John A. Agnew
Encyclopedia
John A. Agnew is a prominent British
-American
political geographer. Agnew was educated at the Universities of Exeter
and Liverpool
in England and Ohio State
in the United States
.
at the University of California, Los Angeles
(UCLA). From 1975 until 1995 he was a professor at Syracuse University
in New York
. Dr. Agnew teaches courses on political geography, the history of geography, European cities, and the Mediterranean World. From 1998 to 2002 he chaired the Department of Geography at UCLA. He has written widely on questions of territory, place, and political power. He has also worked on issues of "science" in geography and how knowledge is created and circulates in and across places. He is best known for his work completely reinventing "geopolitics
" as a field of study and for his theoretical and empirical efforts at showing how national politics is best understood in terms of the geographical dynamics of "places" and how they are made out of both local and long-distance determinants. One of his best known books is "Place and Politics" (1987). Another is "Geopolitics: Re-Visioning World Politics" (2003). Much of his empirical research involves Italy, Greece, and the United States. For the year 2008–9, John Agnew was President of the Association of American Geographers
, the main professional organization for academic geography in the United States. He was associate editor of the flagship journal of the association, Annals of the Association of American Geographers and was co-editor of the international journal Geopolitics with David Newman
from 1998 to 2009.
The focus on place reflects an effort to create a multi-scalar political geography. Agnew sees this as an alternative to the long-dominant state-centrism of the field and better suited than it to the evolving global condition. In this work he tries to do two things: (a) offer a conception of places as geographical settings for political action that are structured by the historical accumulation of local, wider-ranging, and sense-of-place influences and (b) relate the changing character of places with respect to the politics they produce to changes in the wider environment (such as changes in the balance between local and national-state governments, changes in the workings of the world economy, changes in social-class, ethnic, and other social affiliations, and shifts in the meaning and attachments to particular places).
Bringing together research conducted over the previous fifteen years on Italian politics, Place and Politics in Modern Italy (2002), is the most significant development of this perspective since his 1987 book, Place and Politics. It engages with contemporary debates in political theory about rational choice, association, difference, and socialization to provide an alternative geographical perspective that is both attentive to theoretical issues yet immersed in empirical specificity at Italy-wide and local geographical scales. More recently,(2003–2007), Agnew and his colleague Michael Shin have collaborated on an NSF-funded project concerning the transformation of Italian electoral politics between 1987 and 2006 that will further the goal of the research by measuring the geographical dynamics of Italian politics in the country as a whole. The book, Berlusconi's Italy (2008), reports on this particular project.
: The New Shape of Global Power, which won a Choice Award as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2005, and in “Sovereignty Regimes”, a long article that appeared the same year and has been transformed into a book length project, Globalization and Sovereignty (2009) which also won a Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award. Perhaps the three most important themes of this work taken as a whole are (a) the historicization of the idealized state of conventional political theory and geopolitics to the modern era; (b) the role of distinctive geopolitical discourses in different epochs of this era in normalizing the worldview associated with what he calls the state-centered “modern geopolitical imagination;” and (c) the need to take seriously the distinctive contributions to the character of “world order” brought by different hegemonic powers.
This work has attracted the attention of international relations scholars interested in paying more attention to the ways in which “geography” enters into the theory and practices of “international relations.” Agnew's recent work in this area, specifically on the European origins of the modern state and what this signifies for contemporary statehood in southeastern Europe, was helped by the award of a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship for the academic year 2003–2004. The recent article "No Borders, No Nations: Making Greece in Macedonia" (Annals of the Association of American Geographers
, 2007) is an important statement of Agnew's perspective on international borders, an important element in the field of geopolitics.
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
-American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
political geographer. Agnew was educated at the Universities of Exeter
University of Exeter
The University of Exeter is a public university in South West England. It belongs to the 1994 Group, an association of 19 of the United Kingdom's smaller research-intensive universities....
and Liverpool
University of Liverpool
The University of Liverpool is a teaching and research university in the city of Liverpool, England. It is a member of the Russell Group of large research-intensive universities and the N8 Group for research collaboration. Founded in 1881 , it is also one of the six original "red brick" civic...
in England and Ohio State
Ohio State University
The Ohio State University, commonly referred to as Ohio State, is a public research university located in Columbus, Ohio. It was originally founded in 1870 as a land-grant university and is currently the third largest university campus in the United States...
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
Life and career
Agnew is currently Distinguished Professor of GeographyGeography
Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...
at the University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...
(UCLA). From 1975 until 1995 he was a professor at Syracuse University
Syracuse University
Syracuse University is a private research university located in Syracuse, New York, United States. Its roots can be traced back to Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1832, which also later founded Genesee College...
in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. Dr. Agnew teaches courses on political geography, the history of geography, European cities, and the Mediterranean World. From 1998 to 2002 he chaired the Department of Geography at UCLA. He has written widely on questions of territory, place, and political power. He has also worked on issues of "science" in geography and how knowledge is created and circulates in and across places. He is best known for his work completely reinventing "geopolitics
Geopolitics
Geopolitics, from Greek Γη and Πολιτική in broad terms, is a theory that describes the relation between politics and territory whether on local or international scale....
