Geopolitics of Water – The Power of Water

Abstract. This paper develops an exchange between two important strands of research within contemporary human geography. One concerns the matter of socionatures; the other concerns the operation and establishment of power within liberal, capitalist social formations. Through mobilizing some of the recent writings on the political ecology of water, we seek to show how an engagement with Gramscian and Foucauldian work on power could be mutually beneficial for both areas of research. In so doing, we seek to mobilise some of the tensions, as well as the points of engagement, between Gramscian and Foucauldian approaches. Through opening up the ways in which water contributes to the survival of liberal capitalist formations and also to the production of distinctive subjectivities, this dialogue provides new inroads into the politics and praxis of everyday life.

1-Introduction:

For numerous scholars, an empirical focus on water has served to revitalize the historical and geographical materialism, providing new insights into produced environments, uneven development, and the politics of urban metabolisms. However, no one to date has deployed a Gramscian framework to understand urban water provision, and, with several exceptions (Gandy, 2006a; 2006b; Joyce, 2003; Osborne, 1996), little consideration has been given to the purchase that a Foucauldian approach would bring to our understanding of water politics. Accordingly, this paper examines whether our understanding of the politics of urban water provision can be pushed forward through a direct engagement with the work of Gramsci and Foucault. More explicitly, can we understand everyday relations to water as being imbricated in the operation of hegemony and in the maintenance of subtle forms of rule? When competing groups struggle over the merits of various means of water provision, they might also be understood to be struggling over the shape of a future society one in which the exchange relation is dominant, or one in which use and need are privileged over profit. However, when people routinely turn on a tap, are they also positioned within a myriad of relations and techniques of power that bind them to the survival of capitalism? This paper seeks to develop a theoretical framework through which future research can approach these questions. In short, we want to lay some modest foundations for a future research agenda. In order to do this, we enter into a second fount of theoretical debate, the reconcilability or irreconcilability of the work of Gramsci and Foucault. In recent years, this second debate has been taken up within the geographical literature through work on Neoliberalism. Here, Gramscian approaches have been brought into conversation with Foucauldian approaches in ways that, whilst productive for some (Larner, 2000; 2003; Peet, 2001; Sparke, 2006;Watts, 2003) others have argued to be naive, theoretically clumsy, and politically confused (Barnett, 2005). Whilst this debate is vital as a launch pad for some of the arguments taken forward in this paper, nowhere in the debate do we find a detailed discussion of the actual tensions and resonances within the work of these two important theorists. Instead, we see either the adoption of a rarely questioned pluralism or an entrenchment of positions around an antipathy to either historical materialism or post-structuralism. By shifting the empirical discussion from one around Neoliberalism to one around the politics and the practicalities of water provision, we argue that debates might discover a more productive terrain. This necessarily depends on much closer scrutiny of the work of both theorists. Hence, this paper serves two purposes: on the one hand, it seeks to push forward debates on urban water provision, and, on the other, it seeks to add a degree of theoretical robustness to the ongoing debates concerning Gramsci and Foucault. By bringing these discourses together, we hope to bolster our understanding of capitalist urbanization. After a brief review of some of the more recent work by geographers on water and social power, we turn to a more detailed exploration of the potential contributions of Gramsci and Foucault. Here, we focus on where we see resonances between the two: around hegemony and governmentality as dispersed forms of rule, and in the importance placed on interactions between everyday practices, the materiality of ideology, and power. We then go on to look at where we see significant tensions: in the quite different understandings of power, conceptions of the ‘social’ and the nature of struggle. In spite of these tensions, and in spite of what was often a fiercely anti-Marxist stance on Foucault’s part, we refuse to consign the two theorists to opposing camps. Indeed, along with several others (Driver, 1985; Jessop, 2007; Marsden, 1999) we argue that differences do not necessarily prevent dialogue. Foucault’s later work, although treading an utterly distinctive path, seemed to move in many of the directions that several historical materialist writers, including Gramsci, had also claimed. As Mouffe (1979) has argued, Gramsci approached many of the theoretical concerns that were to become central to Foucault’s oeuvre. For both Jessop (2007) and Driver (1985), this leads to what, on the surface, appears an erroneous claim: the theoretician we associate most with a certain microphysics of power was also a provocative genealogist of the state. Taking this forward in the final part of the paper, we show how research on water might be enlivened by such debates. We do this by revisiting the existing literature on water in light of our discussion of Gramsci and Foucault. In doing so, we delineate the contours of a new research agenda concerning the politics of water. Here, we suggest that the existing work could be advanced through explicating the connection between urban water provisions and both hegemonic projects and dispersed forms of rule. In addition, we suggest that attention needs to be paid to the practices and techniques through which social transformations are enacted.

2 Water and social power

For at least a century, geographers have been interested in the ways in which water, power, and politics are woven together. In the accounts of early environmental determinists, water plays a vital role in shaping the history of specific societies (Semple,1911).(1) Later, in somewhat more nuanced accounts, the interactions between social and natural processes are seen to shape political fortunes. Here, one might think of the possibilist critique of environmental determinism (Febvre, 1925) or, later, in geographers’ (Peet, 1985) engagements with Wittfogel’s (1957) Oriental Despotism or Worster’s (1986). Rivers of Empire. In more recent years, these relationships have been explored through a reinvigorated historical geographical materialism(2) and through attempts to ground political ecology much more firmly in a nuanced political economy. With regard to the latter, Bakker’s (2000; 2002; 2003, 2004; 2005) work has forced a questioning of many of the simplistic assumptions in a political economy of the environment. The crude equation of water privatisation with deregulation is unsettled through her argument that, within England and Wales, deregulation of the water sector was accompanied by reregulation. Continually, Bakker’s work urges us to rethink the political economy within a nuanced left political ecology. At times, Bakker’s (2007) work charts a separate course, as seen in her stress that attention be paid to how the reregulation of water is tied up with the reconfiguration of the citizen-consumer nexus. Even if the conceptual resources she deploys to question the latter lack the sophistication with which she approaches political ecology, Bakker’s work brings us to the cusp of explicitly considering how changes in urban water provision are tied to the reconfiguration of social formations. Others have found similarly productive insights in historicising the provision of clean drinking water, showing how this, in turn, comes to play a constitutive role in the rise of modernity. Gandy’s wide-ranging work (1999; 2002; 2004a; 2004b, 2006a; 2006b; 2006c) situates the provision of water within discourses of the organic and the sanitary city: water provision plays a key role in the rise of the Keynesian welfare state and the `splintered urbanism’ of Graham and Marvin’s (2001) contemporary city. In Concrete and Clay, Gandy (2002) develops rich insights into the politics of the city, through looking at New York’s expanding ecological frontier and the complexities of the city’s metabolic processes. Swyngedouw (1997a; 1999; 2004a; 2007), in turn, develops sweeping historical geographies of both the Spanish and the Ecuadorean waterscapes. In the Spanish case, the waterscape is shown to be both a crucial actor in the development of a late-19th-century and early-20th-century regenerationist dis course as well as a key actor in the scalar politics of Franco’s fascist dictatorship. In Kaika and Swyngedouw’s (2000) work, water infrastructure is shown to embody and express the modernist triumph over nature, before, in more recent years, it becomes a fetishised form of the Fordist social compromise. Kaika’s (2003; 2004; 2005) writings then go on to suggest ways in which this fetish might be transformed in periods of crisis that puncture the intimacies of the modern home. Both Gandy’s and Swyngedouw’s more recent work has sought to delve into some of the tropes through which socionatural relationships might be productively explored. For Gandy (2005; 2006a; 2006b), this has involved projects on cyborg urbanisation and, more recently, exploring the purchase in bringing Foucauldian ideas together with Agamben’s writing. For Swyngedouw (1996; 2006), this has involved a more overtly historical materialist exploration of urban metabolisms and hybridity. Implicit in much of this literature are several understandings of both power and the exercise of power. In the rich empirical studies there is a clear appreciation of how power circulates through sociohydraulic landscapes in decentralised and taken-for-granted manners. In this respect, power is an effect of a myriad of relations, not something that can be held. Thus, in Swyngedouw’s (2007) work, the coercive arm of the fascist state works in concert with a consensual power, evident in the material and symbolic flows of power in the waterscape. For Gandy the corporal extension of the body to the physical and symbolic infrastructure of the city decentres the human subject and rearranges the micropolitical realms of power in private spaces (2005; 2006a).

