Revised and updated, this is a new edition of a core undergraduate resource on political geography. Unique in the teaching literature, Political Geography retains its focus on the social and cultural, while systematically giving an overview of the entire discipline. The text Politics, geography, and "political" power, resources, institutions, and the history of political geography State classical views as well as recent work on governance and governmentality Welfare state to workfare the restructuring of present state strategies Democracy citizenship, different models of democracy from Held to Mouffe; democracy citizenship, law in European and global context Electoral geography Identity and social the relation between identity and political action Nationalism and ethnicity, national identity, "otherness" Imperialism and the theoretical literature from World Systems Theory to post-structuralist accounts the political, economic, and strategic significance of geography, illustrated with examples from recent world politics Comprehensive, accessible, and illustrated with real world examples, Political Geography provides undergraduates with a thorough understanding of the relationship between geography and politics.
I was born in London and grew up in Hertfordshire and then in Dorset, where I went to Weymouth Grammar School (now Budmouth College). After seven months' voluntary work in rural India in 1984, I took up a place to study geography at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge University, graduating in 1987. I then moved to the Open University to do research for a PhD on the geography of trade unionism in Britain under the supervision of Doreen Massey and John Allen. In 1990 I joined the University of Wales, Lampeter (then St David's University College) as Lecturer in Geography. I moved to Durham in 1993, first as Lecturer, then as Reader (2000), Professor (2004) and Head of Department (2010-2013). I spent 12 months as a visiting fellow at the Australian National University in Canberra (2004-05). I have also held visiting positions at the University of Cambridge and the University of British Columbia, among others.