" as a field of study and for his theoretical and empirical efforts at showing how national politics is best understood in terms of the geographical dynamics of "places" and how they are made out of both local and long-distance determinants. One of his best known books is "Place and Politics" (1987). Another is "Geopolitics: Re-Visioning World Politics" (2003). Much of his empirical research involves Italy, Greece, and the United States. For the year 2008–9, John Agnew was President of the Association of American Geographers
Association of American Geographers
The Association of American Geographers is a non-profit scientific and educational society founded in 1904 and aimed at advancing the understanding, study, and importance of geography and related fields...
, the main professional organization for academic geography in the United States. He was associate editor of the flagship journal of the association, Annals of the Association of American Geographers and was co-editor of the international journal Geopolitics with David Newman
David Newman (political geographer)
David Newman is a British-Israeli scholar in political geography and geopolitics. He serves as professor at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Department of Politics and Government and editor of the academic journal Geopolitics...
from 1998 to 2009.
Place
In Place and Politics (1987), John Agnew contends that for a space to become a 'place', three requirements need to be met :- A specific location, something that answers the question, 'Where?'in relation to everywhere else.
- A locale - the actual shape of the space, such as defined by the walls in a room or parks and streets in a city, etc. but usually associated with everyday activities (work, recreation, etc.)
- A sense of place - the personal and emotional attachment people have to a place
The focus on place reflects an effort to create a multi-scalar political geography. Agnew sees this as an alternative to the long-dominant state-centrism of the field and better suited than it to the evolving global condition. In this work he tries to do two things: (a) offer a conception of places as geographical settings for political action that are structured by the historical accumulation of local, wider-ranging, and sense-of-place influences and (b) relate the changing character of places with respect to the politics they produce to changes in the wider environment (such as changes in the balance between local and national-state governments, changes in the workings of the world economy, changes in social-class, ethnic, and other social affiliations, and shifts in the meaning and attachments to particular places).
Bringing together research conducted over the previous fifteen years on Italian politics, Place and Politics in Modern Italy (2002), is the most significant development of this perspective since his 1987 book, Place and Politics. It engages with contemporary debates in political theory about rational choice, association, difference, and socialization to provide an alternative geographical perspective that is both attentive to theoretical issues yet immersed in empirical specificity at Italy-wide and local geographical scales. More recently,(2003–2007), Agnew and his colleague Michael Shin have collaborated on an NSF-funded project concerning the transformation of Italian electoral politics between 1987 and 2006 that will further the goal of the research by measuring the geographical dynamics of Italian politics in the country as a whole. The book, Berlusconi's Italy (2008), reports on this particular project.
Geopolitics
Agnew has also been actively involved in reformulating on a critical footing the hitherto long-taboo subject among Anglo-American geographers of “geopolitics.” His 1998 book Geopolitics appeared in a second edition in 2003 and along with the co-authored book Mastering Space (1995), is part of this enterprise. Perhaps his most polished arguments in this area are in HegemonyHegemony
Hegemony is an indirect form of imperial dominance in which the hegemon rules sub-ordinate states by the implied means of power rather than direct military force. In Ancient Greece , hegemony denoted the politico–military dominance of a city-state over other city-states...
: The New Shape of Global Power, which won a Choice Award as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2005, and in “Sovereignty Regimes”, a long article that appeared the same year and has been transformed into a book length project, Globalization and Sovereignty (2009) which also won a Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award. Perhaps the three most important themes of this work taken as a whole are (a) the historicization of the idealized state of conventional political theory and geopolitics to the modern era; (b) the role of distinctive geopolitical discourses in different epochs of this era in normalizing the worldview associated with what he calls the state-centered “modern geopolitical imagination;” and (c) the need to take seriously the distinctive contributions to the character of “world order” brought by different hegemonic powers.
This work has attracted the attention of international relations scholars interested in paying more attention to the ways in which “geography” enters into the theory and practices of “international relations.” Agnew's recent work in this area, specifically on the European origins of the modern state and what this signifies for contemporary statehood in southeastern Europe, was helped by the award of a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship for the academic year 2003–2004. The recent article "No Borders, No Nations: Making Greece in Macedonia" (Annals of the Association of American Geographers
Association of American Geographers
The Association of American Geographers is a non-profit scientific and educational society founded in 1904 and aimed at advancing the understanding, study, and importance of geography and related fields...
, 2007) is an important statement of Agnew's perspective on international borders, an important element in the field of geopolitics.