However, within Swyngedouw’s (2004a) and Gandy’s (2006c) work there is also a more realist understanding of power at play. Power for both of these authors is also something that can be held and deployed. For instance, the military elite of Lagos or the water vendors in Ecuador have the power to make water flow or not flow through cities. Crucially, both Swyngedouw and Gandy insist that power, in the realist sense, might be investigated through a historical geographical materialist analysis. Whilst a choice between a more relational and a more realist understanding of power does not necessarily need to be made, a more direct theoretical engagement with the notion of power could add another degree of sophistication to what is already cutting-edge scholarship. Taking Swyngedouw and Gandy as representative figures, we suggest there is a developing interest in exploring, on the one hand, how water figures in questions of the subject and power, and, on the other, how water contributes to the stabilization of particular social formations. On the one hand, there is a gesturing towards anti-humanist Foucauldian concerns and, on the other, there is a gesturing towards more humanist Gramscian concerns. While, as we noted in the introduction, the thoughts of these twoöthe humanist and the antihumanist, the imprisoned leader of the Italian communist party and the anticommunist campaigner for reform of the penal systemöare not easily reconciled, they may provide conceptual tools through which the water research agenda can be enlivened. Through exploring some of the tensions and through using one’s thought as a way of prising open questions within the other’s thought, productive insights might be possible.

3 The promise of Gramsci and Foucault?

There has been a profusion of literature in recent years on neoliberalism and governmentality. Whilst much of this has sought inspiration within Foucault’s later works and his lectures at the College de France,(3) this has often been complemented by references to Gramsci. For Watts (2003) some of the work in this field (see Braun, 2000; Dean, 1999) represents a particularly powerful means of bringing together resource struggles with the ragged politics of struggle over particular spaces. In Peet’s work (2001), a Gramscian theorisation of hegemony is complemented by some of Foucault’s writings on the power of discourse. And, for Larner (2000; 2003), some of the untidiness in the establishment of neoliberalisms in different contexts might be explored through a rapprochement of Gramsci and Foucault. Recently, however, Barnett (2005) has argued that the differences between `neo-marxist’ approaches and Foucault are significant enough to warrant extreme caution in developing accounts inspired by both. In reference to recent geographical work on neoliberalism, analysed through a Gramscian-Foucauldian lens, Barnett suggests that this scholarship is at best theoretically clumsy and at worst simply na|ive. He states that marxist and Foucauldian approaches “imply different models of the nature of explanatory concepts; different models of causality and determination; different models of social relations and agency; and different normative understandings of political power”, adding that “we should not finesse these differences away by presuming that the two approaches converge around a common real-world referent, so-called `neo-liberalism’ ” (Barnett, 2005, page 8). Neglected here, Barnett argues, are the debates around Hall’s (1978; 1984; 1988; Hall and Jacques, 1983) analyses of Thatcherism and the cultural up-swell that led to the distinctiveness of “Authoritarian populism”.

There is clearly much of value in Barnett’s argument. It provides a wake-up call to lazy theorising and disturbs what appears to be an unproductive consensus around neoliberalism (see also Castree, 2006; Larner, 2003). Indeed, we would add to Barnett’s inventory of differences between Gramsci and Foucault their distinctive conceptions of the `social’ and the prominence afforded to the role of struggle. However, from this, we do not arrive at the same impasse as Barnett [we do not claim to be alone in this (see Driver, 1985, Jessop, 2007; Marsden, 1999)]. Lingering in Barnett’s account, we suspect, is something of a straw-Gramsci, characterised by economistic hubris, a misguided conception of false consciousness, and a lingering humanist essentialism. Whereas Barnett appears to assign the two theorists to different camps, we, instead, seek to explore what can be gained from an analysis that builds on elements of both Gramsci’s work and Foucault’s work, whilst keeping the generative tensions between the two bodies of work explicit. Interestingly, and in contrast to Barnett’s account, both Gramsci and Foucault were at pains to stress (albeit not explicitly) conceptual themes that became central to the other’s work. For Gramsci, the individual served as an important level of political practice. To take just one example, in his assertion that everyone is a legislator, Gramsci (1971, page 266) states that if an individual accepts directives from others “he makes certain that others are carrying them out too.” He adds that, if an individual “understood their spirit, he propagates them as though making them into rules specially applicable to limited and definite zones of living.” For Foucault, maintaining a vestige of the connection between the subject and broader political economic relations became a major consideration in his later work. This is indicated by numerous comments in Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality, Volume 1 stressing that the rise of industrial capitalism was not possible without the profusion of new power relations that subjectivate people and populations in new and distinct ways (Foucault, 1990, pages 114, 140 ^ 142; 1995, pages 164, 174 ^ 175; see also Fontana and Bertani, 2003; Foucault, 2007, pages 48 ^ 49). Thus, in what follows, we detail the resonances between Gramsci’s conceptualisations of hegemony and ideology, and Foucault’s discussion of governmentality and power. Following this, we concentrate on some of the “productive tensions” between their work, through concentrating on their conception of the “social’” and political struggle.

4 Resonances and tensions:

Gramsci’s conceptualisation of hegemony is widely considered to be his preeminent contribution to political theory. Transforming earlier conceptions, Gramsci’s development of hegemony has two related facets. First, hegemony refers to the maintenance of one social group’s dominance over subordinate groups, accomplished through relations of consent and coercion (Gramsci, 1971; pages 144; 148; 152; 155; 161; 169; 180). Maintaining hegemony over subordinate social groups raises the second dimension of his conceptualisationöthe necessity of reproducing the social relations that are foundational to a given social formation [see Gramci's writings on “Americanism and Fordism” (1971, pages 277 ^ 316); see also Kipfer (2002)]. These two facets of hegemony are achieved through active moral and intellectual leadership throughout the state-civil society nexus. However, this should be thought of in explicitly material terms, and includes both elevating the material basis of `society’ and a material reworking of ideology (Gramsci, 1971, pages 60, 161; for discussion of this aspect of his work (see Cox, 1981; Femia, 1981; Hall, 1988; Hall et al, 1977; Jessop, 1988; 1990; 1997; Mouffe, 1979). As many writers have noted (Jessop, 1982; 1990, Showstack-Sasoon, 1980; Simon, 1991), the state is absolutely crucial to Gramsci’s understanding of hegemony. In a characteristically dialectical move, Gramsci shows the state to be both centralised and diffuse. Transforming the Hegelian distinction between state and civil society, Gramsci draws our attention to the relations through which state and civil society are woven together.

