Enabling persistent presence? Performing the embodied geopolitics of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle assemblage

Military Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are being increasingly used to provide surveillance and attack capabilities within war zones. At the heart of much of the rhetoric about these aircraft is their supposed ability to enable persistent presence across the battlespace. They are also unique in that they actively distance the aircrew from the aircraft. This paper seeks to question whether this claim to persistent presence can be justified and considers the implications of the distancing of pilot from machine in this. In order to achieve this, the paper focuses upon conceptualising UAVs as assemblages, composed of both human and machine elements. It uses firsthand accounts from a Royal Air Force Reaper UAV aircrew as a basis to analyse the ways in which the deployment of these aircraft in Afghanistan is changing the ways that war is experienced by aerial combatants. It does this through the utilisation of a feminist, embodied geopolitics, refiguring it from a concern with victims of war to argue for its use to understand the micro-scale of how the humans within these UAV assemblages experience combat. This paper thus focuses upon the extent to which the Reaper UAV achieves a persistent presence through analysis of its supposed more-than-human loitering and vision abilities, and the limitations associated with the requirement for a human-in-the loop. The paper contends that although UAVs like the Reaper change the geopolitics of combat, the continuing requirement for the human element of the assemblage restricts their ability to provide persistent presence.     

Preparing Geography,Earth and Environmental Science (GEES) Students for Employment in the Enterprise Culture

Maps and related graphics are important means of representing key issues in development education and related themes. This paper examines the use of world maps in materials used in teaching development in higher education and concludes that many are not 'fit for purpose'. Many of these maps create false connotations, which can lead to misleading understandings of key issues.     

The India-Iran-Pakistan Triad: Comprehending the Correlation of Geo-economics and Geopolitics

Historically, India’s policy on Iran has been a balancing act between securing its interests as a counterweight to Pakistan, and ensuring its continued partnership with the US and other regional players. Yet confusion in India’s Iran policy became evident when Iran’s nuclear program began to draw international attention in the 1990s. More recently, India has attempted to reach out to Iran, reigniting trade relations and initiating new plans. Growing Indo-Iran relations are however a worrying sign for Islamabad, which is attempting a simultaneous expansion of ties with Tehran while continuing to resolve outstanding disputes. The central argument of this paper is that India’s relations with Iran are best understood through the prism of the intertwining of geo-economic and geopolitical considerations. Analysis has often separated these two factors, but there is evidence that a synergy exists – and that it is particularly visible when the Pakistani element is introduced. Often emphasising historical and cultural affinity, India and Pakistan have each sought politically and economically viable relations with Iran. Yet their bilateral political calculations and the current economic challenges have prompted a nuanced policy based on a careful balancing of geo-economics and geopolitics.     

新疆的地缘政治与国家安全--历史与现状的考察

本文认为古代新疆西部境外没有出现过能向中国王朝挑战的敌对势力 ;民国时期 ,新疆地缘政治形势危机可用“孤悬塞外”来概括 ;新中国成立后的 30多年间 ,新疆的地缘政治经历了“友好的后院”到“反修前线”的变化 ;冷战结束后 ,新疆地缘政治的新威胁是民族分裂、宗教极端和国际恐怖“三个主义” ;“9·11”事件后 ,克什米尔问题、“后塔利班”问题、“前线”国家的动向、“三个主义”合流问题和美军进驻中亚问题 ,是新疆地缘政治的最严重的问题。新疆的地缘政治愈来愈事关国家安全大局 ,愈来愈受到国际大环境的影响 ,其进程愈来愈复杂多变     

对地缘政治学批判的再思考

本文探讨了政治地理学最重要流派的地缘政治学的理论、发展和实践;对“反动”的德国地缘政治学历史批判的渊源进行了探索。作者认为,地缘政治学在二次大战后的一度衰落,仅是其理论组成之一的国家有机体学说,而另一理论组成的地缘战略学研究一直是地缘政治学研究的主流,是历史和当今国际关系研究的重要基础;德国的地缘政治学,其理论的合理部分,其研究所用的方法,对今天的地缘政治学研究仍有意义,应该历史地、客观地、科学地探讨德国地缘政治学的合理内核,恢复其作为一门科学的应有地位,促进政治地理学学科的发展。     