Remote Sensing and Political Geography
In September 2008 Agnew and a group from UCLA evaluated the relative success of the so-called US military surge in Baghdad using night-light satellite information ("Baghdad Nights", Environment and Planning A (2008)). Claiming that the surge merely sealed the fate of Sunni and mixed Sunni/Shia neighborhoods already reduced in population by previous violence, this research received an enormous amount of coverage in the press and the blogosphere, not least from right-wing bloggers in the US defending the Bush-McCain claim that the surge "had worked" but without any sort of empirical information to justify their politically inspired arguments (S. Tavernise and A.W. Lehren, "A grim portrait of civilian deaths in Iraq" New York Times, 22 October 2010) During early 2009, a team led by Thomas W. Gillespie and Agnew of UCLA used satellite-aided geographical analysis to pinpoint three compounds in Parachinar [Pakistan] as likely hideouts of the Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden in 2001. This too received considerable media coverage. Much of this, however, failed to note the ironic tone of the MIT International Review paper (2009), "Finding Bin Laden", reporting the research with its emphasis on why so little effort seemingly had been put into finding the al-Qaeda leader after 2001 and the stake of US governments in keeping the myth of Islamic terrorism going as a basis for an endless new war recapitulating the "success" of the Cold War in mobilizing US identity and formulating a US foreign policy to which others could be recruited.Personal
John Agnew has two daughters: Katherine Agnew Sommer, a deputy district attorney for Los Angeles County and Christine Agnew, the Communications Coordinator for the Jane Fonda Center at Emory School of Medicine in Atlanta, GA.Selected Awards and honors
- 2000 Hettner Lectures, University of Heidelberg
- 2003–2004 Guggenheim AwardGuggenheim FellowshipGuggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
winner - 2005 Choice Outstanding Title Book Award
- 2006 UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award
- 2006 Distinguished Scholarship Award, Association of American Geographers
- 2009 Choice Outstanding Title Book Award
Selected Books & Articles
- "Deus Vult: The Geopolitics of the Catholic Church " (2010, Routledge), Published in: journal Geopolitics, Volume 15, Issue 1 January 2010 , pages 39 – 61
- "The SAGE Handbook of Geographical Knowledge" (2010, Sage), co-edited with David Livingstone ISBN 9781412910811
- "Globalization and Sovereignty" (2009, Rowman & Littlefield) ISBN 0742556786
- "The Geography of the World Economy" (5th Edition, 2008, Oxford UP), co-authored with Paul Knox and Linda McCarthy ISBN 0340948353
- "Berlusconi's Italy" (2008, Temple UP), co-authored with Michael Shin ISBN 1592137172
- "Politics: Critical Essays in Human Geography" (ed) (2008, Ashgate), co-edited with Virginie Mamadouh ISBN 0754626903
- "Hegemony: The New Shape of Global Power" (2005, Temple UP) ISBN 1592131530
- "The Marshall Plan Today" (2004, Routledge), co-edited with J. Nicholas Entrikin ISBN 0714655147
- "Geopolitics : re-visioning world politics" (2003, 2nd ed. Routledge) ISBN 0415310075
- "A Companion to Political Geography" (2003, Blackwell), co-edited with Katharyne Mitchell and Gerard Toal ISBN 978-0-631-22031-2
- "American Space/American Place: Geographies of the Contemporary United States" (2002, University of Edinburgh Press/Routledge), co-edited with Jonathan Smith ISBN 0415935326
- "Making Political Geography" (2002, Arnold/Oxford UP) ISBN13: 9780340759554
- "Place and Politics in Modern Italy" (2002, University of Chicago Press) ISBN 0226010511
- "Reinventing geopolitics : geographies of modern statehood" (2001, Franz Steiner Verlag) ISBN 3885705044
- "Political Geography: A Reader" (ed) (1997, Arnold) ISBN 0470236558
- "Human Geography: An Essential Anthology" (ed) (1996, Wiley-Blackwell), co-edited with David J. Livingstone and Alisdair Rogers ISBN 978-0-631-19461-3
- "Mastering Space" (1995, Routledge), co-authored with Stuart Corbridge ISBN 0415094348
- "Rome" (1995, Wiley-Blackwell) ISBN 978-0-471-94886-5
- "The United States in the World-Economy" (1987, Cambridge UP) ISBN 0521316847
- "Place and Politics: The Geographical Mediation of State and Society" (1987, Allen & Unwin) ISBN 0043201176
Links
- John Agnew's homepage
- "Baghdad Nights" An interview with John Agnew in Guernica MagazineGuernica MagazineGuernica / A Magazine of Art and Politics is a biweekly online site that publishes art and photography, fiction, and poetry, from around the world, along with nonfiction such as letters from abroad, investigative pieces and opinion pieces on international affairs and U.S. domestic policy...
in November 2008 - Interview with John Agnew by Theory Talks (April 2008)