In one of his clearest statements of the `proper’ relation between state and civil society, he contrasts the situation in the East, in which the Bolsheviks had just succeeded in seizing state power, with the quite different situation in the West: “In the East the State was everything, civil society was primordial and gelatinous; in the West, there was a proper relation between State and civil society, and when the state trembled, a sturdy structure of civil society was at once revealed. The State was only an outer ditch, behind which there stood a powerful system of fortresses and earthworks: more or less numerous from one state to the next, it goes without saying öbut this precisely necessitated an accurate reconnaissance of each individual country” (1971, page 238). Rather than relying on coercion as the sole means of consolidating rule, the ruling class, operative throughout the integral state, works to develop acquiescence to its rule through the system of fortresses and earthworks lying behind [and sometimes in front of (Gramsci, 1971, page 244)] the outer ditch of its own institutions. Thus, Gramsci urges us to think through the many ways in which power is consolidated in institutions normally considered outside of the state: in “so called private initiatives” (page 258); through intellectuals (pages 5 ^ 23); and through “the Church, the trade unions, the schools, etc” (footnote 56). We might add to this, and will do so more explicitly later, the provision of water services. If Gramsci invites us to consider the role of the integral state as it reaches into the intimacies of the modern home and `private institutions’, this has clear resonances with Foucault’s concerns with governmentality as a form of dispersed rule. Whilst clearly Gramsci wanted to avoid reifying the state through constantly historicising its existence, Foucault (2003, page 31) stressed that “it is important not to, so to speak, deduce power by beginning at the centre and trying to see how far down it goes, or to what extent it is reproduced or renewed in the most atomistic elements of the society.” Thus, Foucault’s starting point was not the state, but rather the dispersed practices and knowledges that constituted everyday forms of rule. In an ascending analysis, these constitute the state (2003, pages 27 ^ 31). For Foucault, these micropractices are lost if political and social theory begins from the centre, assuming the sovereign power of the state: hence his repeated plea to “cut off the head of the king” (1990, pages 88 ^ 89). Foucault’s intervention is not to deny the existence of the state (although he does not take it as given), but, rather, an attempt to decentre it through beginning with the diverse set of relations that constitutes the basis of modern forms of rule (for a discussion see Jessop, 2007). For Foucault, then, government is understood famously as the `conduct of conduct’. It refers to a field of action between heterogeneous relations of power and states of outright domination (Foucault, 2000a; 2000b; Hindness, 1996; Lemke, 2002). As numerous commentators have pointed out, acts of governing are intimately tied to rationalities of government that provide a dominant logic which is repeatedly enacted and challenged: hence the term `governmentality’ (Dean, 1999; Joyce, 2003; Lemke, 001; 2002; Rose, 1996). However, the relationality of the concept clearly runs deeper than rationalities of government and includes material relations (Barry et al, 1996; Burchell, 1991; 1996; Elden, 2007a; Deleuze, 1988; Gordon, 1991; Lemke, 2001; 2002). In Foucault’s (2000a; page 209) words: “the things which in this sense government is to be concerned with are in fact men [sic], but men in their relations, and their links, their imbrication with those things that are wealth, resources, means of subsistence.” In this respect, government concerns shaping the conduct of individuals in accordance with the pursuit of state strength internally and externally vis-a© -vis other states, which necessarily involves the smooth functioning of economic processes (Burchell, 1991; Elden, 2007b; Foucault, 1981; 1990; 1995; 2000a; 2003).Whilst Foucault was not explicitly concerned with the problematic of hegemony and on the surface much of his writing on governmentality is targeted at the consensus ^ coercion couplet (see Lemke, 2002)(4)ö he did acknowledge that relations of power and truth operated within a broader form of social, cultural, and economic hegemony (Foucault, 2000c, page 133). Thus, Foucault’s attempt to radically reframe how we think of government by pointing out the dispersion of governmental relations throughout the social body might be seen to have antecedents in Gramsci’s work on the integral state. Understanding the form and function of the state has been crucial to much of the recent work in contextualising the relationship between water and power. However, understanding the state through the lens of Gramsci and Foucault necessitates a much closer analysis of the ways in which hegemony is established in the politics of everyday life, or, in Foucault’s words, through the `conduct of conduct’, at specific moments and in specific places. While the tropes of hegemony and governmentality set the context for the arenas in which politics happens and what is at stake in political practice specifically the dominance of one social group, the maintenance of social relations, and individual conductöthey do not reveal how political power is exercised. To answer this question we have to look at Gramsci’s development of ideology and Foucault’s discussion of power. For Gramsci the achievement of hegemony is accomplished through ideological practices that shape individuals’ beliefs and actions. Thus, in trying to understand the support for Mussolini (although Gramsci remains ambivalent as to whether or not this is genuinely hegemonic), Gramsci found it necessary to get to grips with ideology as an active force rather than as a veil of false consciousness. This active ideological force relies on a conscious attachment to certain core elements of a particular society. Rather than being cultivated through `sanctions’ or `compulsory obligations’, hegemony implies a far deeper attachment to a particular way of thinking and acting, what Gramsci (1971, page 242) describes as “a new conformism from below”. Hall’s (1978; 1984; Hall and Jacques, 1983) extended analyses of Thatcherism in the 1980s capture this particularly well, as he explores the paradoxically populist appeal of the authoritarian rule established by Thatcher. Lived practices are crucial to the material view of ideology adopted by Gramsci. Again, the particular `worldview’ being established through the integral state is not a form of false consciousness adopted by an otherwise passive, oppressed people. On this point, we would argue, Barnett’s critique (and his suggestion that the rapprochement of Gramscian and Foucauldian approaches leaves unanswered the question of how power ‘gets at’ particular people), albeit fair on some of his victims, is not fair on Gramsci. Barnett seems to assume that marxist approaches necessarily imply a sense in which people are duped, through ideologies that are always connected to the powerful. However, this overlooks important debates within marxism that stress the material functioning of ideology, extending from Marx’s writing on the fetishism of the commodity (Marx, 1977) through Lukacsian approaches to reification (Lukacs, 1971), to the Frankfurt School (Marcuse, 1991) and more recent writings on the struggle against fetishisation as process (Holloway, 2002). In our final discussion, we argue that the apparently banal act of collecting water is an important example of how material practices and ideas come to be interwoven. In Gramsci’s terms, ideologies are formed ”through everyday experience illuminated by `common sense’ ” (Gramsci, 1971, page 199). Common sense refers to the sedimentedöand at times contradictoryöideologies through which people act in the world. However, as with Marx (1974, pages 421 ^ 423), this is a dialectic process: both reality and thought are shaped by sensuous activityöthe working, the playing, and the making of socionatures. In turn, the ideas shaped in this process have a material force of their own, serving to reshape reality in particular ways. Such a material reading of ideology need fall into neither a crude economism nor a crude discursive determinism. Rather, it is the socionatural relationshipsöwhich contain immanent cultural, symbolic, political, and economic relationsöthat are of the greatest importance for establishing dominant worldviews at particular moments.

Foucault certainly had apprehensions about marxist versions of ideology many of which we would share (whilst noting that marxism is a terrain of debate and not a singular canon(5)). First, he argued that the juxtaposition of ideology to some deeper truth missed how `truth’ always operated within discourses and practices, generating specific effects. This negates the neat categorisation of certain ideas and practices as true or untrue. Second, he was sceptical that ideology should “stand in a secondary position relative to something that functions as its infrastructure, as its material, economic determinant” (Foucault, 2000c, page 119). As can be discerned from our discussion of Gramsci’s development of ideology above, he certainly escapes many of Foucault’s critiques. Nonetheless, we cannot avoid the fact that Foucault built his conceptualisation of power in opposition to `marxist’ understandings of ideology, his principle target being Althusser’s (1971) “Ideology and ideological state apparatuses”.(6) Contrasting his own with such work, Foucault (2000b) explained that one of the central concerns underlying his oeuvre remained the subject and techniques of subjectivation; the development of his understanding of power was a means of approaching these questions. Moreover, through processes of subjectivation, diverse forms of government are actually enacted. Foucault (2000b, page 331) explains that “there are two meanings of the word subject: subject to someone else by control and dependence, and tied to his [sic] own identity by a conscience or self-knowledge. Both meanings suggest a form of power which subjugates and makes subject to.” In this respect, power is a relational concept in that there is no autonomous subject; rather, subjects exist only in relation to other people, institutions, the state, the factory, and so on (2000a). Importantly, power “is not something that can be divided between those that have it and hold on to it exclusively” and those who do not (2003, page 29); it is diffuse and circulates through the social body in a myriad of relations that are considered to be productive. By productive, Foucault has in mind the making of subjects/bodies, truths, institutions, etc, all of which are part-and-parcel of his ascending analysis of the state. But how does power operate? Butler (1993, page 9) explains that “there is no power that acts, but only a reiterated acting that is power in its persistence and instability.” In this respect, then, power refers to the continual repetition and challenging of particular regulatory ideals and practices, which are mutually imbricated in each other. As Montag (1995, page 73) argues, for Foucault, “knowledges are in no way exterior to power relations, caused by them only finally to transcend them; rather, they can only be understood as immanent in the materiality of practices and apparatuses.”

Towards the end of the 1970s Foucault’s project begins to change, and the concept of biopower enters into his conceptual repertoire. Up until this period, Foucault was concerned with the application of disciplinary technologies at the level of the individual and the body (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1982; Foucault, 1995). Both biopower and governmentality arise in Foucault’s theorisations as a complement to individualizing techniques, in order to address relations of power which take the population as the principle target of regulation (Foucault, 1990; 2003). Lazzarato (2004) suggests that biopower holds a special place in Foucault’s conceptual repertoire, insofar as the distinction between the polis and bios is deliberately dismantled thus giving rise to a new ontology. In this new political ecological ontology, making life in certain forms becomes the operating principle. This involves the investment, administration, and control of both life and the population more generally. What is at stake is an attempt to bring regularity and equilibrium to both lives in themselves and to the general social order (Elden, 2007a; Foucault, 1980; 2003; Hardt and Negri, 2000; Lazzarato, 2004). It is important to stress that, in The History of Sexuality, Volume 1, Foucault (1990, page 171) was at pains to maintain that “biopower was without question an indispensable element in the development of capitalism”. He added that not only did capitalism need the proliferation and controlled insertion of docile bodies, but also “it had to have methods of power capable of optimizing forces, aptitudes, and life in general without at the same time making them more difficult to govern. ”Importantly, capitalism is not seen to be determining here; rather the practice of biopower becomes an important element in the development of capitalism; in Foucault’s (1994, page 379, as quoted by Fontana and Bertani, 2003, page 277) words: “all these power relations do not …emanate from a single source; it is the overall effect of a tangle of power relations that allows one class or group to dominate another.” Thus, biopower is far from reducible to capitalist political economy, but it is intimately related to its development. In a characteristic move, Foucault shifts our attention to the practices. Here we encounter once again what is, potentially, one of the principal points of connection between Foucault and Gramsci. Both have a deep appreciation for how ideas and types of knowledge are immanent within the materiality of practices and apparatuses. Thus, Gramsci and Foucault can provide us with an appreciation of how specific rationalities of government and ideologies are internalised within hospitals, cities, and, for our own purposes, produced waterscapes. Moreover, from a Foucauldian perspective, this entails managing the conduct of people and their relations with the material world, customs, beliefs, and ways of acting and thinking. From a Gramscian perspective, water infrastructure can be considered part of the hegemonic apparatus through which forms of `common sense’, in support of a specific group’s interests, come to be constituted. Overall, whilst Foucault and Gramsci deploy different conceptualisations of power in their work, in both cases power circulates throughout the socionatural fabric. For Foucault, this is clearly an explicit part of his work, which cannot be said to be true for Gramsci. A circulatory understanding of power is, however, implicit within Gramsci’s oeuvre. As Eagleton (1991, page 116) notes, Gramsci tries to understand how “power is to remain conveniently invisible, disseminated throughout the texture of social life and thus `naturalized’ as custom, habit, spontaneous practice.” Even if Eagleton highlights the circulatory nature of power, his comment also indicates that there is something ostensibly real about power that can be wilfully deployed and achieved. It is on this point that Foucault’s assertions to the contrary come to mind and we glean a difference in the two theorists’ conceptualisations. The point of convergence is that both theorists insist on the historical specificity of the operation of power, as can be seen in Foucault’s detailed genealogical studies and Gramsci’s close examinations of historical conjunctures.

