Virginie Mamadouh’s research while affiliated with University of Amsterdam and other places

La relación estrecha entre la disciplina de la geografía y la violencia militar en proyectos tanto nacionalistas como imperialistas está bien establecida. Sin embargo, hasta hace poco, la guerra rara vez ha sido un tema prominente en las investigaciones geográficas. Aún menos se ha tratado la paz como objeto de estudio, a pesar de que siempre ha habido geógrafos que han intentado usar la geografía para promover la paz o deslegitimar la guerra y la violencia. Este trabajo ofrece una visión de las numerosas agendas políticas y de investigación que se han desarrollado recientemente en la geografía en relación con la guerra y la paz

Exploring the possibilities of critical geoeconomics from a geographical perspective is an attempt to reclaim geoeconomics from the now established a-geographical and frequently uncritical uses of the term in International Relations. Something similar has been achieved before, from the 1990s onwards, when political geographers reclaimed – at least partially – geopolitics. The task is much harder however, because the geographical roots of this neologism have been forgotten and because the geo in geoeconomics remains underspecified. To explore alternatives, this essay reviews the French literature on geoeconomics and its relation to geopolitics and geography.

This commentary revisits the main elements of Paasi's ideas about the institutionalisation of regions and bounded spaces. It reviews his analysis of the identity of a region and the regional identity of its residents (as addressed in his TESG 2002 article). Next, it discusses how his work on bounded spaces contributed to the reinvention of border studies in political geography and how his innovative conceptual work grounded in and written from Finland, was inspiring for a whole generation of researchers working at the margins of the Anglo‐American academic world. Finally, it reasserts the enduring value of his heuristic framework in a time where the complexity of social spatialisation and of spatial socialisation has greatly increased.

Political geographies engage with the relations between space and power, between geography and politics. It is one of the oldest subdiscipline of human geography. The chapter introduces political geography and the plurality of approaches in the discipline which have ranged from the scrutiny of the impact of physical geography on the politics and international relations of specific states, through the political aspects of regional science to the spatial analysis of elections and conflicts and the political economy of the state. More recent developments echo the broader turns in geography: the cultural turn with critical geopolitics and critical border studies, the feminist turn with feminist political geographies and feminist geopolitics, the material turn with more-than representational and more-than-human approaches and ethical ones.

The full-scale invasion and partial occupation of Ukraine by Russian forces in February 2022 onwards is atragedy first and foremost for the people of Ukraine. The invasion illustrates the importance ofintersecting and diverse interdisciplinary perspectives on territory, politics and governance within andbeyond Ukraine and Russia. Our editorial initially addresses some of the more localised and nationalisedconsequences of the invasion. Thereafter, the focus shifts towards the realignment of extra-territorialflows of people, money and objects, including grain and oil. The territorialised of agency of states andnon-state actors alike continues to vary revealing in turn opportunities for competitive or geopoliticaladvantage. Longer term, the mixed reactions to the Ukrainian crisis reveal both the potential fors olidarity but also the difficulties in store for those seeking forms of climate and food justice.

Individual and collective strategies to cope with the pandemic are highly geopolitical, revealing the intricacies of the relations between power and space. Attempts to contain and mitigate the spread of COVID-19 can be understood as sociospatial practices. Places where the disease has been identified are isolated. Spaces are disrupted when established connections (such as airlines connections) are severed and mobility is restricted. Networks are disturbed through social distancing (a misnomer for physical distancing) and self-isolation, and reinvented and reconfigured through telecommunications. More specifically scale is a useful lens to examine pandemic geopolitics, both the policy responses and the representations that make sense of these policy responses. Practices aiming at containing the pandemic are multiscalar bordering processes. They range from the delimitation and the separation of specific body parts (through facemasks, gloves, new habits including handwashing to avoid contact of potentially contaminated body parts with mouth and eyes), the seclusion of ill, contaminated and/or (potentially) contagious bodies (through protective suits and quarantine arrangements), the segregation of hospital departments devoted to COVID-19 patients and of accommodations dedicated to potential virus carriers, and even entire cities (through isolation), countries (through closed state borders) and continents (through discontinued intercontinental air traffic). Last but not least the temporality of these bordering practices remain uncertain with no perspective on the temporal closure of the pandemic, of the sanitary measures or of the exceptional political and policing arrangements that enabled them (and their impact on the rule of law). This chapter explores the representations of the pandemic and the measures taken to contain and mitigate it through the lens of critical geopolitics. It analyzes academic and lay geographies of the pandemic by reviewing representations of the pandemic in popular culture and news media (popular geopolitics), in COVID-19 policy communication (practical geopolitics) and in geographical publications (formal geopolitics).KeywordsPopular cultureMediaDashboardGeography journalsSociospatial relations

Geography’s way of looking at the world and the kinds of international collaborations promoted by the IGU will become ever more significant in the social arena in the years ahead because the broad trends affecting life on Earth are international in scope and resonate with geography’s core perspectival and analytical approaches. Key demographic, socio-economic, socio-cultural, and geopolitical trends point to the value of studies focused on spatial variability, human-environment interactions, space-time linkages, and interdependence across space and scale. If geography is to make important contributions to social well-being in the twenty-first century, its concern with these matters should be pursued in ways that serve to advance sustainability—an overarching goal that cannot be realized in the absence of increased international awareness and the sharing of geographically informed information and ideas. Nonetheless, geography’s influence will remain marginal unless progress is made in combating widespread geographical ignorance on the part of the general public and influential political actors. As such, addressing educational and outreach challenges will be of critical importance to the future of the discipline.

This paper reappraises the two papers of Manuel Castells published in this journal in 1993 and 2002. This appraisal considers the context of his academic career and formidable body of work, the historical period in which the papers appeared and the general discussion on the transformation of cities and societies in academia. Although his legacy is now strongly coloured by Castells' later shift to information and communication, his contributions to cities should not be neglected. Commonalities and differences between the two papers at issue here are summarised. Despite shifts in personal positions of the author and socio‐economic positions of the studied cities, commonalities largely prevail. Their footprint in the academic literature is indicated by a discussion of cities and the world economy.