For over two hundred years, the domination of some countries by others has been intrinsic to international relations, with national economic and political strength viewed as essential to a nation's survival and global position. Mastering Space identifies the essential features of this state-centredness and suggests an optimistic alternative more in keeping with the contemporary post-Cold War climate. Drawing on recent geopolitical thinking, the authors claim that the dynamism of the international political economy has been obscured through excessive attention on the state as an unchanging...

Agnew explores the elements of geographical imagination and how they have come together in different historical and modern epochs. The new edition examines the implications of recent world events such as September 11th, continued expansion of the EU and NATO, the near bankruptcy and failure of various states, and the re-ignition of the Israeli-Palestine conflict, on such a worldview.

Since 1994, Italian politics has been dominated by the larger-than-life figure of Silvio Berlusconi. Blending discussion of personalities, parties, and policies with detailed geographical analyses, this book provides innovative insight into Berlusconi's career. "Berlusconi's Italy" provides a fresh, thoroughly informed account of how Italy's richest man came to be its political leader. Without dismissing the importance of personalities and political parties, it emphasizes the significance of changes in voting behaviors that led to the rise - and eventual fall - of Silvio Berlusconi, the...

Since 1994, Italian politics has been dominated by the larger-than-life figure of Silvio Berlusconi. Presenting discussion of personalities, parties, and policies with geographical analyses, this book provides insight into Berlusconi's career. It provides an account of how Italy's richest man came to be its political leader.

Reflecting the revival of interest in a social theory that takes place and space seriously, this book focuses on geographical place in the practice of social science and history. There is significant interest among scholars from a range of disciplines in bringing together the geographical and sociological 'imaginations'. The geographical imagination is a concrete and descriptive one, concerned with determining the nature of places, and classifying them and the links between them. The sociological imagination aspires to explanation of human activities in terms of abstract social processes. The...

This volume has as its focus the role of the Marshall Plan as both a force in the transformation of European Economic practices and a stimulus to political integration in Europe. This organizing theme is framed in terms of two other issues that are central to contemporary debates in international political economy and geopolitical studies: the origins and development of the Cold War, and the growing globalisation of the world economy. In relating the Marshall Plan to these issues, this book goes beyond the typical diplomatic history approach to place the Plan in the context of both the...

The first part of the book is concerned with developing the place perspective. Three dimensions of place are put forward: locale and sense of place describe the objective and subjective dimensions of local social arrangements within which political behaviour is realized; location refers to the impact of the 'macro-order', to the fact that a single place is one among many and that the social life of a place is embedded in theworkings of the state and the world economy.

The second part of the book provides detailed examinations of American and Scottish...