- What is political geography?
- Importance of political geography
- Objects of study of political geography
- Auxiliary Sciences of Political Geography
- Political and geopolitical geography
We explain what political geography is, what is its object of study and its auxiliary sciences. Also, differences with geopolitics.
Political geography studies the relationship between space and political organization.What is political geography?
We understand by political geography the branch of human geography that studies human political organizations and their territorial distribution of the earth's surface. That is, study the geographical space determined by the boundaries and dynamics of the nations, populations, cultures, etc.
Their object of study is truly broad, since they have to do with the institutions policies in the world. In addition to the division of the globe into countries and territories, it addresses geopolitical, economic and international dynamics, as well as the dynamics of population exchange and their repercussions on the way in which people are organized. societies human.
In the latter it is distinguished from Political Sciences o Politology, since it also contemplates culture, society and other important elements that escape the strictly political.
The origin of political geography is closely linked to that of human geography and the ethnography, which in its beginnings responded to the needs of the great European empires to know and organize the world that were distributed and considered other cultures and populations as objects of study.
For these and other reasons the discipline went into decline in the mid-20th century. However, it resurfaced in the 1970s and 1980s free from geographic determinism and other problematic interpretive trends.
Importance of political geography
Political geography is a booming discipline, especially in recent times of globalization, regional integration and debate around the dynamics of territorial and political organization of societies.
This has also caused a growing contact between it and other branches of geography, such as economic, social and cultural. Together they offer a multidisciplinary approach typical of contemporary academia.
Objects of study of political geography
Political geography chooses as main objects of study the relations between population, management Y territory, according to three levels of study that allow structuring the analysis:
- The state. As the base organizer of the political forces in conflict and main administrator of the territory;
- International relations. That encompass the geopolitical, geoeconomic and geostrategic dynamics expressed by the States;
- The provincial or regional regional. That it is an internal level of the State, its internal administration and internal division.
Auxiliary Sciences of Political Geography
Political geography has such a wide field of study that it often intersects with other disciplines, such as economy, the history, the right (especially the international), the sociology, the demography and others social Sciences.
In addition, his contacts with other branches of geography are frequent, such as social geography, economic geography Y physical geography.
Political and geopolitical geography
We must not confuse these two terms. Geopolitics studies the international struggles to exercise power in geographical domains, which occur between the different state and global players. It is an analytical science oriented towards rivalries, confrontations and conflicts, in which economic, diplomatic and military factors intervene.
Political geography, on the other hand, delves into the geographical constitution of States and in many other elements than geopolitics, in its desire to focus on the can, put aside.