Critical Geopolitics

The Eurasianist movement launched a theory according to which Russia does not belong to
Europe but forms, together with its Asian colonies, a separate continent named ‘‘Eurasia’’ whose Eastern
border is the Pacific Ocean. Similarily, in the early 1920s, Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, the founder of the
Pan-European movement, developed, the idea of ‘‘Eurafrica.’’ I compare the writings of Coudenhove and
those of Nicolas S. Trubetzkoy and show how the idea of Europe was used as an anti-essentialist model of a
cultural community. Though both ‘‘Eurasia’’ and ‘‘Eurafrica’’ may be understood to express cultural and
economic imperialism, the sophistication with which both concepts are brought forward makes their interpretation
as simple derivatives of chauvinism impossible. Both Trubetzkoy and Coudenhove refuse national
‘‘egocentricity’’ which ‘‘destroys every form of cultural communication between human beings.’’ Above that,
Trubetzkoy and Coudenhove agree that cultural apogees have often come about through fusion. I discuss the
idea of ‘‘convergence’’ in the context of Bergson’s and Deleuze’s biophilosophies.

Not-guilty verdicts, mistrials, and impunity for the Bundy family and many of their supporters in the armed confrontations over public land use in Nevada and Oregon. Expanded access for private oil, gas, mining, and logging industries and the downsizing of national monuments such as Bears Ears lead by Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke. A number of highly contentious debates and sensationalized events have again focused attention on land held in the public domain by the United States. This essay argues that federal land policy as a form of colonial administration has been constitutive for the logic of expectation as property in what is now the United States. From the state land cessions negotiated on behalf of the Articles of Confederation to the preemption acts (1830–1841) to the homestead acts (1862–1916) to present-day demands for land transfer, the acquisition and disposal of the so-called public domain have been central to westward colonization, the consolidation of the nation-state, and the promise of land ownership as the ostensible foundation of individual liberty. These dynamics are evident in contemporary conflicts over public lands and arguments for the transfer of public lands to either state or private ownership. Approaching the Bundy occupations as flashpoints that illuminate competing interpretations and claims to land within the history of westward colonization, this essay seeks to demonstrate the ways in which expectation emerges from particular economies of dispossession of indigenous peoples that have historically worked through and across the division of public and private property.

Federally-recognized tribes must adapt to many ecological challenges arising from climate change, from the effects of glacier retreat on the habitats of culturally significant species to how sea level rise forces human communities to relocate. The governmental and social institutions supporting tribes in adapting to climate change are often constrained by political obstructions, raising concerns about justice. Beyond typical uses of justice, which call attention to violations of formal rights or to considerations about the degree to which some populations may have caused anthropogenic climate change, a justice framework should guide how leaders, scientists and professionals of all heritages and who work with or for federally-recognized tribes understand what actions are morally essential for supporting tribes’ adaptation efforts. This paper motivates a shift to a forward-looking framework of justice. The framework situates justice within the systems of responsibilities that matter to tribes and many others, which range from webs of inter-species relationships to government-to-government partnerships. Justice is achieved when these systems of responsibilities operate in ways that support the continued flourishing of tribal communities.

There are more types of borders today than ever before in history. Borders of all kinds define every aspect of social life in the twenty-first century. From the biometric data that divides the smallest aspects of our bodies to the aerial drones that patrol the immense expanse of our domestic and international airspace, we are defined by borders. They can no longer simply be understood as the geographical divisions between nation-states. Today, their form and function has become too complex, too hybrid. What we need now is a theory of the border that can make sense of this hybridity across multiple domains of social life.

Rather than viewing borders as the result or outcome of pre-established social entities like states, Thomas Nail reinterprets social history from the perspective of the continual and constitutive movement of the borders that organize and divide society in the first place. Societies and states are the products of bordering, Nail argues, not the other way around. Applying his original movement-oriented theoretical framework "kinopolitics" to several major historical border regimes (fences, walls, cells, and checkpoints), Theory of the Border pioneers a new methodology of "critical limology," that provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary border politics.

