E-International Relations, the Bristow based leading open access platform for International Relations, has published a lengthy review of Popular Culture, Geopolitics and Identity. The review is not only by an Intervention Editorial Associate, the book is something of a handbook for the dispossessed in global power game.
Accessible through https://www.e-ir.info/2021/01/17/review-popular-culture-geopolitics-and-identity, the review responds to what Prof Gerald O’Tuathail, a key pioneer scholar of the sub-discipline of critical geopolitics is used to asking analysts to pay attention to. It is what he calls the challenge of identifying and deconstructing contemporary congealment of power within the context of emancipation and global equity from consensual domination. His standpoints remain influential, being the author of the ground shaking doctoral thesis, now published as Critical Geopolitics: The Politics of Writing Global Space and which could be credited with firmly establishing critical geopolitics as a sub-discipline straddling International Relations, Human cum Cultural Geography, Cultural Studies, amongst others.
Accomplishing deconstruction of unfolding congealment of power at the global level is what this book shows in detail, including how even countries wrecked through “accumulation by dispossession” can mobilise cultural and imaginative resources to gain advantage in power relationship. Such a text has a particular relevance for African countries where there has been much of recent innovation in cultural productivity. There may be no better example than Nigeria in that regard.
Beyond the global politics of power, Popular Culture, Geopolitics and Identity provides the most elementary presentation of the subject matter for students of International Relations by the two authors – Prof Jason Dittmer of the University College London and Daniel Boss of the University of Oxford. It is an inviting read for the details on offer in a relatively new realm of the study of international politics. Unlike traditional International Relations, popular geopolitics is not only about the militarily powerful. It is about the sort of power that those powerless in the commonsensical view of power co possess or can easily mobilise. And this book as well as the book review provides interesting examples in this regard. Enjoy it!
