Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed July 22, 2008). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 203-220).

Thesis (M.S.)--Indiana University, 2009. / Department of Geography, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Advisor(s): Owen J. Dwyer, Jeffrey S. Wilson, Scott M. Pegg. Includes vitae. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 135-168).

This research focuses on the Israeli town of Sderot and the rocket attacks it experienced since 2001. Sderot is a unique case study because it represents a group of individuals in a democratic country that lived with terrorism for almost a decade before the state took major defensive action. The situation in Sderot is one which has lacked attention in the media and in Political Science research. By analyzing the level of attention by multiple actors to the crisis in Sderot, the reasons for the perpetual insecurity of its population are discussed. The crisis is analyzed on four main levels: the experience of individuals in Sderot, the response of the Israeli government, Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, and the role of the United Nations. The preliminary chapter examines the impact of living with rocket fire while exploring methods by which Sderot residents have engaged in activism to improve their quality of life. The following chapter discusses Israeli national defense policy and examines where Sderot has ranked on the State's list of priorities. The third chapter consists of two main sections: an analysis of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, an explanation of Barnas' rise to power in Gaza. The latter section consists of an exploration of the politics surrounding the United Nation's level of attention to the crisis in Sderot. As one transitions from the individual level of analysis to the state level, the voices of Sderot residents become much quieter, and the realities of a state that is constantly attacked from beyond its borders can be understood. By analyzing the past failings of peace negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, lessons for future attempts at negotiations are discussed, and the ever-present link between peace and security is emphasized. Overall, the realities of daily life in a state which pursues a policy of security over diplomacy are illuminated.

This study develops a geographic theory relating to sub-imperial states and resistance to them. The theory is centred on what can be called the government-business-media (GBM) complex, whilst resistance to such states is characterised as counter-imperialist discourses. The theory is applied primarily to South Africa’s (SA’s) interactions with the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. The aim is to assess the state of SA’s sub-imperialism and evaluate the claim that this sub-imperialism is in crisis. The research findings are based on media material drawn from, and interviews conducted in, Botswana, Zambia and SA. The thesis outlines how sub-imperialism should be regarded as a distinct analytical and theoretical phenomenon. It explores the theoretical context in which the GBM complex and counter-imperialist discourses may be viewed. Using this theoretical framework, the study then traces the historical geographical development of SA’s GBM complex. Building on this, the thesis identifies and examines regional responses and attitudes to SA’s post-apartheid political, business and cultural-media engagement with the region, by analysing counter-imperialist discourses to SA during this period. In order to assess the current state of SA’s sub-imperialism, case studies were taken from the following four areas which cover crucial aspects of SA’s post-apartheid engagement with the region: SA’s parastatal expansion (Eskom); SA’s peacemaking role (Zimbabwe); SA’s state-driven rhetoric of multiculturalism and tolerance (xenophobia); and SA’s hosting of mega-events (2010 Football World Cup). In each of these areas the intended geopolitical and geoeconomic discourses of the GBM complex, and the corresponding responses in the region, are investigated. It is concluded that there is a discrepancy between the intended discourses of the GBM complex and the responses from the region, giving rise to counter-imperialist discourses. These discourses support the claim that SA’s sub-imperialism is in crisis.

