GEOG 1101 - Exam 3

State

A politically organized territory with a permanent population, a defined territory, and a government

• Must be recognized by other states

• We often think it is natural, but it is the outcome of many encounters between people and places

• Result of territoriality (key piece)

Territoriality

To stake out territorial claims to affect, influence, or control people by asserting control over a geographic area

• Can occur at multiple scales

Sovereignty

States must have sovereignty

• Recognized right to control a territory both politically and militarily

“The State“

• In political geography is a place, a territory, and a people

• Also a set of institutions and practices

Nation

A group of people with a sense of cultural connection that is not necessarily tied to the existence of a state

• It is an “imagined community” because we will never meet all the people in our nation, yet we see ourselves as part of a larger national group

Nation-State

When a nation (group of people) is governed by its own state (territorial political unit)

• Assumes the presence of reasonably well-defined, stable nations living contiguously in discrete territories

Multinational State

State with more than one nation inside its borders

• Nearly every state in the world is a multinational state

Multistate Nation

When a nation stretches across borders and across states

Stateless nation

When a nation does not have a state

• Ex. The Kurds

Boundaries

States typically define their boundaries in a treaty-like legal document in which actual points in the landscape or points of latitude and longitude are described

• Cartographers delimit the boundary on maps

• If states so desire, they can demarcate the boundary by using steel posts, concrete pillars, fences, or walls

Geometric Boundaries

Drawn using grid systems such as latitude and longitude or township and range

Physical-political Boundaries

Follow an agreed upon feature in the natural landscape

Maritime Borders

United Nations Conventions on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS) in 1994 established basic principles

• States have sovereign control over territorial seas that extend out 12 nautical miles (NM) from their coastlines

• States have the right to control fiscal transactions, immigration, and sanitation in the contiguous zone that extends an additional 12 NM

Maritime Borders Cont.

• States have control over all resources found in the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) that extends out 200 NM from their coastlines

• States have complete control over resources found in their continental shelves, which are defined by distance instead of by geology

• International waters, which are considered to be the common heritage of all mankind, to be used by all, start at the end of economic zone (EEZs) and include vast areas of oceans

Boundaries are often in dispute

1. Definitional

2. Locational

3. Operational

4. Allocational

Definitional Boundary Disputes

Focus on the legal language of the boundary agreement

Locational Boundary Disputes

Center on differences over where the boundary should actually be placed

• Definition is not in dispute, but fairness and implementation is contested

Operational Boundary Disputes

Involve neighboring states that differ over the way their border should function

Allocational Boundary Disputes

• Are becoming more common as the search for resources intensifies

• A conflict between states or parties over the ownership or access to natural resources—such as oil, natural gas, or water—located in a border region

Political Geography

The study of the political organization of the world

• Interested in the intersection of power, politics, and place

• Can be examined at many scales

Intro to Reapportionment & Gerrymandering (R&G)

Some political systems of representation are geographically anchored

• US Democracy is based on territorial representation

• Multiple electoral divisions in US: National (President), state (Congress and House), counties, cities, school districts

Electoral Geographers

Examine how the spatial configuration of electoral districts and the voting patterns that emerge in particular elections reflect and influence social and political affairs

US Constitution with R&G

The US Constitution requires a census every 10 years to evaluate the proportion of the population in the House of Representatives District

• The number of people in each district is supposed to be roughly the same: ~700,000 people

• Reapportionment must happen after the Census because people move and states gain or lose population

Reapportionment

Process by which districts are changed according to population shifts, determined by the Census

• The shape of a district often changes to accommodate increases or decreases in population

Reapportionment in GA

• After the 2020 Census, the Georgia State Legislature had to redraw district boundaries to adjust for population shifts

• New lines provide one more Republican seat

Reapportionment in CA

• After the 2020 Census, the California’s Redistricting Commission had to redraw district boundaries to adjust for population shifts; CA lost one seat for the first time in history

• New lines created 10 new competitive seats that are projected to favor Democrats

Splitting Minority Votes

“Splitting” minority votes across districts can ensure the majority population controls each district

• Response: The Voting Rights Act (1965, amended in 1982)

• Outlawed districts that weakened minority voting power

• Result: States increased the number of majority-minority districts in the House of Representatives from 27 to 52

How is the Process of R&G?

Reapportionment and redistricting is often a very contentious issue and political process

Gerrymandering

Drawing district lines to favor a particular party or candidate; often results in oddly shaped congressional districts

• “Redistricting for Advantage”

• Cracking & Packing

“Cracking“

Opposition party divided into many districts

“Packing“

Opposition party concentrated into one (or few) districts

Gerrymandering Cont.

