Doing political geography in authoritarian times

What does it mean to practise political geography amid a transnational far-right surge? What new lines of inquiry does the conjuncture demand? And what responsibilities does it place on us as ‘critical’ political geographers?

We are in the midst of an authoritarian and nationalist turn that is unevenly reshaping political landscapes worldwide. The features of this turn are by now well-enumerated:

• a fixation on ‘cultural erasure’ and demographic decline;
• a disdain for the axioms of liberal internationalism, the re-assertion of Realpolitik and ‘imperial place-making';
• a rallying around signifiers of ethnic or civilisational identity, renewed attachments to the nuclear family as a key site of (white) national identity; and
• a rapidly hardening rhetoric against political enemies of the right, particularly Muslim, migrant and trans communities.

In numerous national contexts, the current conjuncture also heralds political attacks on and widespread defunding of critical knowledge production, including colleagues and comrades within geography.

The preconditions for this shift are many and varied, but point to deeper-seated trajectories of capitalism, colonialism and fascism.

Given a long history of critical scholarship on nationalism, borders, and geopolitics, how should the field recalibrate its lenses to better understand and respond to this urgent context—not only in research but also in the classroom?

The panel, hosted by the Society's Political Geography Research Group, assembles a range of political geographers who are engaged in tackling these timely questions and seeks to identify and sharpen the resources our (sub)discipline possesses to act in and against this conjuncture.

Speakers

• Jason Luger (Northumbria University)
• Natalie Koch (Syracuse University)
• Filippo Menga (University of Bergamo)
• Felicitas Kuebler (University of Klagenfurt)

Booking information

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