UNDERSTANDING GEOPOLITICS BEYOND REALISM: SECURING ACCESS TO FARMLAND IN THE GLOBAL AGE
UNDERSTANDING GEOPOLITICS BEYOND REALISM: SECURING ACCESS TO FARMLAND IN THE GLOBAL AGE

Summary/Abstract: The processes of globalization bear the potential to shake up seriously rigid state-centric realist geopolitical approaches within International Relations, in general, and in terms of securing access to arable land in particular. Accordingly, instead of reproducing homogenous geographical models and power instruments, attention in the article has been paid to complex analytical patterns of space, social life and statecraft in light of critical geopolitics. Practically speaking, a multidimensional empirical analysis of the augmented demand for agricultural land worldwide and in Africa after 2008 has been proposed – following the paradigms of “human emancipation” and “sustainable development”. Methodologically, interdisciplinary incentives from critical geopolitics, development studies, economic studies and sociology have been incorporated. The text concludes that globalization and geopolitics, for that matter, are not to be conceptualized as something between states in the spirit of realism but as directly interwoven with or transcending their social and political structures. It thus underlines the reflexive nature of geopolitics reminding that geopolitical actors play a dual role of extracting information about their surrounding milieu and simultaneously shaping its articulation.

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