Personal reflections on “The Roots of Russia”, written by the late Dr. Lev Dobriansky (1918-2008), a renowned Professor of Economics at Georgetown University, and former US Ambassador to the Bahamas. The Dobriansky article was published, courtesy of the (US) Naval Institute Proceedings-April 1963, in An Cosantoir (The Defender), The Irish Defence Journal, Dublin in January 1964, under the auspices of the Irish Defence Forces. European coherence largely depends on two critical factors today: Russia's ability to respect Ukraine sovereign choices and to restore itself to international and multilateral collaboration, and Germany's ability to think "outside the box", and with some modesty realise that in the wider EU, it is a minority nation, for there is no majority one, and should therefore exert its influence more positively to build consensus around options and choices for European futures. Even Russia would be a minority country if and when it joins the EU. This neighbourhood no longer has any room for bullies.

El devenir de las políticas actuales de cooperación al desarrollo en el futuro cercano; los intereses geopolíticos y geoestratégicos de los grandes aportantes de la ayuda al desarrollo en virtud del caos de la situación mundial hoy y de los índices de pobreza extrema. Una crítica a las ideas que comúnmente se tienen de la ayuda al desarrollo.

It is often said that Finland’s European Union (EU) membership in 1995 finally made it a ‘purely Western’ nation. This article theorises upon the membership debate by studying the geopolitical rhetoric used for and against EU membership from 1990 to 1994. It is argued that political studies of this kind should address arguments used in situations where competing actors try to persuade the public to support their own political goals and to increase their political power. In this context, national identity (i.e., competing interpretations of national history,
geographical affiliation, the national future and national interests) becomes a rhetorical resource for political elites. The EU membership debate that took place in Finland reveals how important geography was in the context of this identitypolitical dispute and emphasises the importance of political recognition in legitimising crucial political decisions*in this case, joining the Western European integration process.

While media and scholarly attention on the ‘clandestinity’ of migrants is commonplace, and while ‘visibility’ and ‘invisibility’ feature prominently in the vocabulary of migration scholars, it seems researchers rarely interrogate borders and migration from the angle of sociologies, anthropologies and geographies of secrecy. We use the analytics of secrecy when we debate the covert activities of spies, diplomats, bankers, conspirators,  not to mention the transgressive acts of whistleblowers, but arguably less so when we theorize migration control. In this essay I want to explore some connections between the politics of secrecy and the politics of migration control. My main argument is that it is fruitful to bring theoretical and empirical reflections on secrecy into the debate about borders and migration. I call this the secretization of migration.

By now, the world seems to have learned to live with the Corona
virus which is likely to cast its spell for some more months. Meanwhile,
active and new infection cases have started to decline in many
countries, along with a growing momentum in the vaccination drive
around the world. Nevertheless, the aftershocks of the pandemic are
real. No event since World War II has triggered such distinct global
effects on human and state behaviour so rapidly. The pandemic’s
transformational effects on global affairs are yet to surface fully.
While there is no unanimity yet on the ushering in of a new world
order, the pandemic’s upshot is consequential for the current world
order.
Will 2019-20 be viewed as another turning point in the geopolitical
history of the world? Will 2019-20 be a hinge in human history with
an ex-post shift in the core concepts that defined pre COVID-19
world politics? Has a transformation process of the fundamental
factors of global politics – like the distribution of power, the
calculation of interest, or the constitution of global actors – begun?

