residents—especially minorities—to obtain home loans and build wealth through homeownership.

Why didn't the Fair Housing Act completely fix the damage caused by segregation?

It prohibited housing discrimination, but ending discriminatory practices did not immediately erase existing segregation, differences in homeownership, accumulated wealth differences, or patterns of neighborhood disinvestment. The law was passed in 1968.

What is the connection between wealth and housing?

Homeownership can help people build wealth through property ownership and appreciation. When discriminatory housing practices restrict access to homeownership, they can also restrict opportunities to build wealth.

What is the role of Political Geography in redlining?

Political geography helps us understand how space, race, government policies, boundaries, and power interact. Redlining shows how decisions about geographic areas can have long-term political, social, and economic effects.

If Classical Geopolitics focuses on “the way the world is,” what does Critical Geopolitics interrogate?

It questions why we understand the world the way we do. It examines how geopolitical ideas and representations are produced.

How does questioning the production of “received wisdom” relate to discourse?

Critical geopolitics asks who produces knowledge, how it becomes accepted as truth, and whose perspectives are left out. Therefore, discourse is important because it helps shape what people accept as knowledge about the world.

Why avoid grand, sweeping statements about how the world works?

Because such statements can hide assumptions and biases and make complicated political situations seem simple. Critical geopolitics questions these assumptions rather than automatically accepting them.

What is Formal Geopolitics?

Involves academics and think tanks producing geopolitical ideas and theories. An example is using different map projections to support a particular theory.

What is Practical Geopolitics?

Involves policymakers and politicians using geopolitical ideas in practice. An example from class is Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) and the arms race.

What is Popular Geopolitics?

Examines how geopolitical ideas appear in news, television, movies, journals, and other popular media, as well as how the public interprets them.

What is the history of Captain America's creation, and how was he identified as an American territorial symbol?

Captain America was created in 1940, before the United States entered WWII, during a period of growing patriotic consciousness. His red, white, and blue uniform and American imagery made him a clear territorial symbol of the United States.

What role does “hard work” play in Captain America's life, and how does this relate to American self-perceptions?

Captain America's story connects success with hard work, determination, and patriotism. His transformation from a weak Steve Rogers into Captain America reflects an ideal of America in which effort and dedication lead to success.

How does Captain America's willingness to sacrifice himself reinforce the importance of the nation?

Captain America repeatedly puts himself in danger for the country, showing that the nation is something worth sacrificing for. Because he personally embodies American identity, the character becomes a particularly powerful national symbol.

What is the relationship between Captain America/Self and the Supervillain/Other?

The stories often create an insider/outsider distinction: Captain America and the United States represent the “Self,” while foreign enemies represent the “Other.” This creates a simplified geopolitical division between America and its perceived external threats.

How did Captain America change with political issues in the 1970s and after 9/11?

Captain America changed as American political concerns changed. In the 1970s he became more progressive and individualistic, while after 9/11 he became more stereotypically associated with American identity.

What happened in the post-9/11 Captain America storyline involving the WTC and Pentagon?

Captain America responds to the attacks with mourning, anger, and a sense of duty. The story places him at Ground Zero and uses the attacks to explore American identity, territory, and the changing geography of war.

Summarize “Captain America at Ground Zero.”

Steve Rogers goes to Ground Zero and helps among the destruction. The scene emphasizes the shock of an attack occurring inside the United States and portrays America as confronting a threat that had crossed its perceived territorial boundaries.

Summarize “Captain America and Terrorism.”

It creates a strong insider/outsider distinction between innocent Americans and foreign terrorists. It reflects a geopolitical script in which America is portrayed as the homeland being threatened from outside.

What is scale?

Can refer to cartographic scale or the level at which political/social processes are analyzed. Scale is socially produced and constructed, not simply fixed.

What is place?

It is space transformed by meaning. It is subjective and can be shaped by how places are portrayed, represented, or marketed.

What is power?

The ability to influence, control, or shape the actions and behavior of others. Political geography studies how power operates across space and society.

What is sovereignty?

A state's authority over its own territory, population, and domestic affairs, combined with independence from outside interference.

What is a nation?

A socially constructed “imagined community”—a group of people who believe they share characteristics such as language, religion, history, or political identity.

What is nationalism?

The idea that a nation has a shared identity and political importance. It connects people to the idea of belonging to a particular nation.

What is a state?

A political unit with defined and internationally recognized boundaries that has governing institutions and authority over its territory.

What is a sovereign state?

A state that has recognized territorial boundaries, political independence, and authority over its territory and population. The modern sovereign-state system is associated with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.

What was the Treaty/Peace of Westphalia?

The Peace of Westphalia (1648) followed the Thirty Years’ War and is associated with the development of the modern sovereign-state system based on territorial authority and non-intervention.

What is a nation-state?

A state in which the nation and state largely correspond—the population identifies as a nation and that nation is associated with the state's territory.

What is a stateless nation?

A nation that has a shared national identity but does not have its own sovereign state.

What is a boundary?

A politically defined division between territories. It is distinguished from a border; this can be less clearly fixed or mapped.

What is a border?

A politically defined territorial division, generally represented or established on a map.

What is governance?

It is the exercise of power. It is ideally constructed through heterarchy, meaning inclusion rather than a purely hierarchical system.

Why are maps important to Political Geography?

Maps appear authoritative, but they are subjective. Mapmakers make choices about what to include, how to represent places, and which projection to use.

What is the “power of maps”?

Maps can shape how people understand the world because their conventions and representations often appear natural or unquestionable, even though they reflect choices made by their creators.

What is the Mercator projection?