• Few districts (10-15%) are “competitive”

• Hard to prove gerrymandering

• All about the shapes drawn to create districts with roughly the same number of people

  • different ways to draw the districts

  • Voter data and mapping allow districts to be drawn in funny shapes to favor one party over another

Origin of the term “gerrymandering”

Supranational Organizations

An institution created by three or more states to promote cooperation

History of Global Supranationalism

• Started with League of Nations after WWI

• United Nations (UN) formed after WWII

Other Supranational Organization

• Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO)

• World Trade Organization (WTO)

• United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)

United Nations (UN)

• Founded in 1945

• Currently includes 193 Member States

• “One place where the world’s nations can gather together, discuss common problems and find shared solutions”

Regional Supranational Organizations

Example European Union (EU)

• 27 members

• Facilitate stability and economic activity

• Retain global prominence

• Ease movement

• Euro currency

Brexit (British Exit)

• United Kingdom withdrawal from the EU

• Occurred after a 2016 referendum; only 52% of residents voted to leave

• Driven by desires for: greater sovereignty, Stricter immigration control, Less EU bureaucracy

• Critics warned of economic damage from leaving the EU’s Market

Nature

Physical universe that includes humans, a social creation

• Understandings of nature are a product of different times and needs

Nature & Society

Nature is a reflection of society

• Philosophies, belief systems, and ideologies influence how we think about and interact with nature

• Examples

  • Romanticism

  • Conservation

  • Environmental Justice

Romanticism with Nature

Emphasized the interdependence of humans and nature

Conservation with Nature

Natural resources should be used thoughtfully and humans should be stewards and not exploiters of nature

Environmental Justice with Nature

All people should have access to safe and healthy communities where they live, work, play, pray, and go to school

Nature & Society Cont.

• Society is the “sum of inventions, institutions, and relationships created and reproduced by human beings” across place and time

  • How society relates to nature varies from place to place and people to people

• Nature and society’s relationship is mediated through technology

  • The extent to which society shapes nature is dependent on technology and its use

What is technology?

• Physical objects & artifacts

• Activities or processes

• Knowledge or know-how

Tools, applications, and understandings are equally critical components of technology

Technology can be both a solution and a problem

Technology Affects the Environment in Three Ways

1.     Harvesting of resources

2.     Emission of wastes in the manufacturing of goods and services

3.     Emissions of waste in the consumption of goods and services

Natural Resources

Materials found in nature and used by humans

Examples: Plants, water, mineral, trees, fossil fuel, sunshine, wind

Renewable Resources

Resources that are replenished even while being used

Nonrenewable Resources

Resources that have finite quantities

Renewable v. Nonrenewable Resources

Land Use

Ways people use land resources for specific purposes

• Grassland, cropland, forest, wetlands, urban/developed

• Residential, commercial, industrial, agricultural, recreational

Land Cover

What is on the ground

• Grass, trees, pavement, row crops

• As land use changes so does land cover

• Need to balance different types of land uses and land cover

Forests, Oxygen, & Deforestation

• Forests play a critical role in the oxygen cycle

• Deforestation is the result of clearing vast tracts of forestland for agriculture and livestock use

• Between 2000 and 2013, 10% of all human caused greenhouse gas emissions came from tropical deforestation

Water with Resource Use & Extraction

Humans and technology have a tremendous impact on the water cycle

A Plastic Ocean

• 70% of the Earth is covered in ocean

• 10% of the plastic used by humans ends up in the ocean

• Plastics do not easily decay

• Often ends up in oceans

• In the oceans, sunlight, and waves break plastics into millions of smaller pieces called microplastics

Garbage Patches

• Ocean currents circling around high-pressure systems gather plastic dumped into the ocean into huge gyres

• Great Garbage Patch is located in the North Pacific

• Only way to remove the microplastics is with fine-mesh nets, but they would also skim ocean phytoplankton

Resource Extraction

• Drilling for oil and natural gas

• Mining for elements

• Logging

Contributed to the development of innovative technology leading to population growth and increased life expectancy AND has unintended consequences & by products

How does Resource Extraction Contribute to Environmental Degradation

• Oceans: Oil and gas exploitation and spills, pollution dumping, overfishing

• Land Surfaces: Open-pit mining and mountaintop removal, dams, irrigation projects

• Biosphere: Deforestation & vegetation loss

• Atmosphere: Air pollution

How Are Environmental Degradation and Its Subsequent Impacts Unevenly Distributed

Rural, Low-Income has highest levels of poor drinking water violations

Love Canal Crisis, New York (1978)