As the above review begins to open up, while certain parts of Gramsci’s and Foucault’s work resonate with one another, there are significant tensions that should not be overlooked. On the surface there are manyöFoucault’s vehement anticommunism differs so markedly from many of Gramsci’s theorisations of the new role of the party, for example. However, beyond these somewhat superficial differences, we discover more significant tensions. Nevertheless, rather than seeing these tensions as debilitating, perhaps they can be used productively, as points of departure for new areas of research. Rather than a closed analytical model, such tensions might prise open new terrains for engaged praxis. One of the principle differences between the approaches lies in how one conceives of the `social’ (see Hennessy, 1993; Laclau and Mouffe, 1985). Gramsci’s dialectical approach suggests an understanding of the social that is internally related and determining, which means various economic, political, and cultural relations come to affect one another whilst congealing as a differentiated whole (1971, page 400; see also Hall, 1980). In contrast, the advocates of poststructuralism such as Deleuze (1988) celebrate Foucault’s conception of the social as discontinuous and fragmented, meaning that specific relations and knowledges are highly independent of one another and therefore not mutually constitutive. Moreover, Foucauldian approaches stress the manner in which notions such as `the social’ or `society’ can be dangerous abstractions: they elide the specificities of subjugated practices (Burchell, 1991; Foucault, 2003). Nonetheless, as we began to see above, lurking in the background of Foucault’s insistence on the discontinuous nature of the social and his genealogical methodology (Foucault, 1998a; 1998b) is an acknowledgment of the way in which dispersed techniques of power are connected to such things as the rise of industrial capitalism (Foucault, 1990; 1995) and state strength (Foucault, 1981; 2003). As Foucault (2003, page 24) reflected in Society Must Be Defended: “in a society such as oursöor in any society, come to that multiple relations of power traverse, characterize, and constitute the social body.” Additionally, as Jessop (2007) writes, Foucault “showed how the economy and the state were increasingly organised in conformity with key features of capitalist political economy without ever being reducible thereto and without these features in turn being fully pre-given.” This hanging on to a relational understanding of the social is indicative of Balibar’s (1992, page 42) claim that “the whole of Foucault’s work can be viewed in terms of a genuine struggle with Marx”, and his assertion that Foucault is the most marxist when he is not talking about Marx. In a slightly different vein, whilst some see this vestige of a relational ontology as a blight in Foucault’s otherwise brilliant genealogical approach (see, for example, Donnelly, 1992), we see this as an important bridging point between Foucault and Gramsci. If the relational dimension of Foucault’s work is developed, we can gain an appreciation for the connections between techniques of subjection and broader hegemonic projects. In many ways, this seems to be the direction in which Foucault was moving in his later lectures and writings. In relation to produced waterscapes and everyday interactions with water, Foucault provides us with the resources and vocabulary for understanding how specific subjectivities are enacted and the “how’”of government. Future research on the politics of water might be considerably invigorated through greater attention to the enactment of liberal government in the daily processes through which water is accessed. At the same time, it might provide a concrete example of the contradictions of liberal government in a period of ongoing primary accumulation.

How the social fabric is conceptualised has important consequences for how politics is conceived. If the social fabric is seen as fragmented and discontinuous, it becomes difficult to conceptualise political struggles that are not trapped in the local. [At the same time, although focusing on the specificities of resistances, Foucault is also prone to some fairly sweeping generalisations about the nature of struggles as evidenced in his threefold categorisation of centuries of struggle (see 2000b)]. In contrast, if various parts of the socionatural world are considered internally related, it becomes possible to envision political practice that brings together coalitions cutting across different spatialities and positionalities. For Gramsci, politics revolves around struggle, something he considers to be socially constitutive. Generally, this has been taken to mean the class struggle, even though Gramsci’s work was a move against economistic understandings of the social and within his work there is ample scope for exploring nationalist and religious contestations. Foucault, in contrast, is often considered to derogate the role of struggle (Driver, 1985). As Said (1986; see also Fraser, 1981) complained, Foucault’s “imagination of power is largely within rather than against it”. For Driver (1985, page 443), however, the assumed derogation of struggle within Foucault’s work is more generally “designed to undermine grand assertions of the primacy and inevitability of the `struggle’ of the proletariat, and to illuminate the whole panoply of local and concrete struggles which surround our everyday lives.” Once

again, we might be able to use one body of thought to gain a different take on the other. Taking this dialogue forward through concrete, historical examples is the task we would like to propose. As part of this agenda we hope to provide some suggestive starting points in section 5.

