A Splintered Heartland: Russia, Europe, and the Geopolitics of Networked Energy Infrastructure

Much has been made about a revival of Mackinderian geopolitics in Eurasia, largely centred on struggles over access to energy resources and rooted in a territorial understanding of space. This paper proposes that the conceptual political cartography of Eurasia is indeed largely being rewritten, but conventional understandings of space, territory, and resources are insufficient in providing insight into a changing geopolitics. We interrogate the geographical logics of Russia's role as energy provider to Europe by focusing specifically on the provision of gas to Europe via Nord Stream, a new underwater pipeline that is scheduled to go online by late 2011. Drawing on debates in human geography on relational/topological views of space, and on the “splintering urbanism” thesis, the paper describes a rapidly evolving networked space that effectively “splinters” the territorial integrity of the region and thereby complicates notions of Eurasian geopolitics that emphasise proximity, territorial hegemony, and state-centric international relations

The biopolitics and geopolitics of border enforcement in Melilla

This article uses the multiple and contradictory realities of Melilla, a pene-enclave and -exclave of Spain in North Africa, to draw out the contemporary practice of Spanish, European Union, and Moroccan immigration enforcement policies. The city is many things at once: a piece of Europe in North Africa and a symbol of Spain’s colonial history; an example of the contemporary narrative of a cosmopolitan and multicultural Europe; a place where extraterritorial and intraterritorial dynamics demonstrate territory’s continuing allure despite the security challenges and the lack of economic or strategic value; a metaphorical island of contrasting geopolitical and biopolitical practices; and a place of regional flows and cross-border cooperation between Spain, the EU, and Morocco. It is a border where the immunitary logic of sovereign territorial spaces is exposed through the biopolitical practices of the state to ‘protect’ the community from outsiders. In light of the hardening of borders throughout European and North African space in recent years, this article offers a rich case study of our persistently territorial world

Energy (In)security in Poland? The case of shale gas

The large scale extraction of natural gas from shale rock layers in North America using hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”, has prompted geologists, economists and politicians in various parts of the world to ask whether there are new reserves of this precious resource to be found under their soils. It has also raised a host of questions about the potential environmental impacts of extracting it. Drawing on research on both sides of the Atlantic, this paper assesses the most pressing issues for research and policy makers related to shale gas extraction. The paper first provides a survey of environmental and economic issues related to shale gas. It then turns to a case study of Poland, whose policy makers have been among the most fervent proponents of shale gas development in the European Union. We examine the status of shale gas extraction in that country and what the barriers are to overcome before commercial extraction can in fact take place, if at all

German Geopolitics in Transition

Two American geographers examine the evolution of Germany's geopolitical orientation in the aftermath of World War II, through the Cold War era, the war on terrorism, 9/ 11, and the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. Drawing on public statements by German officials, government documents, opinion polls, and media accounts, the authors analyze the country's increasing post-Cold War assertiveness in foreign policy and much greater autonomy from the United States. They also evaluate the plausibility of two proposed geopolitical scenarios: that Germany will become part of a Paris-Berlin-Moscow-Beijing axis and that Germany will adopt a Europeanist, rather than Atlanticist, orientation

Cross border regions and territorial restructuring in Central Europe

As the world's `first postmodern political form', Europe provides an excellent laboratory for exploring how border regions offer new spaces of/for governance, cultural interaction, and economic development. With the backdrop of dynamic transboundary regionalization in Europe, this article has two goals: the first is to provide a critical review of some recent literature on territorial restructuring whose spatial ambit curiously omits transboundary space. Second, the article follows in the tradition of recent literature on regionalism in geography by exploring competing visions of the scales which are appropriate for organizing particular political and economic activities, in order to call for more engagement with transboundary regionalism.A case-study from Saxony (Germany) shows that the functional utilitarianism — and resulting short half life — of some European transboundary regions is a factor inhibiting the emergence of coherent regions. This notwithstanding, evidence also suggests that cross-border cooperation is becoming a key tool as localities and other territories strive to become `global'. The tangled map of current regional initiatives within the European Union (EU) reflects the temporal emergence and disappearance of cross-border regions in response to changing political priorities and shifting macro-institutional funding sources. The article shows that transboundary regions play an important role in territorial restructuring in Central Europe, but not necessarily in the way EU regional policy intends

Mezzogiorno without the mafia: Modern-day meridionalisti and the making of a ‘space of backwardness’ in eastern Germany

Practices of spatial representation can be revealing indicators of particular brands of nationalized discourse. In this article, the prevalent use of a comparison between eastern Germany and the Italian Mezzogiorno by a specific set of German elites is examined. Anxieties about Germany's place in the European and global economies are accompanied by a spatial vocabulary that uploads these anxieties onto the ongoing project of German unification. Eastern Germany, painted as a homogenized ‘space of backwardness,’ is thereby made out as a key factor inhibiting competitiveness and modernization of the economy

Euro-politics of scale: competing visions of the region in eastern Germany

As John Agnew (Political geography: a reader, 1997) has argued, political and economic change often occasions competing visions of the scales that are appropriate for organizing particular political and economic activities. Nowhere is this more evident than in the European Union, and eastern Germany offers compelling evidence of the contested nature of contemporary scalar politics. Yet a recent debate in human geography (see, e.g. Marston et al., Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 30:416–432, 2005) calls into question the very concept of scale and rejects its hierarchical conceptualization. In light of this debate, it is appropriate to draw on real-world case studies to examine the ways in which geography figures into policy. Drawing on field work in Saxony, evidence is offered in the form of competing visions of regionalism in the EU context. The evidence presented complicates both hierarchical and flat notions of scale. The current process of querying space to identify those scales that are best-suited for the globalized economy offers insights into both the socially constructed nature of scale as well as the ways in which scalar lenses help to illuminate the geographical aspects (and consequences) of strategies for coping with structural changes

Energy materiality: A conceptual review of multi-disciplinary approaches

This jointly authored essay reviews recent scholarship in the social sciences, broadly understood, that focuses on the materiality of energy. Although this work is extraordinarily diverse in its disciplinary and interdisciplinary influences and its theoretical and methodological commitments, we discern four areas of convergence and divergence that we term the locations, uses, relationalities, and analytical roles of energy materiality. We trace these convergences and divergences through five recent scholarly conversations: materiality as a constraint on actors’ behavior; historical energy systems; mobility, space and scale; discourse and power via energy materialities; and energy becoming material