TI 703

Geopolitics and Security

Dr Alma Clavin and Dr John Morrissey

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Please click below for various module details:

• Module rationale
• Key learning outcomes
• Assessment
• Readings
• Full module outline

Module rationale

Geopolitics is once again the 'lingua franca' of global power. Intimately interwoven with its resurgence is an acute sense of vulnerability to international terrorism that has prompted not only renewed forms of Western interventionism 'overseas' but also new forms of governmentality at 'home'. Using a broad range of contexts at multiple scales, this module sets out to explore the interconnections between geopolitical discourse and practices of securitization in our modern world. A particular focus on the US-led war on terrorism aims to critique the abstracted discursive production of geopolitical knowledge by examining the ubiquitous scriptings of insecurity, war and geopolitics in our contemporary moment. A broader key concern is to explore how neoliberal practices of intervention, war and reconstruction have long been based on the mobilization of prioritized geopolitical and geoeconomic discourses. Building on recent work in critical geopolitics, the module seeks to not only interrogate the basis, legitimization and operation of contemporary geopolitics, but also to proffer more humane and nuanced counter-geographies that insist on the spatiality and materiality of global space.

Key learning outcomes

• understanding the intimate links between geopolitical discourse and practices of securitization in our contemporary world

• recognising the long-standing equation between 'security' interests and 'economic' interests at the heart of geopolitical calculation

• seeing the so-called war on terror in the Middle East in its historic context of a much longer Western concern for the military-economic securitization of the Persian Gulf region

• appreciating how neoliberal practices of intervention, war and reconstruction have long been based on the mobilization of prioritized geopolitical and geoeconomic discourses

Assessment (10 ECTS)

Continuous assessment (100%)

2 x 3000-word term papers or equivalent

Some key readings

D. Gregory (2004) The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq. Oxford: Blackwell

M. Hardt and A. Negri (2000) Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press

D. Harvey (2003) The New Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press

G. Ó Tuathail (1996) Critical Geopolitics: The Politics of Writing Global Space. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press

E. Said (1994) Culture and Imperialism. London: Vintage

N. Smith (2005) The Endgame of Globalization. New York: Routledge

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