INTRODUCTION
‘La Géographie, de nouveau un savoir politique’
(Geography: once again a political knowledge).
(Lacoste, 1984)
This statement by the chief editor of Hérodote,
intended to celebrate the politicization of French
geography through the journal in the 1970s and
1980s, also, and paradoxically, captures a profound
dilemma of contemporary political geography. If,
as a recent academic forum showed, the political
is alive and well in all of geography, does this not
question the continued relevance and validity of
having a separate sub-field of political geography
(Cox and Low, 2003)? The most fruitful response
to such existential questions about academic subdisciplines
is delving into the past and tracing the
genesis of the subject. In what follows, I will seek
to understand the meaning of political geography
by analyzing the historical development and implications
for present practices, in short, the politics
of political geography.