A map projection originally designed for navigation that distorts the size of land near the poles. Your notes discuss how it can also contribute to a Eurocentric representation because northern landmasses appear much larger.

What is the Peters projection?

A map projection that attempts to represent the relative actual sizes of countries more accurately than the Mercator projection.

What is colonialism?

The practice of one power establishing control over another territory and its people, often involving political, economic, and cultural domination.

What was the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494)?

An agreement between Spain and Portugal that divided newly claimed overseas territories between them using a geographic boundary line. It is an important example of how European powers used geography to organize and justify colonial expansion.

What is “Discipline’s Achilles’ Heel”?

The idea from the colonialism reading that colonialism was deeply connected to the development of early geopolitics and that geography could function as a tool of empire.

What is hegemony?

Political control without relying primarily on physical force. Power is maintained through influence, ideas, consent, or cultural dominance.

What is imperialism?

A system in which a powerful state or empire extends its political, economic, or territorial influence over other peoples or territories.

What is Darwinism?

Refers to ideas based on Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and natural selection.

What is Social Darwinism?

The application of ideas about competition and “survival of the fittest” to human societies and politics. It was used historically to justify ideas about racial hierarchy, imperialism, and expansion.

What is environmental determinism?

The theory that the physical environment strongly determines or controls how societies develop.

Why is environmental determinism important to Political Geography?

It shows how geographic ideas can be used to explain—and historically justify—political power, colonialism, and imperialism.

What is Post-Colonial Theory?

A perspective that examines the continuing effects of colonialism, including how colonial power shaped knowledge, representations, identities, and relationships between places.

What does Post-Colonial Theory say about Western representations of the “Other”?

It argues that Western powers historically played a major role in creating representations of non-Western peoples as the “Other.” Your notes emphasize that Western colonial writers often constructed narratives about places and people they were representing.

Who is Edward Said?

A scholar whose work was central to Post-Colonial Theory, particularly through his concept of Orientalism.

What is Orientalism?

Describes a Western way of representing the “Orient” or East as fundamentally different from the West, often through simplified or stereotyped representations.

What is the “Other”?

A group represented as different from the dominant “Self.” In post-colonial theory, Western representations often constructed non-Western peoples as the Other.

What are “imaginative geographies”?

Mental and cultural representations of places and peoples that shape how people imagine and understand geographic differences, even when those representations do not accurately reflect reality.

How are Orientalism and power connected?

Representations of the “Other” can influence how people understand and treat other places and peoples. Therefore, knowledge and representation can reinforce power relationships.

What is the Afghanistan/Britain case study about?

It illustrates how colonial and geopolitical ideas about Afghanistan were constructed through Western representations, connecting geography, power, imperialism, and the “Other.”

What is Geopolitics?

The study of how geography influences politics, international relations, and statecraft.

What is Classical Geopolitics?

An approach that attempted to explain world politics through geographic factors, territory, resources, location, and state power.

What did Classical Geopolitics assume?

It generally treated the world as something that could be objectively understood and strategically controlled through geography.

Who was Halford Mackinder?

A British political geographer who developed the Heartland Theory, an important idea in Classical Geopolitics.

What is Mackinder’s Heartland Theory?

The theory that central Eurasia—the “Heartland”—was strategically important because control of this geographic area could provide enormous geopolitical power.

Who was Friedrich Ratzel?

A German geographer associated with Classical Geopolitics who viewed states partly through geographic space, territory, growth, and competition. His ideas contributed to the concept of Lebensraum.

What is Lebensraum?

Literally “living space.” Ratzel used the concept in relation to the geographic space needed for a state's development; it was later appropriated and radically distorted by Nazi ideology to support territorial expansion.

What is the connection between Classical Geopolitics and Nazism?

Some geopolitical ideas—particularly ideas associated with territorial expansion, environmental determinism, and Lebensraum—were later incorporated into Nazi expansionist ideology.

What is AlterGeopolitcs?

An approach that moves away from traditional top-down geopolitical analysis and emphasizes embodied knowledge, everyday experiences, and overlooked people and places.

What is Feminist Geopolitics?

A perspective that examines geopolitics from the standpoint of people's everyday, embodied experiences, rather than focusing only on states and powerful leaders.

What methods are associated with Feminist/AlterGeopolitics?

Interviews and field research as ways to understand people's lived experiences.

Why does Feminist Geopolitics challenge traditional geopolitics?

Traditional geopolitics often emphasizes powerful states, leaders, and institutions. Feminist geopolitics asks us to consider people and places that may be overlooked by hierarchical/top-down approaches.

What is Critical Geopolitics?

A critical analysis of how geopolitical ideas and images are produced, who produces them, and why

What is the main difference between Classical and Critical Geopolitics?

Classical: “The way the world is.”

Critical: “Why do we understand the world this way?”

What does Critical Geopolitics question?

It questions assumptions, biases, representations, and the production of geopolitical knowledge rather than treating geopolitical ideas as neutral facts.

What are the three avenues of Critical Geopolitics?

• Formal

• Practical

• Popular

What is Formal Geopolitics?

Geopolitical ideas produced by academics and think tanks.

What is Practical Geopolitics?

Geopolitical ideas used by policymakers and politicians.

What is Popular Geopolitics?

Geopolitical ideas communicated through news, television, movies, journals, and popular culture, including how audiences respond to and reinterpret those ideas.

What is a Sovereignty-Free Actor (SFA)?

An actor that has significant political/economic power but is not a sovereign state.

Class examples: ISIL/Al Qaeda, credit agencies, and actors involved in cyber warfare.

Why are SFAs important to Political Geography?

They challenge the assumption that states are the only important geopolitical actors. Non-state actors can cross borders, influence economies, or exercise power internationally.