Undergraduate Module Descriptor

POC2108: Political Geographies: Local to Global

This module descriptor refers to the 2021/2 academic year.

Please note that this module is only delivered on the Penryn Campus.

Module Aims

In this module, you will be introduced to critical approaches to the relationship between politics, place, and space, and you will develop analytical tools for engaging the complicated geographies of contemporary politics. We will examine how thinking about politics and geography together generates important areas of research and understanding, in both content and methods. You will learn how modern definitions of space and place helped to constitute the world in the familiar (but contingent) form of domestic politics and international relations, and you will learn about the spread of this form around the world through histories of colonization and settler colonization. You will get to explore the distinctive critical political geographies of the body, the local, the municipal, and the urban; of the state, borders, and diverse boundary practices; and of the international, the world, and the globe. This module provides an essential introduction to critical approaches to modern and contemporary political geography. It will give you the grounding necessary to integrate spatial and place-based analyses into your research and to understand the political stakes of geographical claims and projects.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

This module's assessment will evaluate your achievement of the ILOs listed here – you will see reference to these ILO numbers in the details of the assessment for this module.
On successfully completing the programme you will be able to:
Module-Specific Skills1. Describe and competently assess ways that definitions of politics, space, and place (“political geography”) give rise to specific forms of subjectivity, identity, community, culture, and economy.
2. Argue for and/or against particular approaches to understanding political geography, on both theoretical and practical grounds.
3. Analyze the political geographies invoked and debated in specific empirical sites or case studies and critically discuss some of the implications of these debates.
Discipline-Specific Skills4. Synthesize and competently assess two or more related fields of interdisciplinary research.
5. Demonstrate the capacity to extend and revise disciplinary concepts to account for new fields of theoretical and empirical research.
Personal and Key Skills6. Work independently and in informal groups to engage in spontaneous discussion and defence of arguments in class, to prepare topics for class discussion, and to contribute to a productive classroom.
7. Work independently to research, formulate, write, and present critical analyses that engage an appropriate mix of theoretical and empirical content.
8. Develop a self-reflexive academic practice that integrates reading and research, explores practical or creative modes of expression, and engages productively with peer and instructor feedback.