Empire as a Geopolitical Figure

TY - JOUR

T1 - Empire as a Geopolitical Figure

AU - Parker, Noel

PY - 2010/1

Y1 - 2010/1

N2 - This article analyses the ingredients of empire as a pattern of orderwith geopolitical effects. Noting the imperial form's proclivity forexpansion from a critical reading of historical sociology, thearticle argues that the principal manifestation of earlier geopoliticslay not in the nation but in empire. That in turn has been drivenby a view of the world as disorderly and open to the ordering willof empires (emanating, at the time of geopolitics' inception, fromEurope). One implication is that empires are likely to figure in thegeopolitical ordering of the globe at all times, in particular after allthat has happened in the late twentieth century to underminenationalism and the national state. Empire is indeed a probable,even for some an attractive form of regime for extending orderover the disorder produced by globalisation. Geopolitics articulatedin imperial expansion is likely to be found in the present andin the future - the EU, and still more obviously the USA exhibitingthe form in contemporary guise. This does not mean that empiresfigure in geopolitics simply by extending their own order, however;they are at least as much purveyors of other dynamics and orders,which possess their own discrete effects. The article ends with stipulationsregarding the variety of forms that empires may take:neither fully bounded nor centred; neither straightforwardlyself-serving nor easily made legitimate.

AB - This article analyses the ingredients of empire as a pattern of orderwith geopolitical effects. Noting the imperial form's proclivity forexpansion from a critical reading of historical sociology, thearticle argues that the principal manifestation of earlier geopoliticslay not in the nation but in empire. That in turn has been drivenby a view of the world as disorderly and open to the ordering willof empires (emanating, at the time of geopolitics' inception, fromEurope). One implication is that empires are likely to figure in thegeopolitical ordering of the globe at all times, in particular after allthat has happened in the late twentieth century to underminenationalism and the national state. Empire is indeed a probable,even for some an attractive form of regime for extending orderover the disorder produced by globalisation. Geopolitics articulatedin imperial expansion is likely to be found in the present andin the future - the EU, and still more obviously the USA exhibitingthe form in contemporary guise. This does not mean that empiresfigure in geopolitics simply by extending their own order, however;they are at least as much purveyors of other dynamics and orders,which possess their own discrete effects. The article ends with stipulationsregarding the variety of forms that empires may take:neither fully bounded nor centred; neither straightforwardlyself-serving nor easily made legitimate.

U2 - 10.1080/14650040903420412

DO - 10.1080/14650040903420412

M3 - Journal article

SN - 1465-0045

VL - 15

SP - 109

EP - 132

JO - Geopolitics

JF - Geopolitics

IS - 1-2

ER -