5 Taking the dialogue forward

At the outset, we asked whether everyday relations to water contribute to the maintenance of hegemony and the continuance of subtle forms of rule. Gramsci and Foucault, we suggested, are particularly apt theorists for addressing this question. In order to illustrate this possibility, and outline the contours of a new research agenda, we now revisit themes discussed in section 1 of the paper. In so doing, we recast and reevaluate the literature on water and social power in light of our discussion of Gramsci and Foucault.We will argue that an engagement with these theorists simultaneously broadens and specifies the analytic framework through which the relationship between water and power is interpreted. In this regard, we focus on: How struggles for legitimacy conducted through water infrastructure might be more clearly specified through an engagement with a reworked conception of hegemony. How this might be linked to a more explicit theorisation of the state in work on water and social power. Here, we argue that state theory is a spectre (an elephant in the room?) that haunts much of the literature on water and social power. And yet it is never stated with the precision that we might expect. Necessarily, the above points require far greater specificity as to how power is enacted. Here we focus on everyday hydraulic practices and their links to broader questions of power. Whilst much of the literature reviewed in section 2 has been strong on power it has been less clear on how this “works.” Finally, we return to the tensions between Gramscian and Foucauldian perspectives over the question of struggle and look at what additional light this sheds on the literature on water struggles. We conclude this section, first, with a set of methodological questions and, second, by emphasising the tremendous conceptual resources available here for theorising the urbanisation of capitalist hegemony. One of the great contributions of recent scholarship on water and urbanity has been to shift debates over water provision from a narrow technocratic ground to rich political and ecological terrains. As reviewed in section 2 of the paper, much of this scholarship has demonstrated how water engineering is turned to as a means of developing the moral, cultural, and political legitimacy of certain forms of rule. In the focus on legitimacy, the literature develops concerns closely related to those of Gramsci and Foucault. There is an implicit understanding of hegemony at work, insofar as the literature demonstrates how superiority over subordinate groups is established and legitimised (see Gandy, 2002; Kaika, 2005; Swyngedouw, 2007). How ever, this understanding remains implicit. For quite understandable reasons the primary aim of this work is to open up discussion of the socionatural in a nuanced, politicised manner hegemony is not discussed in precise terms. Whilst developing valuable new terrains of debate, this leaves key questions unanswered: without some understanding of the operation of hegemony, it is surprisingly difficult to move from the grand displays of power represented in large-scale engineering works to the more subtle ways in which power works through everyday hydraulic practices. In contrast, through transforming Gramsci’s understanding of hegemony from a social to a socionatural concept, as recent contributions to Gramscian political ecologies have done (Ekers et al, 2008), we are able to develop an understanding of how the aforementioned struggles for legitimacy are hegemonic struggles that might be waged within and through the waterscape. Alliances between and within specific groups are forged through the provision of water to certain areas, through billing procedures, and through subtle consensus-building practices operating through the water network. In order to bring to light the shift in the analytic perspective we are advancing, it is worthwhile revisiting Swyngedouw’s (1997a; 1999; 2004a; 2007) pathbreaking work. Swyngedouw’s (2007) insistence on the scalar dimensions of the Spanish waterscape, and the ‘networks of interest’ that have regional, national, and international dimensions, indicates how flows of power operate in a multiscalar fashion. Legitimacy, however, remains anchored in governmental institutions. Power is largely a “thing” that certain groups have and others do not (Swyngedouw, 2004a), even if the possession of power by certain groups is exercised in a circulatory way through a variety of conduits. In this latter respect, power works to consolidate hegemony for particular groups. This understanding of power approaches that of Gramsci. For Gramsci, the achievement of power, or, in other words, the taking of power, is the political task of subaltern groups (for examples, see notes on The Modern Prince, 1971, pages 125 ^ 205). Achieving hegemony through a long-term war of position is crucial in countering the subversive operation of power through the integral state. If we shift our lens from power as a thing that is held to power as productive, in the sense of materialising a reiterated norm, then we must instead enquire into the production of specific subjects and customs and beliefs. This generates questions around how the reengineering of the waterscape affects the ways in which an individual enters into collective life. What are the other ideologies that are displaced and merged in the process? And what are the contradictions of this process? To draw on Foucault, and yet bring him into conversation with Swyngedouw’s (2007) work, what are the specific techniques of power that Franco colonises in order to produce acquiescent subjects? For instance, is there a reconfiguration of disciplinary techniques of power that individuate people and of biopolitical techniques that “optimize forces, aptitudes and life in general” (Foucault, 1994, page 379, as quoted by Fontana and Bertani, 2003, page 277)? Answering these questions is difficult, but in order to do so we need to consider power as an effect of dispersed socionatural relations in addition to power, normatively understood, as something that someone has. Doing so would arguably elucidate the specific techniques of power through which Franco’s hegemony is enacted or not. The key research issue thereby becomes establishing the connections between the specificities of power and broader questions around hegemony. In doing this, we argue that questions of the state may also be developed further. In a strange paradox, although the legitimacy achieved through hydrosocial engineering is a central focus of the literature on water and social power, the state is rarely discussed. This is in spite of nuanced and theoretically sophisticated discussions of state theory in other aspects of several of the protagonists’ work.(7) Engaging with the work of Gramsci and Foucault permits a considered discussion of the form and function of the state that fits surprisingly well with the work already conducted on water politics. Gramsci’s two-headed conception of the integral state seen to be both centralized and dispersedösynergises well with the discussion of power developed above. His insistence on analytics that begin from `below’ permits an understanding of the state that emanates from the taps, the pipes, and the plumbing, whilst documenting the links between the subtle operation of state power and the workings of everyday life. The attention to Foucault’s paradoxically antistatist genealogies of the state (Driver, 1985; Jessop, 2007) might also serve as a fecund ground for developing an understanding of state practices, as opposed to centralised state poweröexactly the kind of analysis that work on water and social power demands. At times, the literature on water treats the state as if it is a real entity that facilitates and imposes changes in the water sector (see, for example, Bakker, 2002; Bond, 2002; McDonald and Pape, 2002). Gramsci and Foucault turn this conception on its head through detailing how the state is constantly reproduced out of changing water practices. Indeed, if a theorisation of the state is implicit in much of the literature, it is almost certainly a Poulantzean conception. As Jessop (2007) notes in a recent discussion, and as Driver (1985) noted earlier, Poulantzas provides a vital connection between a Foucauldian genealogy of the state and the sort of nuanced historical materialist position possible from Gramsci’s work. Once again, the waterscape provides a surprisingly rich terrain over which such a theorisation might be explored. If Foucault’s genealogies of the state begin from the sets of practices that are stabilised in specific moments, Gramsci similarly urges us to specify the material ways in which hegemony comes to be established. It is vital, therefore, to specify the way in which power is enacted. Barnett’s (2005) rhetorical trapöas he states that recent work on neoliberalisms fails to specify how power `gets at’ people needs to be answered through looking at the way in which this power is enacted at particular moments through material practices. Our starting point in this might be Kaika’s (2003; 2004; 2005) highly suggestive work in which she is able to move between overt expressions of state power, in the form of large-scale dam projects, and the politics of domestic practices. It becomes clear that both water and the practices that are associated with water provision serve to distribute power through the capillaries of the water network. By bringing Gramsci’s theorisation of everyday practices together with a Foucauldian emphasis on knowledge, practices, and power, further nuanced understandings of the day-to-day acts of provisioning a household with water or paying a bill to a newly privatised water company might be made possible. Importantly, this implies a movement between the infrastructural sites that have captured the attention of many of the theorists of the contemporary waterscapeöfrom the iconographies of large dams to the vast interbasin transfers achieved under demagogic forms of rule and some of the more intimate practices within the home, within the government office, and so on. Just as Kipfer (2008) and others have sought to reassert the importance of the everyday in Gramsci’s work, we would seek a dialogue with Foucault over the materialities and the practices of everyday waterscapes.We see indications of this type of research in Kaika’s reflections on how the (re)engineering of water associated with the rise of modernity transformed gendered practices in the home.(8) The connections that Kaika makes are more empirical and historical rather than theoretical. Thus, Gramsci and Foucault might provide the theoretical tools through which more direct connections might be made between the twin ‘scales’ of research in Kaika’s work. It should be clear that, far from arguing that recent debates over water and social power exclude many of these concerns, the concerns which the literature already opens up might be reanimated by an explicit engagement with the Foucault-Gramsci problematic. Gandy’s (2005; 2006a; 2006b; 2006c) work is another interesting case in point. In the first instance, Gandy uses the cyborg metaphor to understand the material interface between the body and the city: the cyborg permits us to consider the “abstract and inter-subjective realm through which political and cultural ideas become constituted or `fleshed out’ in parallel with the concrete development of the city” (2005, page 38). In making this argument, Gandy illustrates how discourses become articulated in the infrastructure of the city and cyborg bodies. In this respect, we begin to see how power as a set of relations that subjectivates people is immanent to urban infrastructure. In the second instance, Gandy’s (2006a; 2006b; 2006c) more recent work looks at how a Foucauldian understanding of power allows us to understand the constitution of the modern subject and everyday life in relation to the physical infrastructure of cities and discourses of hygiene and sanitation. This would seem to go to the core of several of the substantive arguments we have sought to make in this paper. It is worth considering what the political and analytical stakes in adopting this more explicitly poststructural position might be. Gandy (2006b; 2006c) is well aware of the difficult political commitments that follow from some of the key premises of French poststructualist thought, noting that it is a slippery slope from Foucault and Deleuze to the liberalism of Hayek. He adds that theoretical implications of both Foucault and Deleuze remain vague in relation to the practical dilemmas of urban Realpolitik at the scale of an entire city or metropolitan region. Perhaps there is something to be gained in bringing Gramscian thought to these questions. In the last section, we saw how Gramsci provides a rejoinder to Foucault’s (in spite of himself) totalising theory of power, critiqued by the likes of Said and Fraser. In particular, Gramsci never gave up hope in the possibility of transformative politics, poignantly captured in the oft-quoted phrase advocating for “the pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will”. At times Foucault appears to give up on “the optimism of the will”, and hence Gandy is challenged to find the basis for a broad-based political project within Foucault’s work. As suggested in the previous section, Gramsci’s insistence on the relational understanding of the social and the constitutive role of struggle may provide a means for Gandy to advance his political claims. Grasmci’s writings on `the Southern question’ show a deep concern with how to forge common alliances of interest between the Southern peasantry and the industrial proletariat of the North. This is also evident in Gramsci’s repeated reflections on the city and the country: These examine the processes through which differences come to be articulated and woven into a historic bloc. The need for a workable understanding of the public realm might also be explored through Gramsci’s writings. Indeed, his appreciation of how hegemony is achieved through advancing the material basis of societyöin addition to more recent attempts at understanding how ideologies are embodied and expressed within urban infrastructureöcould provide a firmer basis from which to advance claims about the need to develop a public realm in a city of fragmentation and difference (Gandy, 2006b; 2006c). One final area in which we think research might be further enlivened is around the strategic and tactical possibilities of political struggles. To date, much of the work on water and social power has sought to prise open the panoply of struggles that do exist around water in daily life. Whilst gendered, `racial’, and `ethnic’ struggles have been crucial subjects of empirical investigations, so also have been class struggles. Political economic questions have never lost their salience within historical materialist approachesöstill perhaps dominant within work on water and power. The reasons for this are both obvious and yet important: in the vast majority of capitalist societies, the struggle for access to water remains one revolving around the ability of some to be able to pay and the inability of others. More recently, this struggle has been heightened by the easing of restrictions on the ability of some to be able to profit, in monetary terms, from the difficulties some encounter in accessing water. Water struggles are inevitably defined in class terms. Invariably, they cannot be extricated from capital circulation and a capitalist system of accumulation, so central to class positionality. If, however, to pick up on this insight, there is any tendency towards reductionism in historical geographical materialist approaches, perhaps it might be challenged through Foucault’s questioning of the primacy of “the good old logic of “contradiction”(Foucault, 1980, page 164). Here, a more recent focus on how class, gender, and racial struggles intersect and articulate with previous historical geographies is crucial. At the same time, Foucault’s frequently totalising view of power might be challenged through the concrete examples of revolts against techniques of power provided by work on water politics (see, for example, Bond, 2004; Debbane and Keil, 2004; Desai, 2002; Loftus and Lumsden, 2008). Rather than derogating the role of struggle, therefore, an engagement with Foucault serves to prise struggles open still further. Indeed, we might seek to unpick the many ways in which a water politics serves to universalize through its coverage of more and more peopleöwhilst also individualising, as more and more households are isolated through their inability to pay. In different ways, both Laurie’s (2005) and O’Reilly’s (2006) work offers suggestive insights into these individualizing practices and how such natural resource interventions serve to generate gendered subjectivities. Struggles against and within these practices enliven both sets of research. As this discussion has sought to illustrate, some of the most exciting research around urban water provision contains threads of research closely akin to the concerns that preoccupied Gramsci and Foucault. We can see this in the discussions of the legitimising role of water and the changing practices of everyday access to water. Bringing the new wave of literature on water and social power together with a theoretical engagement with Gramsci and Foucault has the potential to fundamentally deepen our understanding of the urbanisation of hegemony. Thus far, those debates that have sought to urbanise Gramsci in productive ways have been theoretical in orientation. This brings us to a final point concerning the fecundity of the recent literature on water. Deploying Gramsci and Foucault in order to understand the empirical studies of the sociopolitical and economic aspects of water provides a concrete means of exploring the enactment of urban hegemony and governmentalities. Perhaps the greatest obstacle in pursuing this type of research is in navigating the tricky methodological terrain. Paying attention to broad political, economic, cultural, and ecological relations and understanding how these are articulated, expressed, and resisted in the ideologies and techniques of power of everyday life is no easy task. Perhaps this begins to explain the historical orientation to much of the research. It has often been more productive to contemplate the long dure over which such relations have transformed than it has been to look outwards from the present moment. Nonetheless, we think there are many reasons for undertaking this kind of research. There is the possibility that we bring into focus the contradictory ideologies expressed in everyday customs and behaviours. Foucault (1981) urges us to consider the microtechniques of power that must be challenged as part of a broader political project, something he was certainly not always averse to considering. In identifying the fragments of ideologies expressed in everyday practices, and in identifying peoples’ challenges to techniques of power both disciplinary and biopolitical we can see the contradictions of a hegemonic project. It is from within these contradictions and tensions that new societies might be envisioned and fought for. Indeed, such work can build upon the immanent critiques at work in people’s everyday lives and everyday practices. To sum up, what Gramsci and Foucault bring to the table is a set of conceptual and political resources through which we can gather up the provocative threads of research already undertaken and take them forward through a nuanced analytical framework. Gramsci and Foucault ask us to build bridges between wider questions of legitimacy and hegemony and specific, subjectifying practices and techniques of power. Lastly, the two theorists pose difficult questions around what can be concluded from sites of resistance to socially unjust changes in the water sector: we are forced, for example, to question whether struggles against water privatisation might be celebrated as a part of broader hegemonic stuggles or simply as revolts against disciplinary forms of power. This is more than a theoretical question, but Gramsci and Foucault force us to interrogate the political conclusions we draw from these concrete struggles.

