Introduction to Political

Geography

Class 4: Geopolitical Structure

BIR 2018
Course: 1206
1st Year, 2nd Semester
Discussion Points

• Assign Term Paper Topics

• Territoriality, Boundaries and State
• Geopolitical Regions
• Nation States
• Types of Borders
Term Paper Topics
• Individual topic
• Word limit: 1500-2000
• Font: Times New Roman
• Font Size: 12
• Line Space: 1.5
• Reference Style: Harvard
• Date of Submission:
• Marks: 07 (Paper); Presentation: 03
Territory
- Bounded geographic space.

- Area under control of a country or state.

- Land, water.

- Land becomes territory when someone claims authority over

the land and limits the types of activities that can occur there.

- Non-sovereign.
Territoriality
- Attempt/effort to control that space.

- For personal, political and social ends.

- Mobility and immobility.

- Territorial strategy for some is a threat to the territorial

strategies of others.

- Territorial strategies typically draw in some way on the power of

the state.
Boundaries/National Boundaries
• Defines both the territory of a state and the
people who are the citizens of the state.

• Something (such as a river, a fence, or an

imaginary line) that shows where an area ends
and another area begins.

• Fence is a visual display of power.

Borders
• Borders are to define territories.

• Political borders turn land into territory.

• Its not natural parts of landscape, rather

human invention.
State
• A political unit that occupies a precisely
defined, permanently populated territory.

• Government, territory, population,

sovereignty.
Nation State
• Territory of a state occupied by only one
distinct nation or people.

• Japan, Denmark, Iceland.

Geopolitical Region
• Areas where a similar type of politics, be it the
groups that occupy it, the ideologies they pursue,
or the types of institutions they operate on.

• Example:
- South-China Sea.
- Indian Ocean.
- Geopolitics of South Asia and like.
Thank You