Thoroughly updated to reflect the many historic changes in the world. Coverage includes a new chapter on indigenous peoples, sections concerned with international peacekeeping operations, the Arctic, the proposed New World Information and Communication Order and a New International Economic Order, contemporary state practice in marine affairs and the outer continental shelf of the U.S. Contains numerous new maps, graphs, photographs and illustrations plus completely revised references.
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Probably one of the best geography textbooks I’ve been forced to read. I loved that the chapters were short yet very informative. My only complaint is that the book had bonded terms, but there wasn’t always an in-text definition for the words (and often when there was an in-text definition it wasn’t with the bolded instance of the word) nor was there a glossary to provide definitions.
Very readable and enjoyable, even to a layman. The opening chapter with the history of political geography is a bit of a slog, but the rest is interesting and well-informed and a sly opinion has crept past the editor here and there. I really enjoyed this and found it quite interesting. I should note, though, that if you read a major newspaper everyday and several political magazines, much of this is stuff you already know. This is certainly a survey textbook.
I felt very uncomfortable when I read in the introduction that the authors view feminist geography as a mere trend that will be obsolete once the subject has suffered "the inevitable assault of reality". For women, gendered geographies are reality, whether in the physical sense in terms of in which countries women allowed to leave the house without male accompaniment, whether in the political sense in terms of reproductive rights by region, or whether in the "mental map" sense in terms of in which spaces women feel safe walking alone and so on. Dismissing the inherent gendering of geography only serves to shut the doors of the subject to women and their experiences, which will only serve to take geography as a whole back to the 1950s before gender, race, class, and so on were recognized within the field.
For those who need a primer in feminist geography: Susan Hanson's 1992 AAG presidential address "Geography and Feminism: Worlds in Collision?" questions and examines the similarities and differences between feminism and geography as "intellectual forces". Her argument is that the two fields of thought aren't mutually exclusive, and that by noting their shared central traditions, both areas of inquiry will be enriched. She remarks that the two fields share in common the finding of significance in everyday life, an appreciation for the importance of context, as well as recognition of difference. Most importantly, she claimed that geography has not until recently acknowledged place, space, and location being gendered (as well as classed, and raced). Hanson also focuses on how feminism and geography deal with the nation of which spaces belong to whom, as well as the gendered public/private space dichotomy as well as the also gendered home/work dichotomy. Finally, she draws upon research about women in the workplace to explain how "women's" work is traditionally undervalued and under-compensated, which reiterates how necessary it is to break down gender differences in every day life. With geography and feminism working together, it is possible.
In 2005, the journal Progress in Human Geography published an article by the University of Glasgow's Joanne Sharp entitled "Geography and Gender: Feminist Methodologies in Collaboration and In the Field". This article describes the "recent mainstreaming" of feminist geography, a major difference from the 1992 Hanson piece which painted feminist geography as being a niche subject on the outskirts of the field at the time. Remember, this is only a year after Fahrer and Glassner dismissed feminist geography within Political Geography. Their majority privilege does not give them the right to trivialize a subject that has seen great leaps within the past 20 years. I hope that if there is a 4th edition of Political Geography, Fahrer and Glassner will realize their error.
Otherwise, it is a fairly decent guide to political geography and all aspects thereof, though some of the references are now relatively outdated, and the design of the textbook (notably in terms of walls of serif text) could be easier on the eyes.
While chock-a-block full of facts, this tome is not only rife with obvious and often appearing bias, but it's a bit of a snorer. It takes a particular skill to take an interesting subject and turn it into a truly dull read. While I realize the pursuit of knowledge shouldn't require out and out entertainment value, people of the author's ilk could do the Ivory Tower set a service by sticking to reading and researching, rather than writing. Case in point: At her bedtime, I can read to my 4-year-old daughter for an hour from my Physical Geo book and she not only doesn't fall asleep, she asks me questions about it the next day. However, this book guarantees she'll be out in ten minutes or less. I was initially excited when the book arrived, though some of that was built up by an inordinately long wait for delivery, but my excitement dwindled proportionately to the number of pages read...