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Editorial Board Member: Political Geography; Geopolitics; Emotions, Space and Society. More about Professor Dittmer. Thinking about how the past can be incorporated into the present in new, politically emancipatory ways, has the potential to unlock contemporary conflicts.
Aug 28, 2021 · Finally, Jason Dittmer’s article ‘The State, All at Sea: Interoperability and the Global Network of Navies’ focuses on the efforts by the United States to incorporate ocean space into the logic of the terrestrial state system through the Global Network of Navies (GNoN).
- Jason Dittmer
- 2021
Oct 2, 2024 · PhD student William Stewart and Professor Dittmer received the award for their article, “More-than-Human Space Diplomacy: Assembling Internationalism in Orbit.” The ‘The Hague Journal of Diplomacy Article Award’ is presented annually to the article that best advances the theoretical and/or empirical study of diplomacy.
- The Book
- Popular Geopolitics and Related Concepts
- Representations
What made you decide to write a book that combines popular culture, geopolitics and identity?
I thought that the field of popular geopolitics had gone through such a rapid expansion in the past decade or so that someone needed to try and consolidate it in some way; to systematize it a bit. Most people who write on the topic do so as an aside from what they are usually researching, because a movie piqued their interest or something like that. Consequently, I don’t think anyone had really tried to put it all together. And of course I think popular culture is a great way to get students...
Why did you base your book largely on the social constructivist perspective?
Well, I suppose it’s because I think that’s the perspective most of the literature adopts. The focus on discourse in critical geopolitics has been pretty relentless (some would argue too much so). While I certainly wanted to book to reflect my views, I wanted it to do justice to the body of work that it was drawing on, so the book mostly adopts a social constructionist perspective. Further, I think it provides a nice link between the world of media we are immersed in and our own understanding...
Why do you argue that ‘we are all “doing” popular geopolitics all the time’?
To me that’s the argument that is central to the project of popular geopolitics. Usually geopolitics gets framed as ‘big boy’ research, dealing with wars, diplomacy, and the like. The importance of popular geopolitics is, I think, in pointing out that all those ‘big boy’ events are reliant on the billions of everyday interactions between people and media, and then how people engage with each other in ways contextualized by those media. One piece of jargon that I think is really helpful is the...
To what extent can we speak of an ‘Americanisation of popular culture around the world’?
I’m actually quite sceptical about the Americanisation thesis. Certainly American popular culture circulates around the world, probably more than most. As an American living in London I am mostly able to keep up with my favourite shows from the States. Amusingly though, my mother in Florida is always telling me about the best BBC shows that I should be looking out for. So I think using the term ‘Americanisation’ obscures more than it illuminates. Also, I think the focus on where media come fr...
What is the postcolonial perspective and how does it relate to critical geopolitics?
Postcolonialism is the intellectual movement attempting to de-centralize global knowledge production. Despite the formal end of most empires several decades ago, we still live in a world where knowledge is produced in certain places, often about other places. So there’s a crisis of representation – who gets to describe someone else, and under what circumstances? Certainly geopolitics has been one of the worst culprits here, historically speaking, and the emergence of critical geopolitics in t...
What are representations and why do they matter in popular geopolitics?
Representations are mediated versions of places and spaces; they’re central not just to popular geopolitics but to geography in general. Imagine a visit to New York or Paris; part of your experience of being there is the unreality of seeing the actual place that you’ve seen thousands of times before in movies or television. Our understandings of the world in fact rarely come from first-hand experience, but from books, news media, friends’ travel stories, and the like. I think the important in...
What role do representations play in James Bond movies?
Klaus Dodds has done some fantastic work on the James Bond movies which were quite inspirational to me when I was just getting started. He makes the point that the role of place in the James Bond movies is central to setting up the tension. The places in which Bond swings into action are usually not the major powers themselves, but instead they are countries at the margins of the geopolitical order, in which the major powers battle for the fate of the world. Bond moves in and out of these cou...
What could be the impact of the representations in ‘first-person shooter’ video games?
I’m sceptical of any discussion of the ‘impact’ of representations because of my belief in the active nature of consumption, which I mentioned earlier. But certainly representations matter in that they provide cultural resources from which people can produce their geopolitical imaginations. Currently, Ian Shaw is doing some great work looking at the popular geopolitics of first-person shooters and he emphasizes the Orientalist nature of the recent crop of first-person shooters. I think this c...
Nov 7, 2021 · Jason Dittmer discusses what the discipline of Geography can bring to IR, the relationship between popular culture and International Relations, and media as a vessel for nationalism.
Articles 1–20. Professor of Political Geography, University College London - Cited by 6,214 - Diplomacy - Geopolitics - Cultural Geography - Comic Books - Assemblages.
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View the University College London profile of Jason Dittmer. Including their publications, grants, professional activities and teaching activities.