6 Conclusions

While this paper is situated at the intersection of two different debates, it is an attempt to push two different discussions forward through reciprocal synergies. A more direct engagement with Gramsci and Foucault can potentially serve to explicate many of the crucial insights that have largely remained implicit in the water literature thus far. Through revelling in both the tensions and the resonances between Gramsci and Foucault, we have tried to develop a research agenda around the quotidian ways in which water and politics are intertwined. We have sought to pose questions about the complicated relations between grand political economic considerations and the seemingly banal, taken-for-granted act of turning on a tap. On the other hand, we have unashamedly used water as a heuristic device to explore and push forward debates concerning the relationship between Gramsci and Foucault. However, it is not enough to state that the differences between Gramsci and Foucault represent productive tensions. Rather, these tensions must be made explicit, andöwe would agree with Barnett (2005)önot finessed away. In doing so, we hope to have steered clear of a naive pluralism while also remaining cognizant of the existing tensions and contradictions that are uncovered through bringing Gramsci and Foucault into conversation with one another. The overall effect is to further our understanding of capitalist urbanisation, through illustrating how hegemony is exercised through techniques of power, imbricated in everyday relations with water.While other scholars have discussed issues of urbanism and hegemony (Jessop, 1997; Kipfer, 2002; 2008), we would insist that more attention needs to be paid to the specific practices through which urban hegemony may or may not be achieved. Thinking politically, Foucault urges us to consider and challenge the micropolitics of things like urban water provision through which people are subjectified in specific ways. However, drawing on a Gramscian sensibility requires us to think about how these specific techniques of power are connected to everyday practices and broader struggles for hegemony. To conclude, working through the Gramsci ^Foucault problematic requires individuals to make epistemological, ontological, and normative commitments where and when conflicts arise. The litmus test in terms of epistemological, ontological, and normative relevance of a Gramscian or Foucauldian approach must surely be more than a theoretical exercise. Rather, it must depend on the ability of the framework to account for the untidiness and political struggles of everyday life. In this regard, much of the work being conducted on water provides both a theoretical environment through which Gramsci and Foucault might be brought into dialogue, and the situated and grounded case studies that have often taken geographic research in such fruitful directions. Through a ceaseless movement between the concrete and the abstract, such work provides hope not only for reinvigorating theoretical debates but also for shaping praxis. It provides a material phenomenon through which the micropolitics of power are connected with broader political ^ economic structures. And it provides specific practices through which these connections might be subverted, challenged, and reversed. Through remaining open to potential conversations, tensions, and differences in the work of Gramsci and Foucault, we feel the academic and political terrain on which we operate might be transformed in positive and progressive ways.

Michael Ekers

Oxford University Centre for the Environment, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QY, England;

Alex Loftusô

Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham TW20 0EX, England;

Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2008, volume 26, pages 698 ^ 718

Acknowledgements. This paper has had a remarkably long gestation. Many have helped it (and us) along the way. In particular, we would like to thanköwhilst not holding them in any way responsible for the content of the paperöKaren Bakker, Michelle Buckley, Zuzana Eperjesi, Olivier Graefe, Andrew Luck, Roger Keil, Stefan Kipfer, Stephanie Rutherford, Erik Swyngedouw, and three anonymous referees at Society and Space.

References:

(1) See chapter 1 entitled “The operation of geographic factors in history”. The book is replete with

references to the role of geography in shaping history and includes a tenth chapter on “Man’s

relation to the water”.

(2) For discussions of the concept of historical geographical materialism see Harvey (1982; 1996;

2003), Smith (1984), and Swyngedouw (2000).

(3) For an excellent discussion of these courses, further contextualising Foucault’s (2000a) much

celebrated lecture titled “Governmentality”, see Elden (2007a; 2007b) and Jessop (2007).

(4) Lemke (2002, page 52) explains that, for Foucault, “coercion and consensus are reformulated

as means of government among others; they are rather `effects’ or `instruments’ rather than

the `foundation’ or `source’ of power relationships.” It should be noted that Gramsci utilised the

analytics of consent and coercion to describe multiple social relations ranging from the influence of

one individual on another, to relations associated with religion, education, and policing. In addi-

tion, Gramsci’s treatment of consent and coercion did not exclusively revolve around organizing

the legitimacy of the sovereign or the state.

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Geopolitics of Ice

“Russians are crawling over the pole like flies.”

