Geopolitics

Explores evolving geopolitics through theory and contemporary global case studies for advanced students.

It is increasingly clear that geopolitics shapes our daily lives in important ways. Geopolitical forces also influence a wide range of human geography processes that pupils study in A Level geography (and equivalent qualifications). Geopolitics extends pupils’ understanding of those issues in challenging but accessible ways.
The book first introduces the historical and theoretical development of geopolitics as a discipline to give readers a framework to think critically for themselves about the ideas that follow. It explores how approaches to geopolitics have changed from early environmentally deterministic approaches, through classical geopolitics, and into more recent critical perspectives.
The book then uses those theoretical perspectives to address important questions in contemporary geopolitics. Each chapter explores a big question through current and original case studies that stretch pupils beyond their usual A Level case studies. In doing so, each chapter raises an assumption many hold about how global power operates and then shows the flaws in those assumptions.
It challenges the view that the hard power of military might is all-important by exploring the growing role of soft power, through the example of Saudi Arabia. While economic flows have often taken second place behind military and political power, the book looks at the example of Sri Lanka to show how and why that is changing. It invites readers, through the example of emerging powers in Africa, to question how confident they are that the world’s geopolitical superpowers will always remain so. Finally, it explores the new and under-examined spaces of geopolitics with a particular focus on the (re)emergence of the Arctic as a place of geopolitics.
Written in an accessible but academically rigorous style, Geopolitics is a perfect bridge for highly able school pupils looking to stretch their thinking. It gives pupils contemporary case study examples in geopolitics and the theoretical frameworks to make sense of them.