"A very good overview. Covers the key topics well and in an accessible and engaging style."
- Dr Daniel Hammett, Department of Geography, Sheffield University

This is a revised and updated edition of a core undergraduate resource for political geography. Focusing on the social and cultural while systematically overviewing the entire discipline, Joe Painter and Alex Jeffrey explain:

Politics, geography, and ′political′ geography:

power, resources, institutions, and the history of the field

State formation:

classical views alongside recent work on governance and governmentality

Welfare to workfare state:

the restructuring of present state strategies

Democracy, citizenship and law:

different models of democracy in European and global contexts

Identity and social movements:

the relation between identity and political action

Nationalism and regionalism:

ethnicity, national identity and "otherness"

Imperialism and post-colonialism:

from world systems theory to post-structuralist accounts

Geopolitics:

the political, economic, and strategic significance of geography.

Comprehensive, accessible and illustrated with real world examples, Political Geography provides undergraduates with a thorough understanding of the relationship between geography and politics.