The Alien (1951)

In July 2007 newspapers around the world reported that a Russian oceanographic vessel had led an expedition to the North Pole. On 2 August a largely symbolic claim to a vast area of the Arctic basin was implemented. Television footage, broadcast by the Russian channel NTV, was released depicting a mini-submarine planting a titanium (corrosion-resistant) flag to the bottom of the Arctic Basin (1). A Russian submariner was quoted as saying that the expedition would “remind the whole world that Russia is a great polar and scientific power” (The Times 2007). The stated purpose of the expedition was to investigate further the underwater geology of the high Arctic and in particular to ascertain whether the Lomonosov Ridge (2) was actually an extension of the Siberian continental shelf (3). If so then Russian scientists and political figures alike expressed hopes that Russian sovereignty could be extended over the North Pole itself. Near neighbors such as Canada, Denmark (4) and the United States condemned the move and in the case of the Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, warned darkly of defending “our sovereignty over the Arctic”. As if that was not sufficient, the Canadian Foreign Minister, Peter MacKay, memorably retorted “You can’t go around the world these days dropping flags somewhere. This isn’t the 14th or 15th century. They’re fooling themselves” (Toronto Star 2007). And then in a nice touch of presumably unintended irony noted that the “waters belonged to Canada”. Given recent Russian activity and associated reactions from Arctic neighbors, it appears that some of the intrigue and tension that characterized the Cold War has returned. Following the Russian expedition to the North Pole, Denmark and Canada are planning further research into the geological connections between their continental shelves and the Lomonosov Ridge. With the entry into force of the United Nations Law of the Sea Convention (UNCLOS) in 1994, signatories such as Russia and Canada (but not the United States) have had a ten-year period to submit materials to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS) delimiting the outer limits of the continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles from the relevant baseline (5). In December 2001 the Russian government submitted materials to the CLCS and cited Article 76 (8)(6) of UNCLOS, which authorizes parties to make such submissions. Geological data are critical in such submissions because they help determine whether there is a case for delimiting an extended continental shelf (7). The territory claimed by the Russians included a large portion of the Arctic Basin and stated that the underwater Lomonosov Ridge alongside the Mendeleev Ridge were natural extensions of the Eurasian Continent (8). In 2002 the CLCS asked for more scientific data (but did not offer a judgment at this state about the Russian submission) and hence the dispatch, amongst other activities, of the 2007 Russian oceanographic expedition to the high Arctic. The Russians are intending to submit new documentation to the CLCS in 2009 (9). If the Russian claim is accepted, amongst others, then coastal states are able to claim not only a 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) but also up to 150 nautical miles of rights on the seabed beyond the EEZ. This matters greatly to coastal states particularly in areas such as the high Arctic where it has been estimated by the US Geological Survey that up to 10 billion tones of oil and natural gas remain untapped much of which lies outside internationally recognized waters (10).

Predictably, the Canadian and Danish governments have also been determined to further map the underwater geology of the high Arctic and establish connections to the Lomonosov Ridge. Denmark’s Science and Technology Minister Helge Sander commented, “You can plant as many flags or send as many ministers as you want, in the end the important thing is to have the best data. We’ve put 230 million Danish Kroner [US$42 million] into this North Pole project, for 2004 to 2010” (11). At the same time, the Canadian government confirmed that it would be investing in two new military facilities in the Arctic in a bid to strengthen its claim to the contested region. In August 2007, at a press conference in Yellowknife, in the North West Territories (NWT) (12), the Prime Minister Stephen Harper said, “I think the recent activities of the Russians are another indication that there’s going to be growing international interest in this region.” (13). At the time of the news breaking about the Russian expedition to the North Pole, three aspects seemed to receive limited attention from journalists and other commentators and are deserving of further reflection. First, for countries such as Canada and Russia the “far north” had always been invested with considerable political, economic, cultural, and symbolic importance (Abel and Coates, 2001; McCannon, 1998). Although Canadian government ministers in particular were dismissive of Russia’s flag planting, there is a long history of countries dispatching expeditions to the high Arctic (and the Antarctic), which involved a substantial amount of flag waving as part of the formal process of cementing claims to sovereignty. Indeed, as Patricia Seed (1993) has noted, the planting of flags has been an important element in various “Ceremonies of possession” dating from the Columbian encounter. The television coverage of the Russian expedition within Russia itself was thoroughly redolent of earlier eras of Soviet polar endeavor; including the use of visual media to promote polar awareness amongst the wider public. In the 1930s, for instance, the Soviet Union not only invested time and resources in dispatching expeditions to the high Arctic, but also encouraged newspaper reporting and what might be called `Arctic cinema’. As John Mc Cannon had noted in his book Red Arctic,”the Arctic has occupied a place of prominence in its national development. For the Soviet state, the Arctic was a matter of paramount importance. Possessing great strategic significance, compromising over one-fourth of the entire Russian land-mass, home to two dozen nationalities, and containing the lion’s share of the country’s most valuable natural resources, the Soviet Arctic commanded the attention of the USSR’s foremost statesmen and generals, engaged the minds of the finest scientists and economic planners, and attracted vast quantities of money, equipment and sheer human energy”.

While much has changed since the 1930s, the Soviet and now Russian goal of not only taming the icy waters of the Arctic but also gaining access to rich mineral deposits in the region has not changed (14). Likewise, Canada has had a long national debate about “Northern Visions” and the cultural and political significance of the North. The social scientist, Harold Innis was an important source of intellectual and political debate about a northern vision for Canada in the 1920s and 1930s. He contended that the North was not only an important industrial frontier for the country but also an imaginative resource that could help to promote greater national unity. In the post-1945 era, the Diefenbaker administration, in particular was associated with a `northern vision’ for Canada that improved the country’s integration and resource potential.

At the same time, in the midst of the International Geophysical Year (IGY) of 1957/58, Canada initiated a Polar Continental Shelf Project for the purpose of collecting geophysical data for US satellite launch tests in the high Arctic as well consolidating territorial sovereignty in the insular territories of NWT (now Nunavut). It was no accident that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in a speech to Parliament in October 2007 acknowledged the Diefenbaker legacy,

“Half a century ago Prime Minister John Diefenbaker extolled his Northern Vision. He foresaw that Canada’s future development and prosperity would depend on efficient transportation networks linking Northern resources to Southern markets. That is why our government established a strategy for the North and why we have already taken a number of steps to affirm our presence and sovereignty in the Canadian Arctic.”(15).

Second, the intersection between geographic knowledge (including underwater geology) and geopolitics and military strategy needs, if you will forgive the pun, flagging. As geographers and historians of the earth sciences have noted, scientists including geologists, geographers, and cartographers were “swiftly incorporated into highest level discussions about the relationship of science and foreign policy”. Geographers such as Matt Farish and Richard Powell have done sterling work here with regard to exploring how American and Canadian scientists, respectively, were embedded in the military and strategic calculations of Cold War Arctic policies. Historically, this kind of embedding has not been restricted to the northern high latitudes. The career of the polar geographer and long-term advisor to the British Foreign Office, Brian Roberts, highlights how academics played a vital role in producing wartime naval intelligence for both the Arctic and Antarctic (Dodds, 2002) (16). The IGY of 1957/58 further contributed to even more detailed mapping of the underwater geology of the world’s oceans (Doel et al, 2006) (17). The IGY coincided with the signing of the first Law of the Sea Convention 1958 and subsequent manifestations in particular the 1982 Convention, have placed a premium on geological and oceanographic knowledge of the continental shelf and the surrounding seas. In the Cold War setting, places such as the Arctic accumulated strategic significance as the United States, Canada, and the Soviet Union became every more eager to collect geographical and geophysical data necessary for the accurate targeting of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) and general surveillance purposes. Research establishments played their part in contributing vital information to what John Cloud had termed, the military- industrial-academic complex especially in North America. In a more contemporary setting, establishments such as Institute of Oceanology at the Russian Academy of Sciences have been at the forefront of providing the technical expertise so necessary for formal governmental submissions to the CLCS. The Russian government has also increased its military presence in the Arctic and recently conducted military exercises much to the alarm of the Canadians (18).

Finally, this tale about Russians planting a flag in the icy depths of the Artic Ocean highlights how expressions of ownership and associated military and strategic intrigue are bound up with the relentless search for oil and gas in the northern latitudes. As Peter Matthiessen has recently noted, “the imminent development of the Arctic sea floor as a lucrative new field for the industrial extraction of the fossil fuels whose carbon emissions were the principal component of the greenhouse gases that are the primary cause of Arctic warming in the first place”.

In the past, regions such as the Arctic and Antarctic were somewhat protected from more rapacious human behavior either by harsh climates and or by dense ice formations, which blocked the fabled North West and North East Passages. In the Antarctic, for instance, “sovereignty games” were conditioned by the seasons, especially in the period leading up to the IGY (19). During the southern austral winter season (approximately March-October), long polar nights combined with frigid temperatures placed a restraint of sorts on human endeavors to colonize, exploit, and administer polar territory. Likewise, the Arctic sea ice acted as a natural barrier to all but the strongest nuclear powered icebreakers in the Cold War period. In August 2007, global warming has made the North West Passage navigable for the first time and it is likely to become a major shipping route in the coming decades not least because it allows ships to save thousands of nautical miles by avoiding the Panama Canal. The shrinkage of ice cover has been recorded by the European Space Agency and its Arctic Climate Impact Assessment makes for sobering reading and more importantly will have dire consequences for indigenous communities such as the Inuit and Inupiat (20). The net result of ice cover shrinkage in the Arctic has been to further facilitate strategic and military planners vis-à-vis accessing the high latitudes and exploiting untapped resources. Paradoxically, therefore, the thinning of ice has encouraged further speculative behavior and military posturing. While climate scientists debate the instability of the Greenland ice sheet, others plot and plan further territorial consolidation at the same as indigenous peoples campaign for greater recognition of the threat posed to their human security (not to mention other indigenous residents such as the polar bear). The Inupiat in northern Alaska are a case in point. As traditional seal hunters, their livelihoods depend on hunting the Beluga whale and there is mounting evidence that not only is oil prospecting (including seismic surveying) disrupting whale migration but also thinning sea ice is unsettling the delicate polar ecosystem. Moreover, coastal communities are also further threatened, “because of Arctic warming, the sea ice is forming too late in the year to suppress the waves that batter the shores in the fierce autumn storms … their inhabitants [in the Point Hope region of Alaska] are likely to become the first “climate refugees” from global warming in the United States” (Matthiessen, 2007, page 61).

