Making the Strange Familiar: Geographical Analogy in Global Geopolitics*

Abstract

ABSTRACT. In several publications in the 1950s, Donald Meinig raised two themes that are central to contemporary “critical geopolitics”: criticizing the idea of a determining global physical geography that directs global geopolitics, and suggesting that geographical labels and geopolitical concepts have political consequences. I take off from Meinig's insight about geopolitics as an active process of naming and acting by discussing the broad power of analogy in world politics and by examining recent use of two geographical analogies—the Macedonian syndrome and balkanization—as symptomatic of a wider process of making the strange familiar by recycling geographical analogies.

• balkanization
• geopolitics
• Macedonian syndrome
• D. W. Meinig

* A much earlier version of this article was presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association in Chicago on 1 March 2007. I am grateful for the useful questions from the audience and the comments of the discussant, Alexander B. Murphy, and for the editorial help of Felicity Nussbaum and Tristan Sturm in revising the paper for publication.

1 Dr. Agnew is a professor of geography at the University of California‐Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90095.

* A much earlier version of this article was presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association in Chicago on 1 March 2007. I am grateful for the useful questions from the audience and the comments of the discussant, Alexander B. Murphy, and for the editorial help of Felicity Nussbaum and Tristan Sturm in revising the paper for publication.

1 Dr. Agnew is a professor of geography at the University of California‐Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90095.

Notes

* A much earlier version of this article was presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association in Chicago on 1 March 2007. I am grateful for the useful questions from the audience and the comments of the discussant, Alexander B. Murphy, and for the editorial help of Felicity Nussbaum and Tristan Sturm in revising the paper for publication.

1 Dr. Agnew is a professor of geography at the University of California‐Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90095.