Геополитика – это власть пространства. Именно эта емкая формула лучше всего выражает сущность некогда запретной, а ныне столь модной в нашей стране дисциплины. Для России – самой большой страны в мире, протянувшейся от Балтики и Черного моря до Тихого океана и от полярных морей до Кавказа и Каспия, эта власть как нигде важна и ощутима. Власть пространства проявляется через серию вызовов, на которые цивилизация должна давать ответ; способность каждый раз находить адекватный ответ на постоянно возникающие вызовы является залогом не только движения вперед, но и выживания цивилизации как таковой. Здесь работает бессмертная формула, с которой Алиса была вынуждена познакомиться в Зазеркалье: «приходится бежать со всех ног, чтобы только остаться на том  же месте; если же хочешь попасть в другое место, тогда нужно бежать по меньшей мере вдвое быстрее» (Льюис Кэрролл. Алиса в Зазеркалье). Арнольд Тойнби, предложивший парадигму «вызов и ответ» для описания эволюции человеческих сообществ, отмечал, что «чем сильнее вызов, тем оригинальней и созидательней ответ» поскольку «постоянное напряжение» стимулирует «жизненную силу … для новых ответов на вызовы» (Арнольд Тойнби. Постижение истории).
Иерархия геополитических вызовов носит сложный, многоуровневый характер. Важность их изучения напрямую связана с необходимостью выработки квалифицированных ответов и создания долгосрочной стратегии развития, что требуется для последовательного движения России вперед. Особая важность геополитического анализа для России обусловлена той ролью, которую пространственный фактор традиционно играл и продолжает играть в жизни нашей страны. Взгляд на проблемы и перспективы развития России через призму геополитики не исключает, разумеется, других подходов, но должен применяться наряду с ними, как неотъемлемый элемент комплексной стратегии.
Двойственный характер самой геополитики, объединяющей географические и политические начала, служит основой для разделения геополитических вызовов на два типа. Первый тип составляют статические вызовы, длящиеся «из века в век» и являющиеся своеобразной производной от фундаментальных характеристик занимаемой цивилизацией или государством территории. Статические вызовы имеют географическую природу и выступают выразителями присущей геополитике пространственной непрерывности. Второй тип образуют динамические вызовы, возникающие в результате определенных политических, экономических или социальных трансформаций в критические точки развития существующей на данной территории цивилизации или государства. Динамические вызовы имеют ярко выраженный политический характер, описываемый через временну́ю изменчивость, также свойственную геополитике.
В жизни цивилизации или государства достаточно длительные и спокойные периоды, когда приходится иметь дело в основном с уже ставшими привычными статическими вызовами, чередуются с относительно непродолжительными хронологическими отрезками, когда во «взрывном порядке» появляются новые динамические вызовы. При этом вызовы обеих видов не существуют независимо друг от друга – возникающие раз за разом динамические вызовы надстраиваются над статическими, которые «были и будут всегда», усиливая и модифицируя их, открывая у них новые, подчас непредвиденные стороны.
Механизм выработки ответов на вызовы напрямую зависит от их характера. В качестве ответа на статические вызовы чаще всего используются традиционные методы и подходы, зарекомендовавшие себя на протяжении длительного времени в качестве части долгосрочной стратегии, пускай и не всегда институционально оформленной и осознаваемой. Свидетельством эффективности, разумеется, далеко не всегда абсолютной, традиционных методов является сам факт выживания цивилизации или государства в течение исторического времени. Динамические вызовы требуют выработки качественно новых, инновационных ответов или кардинальной модификации уже имеющихся методов. Подчас поиск ответов на динамические вызовы напоминает латание дыр (коим он, к сожалению, зачастую и является), хотя на самом деле это хорошая возможность для разработки осмысленной долгосрочной стратегии дальнейшего развития с учетом всех изменений, которые произошли в иерархии вызов в связи с надстраиванием динамических вызовов над вызовами статическими.

Ce texte vise à montrer la problématique des opérations politiques de la mobilité à l'intérieur du système international de l'art contemporain, soit à l'intérieur des réseaux économique, symbolique et transculturel proposés par les biennales internationales, la communauté translocale de galeries, la nouvelle géographie des institutions culturelles, les musées, las organisations et les cadres ainsi que les processus d'internationalisation de l'art contemporain des années quatre-vingt.

Suomalaisten  Venäjä-kuvista  on  keskusteltu  melko  paljon,  minkä  seurauksena  julkisten keskustelufoorumeiden  Venäjä-keskustelut  kääntyvät  usein  käsittelemään  itseään.  Pitkälle kehittyneissä Venäjä-keskusteluissa on tunnistettavissa pitkä historia: Venäläisyys on ollut
lähes  koko  suomalaisuuden  itsetietoisuuden  historian  ajan  keskeinen  ”toinen”  Suomen kansalliselle identiteetille. Tämä näkyy myös Pohjois-Karjalassa, missä Venäjän läheisyys on osa arkipäivää. Moni maakuntalehti Karjalaisessa ja internetin Suomi24-keskustelufoorumilla
Venäjä-keskusteluun  osallistunut  piti  itäistä  rajanaapuria  lähiperspektiivissä mahdollisuutena,  mutta  suuressa  mittakaavassa  uhkana.  Venäjä-kuvien  pelkoon  liittyvistä piirteissä ilmenivät yhtäältä vieraus, erilaisuus, tuntemattomuus sekä toisaalta vaihtelevissa
määrissä kyseenalaistetut historian ja ajankohtaisuutisoinnin tulkinnat.

