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1. The Politics Of Maps: Mapping The West Bank Barrier

Author:
Christine Leuenberger
Publication Date:
09-2019
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Brown Journal of World Affairs
Abstract:
Maps and mapmaking have traditionally enjoyed the prestige of privileged and objective sources of knowledge. Within the geographic community and the public at large, it was assumed that the natural world was observable and could be rendered in pictorial form. Cartography is therefore not like psychoanalysis. It does not deal with internal phenomena hardly accessible to direct observation. Land and cityscapes do not need to be inferred or deduced. They are presumed to be susceptible to the scientific method in a most unproblematic fashion. Geographers, cartographers, historians of science, and science studies scholars, however, have increasingly questioned maps as objective representations. They have analyzed the social production of maps and maps’ link to society, culture, and geopolitics. They have found that mapmakers inevitably present a particular vantage point, one tied to certain social interests, values, and practices.
Topic:
Geopolitics, Occupation, Settler Colonialism, and Cartography
Political Geography:
Israel, Palestine, Gaza, and West Bank

2. Parag Khanna: Cartographic Conceptions For The Twenty-First Century

Author:
Parag Khanna
Publication Date:
03-2019
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Brown Journal of World Affairs
Abstract:
Parag Khanna is a leading global strategic advisor, world traveler, and best-selling author. He is the founder & managing partner of FutureMap, a data and scenario based strategic advisory firm. Parag’s newest book is The Future is Asian: Com- merce, Conflict & Culture in the 21st Century (2019). He is author of a trilogy of books on the future of world order beginning with The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order (2008), followed by How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance (2011), and concluding with Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization (2016). He is also author of Technocracy in America: Rise of the Info-State (2017) and co-author of Hybrid Reality: Thriving in the Emerging Human-Technology Civilization (2012). In 2008, Parag was named one of Esquire’s “75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century,” and featured in WIRED Magazine’s “Smart List.” He holds a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and Bachelors and Masters degrees from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
Topic:
Geopolitics and Cartography
Political Geography:
India

3. The Cartographic Constitution Of International Politics

Author:
Jeppe Strandsbjerg
Publication Date:
03-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Brown Journal of World Affairs
Abstract:
Our current system of international politics is built on a cartographic real- ity of space. Te legal attachment of sovereignty to territory requires a particular cartographic representation of space. By this I mean that our system of states— being territorially defned—implicitly requires a geography that is mapped in a way that is compatible with our notion of sovereignty. Te cartographic image of state territory enables us to maintain the idea of territorial integrity even when the reality on the ground corresponds very little with the fundamental principles of the UN Charter: Sovereignty (Article 2:1) and Territorial Integrity (Article 2:4).1 When UN operations map the Democratic Republic of Congo it is represented as an integrated territory, and Iraq and Syria maintain their coherent cartographic-territorial representation even when both countries have been divided in all but formal name. Although these are obvious examples of the territorial ideal disagreeing with the power relations on the ground, they actually capture a general logic where the territorial order represented by the map precedes the order on the ground.
Topic:
International Relations, Geopolitics, International Relations Theory, and Cartography
Political Geography:
Global Focus

4. The Modern Political Map of Our Ocean Planet

Author:
Coalter G. Lathrop
Publication Date:
03-2019
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Brown Journal of World Affairs
Abstract:
On land, the political map of the world has been relatively stable since the end of World War II: with some significant exceptions, most countries are, spatially, as they were in 1945 or shortly thereafter. Land borders are mostly set, and the major state-to-state territorial disputes that persist today are—again, with some notable exceptions—disputes over relatively small areas, mostly tiny insular features with negligible inherent value.
Topic:
International Relations, Geopolitics, Navy, Oceans and Seas, and Cartography
Political Geography:
Global Focus

5. Maps Of War And Peace: Rethinking Geography In International Affairs

Author:
Luis da Vinha
Publication Date:
03-2019
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Brown Journal of World Affairs
Abstract:
In his memoirs of his final years as one of the United States’ most prominent foreign policy decision-makers, Henry Kissinger offers an anecdote involving President Nixon and the Prime Minister of Mauritius, Seewoosagur Ramgoolam. As part of the celebration of the UN’s twenty-fifth anniversary, Ramgoolam was invited to dine with Nixon at the White House on 24 October 1970. The gathering nearly created a diplomatic faux pas due in large part to the admin- istration’s confusion regarding the geography of Africa. According to Kissinger, the national security staff mistook the country of Mauritius—U.S. ally and island nation located in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar—for Mauritania, a northwestern African nation that had broken diplomatic relations with the United States in 1967 as a result of U.S. support for Israel during the Six-Day War.
Topic:
International Relations, War, Geopolitics, Peace, and Cartography
Political Geography:
United Nations and Global Focus