9.3: Politics and Power

Chapter 9 Part 2: Politics and Power

Politics is not just the process of choosing political leaders and the distribution of power in a system of governance.Politics includes a variety of elements that many folks think simply of as “culture”–the rules that unofficially govern our everydaylives.Geographers are interested in the spatial behavior of the political process–whether the governance is official (congress, etc.) or unofficial cultural politics.

Correlation of Politics and Power

In the most basic sense, politics is a struggle for power over the rules (written and unwritten) that control people in a specific location or space.This chapter explores how people, in the United States and elsewhere govern and are governed by this struggle for control.Political spaces exist at multiple scales, from a kid’s bedroom to the entire planet.At each location, somebody, or some group(s),seek(s)to establish rules governing what happens in that space, how power is shared (or not), and who even has the right to access those spaces.

Figure: East Los Angeles- Competing gangs use graffiti to mark and or dispute territorial boundaries.

Most of the written and unwritten rules that govern our lives are established by those with whom we share a common territory and identity. The United States of America is a country. Technically, it is a state, but that term applies in the US to our sub-national provinces as well, so be careful when you hear or read “state”. This text will use the word “country” to refer to the highest level of government organization. The US is defined by its borders. Most Residents within those borders claim “American” as an important part of their identity; therefore, the United States can be considered, for the most part, a nation, and “American” is our nationality. A nation can include millions of individuals, or it can include far fewer – maybe only hundreds, but very small groups with a shared identity are often called ethnic groups (see chapter 9). Because Americans control the territory that is the United States, we live in a special kind of country called a nation state. France and Japan are even better examples of nation-states because almost all of their residents are either French or Japanese respectively.

Figure: Tijuana, Mexico- Children pose at the border marking the boundary between the US and Mexico. Very real differences exist on either side of the paint marking the boundary but the most important differences are legal and political.

The idea of nationhood, like many other elements of identity, is a social construct. How do people living in a region develop a sense of identity associated with that land? This identity can be so powerful that people have repeatedly killed or killed others in defense of this identity? There are some who think the idea is ancient, perhaps even a basic component of human psychology. Others suggest that nationhood is an invention of Enlightenment-era political elites who sought a mechanism to advance capitalistic and imperialistic agendas. It can be argued that the proliferation of maps and cartographic science during the enlightenment era made people far more aware of boundaries than they had been during the Middle Ages, and thus advances in mapping gave rise to the idea of the nation. Nations may be, as Benedict Anderson has argued, imagined communities, the product of the emotional and psychological desires of people who constitute any nation to belong to a group. Imagined or not, the idea of nation functions often in very real terms. People root for ball teams, swear allegiance to flags or rulers, and will even fight to the death to preserve and/or honor an imaginary sense of identity. Some people within nations fight to restrict admission to their group or land as well. Most countries govern who crosses boundaries, as well as the degree to which individuals may participate in life of the country, and/or who can become citizens, a legal status that permits one to be legally part of the group.