Contestations over justice and equity in the climate regime provide the most striking evidence of the quest by relevant actors to ensure that institutions for global environmental governance are based on widely shared ethical standards of responsibility and fairness. This review article examines recent policy debates and literature on distributive justice and the climate regime and highlights some areas of key research. The review indicates that while discussions on climate justice have gained ascendency within the international regime circle with noticeable impacts, a lot remains to be clarified about the status of justice concepts and how to best design polices that reconcile moral ideals and power politics. Hence, although the current regime performs well in terms of recognizing the need for and incorporating concepts of distributive justice between the rich and poor countries; it has not provided a basis to sufficiently upset the underlying forces and abiding structures of global inequality. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website

This special issue celebrates research in the higher education field with an interest in non-Western lines of inquiry. The six papers here emerge from Latin-America, Spain, the USA and India and draw on multiple perspectives and methodologies. They address tensions and challenges in higher education systems that experienced in concrete contexts and regions but that are yet, to some extent, experienced in higher education systems globally. More specifically, the variety of research questions, theories, methods and contexts displayed here raise critical questions about global forces attached to neoliberalism and competition for prestige, which in turn, frame current practices in higher education. This special issue, therefore, constitutes an epistemic space that gives visibility to narratives on higher education that have been in Santo’s
words, invisible narratives on higher education but that are fast becoming more visible.

This paper discusses how performance ethnography has the potential to intervene in research praxis on environmental justice, by combining the analytic, the aesthetic and the activist. Performance enables a politics of proximity that allows research to be accountable to and in dialogue with communities impacted by environmental justice. This paper draws on a case study of a collaborative film project that captures the environmental history of Warren County through the perspective of a community leader. Stories and scenes from this collaborative research process are woven in with reflections on research as performance. Performance allows for critical analysis of human-toxin interactions, and as a form of aesthetic engagement, creates the possibility of dialogic knowledge production, rooted in place and embodied in practice.

En una cultura visual marcadamente colonialista y excluyente, la entrada del arte contemporáneo periférico en los circuitos canónicos nos arroja las siguientes preguntas sobre la mesa: ¿qué motivó que este arte 'otro' entrara en los circuitos de exposición occidentales? ¿por medio de qué vías  se ha vuelto accesible dicha forma de alteridad sensible? ¿la búsqueda de un verdadero equilibrio en la cartografía internacional del arte contemporáneo encuentra su correspondencia en el equilibrio de las políticas de representación de la diversidad cultural, o la integración de la periferia, paradójicamente, ha servido más bien para perpetuar y fortalecer el poder del centro? ¿qué queda del Otro, y en dónde, cuando es representado? ¿la incorporación de la periferia cultural (de los extremos de Occidente) al mainstream, es parte del proyecto de estetización de lo subordinado? ¿la inclusión de los Otros debe ser vista como una victoria del proyecto poscolonial, como la expresión cultural más eficaz de la descolonización, o bien como una nueva forma de domino intercultural mediada por el control de los mecanismos de exhibición de las identidades y por la gestión de las políticas de representación de la diversidad cultural? ¿en qué medida puede la estética implicarse en este juego de tensiones para mediar el desequilibrio entre las diferentes culturas? ¿será capaz la teoría estética (a través de una nueva delimitación geoepistemológica de sus fronteras) de utilizar la escenificación global de la pluralidad del arte contemporáneo como un verdadero motor epistemológico que disminuya la estandarización de las identidades y la absorción de las diferencias culturales? ¿tienen las prácticas artísticas y la visualidad crítica un papel ineludible en el proceso de consecución de una verdadera condición poscolonial de la cultura global?