Orientador: Marcio Antonio Cataia / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Geociências / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-19T20:10:08Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Farias_AndreRodrigo_M.pdf: 5142420 bytes, checksum: 553f93db0a1851c3814c4b2a2fab3fdb (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011 / Resumo; O texto objetiva discutir as questões relativas às transferências intergovernamentais constitucionais realizadas entre a União, os estados e os municípios no que se refere às compensações financeiras por exploração de recursos hídricos, recursos minerais e royalties advindos da exploração de petróleo e gás natural. Esses aportes financeiros estruturam um importante viés da capacidade de organização dos entes federativos nacionais, influenciando de maneira significativa em suas configurações sócio-territoriais, bem como condicionando a própria conformação e desenvolvimento da federação brasileira enquanto modo de organização política do Estado nacional. O repasse e distribuição dessas transferências entre os entes federativos, previsto na Constituição Federal, são realizados mediante o atendimento de diversos critérios legais por parte dos agentes envolvidos, adequando-se a um amplo sistema normativo cuja incumbência principal é fornecer a regulação necessária para a continuidade e aperfeiçoamento desses instrumentos de transferência de recursos públicos. Entre as inúmeras variáveis geradas a partir dessa base legal de repasse de finanças governamentais, um atributo fundamental à análise refere-se às formas específicas e seletivas com que esses recursos são distribuídos pelo território nacional, impactando significativamente as estratégias de desenvolvimento regional. Nesse sentido, a pesquisa problematiza os aspectos principais dessa modalidade de transferência intergovernamental constitucional, compreendendo a forma e relevância em que se apresentam para a organização da federação brasileira, bem como no conjunto do território nacional, destacando seus principais aspectos legais, políticos, econômicos e, sobretudo, territoriais / Abstract: The text aims to discuss issues relating to constitutional intergovernmental transfers made between Union, states and municipalities that regards to financial compensation for exploitation of water resources, mineral resources and royalties arising from petroleum and natural gas. These financial contributions structure a significant bias of the capacity of organization of national federative entities, influencing significantly in their socio-territorial settings, as well as conditioning its own conformation and development of the Brazilian federation as a mode of political organization of the national State. The repass and distribution of this transfers between the federal entities foreseen in the Constitution, are performed with the assistance of several legal criterions by the agents involved, adapting itself to a wide regulatory system whose main incumbency is to provide the necessary regulation to the continuity and improvement of these instruments of transfer of public resources. Among the many variables generated from this legal basis for the transfer of government finances, a key attribute of the analysis refers to the selective and specific ways in which these resources are distributed throughout the country, significantly impacting the regional development strategies. Therein, the survey discusses the main aspects of this type of constitutional intergovernmental transfers, comprehending the manner and relevance that are presented to the organization of the Brazilian federation, as well as in the set of the national territory, highlighting its major legal, political, economic and mainly territorial aspects / Mestrado / Análise Ambiental e Dinâmica Territorial / Mestre em Geografia

The dissertation is a philosophical approach to politicizing place and space, or environments broadly construed, that is motivated by three questions. How can geography be employed to analyze the spatialities of environmental justice? How do spatial concepts inform understandings of environmentalism? And, how can geography help overcome social/political philosophy's redistribution-recognition debate in a way that accounts for the multiscalar dimensions of environmental justice? Accordingly, the dissertation's objective is threefold. First, I develop a critical geography framework that explores the spatialities of environmental injustices as they pertain to economic marginalization across spaces of inequitable distribution, cultural subordination in places of misrecognition, and political exclusion from public places of deliberation and policy. Place and space are relationally constituted by intricate networks of social relations, cultural practices, socioecological flows, and political-economic processes, and I contend that urban and natural environments are best represented as "places-in-space." Second, I argue that spatial frameworks and environmental discourses interlock because conceptualizations of place and space affect how environments are perceived, serve as framing devices to identify environmental issues, and entail different solutions to problems. In the midst of demonstrating how the racialization of place upholds inequitable distributions of pollution burdens, I introduce notions of "social location" and "white privilege" to account for the conflicting agendas of the mainstream environmental movement and the environmental justice movement, and consequent accusations of discriminatory environmentalism. Third, I outline a bivalent environmental justice theory that deals with the spatialities of environmental injustices. The theory synergizes distributive justice and the politics of social equality with recognition justice and the politics of identity and difference, therefore connecting cultural issues to a broader materialist analysis concerned with economic issues that extend across space. In doing so, I provide a justice framework that assesses critically the particularities of place and concurrently identifies commonalities to diverse social struggles, thus spatializing the geography of place-based political praxis.