中亚的地缘政治--历史和现实

一个多世纪以来 ,中亚的地缘政治格局和作用不断发生变化 ,并在不同时期以不同的方式影响着中国。“9·11”事件之后 ,中亚的地缘政治形势变得更加复杂 ,大国的、区域的、国际的利益交织在一起 ,成为全球关注的热点。阿富汗反恐战争的结束为中亚国家提供了国际合作的新通道 ,尽管中亚在国际地缘政治格局中的作用将越来越重要 ,但它不会成为新的地缘政治“核心地区”。     

战后西方地缘政治学的发展与特征

本文在简要回顾二战前西方地缘政治学发展历史的基础上,介绍了\"多极世界\"模式,地缘经济学,文明冲突论等战后及冷战后西方地缘政治理论发展过程中有代表性的学说。分析评价了它们产生的思想基础,历史背景及发展特征,并预测了今后西方地缘政治学的发展趋势与方向。     

Commentary: Philip Hirsch's “The shifting regional geopolitics of Mekong dams”

Understanding the complex shifting geopolitics of the Mekong at a time when many networked arrangements and economic flows are disrupting earlier forms of regulation must involve a multidimensional view of geopolitical practices across time and engagement with their representations. This commentary on Hirsch (2016) underscores the importance of the local struggles and people whose voice is often silenced. For a multidimensional view, it is particularly important to include voices that too easily become omissions.     

地缘政治学理论、方法与九十年代的地缘政治学

本文介绍了地缘政治学家关于地缘政治学学科的不同定义;探讨了不同层次地缘政治学研究的核心概念和研究方法论,分析了长期存在的学科内涵争论;探索了九十年代地缘政治学新的研究领域和发展方向:旨在推动我国地理学家参与国家和全球的地缘政治,地缘战略研究,繁荣和发展我国人文地理学的学科体系。     

The geographical and ethical origins of neoliberalism: The Walter Lippmann Colloquium and the foundations of a new geopolitical order

Observers tend to overlook the early neoliberalism that derived from the “Lippmann Colloquium” organised in Paris in 1938. Analysis of the discourse produced and books published at this founding moment shows that neoliberalism was then presented as a geopolitical doctrine aimed at redressing the spatial fragmentation of the world into States. The means to achieve this, according to this first neoliberalism, was by implementing what, in 1978, M. Foucault called “governmentality”: a multiscalar political system based on the submission of territories to the transnational discipline of a multilateral free division of labour. This thinking was very similar to the convictions of a number of political leaders who, from the 1940s onwards, were involved in creating a new international order uniting Western Europe and the United States, the foundations of which had many similarities with the principles of the first neoliberalism.     

国际关系的变化趋势与地缘关系理论的变革

国际关系的发展趋势将以经济为主题、以和平合作为主调。相应的地缘关系理论也应作如下调整:从\"争夺霸权\"向\"寻求合作\"的目标转换、从地缘政治向地缘经济的主题转换、从地理位置向科技人才的解释因子转换、从欧洲中心论向全球一体化的空间转换。     

Geographies of mediation: Market development and the rural broker in Maharashtra, India

This paper explicates the role of community-level intermediaries in post-liberalized economic sectors. Focusing on nascent commercial markets for improved, smokeless cookstoves in southwestern Maharashtra, I describe how development is encountered by three analytic groups – artisans, female stove users and NGO field officers. This study highlights patterns of strategic intermediary action, or forms of brokering, used to negotiate the commercialization process for individuals involved in the fabrication, distribution and use of improved cookstoves. A close analysis of the mediating agent can strengthen theories on how individuals and communities encounter sector privatization and state retrenchment. This study reveals a diverse set of brokering activities and actors, and shows how intermediaries combine tasks associated with traditional conceptions of the political fixer and market broker by working within and between groups of market, village and state operatives to transform market supply chains. Mediating agents coordinate counter regulating activities within civil society in the absence of heavy state intervention and play a crucial role in activating and connecting community interests to latent neoliberal state resources.