En este libro se aborda el contexto de una situación cultural que describiremos como la condición poscolonial del proceso de internacionalización del arte contemporáneo, en la cual el campo de acción de la estética parece requerir unas nuevas delimitaciones y unas nuevas fronteras epistemológicas que desdibujen la separación que se instaló, impelida por una lectura posmodernista de la modernidad colonial, entre los sujetos, sus subjetividades y los procesos de estetización, apropiación y politización de la realidad.

In its immediate aftermath the Eastern European revolution of 1989 was interpreted as a ‘rectifying revolution’: the experiment of 1917 had been cast off, liberal institutions were copied from the West and no new ideas were launched. Subsequent debate has gone some way in challenging this, suggesting that 1989 at least launched historically distinct political methods but lacked novel utopias or critiques of dominant political and economic paradigms. Such interpretations have overlooked that dissidents and protest movements across Eastern Europe also relied widely on a strong environmental critique of industrial society, expansionary economics and instrumental reason. More specifically, many of the human rights and democracy movements began as, or meshed with, environmentalist organizations, and from very early on dissidents linked their non-violent and anti-authoritarian strategies of resistance to explicitly environmentalist critiques of industrialism. This article argues that although overshadowed by human rights and demands for political reform, environmentalism was a significant feature of the revolutionary process in the ways it allowed dissidents to critique socialist as well as capitalist systems, provided a focus to the idea of civil society and tapped into a wider emerging globalist political narrative in which the limits of the Earth and of rationalist control over it were made increasingly apparent.

This chapter addresses the life and works of Italian transnational anarchist and anti-fascist Camillo Berneri (1897-1937) drawing upon Berneri’s archives and original papers, never translated into English with only few exceptions. For the first time, I analyse Berneri’s work through spatial lenses, investigating the contributions that this can bring to the contemporary fields of critical, radical and subaltern geopolitics. My argument is twofold. First, I argue that the analysis of spaces of exile and transnational solidarity networks are paramount for understanding the trajectories of anarchist anti-fascism between the two world wars. Berneri is an outstanding representative of an entire generation of Italian anarchists and antifascists. He was eventually defined ‘the most expelled anarchist of Europe’ due to his innumerable travels and tribulations across the borders of Italy, France, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg and Spain. Second, I argue that Berneri’s writings on the geopolitical problems that the Spanish revolution had to face from 1936, such as the question of the armed defence from Franco’s troops and the Italian imperialism in the Balearic Islands, can nourish present-day perspectives in radical internationalism and stateless geopolitics. The prickliness of Berneri’s analyses, published in the journals of Italian anarchists fighting in Spain with the CNT-FAI, can also explain why he was murdered by Stalinist agents during the Bloody Week of Barcelona in May 1937, just few days after delivering a radio speech where Berneri pronounced a moved tribute to another Italian anti-fascist, Antonio Gramsci, just died in a fascist prison in Italy.

El presente trabajo se enfoca en analizar la configuración y percepción que existe entre Chile y Perú en relación con el tema “frontera”, tomando como punto de vista la visión que cada uno de los estados posee desde los ángulos político, jurídico y geopolítico, lo cual se traduce en concepciones “porosas”, “flexibles” y “absolutas” de la misma. En este sentido, se visualiza la evolución de la relación bilateral en los ámbitos mencionados, considerando en forma especial los recientes eventos que han acontecido entre aquellos estados, como lo fue el fallo de la Corte Internacional de Justicia de La Haya en lo relativo a la delimitación de la frontera marítima. Finalmente, se considera que si bien las visiones en torno a la percepción de la frontera se construyen principalmente desde la “alta política”, ello ocurre sin apreciar la concepción social y geopolítica de la zona en cuestión, con lo que se deja de lado una visión inclusiva, maximizando los elementos divisionarios entre ambos países.

