The SAGE Handbook of Political Geography

Murray Low's research focuses on relationships between geography and democracy including institutional and spatial aspects of elections, changing practices of accountability and legitimacy in cities, and the geography of political party organisations and social movements. His work has dealt with the relationships between global networks and democracy, constructions of globalization and states in geography, and geographical aspects of political representation. He has recently completed research funded by the Leverhulme Foundation into city democratisation in South Africa. He is co-editor of Spaces of Democracy: Geographical Perspectives on Citizenship, Participation and Representation (Sage, 2004), and of The Sage Handbook of Political Geography (Sage, 2008) Current research builds on my book, Ordinary Cities: Between Modernity and Development (Routledge, 2006) which develops a postcolonial critique of urban studies, presenting resources for cutting across the thinking which has divided understandings of Western and Third World Cities. I argue against perspectives which categorize cities as Global, Third World, Mega, African etc. and suggest instead an attentiveness to the diverse trajectories of 'ordinary cities'. This work has strong implications for the practices of urban studies internationally, and invites a regrounding of comparative urbanism in rigorous practices able to encompass both wealthier and poorer cities so as to generate approaches to understanding cities which are properly international. Future plans include an empirical project to exemplify comparative methods incorporating wealthier and poorer cities, taking as the object of study the ubiquitous technology of developing city strategies and visions. This will also enable an investigation of the international circulation of urban policy to understand how policy arrives in and is adopted or adapted in different localities. The research will press an engagement with analyses of neoliberalism in urban studies to incorporate perspectives from cities in poorer contexts. It contributes to conceptualisations of the spatialities of circulation, reflecting my wider interests in general theoretical accounts of space. Previous research has centred on the relationship between power and space, specifically in cities and mostly in relation to South African politics. For example, I have written on the 1936 Empire Exhibition in Johannesburg to explore spaces of racial interaction in South African cities. I have also written on issues in feminist politics, including questions of difference and methodology, and more recently on the implications of Julia Kristeva's psychoanalytic writing for feminist theorizations of space. More broadly, I have explored ways of postcolonializing the theoretical and empirical practices of Geography.

PART ONE: THE SCOPE AND DEVELOPMENT OF POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY The Politics of Political Geography - Guntram Herb The Geography of Political Geography - James Sidaway Geographies of Space and Power - Joe Painter Feminist Transformations of Political Geography - Eleonore Kofman PART TWO: STATES Theorizing the State Geographically - Merje Kuus and John Agnew Sovereignty, Subjectivity, Territoriality State and Society - Stuart Corbridge Planning, Space and Government - Margo Huxley Welfare Provision, Welfare Reform, Welfare Mothers - Kim England Making Space for Law - Nick Blomley Coercion, Territoriality, Legitimacy - Steve Herbert The Police And The Modern State PART THREE: RE-NATURING POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY Theorizing the Nature-Society Divide - Bruce Braun The State in Political Ecology - Paul Robbins A Postcard to Political Geography from the Field Regulating Resource Use - Karen Bakker and Gavin Bridge Global Environmental Politics - Becky Mansfield The Politics of Transition - Joshua Muldavin Critical Political Ecology, Classical Economics and Ecological Modernization in China PART FOUR: IDENTITIES AND INTERESTS IN POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS Nation-States and National Identity - Jan Penrose and Richard Mole Working Political Geography Through Social Movement Theory - Michael Brown The Case of Gay and Lesbian Seattle Contrapuntal Geographies - Noel Castree, David Featherstone and Andrew Herod The Politics of Organising Across Socio-spatial Difference The Political Geography of Many Bodies - Arun Saldanha Transnational Political Movements - Paul Routledge PART FIVE: FROM 'LA GEOGRAPHIE ELECTORALE' TO THE POLITICS OF DEMOCRACY Place and Vote - Ron Johnston and Charles Pattie The Territorial Politics of Representation - Benjamin Forest Democracy and Democratization - Lynn A. Staeheli Convening Publics - Clive Barnett The Parasitical Spaces of Public Action PART SIX: GLOBAL POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY `Global' Geopolitics - Simon Dalby Geo-graphers - Elena Dell'Agnese Writing Worlds Empire - Alan Lester Re-Bordering Spaces - Jouni Hakli Transnationalism and (Im)mobility - Rachel Silvey, Elizabeth Olson and Yaffa Truelove The Politics of Border Crossings Spatial Analysis of Civil War Violence - John O'Loughlin and Clionadh Raleigh PART SEVEN: THE POLITICS OF UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT Political Geography of Uneven Development - Peter Taylor The Politics of Local and Regional Development - Andrew Wood The Politics of Localization - Giles Mohan and Kristian Stokke From Depoliticizing Development to Politicizing Democracy 'Development' in Question - Hariprya Rangan Sustainable Development and Governance - Yvonne Rydin Urban Governance in the South - Sue Parnell The politics of rights and development

'A thorough and absorbing tour of the sub-discipline... An essential acquisition for any scholar or teacher interested in geographical perspectives on political process, this Handbook is sure to become the major reference work in anglophone political geography' - Sallie Marston, University of Arizona 'This unique book is a true encyclopedia of political geography... The volume is a result of cooperation between a big international team of well known geographers, including scholars beyond the Anglo-American world' - Vladimir Kolossov, Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, and Vice President of the International Geographical Union