Module POC2108 for 2021/2
- Overview
- Aims and Learning Outcomes
- Module Content
- Indicative Reading List
- Assessment
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.
| On successfully completing the programme you will be able to: | |
|---|---|
| Module-Specific Skills | 1. 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 Skills | 4. 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 Skills | 6. 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. |
Module Content
Syllabus Plan
Whilst the module’s precise content may vary from year to year, it is envisaged that the syllabus will cover some or all of the following topics, through both theoretical and practical approaches:
Beginning Where We Are
- Politics, Space and Place in the Everyday
- Approaches to Interdisciplinary Knowing: Methods, Forms, and Practices
Modern Political Geography
- The Space of the State and the International
- Territory and Place
- Borders and Boundaries
“We Have Never Been Modern”: Spaces Against the State
- Feminist and Queer Spaces
- Coloniality, Racialisation and Post-/Decolonial Political Geographies
- Urban Geographies
Contemporary Challenges: Selected Studies in Reterritorialization (different every year)
- Migrations, Refugees, Camps, and Sanctuaries
- Indigenous Sovereignty Claims
- Transnationalism and Social Movements
- Anthropocene, Ecology, and Global Climate Change
- Spaces of Security: Geopolitics and Urban Geopolitics
Learning and Teaching
This table provides an overview of how your hours of study for this module are allocated:
| Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities | Guided independent study | Placement / study abroad |
|---|---|---|
| 22 | 128 | 0 |
...and this table provides a more detailed breakdown of the hours allocated to various study activities:
| Category | Hours of study time | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities | 22 | 11 x 2 hour seminars |
| Guided Independent Study | 48 | Private study students are expected to read suggested texts and make notes prior to seminar sessions. More specifically, students are expected to devote approximately: 48 hours to weekly readings and seminar preparation |
| Guided Independent Study | 10 | Formative activities and reflecting on assessment feedback |
| Guided independent study | 40 | Independent research, reading, and writing |
| Guided independent study | 10 | Guidebook preparation and reflection |
| Guided independent study | 20 | Critical research essay preparation, editing, peer reviewing |
Online Resources
This module has online resources available via ELE (the Exeter Learning Environment).
How this Module is Assessed
In the tables below, you will see reference to 'ILO's. An ILO is an Intended Learning Outcome - see Aims and Learning Outcomes for details of the ILOs for this module.
Formative Assessment
A formative assessment is designed to give you feedback on your understanding of the module content but it will not count towards your mark for the module.
| Form of assessment | Size of the assessment (eg length / duration) | ILOs assessed | Feedback method |
|---|---|---|---|
| Essay Plan | 400 words + 3 annotated sources | 1-5, 7 | Written |
| Guidebook Informal Discussion | 10 minutes | 1-6, 8 | Verbal |
Summative Assessment
A summative assessment counts towards your mark for the module. The table below tells you what percentage of your mark will come from which type of assessment.
| Coursework | Written exams | Practical exams |
|---|---|---|
| 100 | 0 | 0 |
...and this table provides further details on the summative assessments for this module.
| Form of assessment | % of credit | Size of the assessment (eg length / duration) | ILOs assessed | Feedback method |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Guidebook Entry | 30 | 750 words + 1 image | 1-4, 7 | Written |
| Guidebook Reflection | 20 | 500 words | 1-8 | Written |
| Critical Research Essay | 50 | 2,000 words | 1-5, 7, 8 | Written |
| 0 |
Re-assessment
Re-assessment takes place when the summative assessment has not been completed by the original deadline, and the student has been allowed to refer or defer it to a later date (this only happens following certain criteria and is always subject to exam board approval). For obvious reasons, re-assessments cannot be the same as the original assessment and so these alternatives are set. In cases where the form of assessment is the same, the content will nevertheless be different.
| Original form of assessment | Form of re-assessment | ILOs re-assessed | Timescale for re-assessment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Guidebook Entry | 750 words + 1 image | 1-6, 8-9 | August/September reassessment period |
| Guidebook Reflection | 500 words | 1-6, 8-9 | August/September reassessment period |
| Critical Research Essay | 2,000 words | 1-6, 8 | August/September reassessment period |
Indicative Reading List
This reading list is indicative - i.e. it provides an idea of texts that may be useful to you on this module, but it is not considered to be a confirmed or compulsory reading list for this module.
Basic reading:
Agnew, J. 2003. Geopolitics: Revisioning World Politics. London: Routledge.
--------. 1994. The territorial trap: The geographical assumptions of international relations theory. Review of International Political Economy (RIPE) 1: 53-80.
Amoore, L. (2006) Biometric borders: Governing mobilities in the war on terror. Political Geography, 25, 336-351.
Blomley, N. K. 2004. Unsettling the city: Urban land and the politics of property. New York: Routledge.
Crampton, J. W. 2003. The political mapping of cyberspace. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Cresswell, T. 1996. In place/out of place: Geography, ideology, and transgression. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Fall, J. J. 2010. Artificial states? On the enduring geographical myth of natural borders. Political Geography, 29(3): 140-147.
Flint, C. and P.J. Taylor 2007. Political Geography: World-system, nation-state and locality. Fifth Edition. New York: Pearson.
Johnson, C., R. Jones, A. Paasi, L. Amoore, A. Mountz, M. Salter & C. Rumford. 2011. Interventions on rethinking 'the border' in border studies. Political Geography, 30, 61- 69.
Kuus, M., and J. Agnew. 2008. “Theorizing the State Geographically: Sovereignty, Subjectivity, and Territoriality.” In K. Cox, M. Low, and J. Robinson (Eds.), The Sage Handbook of Political Geography. California: Sage, pp. 95-106.
Magnusson, W. 1985. Urban politics and the local state. Studies in Political Economy 16: 111-142.
Mountz, A. 2003. Human smuggling, the transnational imaginary, and everyday geographies of the nation-state. Antipode, 35(3): 621-44.
Newman, D., and A. Paasi. 1998. Fences and neighbours in the postmodern world: boundary narratives in political geography. Progress in Human Geography 22 (2): 186-207.
Newman, D. 2006. The Lines that Continue to Separate Us: Borders in our ‘borderless’ world. Progress in Human Geography 30: 143-161.
Ó Tuathail, G. 2006. “Introduction, Overview Part I.” In G. O Tuathail, S. Dalby, and P. Routledge (Eds.). 2006.The Geopolitics Reader. Second Edition: London: Routledge, pp: 1-12; 17-30.
Sharp, J. 2007. Geography and gender: finding feminist political geographies. Progress in Human Geography 31 (3): 381-387.
Taylor, P. J. 1995. Beyond Containers: Internationality, Interstateness, Interterritoriality. Progress in Human Geography 19 (1): 1-15.
———. 1994. The State As Container: Territoriality In The Modern World-System. Progress in Human Geography 18 (2): 151-162.
Tesfahuney, M. 1998. Mobility, Racism and Geopolitics. Political Geography 17: 499-515.