Geopolitical dynamics  –  A theoretical claim

In the social sciences, geopolitical theory is used in order to analyze states actions and commitments  when it comes to foreign policy. This thesis develops a new understanding of geopolitical theory. Firstly, the development and application of geopolitical theory, from its foundations in the early twentieth century to contemporary geopolitical studies is discussed. Secondly a revised understanding of the variables integrated in the concept and how it can be operationalized as an analytical tool is presented and tested empirically.  The critical assessment of the research field of geopolitical theory tells us that six different geopolitical perspectives have been considered the most influential (room, strategy, power, projection, identity, affiliation and governance) when it comes to analyzing state action. This model is applied as an analytical tool and thus tested on a single case. The case study is an analysis of foreign policy discussions at the state level in Sweden. This has determined how the geopolitical perspectives function in relation to each other as well as presenting the need of new geopolitical perspectives, in order to understand a state’s foreign policies actions and commitments.  The case study clearly shows the merits in using geopolitical perspectives and letting them interplay. The most important result, however, is that future studies needs to consider the connections between the six perspectives. The study has confirmed the need of an additional geopolitical perspective ( ideology). Ideology as a seventh perspective addresses the issue of political intentions among a state’s representatives, and in that way helps to explain the dynamic connections between the other six geopolitical perspectives that influence states actions and commitments when it comes to foreign policy.

Keywords: Theory development, dynamics, foreign policy, geopolitics, geopolitical theoretical perspective, room, strategy, power projection, identity, affiliation, governance, ideology.

Climate change has become a matter of security in recent policy discussions. The scale of the transformations we are living through is slowly dawning on policy makers. But the implications for both security and policy making in general of our new geological conditions, our living in the new geological epoch of the Anthropocene, have yet to be thought through carefully. The basic geopolitical premises in security thinking are now in need of a radical overhaul in light of the insights from Earth system science. Simplistic assumptions of environmental change leading directly to conflict are misleading at best and dangerous at worst. Climate security discussions now have to engage directly with global envi- ronmental change and with Earth systems science in particular. Climate security in the long run is not a matter of envi- ronmental change causing political difficulties, but rather a matter of contemporary political difficulties causing accelerating climate change. Climate change is a production problem, not one that can be managed in the terms of traditional environmental thinking; security thinking needs to focus on the implications of this rethinking of traditional geopolitical assumptions.

What do national borders mean today? Can they be effectively maintained in times of massive humanitarian crises and refugee influx? What do such mass movements imply both for the authority and sovereignty of states and how do they affect debates on national identity? This chapter debates these questions on a conceptual level.

L’articolo intende affrontare il fenomeno della globalizzazione culturale, nel settore specifico dell’arte contemporanea, rilevando alcuni tra i suoi lati più significativi e i suoi limiti, evidenziando soprattutto il sostanziale rischio dell’appiattimento delle diversità e delle identità. Considerando come un incipit la mostra Magiciens de la terre, curata da Jean-Hubert Martin nel 1989, se ne ricostruisce e ripercorre in parte il dibattito critico, quindi vengono tratteggiati alcuni degli aspetti caratterizzanti l’allargamento dello scenario artistico attuale. Viene, infine, ipotizzata l’altra strada della globalizzazione: una negoziazione tra ciò che è locale e ciò che è globale, un immaginario ibrido composto da un vocabolario che rende ovunque riconoscibili i contorni e gli elementi chiave di esperienze comuni.

