Geopol, Koopman 2011

Alter-geopolitics: Other securities are happening

What is traditional geopolitics?

Traditionally, geopolitics is understood as powerful states (“big men”) moving military power (“big guns”) across territory to secure resources and influence.

What does critical geopolitics study?

Critical geopolitics studies the discourses, imaginaries, and representations that shape how the world and geopolitical conflicts are understood.

How does critical geopolitics differ from traditional geopolitics?

Traditional geopolitics focuses on state power and territory, while critical geopolitics examines how elites construct and represent space and political narratives.

What is anti-geopolitics?

Anti-geopolitics focuses on resistance from below, examining how ordinary people oppose hegemonic geopolitical power.

What is feminist geopolitics?

Feminist geopolitics rethinks geopolitics by focusing on everyday life, embodiment, emotion, and the connections between the personal and the international.

What does Cynthia Enloe mean by “the personal is international”?

It means that intimate and everyday experiences are deeply connected to global political processes and vice versa.

How does feminist geopolitics challenge traditional geopolitics?

It expands geopolitics beyond elite male actors and military conflict to include everyday experiences, gender, bodies, and non-state actors.

Why is feminist geopolitics considered a form of anti-geopolitics?

Because it challenges dominant geopolitical practices and focuses on hope, resistance, and alternative futures rather than elite power.

What is alter-geopolitics?

Alter-geopolitics goes beyond critique by actively creating non-violent alternatives and forms of security based on cooperation and solidarity.

How did ordinary Americans practice alter-geopolitics with Salvadorans?

Some Americans resisted US policy by offering Salvadorans asylum and physically protecting them through solidarity networks.

What does “putting our bodies together for safety” mean?

It refers to people physically using their bodies collectively and non-violently to create protection and security for vulnerable groups.

What is international accompaniment?

A form of alter-geopolitics where less vulnerable outsiders physically accompany threatened activists or communities as unarmed protection.

What is Peace Brigades International (PBI)?

PBI is an organisation that sends international volunteers to accompany threatened peace and justice activists in countries such as Colombia.

Why are international accompaniers less likely to be attacked?

Because they are often privileged foreign bodies whose deaths would attract international attention and political consequences.

What happened in San José de Apartadó, Colombia?

After massacres by the Colombian military in 1996–97, villagers formed a peace community and humanitarian zones with international accompaniment.

How did accompaniment affect violence in Colombian peace communities?

Attacks decreased when international accompaniers such as PBI were present.

What is the difference between negative peace and positive peace?

Negative peace means the absence of war, while positive peace includes justice, wellbeing, housing, food security, and human security.

What paradox exists within international accompaniment?

Accompaniers use their privileged status and the fact their lives “count more” politically to help build a world where all lives count equally.

How does alter-geopolitics view security?

It sees security as based on cooperation, solidarity, wellbeing, and non-violence rather than military competition.

What is the key conclusion of alter-geopolitics?

Geopolitics is not only created by elites; ordinary people can actively reshape global politics through collective, embodied, and non-violent action.