• Lova Canal was a predominately white, working-class neighborhood that was built on top of a former chemical dumpsite

• Began experiencing severe toxic exposure when heavy rains caused buried chemical waste to leach into homes, backyards, and the local school

• Led by Lois Gibbs, the community’s activism drew national attention; aimed at preventing toxic exposure and demanding accountability

• Love Canal became the representation of a broader pattern of industrial neglect and environmental harm

• Anti-Toxics Movement

Warren County, North Carolina (1982)

• Residents along with civil rights and environmental rights groups protested the siting of a hazardous waste landfill

• Argued that the county was deliberately targeted because it was predominately Black and poor

• Did not stop the landfill, but drew national attention to the issue

Two Landmark Studies Emerged During This Period

• US Government Accountability Office (1983), Siting of Hazardous Wast Landfills and their Correlation with Racial and Economic Status of Surround Communities

• United Church of Christ (1987), Toxic Waste and Race in the United States

Provided documentation that hazardous waste sites were disproportionately located in low-income communities of color

Environmental Racism

The unequal distribution of environmental benefits and pollution burdens according to race

Environmental Justice

• The just treatment and meaningful involvement of all people in environmental decisions, ensuring full protection from disproportionate environmental and health hazards, and equitable access to a healthy, sustainable, and resilient environment

• Examples:

  • Access to clean air and water

  • Clean and accessible green spaces

  • Affordable housing

  • Clean energy

Cancer Alley Louisiana

136 petrochemical plants and 7 oil refineries along an 85 mile stretch of the Mississippi River

Sustainability

Often is dated to the UN World Commission on Environment & Development

• Findings were reported in the 1987 Brundtland Report

• How can humanity improve the conditions of developing countries without degrading the environment, when the earth has limited resources

Sustainable Development

• Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs

• Sustainable development and sustainability have since become a goal of many programs enacted by both government and nongovernment organizations

UGA Office of Sustainability

• Programs for students & employees

• Efforts to make campus more sustainable:

• Dining Services, UGArden, Green Roof Garden, Campus Pollinators Project, Campus Arboretum, Electric Mobility, Waste Reduction

• Research Grants

• Research Centers

• Off-Campus Programs

Indigenous Self-Determination

Having the power over socio-cultural and political decision-making

Indigenous Environmentalism

1.     Relational

2.     Socially, culturally, and politically motivated

3.     Land & Place-Based

4.     Culturally & Ethically Grounded

Relationally of Indigenous Environmentalism

• Practice of relationality

• Land as a person v. Land as an object

• Get later

• Human and non-human

• Interconnected, resists silos

• Across time and place

Socio-Political Indigenous Environmentalism

• Ecological sphere is not siloed and separated

• Socially, culturally and politically motivated

• Epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and Two-Spirit Relatives

Land-Based Indigenous Environmentalism

• Indigenous knowledges, governance systems, ecologies and lifeways are rooted in the land

• Caution against pan-Indignity

• Indigenous environmentalisms are land and place-based

• Resist universalizing solutions

Culturally Driven & Indigenous Environmentalism

• Grounded in cultural and ethical practices and protocols

• Linked to the land and our governance systems

• Ex. Seven Generations Protocol

Prominent Indigenous Environmentalism

• Fort Laramie Treaty guaranteed “undisturbed use and occupation” of reservation land

• US Treaties are Supreme Laws of the land

• Standing Rock Sioux Nation voted that the pipeline was a threat to their very survival

• People lived in this camp for months

• Created a community and a sense of place grounded in protecting the land and water

Standing Rock as Indigenous Environmentalism

• Water protectors as non-human relationality

• Fighting for their land as a form of cultural survival

• Fighting for treaty rights as a form of political survival

Where Indigenous Environmentalism Take Place

• Almost always take place in rural spaces

• Places Indigenous peoples into rural, wilderness and reservation spaces

Urban-Native Dichotomy

• Terra Nullius: Land that belongs to no one

• As cities grew, Indigenous people were often barred to cities

• Natives were seen as antithesis to the modern city

Myth of the vanishing Indian is false - Today roughly 70% of Native people live in US cities

Skagit River Hydroelectric Power Project

• Three dams: Gorge, Diablo, and Ross

• 100 year license since 1925

• Produced 20% of the utility’s electricity

• Project allows for flood control

Natives Views of the Skagit Project

• Destruction of river habitat

• Lack of fish passage leading to massive salmon and fish losses

• Dewatering of the river at sacred sites

• Leading to cultural genocide and environmental justice

• Salmon is a culturally significant food and the practice