Book Review
The world is changing, no doubt. Would you like to know how some of the elements of our contemporary world are evolving? I would encourage you to read The Death of the Gods by Carl Miller to find out more about these changes. Carl Miller demonstrates how some of the elements of our contemporary world are shifting, and this book traces a historically embedded sequence of changes in power, including its latest phase. More specifically, after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, public opinion pays more attention to how Internet activity is affecting our daily and political realities. Both sociologists and the public should be getting more attuned to what is going on in that space. Thus, one way of doing that is by reading Carl Miller's The Death of the Gods. Cyberattacks during election times might affect a political landscape, so it would be good for social scientists to understand more how critical these issues are to democracies. This book is a timely reminder of how some of the changes in the power structure affect all of us, even though most examples and situations discussed in this book relate to the developed countries. The Death of the Gods highlights how centres of power are shifting in contemporary societies of the Global North (and no doubt South too), with emphasis on the unparalleled speed and pace of change. The book is aimed mostly at non-academic audiences, but it offers some basic theoretical grounding about debates on power. It aims to show how some old "gods" (a direct reference to Greek mythology) are losing their power and how new ones are emerging in the early twenty-first century. This book discusses the association between power and modern technology (i.e. computers, all types of computer software, and mobile phones). This book is relevant and has broad scope. It sits at the intersection of discussions on power, crime, and how technology influences contemporary globalised societies. It fits into public debates on the role of the internet, social media, and "post-truth" in shaping contemporary communication, culture, and politics. It describes a shift from power based on means of production towards power based on means of mediation (for example, the ownership of software and devices using that software). Carl Miller begins his book by introducing basic information on the discourse on power. He examines how power was perceived from a traditional geopolitical point of view. Miller mentions some of the most influential authors in that academic space (i.e. sociology and philosophy, for example, Niccolò Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, Karl Marx, Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault, and Robert Dahl) and some of their approaches. He taps into a growing tendency amongst journalists, academics, and influencers assuming a societal transition or revolution within a contemporary globalised world induced by technological change. More detailed historical context is provided in specific chapters. One emerging theme of the book is that most shifts in power have their roots in social, political, and cultural changes (e.g. means of communication or technological advancement) occurred during the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. For Carl Miller, all forms of technologies are instruments of social control; for instance, certain social media platforms can influence social norms and pressure people to conform to these reformulated norms. Similarly, these technologies affect how power can be gained and lost. The association between modern technology (based on digital means of communication) and power is not a new one as it is present in the public sphere from at least the 1980's. Miller shows how information is transferred into power, and how, for example, hacking became a new route to power. Thus, he claims that hackers-a multiform social group-are "a strange new kind of ruling class" (p. 21). Hackers are defined by their skills, knowledge, mind-set, and curiosity as to how the technology works. David thanking God after death of Goliath Hacking is all about knowing how specific elements of our contemporary reality operate and interact, and about being able to exploit its imperfections and vulnerabilities to one's advantage. In Miller's own words: "[t]he device isn't doing what the maker designed it to do. It's doing what you wanted it to do. You, through a mixture of knowledge, skill, perseverance-you've owned the device! You have reached out and changed the world" (p. 23). Thus, hacking is one of the defining skills shaping the contemporary public sphere. Hackers can influence power relations which depend on technology by exploiting vulnerabilities of that technology (for example, to blackmail someone over their illegally obtained private correspondence or pictures). Similarly, this book demonstrates how governments can be ridiculed, undermined, or even overthrown using social media and connectedness. Considering that, whoever mastered control over computers, mobile devices, or relevant software can create favourable conditions for themselves to control a portion of a public sphere which is reliant on that hardware and software. In the context of traditional institutions and centres of power, Miller notes that "... the technology weakens the very structures and institutions that determine where power sits, they weaken the rules for how power can be legitimately used" (p.333). The main weakness of the book is that some arguments are scattered across chapters, or else, the discussed arguments are not following the central themes of specific chapters. The most vivid example of that is a chapter on warfare. This section focuses predominantly on the use of information in modern warfare, and the military element of that chapter is somewhat in the background. Armies depend on information; nonetheless, the focus of this section of the book seems to be fluctuating between warfare and attention-hacking or fact-checking. Such fluctuation influences the strength of the presented arguments. Miller claims that his book is a groundbreaking examination of the new centres of contemporary power and control. Indeed, his book challenges the prevailing assumptions about the centres of contemporary power by providing examples of entities which gained or lost power in recent times, such as such as, the Big Four (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple) or governments. This book brings to light multiple facets of power. It is a story about liberation and control, and how the new communication channels are changing the composition of power structures. Also, The Death of the Gods is a story about the weakening of the old hierarchies (e.g. elite political parties, business leaders, and those who controlled other traditional centres of power). Miller observed that in the United States older and newer forms of power feeds off one another, for example, when the tech giants (the new power) finance politics and politicians (the old power). The book's content was enhanced and contextualised by personal experience acquired in the process of meeting with, and interviewing, people who thanks to their expertise and experience on power and dominance significantly enriched the author's understanding of discussed matters. It uses some of the most current examples (relating to fake news or information warfare) which may prove especially useful for lecturers wishing to include an accessible reading about the effects of technology on the political, social, and cultural spheres of life. Overall, The Death of the Gods offers a fresh and broad perspective on the new and emerging form of power that is coming to distinguish twenty-first-century liberal democracies.

