Mapping a New World: Geography and the Interwar Study of International Relations

Ashworth, Lucian M.

doi:10.1111/isqu.12060

Cited by 38 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Semple is mistakenly reduced to a more or less effective mediator of Ratzel's ideas, as opposed to a thinker in her own right. In contrast, Bowman and Whittlesey, both of whom learned from Semple, appear as independent thinkers (Ashworth 2013;cf. Ashworth 2011;2020).…”

Section: In and Beyond The Canon: Semple Suttner And Coopermentioning

confidence: 94%

Women Thinkers and the Canon of International Thought: Recovery, Rejection, and Reconstitution

Hutchings

Owens

2020

Am Polit Sci Rev

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Canons of intellectual “greats” anchor the history and scope of academic disciplines. Within international relations (IR), such a canon emerged in the mid-twentieth century and is almost entirely male. Why are women thinkers absent from IR’s canon? We show that it is not due to a lack of international thought, or that this thought fell outside established IR theories. Rather it is due to the gendered and racialized selection and reception of work that is deemed to be canonical. In contrast, we show what can be gained by reclaiming women’s international thought through analyses of three intellectuals whose work was authoritative and influential in its own time or today. Our findings question several of the basic premises underpinning IR’s existing canon and suggest the need for a new research agenda on women international thinkers as part of a fundamental rethinking of the history and scope of the discipline.

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Section: In and Beyond The Canon: Semple Suttner And Coopermentioning

confidence: 94%

Women Thinkers and the Canon of International Thought: Recovery, Rejection, and Reconstitution

Hutchings

Owens

2020

Am Polit Sci Rev

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“…Ratzel's theories and made their way to the United States through one of his disciples, Ellen Churchill Semple, whose own followers included the young geographer Isaiah Bowman. 9 While Semple has often been associated with Ratzel's deterministic geopolitics, her earlier works embraced a more nuanced spatial analysis, attuned to the complex interplay of nature and power and similar to the notion of 'milieu', that, as we shall see, was embraced by the Sprouts. 10 The interplay of natural environment and political power was also a main concern for the British geographer Halford Mackinder.…”

Section: Geopolitical Ideas Gained Interest In the United States At Tmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…73 Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, 1985, [1948 In recent years, a growing attention has been given to the potential role of spatial thinking, after scholars flagged the limited impact of this theoretical approach on international theory within the academic discipline of IR. 76 In view of contemporary calls to take space, place and location seriously in international theory (within the discipline or IR and beyond) it seems surprising that this approach had not been integrated in a more meaningful way in the theoretical toolbox of IR. 77 In a previous study, I outlined some of the reasons for the demise of geopolitics after the Second World War.…”

Section: Conclusion: the Value Of Spacementioning

confidence: 99%

The Value of Space: Geopolitics, Geography and the American Search for International Theory in the 1950s

Rosenboim

2019

The International History Review

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members sought to conclude their works and consider the foundations of international theory, there was no reference to either geography or geopolitics. Wariness towards spatial thinking in international theory outlasted the group's discussions. Recently, Harvey Starr, a leading International Relations (IR) scholar, proposed spatial theory as a means to revive the conceptual foundations of the discipline of IR. On April 4, 2013, in his Presidential Address at the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association in San Francisco, Starr advocated for a serious consideration of space and place in IR. 5 He replicated the common repudiation of 'deterministic' and 'immutable' geopolitics, in favour of a dynamic version. The juxtaposition of time and space, the involuntary and universal temporality and the voluntary localised spatiality of politics, could provide, for him, a sustainable theoretical renewal for IR. Starr's public call for spatial thinking in IR suggests that space is not a commonly used theoretical lens in the field today. His address proved that key concepts, notably 'space', 'place', and 'geopolitics', are still in need of 'introduction' into international theory. Most IR scholars todayregardless of their theoretical and normative assumptions-still do not think seriously about space. Why was space downplayed by the 1953 study group? As a heterogeneous group of scholars, their theoretical and normative assumptions were more diverse than the realist and behavioralist approaches that eventually predominated in IR. Their pluralistic and multidisciplinary background suggests that they could have been willing to think about space seriously. Yet they analysed geopolitical and spatial thinking from a misguided moralistic viewpoint that missed their theoretical potential. They identified two main problems with geopolitics: it was too deterministic, and it was too 'ideological', or in other words too closely tied to a rigid and intolerant worldview advocating expansionism and imperialism. Natural determinism and ideological commitment thus limited, for them, the interpretative and analytical power of geopolitics. Rather than investigating the full scope of geopolitical and geographical scholarship in American international studies at the time, the study group reduced existing literature to a simplistic narrative and missed an opportunity to integrate it into the nascent discipline of IR.

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“…Certainly, the period from 1875 until 1945 can be reasonably characterized as one in which inter-imperial rivalry tended to win out over open trade and so and the Cold War from 1945 until 1991 involved a major geopolitical fracture between a relatively freeflowing West and a relatively autarchic East. Classic geopolitics developed in the first period and represented an effort at justifying imperialism in naturalistic terms of space and race (Ashworth 2013). But right across the periods in question there were systematic efforts on the part of some governments, particularly in Britain and the United States, and businesses looking to expand beyond home shores, to reduce and remove barriers to trade and investment.…”

Section: Geopolitics Versus Globalizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding “Geopolitics” in an Era of Globalization

Agnew

2015

Rev. Tamoios

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An older European-Enlightenment geopolitical imagination was lost in the late nineteenth century with the rise of naturalized understandings of interstate and imperial relations that saw states and empires in terms of biological competition conditioned by relative location on the earth's surface. The word "geopolitics" emerged in that context and since that time the term has had to contend with this original sin. Arguably, however, Montesquieu and Voltaire in their references to Alexander the Great had a somewhat different conception of geopolitics in mind: one in which reciprocity and exchange between places as well as the redistribution of resources from colonies to homeland are at work. It is this broader sense of the word that has been revived over the

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Mapping a New World: Geography and the Interwar Study of International Relations

Cited by 38 publications

References 35 publications

Women Thinkers and the Canon of International Thought: Recovery, Rejection, and Reconstitution

Women Thinkers and the Canon of International Thought: Recovery, Rejection, and Reconstitution

The Value of Space: Geopolitics, Geography and the American Search for International Theory in the 1950s

Understanding “Geopolitics” in an Era of Globalization

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