People's narratives, interpretations and understandings of the Chad-Cameroon Oil Pipeline and pipeline actors emphasise the uneven exercise of power through which structural violence is effected and experienced. The complexity of the processes of structural violence along with local socio-political context and peoples' dynamic understandings thereof play major roles in shaping resistance practices, in complex ways in Kribi and Nanga-Eboko. Working from these narratives, I offer a theoretical re-articulation of structural violence as (i) tangible through the body, (ii) historically compounded, (iii) spatially compressed and (iv) enacted in a globalised geopolitical nexus by actors who are spatially nested within a racialised and gendered hierarchy of scale. Drawing from critical interdisciplinary work on violence, my theory of a triad of divergent, often interrelated and co-existing, distinguishable indexes of structural violence includes: infra/structural violence, industrial structural violence and institutionalized structural violence. The particular processes and mechanisms of uneven power within structural violence, local socio-political contexts and the epistemologies through which power is conceived (in this case I consider epistemologies of la sorcellerie, or witchcraft) inform resistance practices; I illuminate key operations (within geographies characterised by high levels of infra/structural violence) within the spatial practices of power that influence the tendency for resistance struggles to be quiet, spontaneous and/or labour-based. I conclude with a discussion of the political and intellectual value of academic work on life and being amid structural violence, emphasising the need to move beyond the invisible/visible dichotomy that has often informed intellectual work on structural violence.

Despite analysts' predictions and assertions prior to the 2016 presidential election, the Hispanic vote did not prove decisive. Donald Trump's victory elucidates a new electoral calculus, one that will be ruled simultaneously by changing demographics and the backlash against such change. While Hispanic voters largely supported Hillary Clinton, structural and individual impediments hinder their access to the voting booth and their turnout on election day. This thesis explores the reasons why the Hispanic electorate did not prove decisive in the 2016 presidential election. It further illuminates the changing Electoral College map, in which the Midwest and the Rustbelt are determined by an older white electorate and the South and Southwest are determined by an influx of minorities and immigrants, namely the Hispanic electorate. The 2016 presidential election illustrates the demographic changes and subsequent backlash that will persist over the next decade. A growing Hispanic population and electorate will eventually alter the political calculus of national and state elections, but turnout among white voters will continue to prove decisive in the near future. White backlash and transactional voting (e.g. economic, religious) clearly clinched Trump's success in crucial swing states, ultimately securing his Electoral College win. A review of polling prior to the 2016 election, as well as case studies of economic transactional and Hispanic Trump voters, demonstrates the breakdown across party and state lines that ensured Trump's Electoral College victory, despite a large and expanding Hispanic electorate. While it will continue to grow exponentially, it is unlikely that the Hispanic electorate will prove decisive as soon as the 2020 presidential election, but it will inevitably determine national and state elections within the next decade.

Recent calls from progressive, subaltern and postcolonial geopoliticians to move geopolitical scholarship away from its Western ontological bases have argued that more ethnographic studies centred on peripheral and dispossessed geographies need to be undertaken in order to integrate peripheralised agents and agencies in dominant ontologies of geopolitics. This thesis follows these calls. Through empirical data collected during a period of five months of fieldwork undertaken between October 2014 and March 2015, it investigates the ways through which an Indigenous community of the Canadian Arctic, Tulita (located in the Northwest Territories' Sahtu region) represents geopower. It suggests a semiotic reading of these representations in order to take the agency of other-than/more-than-human beings into account. In doing so, it identifies the ontological bases through which geopolitics can be indigenised. Drawing from Dene animist ontologies, it indeed introduces the notion of a place-contingent speculative geopolitics. Two overarching argumentative lines are pursued. First, this thesis contends that geopower operates through metamorphic refashionings of the material forms of, and signs associated with, space and place. Second, it infers from this that through this transformational process, geopower is able to create the conditions for alienating but also transcending experiences and meanings of place to emerge. It argues that this movement between conflictual and progressive understandings is dialectical in nature. In addition to its conceptual suggestions, this thesis makes three empirical contributions. First, it confirms that settler geopolitical narratives of sovereignty assertion in the North cannot be disentangled from capitalist and industrial political-economic processes. Second, it shows that these processes, and the geopolitical visions that subtend them, are materialised in space via the extension of the urban fabric into Indigenous lands. Third, it demonstrates that by assembling space ontologically in particular ways, geopower establishes (and entrenches) a geopolitical distinction between living/sovereign (or governmentalised) spaces and nonliving/bare spaces (or spaces of nothingness).