В статье рассматривается становление и развитие региональной подсистемы международных отношений в Северной Америке в XIX в. В изучаемое столетие североамериканская подсистема международных отношений прошла три периода, которые отражают ее формирование (1800–1823), консолидацию (1823–1867) и стабильное развитие (1867–1904). Особую значимость в развитии международных отношений в Северной Америке сыграли два хронологических отрезка: 1815–1823 – время появления нового независимого актора и выстраивания системного взаимодействия между игроками в регионе; 1845–1867 – завершение формирования региональной международной иерархии, на вершине которой оказались США.

Cet article analyse la genèse du concept de géohistoire chez l'historien français Fernand Braudel. Cette notion n'est pas apparue dans La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l'époque de Philippe II (1949) comme l'historiographie le dit d'habitude, mais dans les Cahiers de captivité entre 1941 et 1944. Dans ces Cahiers s'observent à la fois l'influence de la géographie française et celle de la géographie allemande dans l'élaboration de la géohistoire — en même temps que les points de divergences de Braudel vis-à-vis de la géographie conçue par Lucien Febvre dans La Terre et l'évolution humaine (1922). De ce débat résulte de ce qu'on peut appeler un chapitre braudélien de l'histoire de la pensée géographique. Abstract This article analyses the origin of the concept of geohistory in the French historian Fernand Braudel. We aim to show that it did not appear in La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l'époque de Philippe II (1949), as historiography normally asserts, but in his prison notebooks written between 1941 and 1944. In them we see the influence of French and German geography in the development of geohistory as well as Braudel's divergences concerning the treatment given to geography in Lucien Febvre's La Terre et l'évolution humaine (1922). This debate defines what we are calling " a Braudelian chapter in the history of geographical thought " .

The way in which societies institutionalize “collective memory” is one of the most important aspects of contemporary politics, feeding directly into the constitution of individual and communal identities, and creating sources of discord and dialogue. This essay explores some of the most significant issues at stake in debates over the political uses of the past. I suggest that it is important to distinguish between three modes of historical consciousness, memory, mythology, and critical history. I then offer a critique of Avishai Margalit’s "The Ethics of Memory" (2002), arguing that in failing to allow space for “acknowledging” the plurality of communal myths his strong communitarian conception of mnemonic ethics leaves room for the perpetuation of asymmetric power relations and the imposition of hegemonic identities. Developing this line of thought, the essay then explores some of the ways in which agonistic democratic theorists might think through the relationship between past and present, myth and history. I argue that it is necessary to avoid procedures and institutions that entrench diverse identities while simultaneously establishing conditions in which different communities can freely propound their historical identity-constitutive claims.

Pandemic Geopolitics, Scales of the Crisis and Contentious Scenarios

This article analyzes the geopolitics of the COVID-19 pandemic from three interrelated axes that allow us to observe the responses and recompositions of power and resistances: geopolitical constraints, geopolitical representations and post-pandemic scenarios. In the first case, the antecedents and causes of the pandemic are discussed, based on different spatio-temporal dimensions, framing it within a broader civilizational crisis and ecosystem limits. In the second, a picture of spatial
reorganization is drawn with geopolitical representations that highlight global chaos, the political fragility of regional blocks and the centrality acquired by state action and local initiatives with community and territorial roots. Finally, three post-pandemic contentious scenarios are drawn: that of
“recovery”, based on the logic of business as usual and economic growth; that of “adaptation”, with proposals for capitalist reforms in the face of the climate emergency; and, finally, the paradigm shift towards a new ecosocial matrix, guided by anti-capitalism, and environmental and social justice.

Today, the importance of borders in people’s lives is more than theoretical. Borders unite and divide; they have become mobile and individ- ualized, letting some move around freely and restricting access to others. Hence, whether they are opening or closing, borders have become an object of public policy as well as an essen- tial resource for private interests; they are both a governing tool and an advantageous one for the market economy. They represent a point of
political, social, economic exacerbation, a labora- tory of our times.
For the moment, international borders remain the basis of citizenship, on which democracy is built... But the manner in which they oscillate reveals the uncertain future of our political systems. To un- derstand what a border constitutes today means raising fundamental questions in order to visualize our future societies, as well as redefining our rela- tion to the world.