2006/03/01 by Fraser MacDonald · 66 citations
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Geographies of human-animal interactions #Photography and Visual Culture #Visual Culture and Art Theory #Geopolitics #Witness #Agency (philosophy) #Sight #Missile #State (computer science) #Power (physics) #Nuclear weapon #Political science #Space (punctuation) #Political geography #Sociology #Law #Political economy #Politics #History #Social science #Archaeology #Philosophy
paper · doi:10.1111/j.1475-5661.2006.00196.x
published in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 31(1), 53-71 (Wiley)
openalex publication_date 2006/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Critical geopolitics, despite its radical ambitions, has been reluctant to shift its emphasis from the figure of the geopolitical tactician, ‘decisive’ events and the agency of the military‐state. This paper, in common with recent work on ‘popular geopolitics’, offers a different agenda. It takes up the story of Britain and America's first nuclear missile – the US‐made ‘Corporal’– through the testimony of a self‐described ‘space‐daft’ schoolboy who, in 1959, travelled alone across Scotland to witness the first British testing of the missile. However, unlike much of the literature on popular geopolitics, this paper is concerned with the more‐than‐representational question of observant practice. Addressing recent calls for a more empirical enquiry into the relationship between geography and visual culture, the paper examines how geopolitical power operates through sights and spectacles.