Unsurprisingly, the 2007/08 International Polar Year (IPY) has laid a great deal of emphasis on human security in the high Arctic especially in the light of ongoing interest in consolidating territorial sovereignty and possible resource exploitation in the Arctic Basin close to the geographic North Pole (21). There are good reasons to be concerned about this unhappy coincidence of icy geopolitics, fossil fuels, and actual sea ice loss. Elsewhere in the Arctic, oil companies want to increase their prospecting activities off the Alaskan continental shelf and in Siberia. As Mark Serreze, a senior research scientist at the US National Snow and Ice Data Center at Boulder in Colorado has noted, “The sea ice cover this year [2007] has reached a new record low. It’s not just that we beat the old record, we annihilated it. It’s going to be a different world [as] the observed rates of change have far outstripped what we projected.” (22). A sobering thought indeed.

Klaus Dodds, Royal Holloway, University of London.

Acknowledgement: My sincere thanks to Stuart Elden for suggesting I write this editorial in the first place.

References:

Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2008, volume 26, pages 1 ^ 6 doi:10.1068/d2601ed

(1) NTV is owned by Gazprom Media, which is a subsidiary of Gazpromöthe biggest extractor of natural gas in the world and, according to some estimates, the third largest corporation in the world. It should also be noted that the planting of metal plates and flags bearing the national coat of arms is a well-established Russian/Soviet practice. Such objects were buried by Russian explorers in the Aleutian Islands and a metal pennant bearing the coat of arms of the Soviet Union was included in the payload of the Soviet satellite Lunik II, which crashed into the moon on 14 September 1959. Apparently, the pennant was designed to survive the impact of the crash.

(2) The Lomonosov Ridge was named after a Russian scientist Mikhail Lomonosov following the 1948 Soviet High Latitude Expeditions.

(3) As international lawyers have noted, the definition of regions such as the Lomonosov Ridge is problematic under the terms of UNCLOS. Oceanic ridges cannot be considered part of the continental shelf so there is some doubt as to what the Russian submission in 2009 will actually contain in terms of cementing their claim to a larger part of the Arctic Basin. It is likely that they will claim that the ridges are `submarine elevations that are natural components of the continental margin’ (see Benitah, 2007).

(4) Denmark is involved because it is responsible for exercising the defense and foreign policies of Greenland.

(5) The United States has not ratified the UNCLOS because it objects to Part XI of the convention, which deals with the International Seabed Authority (ISA) and economic rights of the deep seabed. In essence, the ISA is invested with the authority to oversee the exploitation of the deep seabed on behalf of all members of the international community. These areas are treated as beyond internationally recognized waters and hence as a global common. For years successive US governments have resented such a role for the ISA and argued that it is prejudicial against US sovereign interests. In May 2007 President George W Bush urged the Senate to reconsider ratifying the UNCLOS and in October 2007 the Senate Foreign Relations Committee recommended that the full Senate consider formal ratification. The Treaty may be ratified in 2008 and the US in the meantime accepts most of the provisions of the UNCLOS such as the 200 nautical mile delimitation of exclusive economic zones (EEZ). The United States has the largest EEZ in the world.

(6) The relevant section of Article 76 states: “Information on the limits of the continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles from the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial sea is measured shall be submitted by the coastal State to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf set up under Annex II on the basis of equitable geographical representation. The Commission shall make recommendations to coastal States on matters related to the establishment of the outer limits of their continental shelf. The limits of the shelf established by a coastal State on the basis of these recommendations shall be final and binding.”

(7) For a geographical investigation into conventions such as the Law of the Sea see Steinberg (2001).

8 If you want to look at one of the maps submitted by the Russian authorities, which details the delimitation of the continental shelf with reference to the high Arctic see: http://www.un.org/Depts/ los/clcs new/submissions files/rus01/RUS CLCS_01 2001 LOS 2.jpg.

(9) For further information on the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf see: http://www.un.org/Depts/los/clcs new/clcs home.htm

(10) The US Geological Survey is involved in a program of Circum-Arctic Resource Appraisal and a great deal of attention has been given to the untapped potential of specific regions such as the East Greenland Rifts Basin Province. For further information see: http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2007/3077/.

(11) For further details see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6941134.stm.

(12) NWT was formally split in April 1999 when the territory of Nunavut was created. The Premier of Nunavut is advised by a council of tribal elders to help ensure Inuit culture and traditional knowledge incorporated into the decision-making process. Nunavut is dependent on federal Canadian funding and as with NWT is a major source of mineral exploitation.

(13) For further details see: http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070810/harper arctic military 070810?s name=&no ads

(14) Significantly the breakup of the Soviet Union made no difference to its northern boundary as the other fourteen socialist republics were located overwhelmingly to the south of Moscow let alone the Arctic Circle.

(15) The speech is reproduced at: http://news.gc.ca/web/view/en/index.jsp?articleid=355519.

(16) It is also worth noting that Australia has submitted materials to the CLCS regarding the delimitation of continental shelf off the Antarctic continent and this involved much cartographic and geological research (see Jabour, 2006). Britain is planning to do so, but there is an additional tension involving overlapping claims to the Antarctic Peninsula. The Antarctic and Arctic are not only very different geographical environments but they also have distinct legal regimes.

(17) During the IGY itself, the US nuclear-powered submarine USS Nautilus had demonstrated that it was now possible for submerged vessels to sail under the North Pole. This feat was achieved in August 1958 and later films such as Ice Station Zebra 1968 brought to the wide screen stories of high Arctic geopolitical intrigue.

18See, for example, http://www.cbc.ca/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2007/10/24/goose-russians.html.

(19) It was only during the IGY that permanently manned stations on the polar continent itself were established in significant numbers.

(20) For further details see: http://www.esa.int/esaEO/SEMA0R4Y3EE planet 0.html.

(21) The official website for the IPY can be found at: http://classic.ipy.org/. Abel K, Coates K (Eds), 2001Northern Visions (Broadview Press, Peterborough, ON), Benitah M, 2007, “Russia’s claim in the Arctic and the vexing issue of ridges in UNCLOS” ASIL Insight 8 November, http://www.asil.org/insights/2007/11/insights071108.html. Carleton C, 2006, “Article 76 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea: implementation problems from the technical perspective” International Journal of Marine and Coastal Law 21 287 ^ 303.

Cloud J, 2001, “Imaging the world in a barrel: CORONA and the clandestine convergence of the earth sciences” Social Studies of Science 31 231^ 251

Dodds K, 2002 Pink Ice: Britain and the South Atlantic Empire (I B Tauris, London)

Doel R, 2003, “Constituting the post-war earth sciences: the military’s influence on the environmental sciences in the USA after 1945” Social Studies of Science 33 635 ^ 666

Doel R, Levin T, Marker M, 2006, “Extending modern cartography to the ocean depths: military patronage, cold war priorities and the Heezen ^ Tharp mapping project 1952 ^ 1959” Journal of Historical Geography 32 605 ^ 626

Farish M, 2006, “Frontier engineering: from the globe to the body in the Cold War Arctic” The Canadian Geographer 50 177 ^ 196.

Innis H, 1923, A History of the Canadian Pacific Railway (McClelland and Stewart, Toronto)

Jabour J, 2006, “High latitude diplomacy: Australia’s Antarctic extended continental shelf ” Marine Policy, 30-197- 198

McCannon J, 1998 Red Arctic (Oxford University Press, Oxford)

Matthiessen P, 2007, “Alaska: big oil and the whales” New York Review 22 November, pp 57 ^ 64

Powell R, 2007, “The rigors of an Arctic experiment: the precarious authority of field practices in the Canadian High Arctic, 1959 ^ 1975” Environment and Planning A 39 1794 ^ 1811

Seed P, 1993 Ceremonies of Possession (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge)

Steinberg P, 2001 The Social Construction of the Ocean (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge)

The Times 2007, Russia stakes its North Pole claim with an underwater search for oil”, 28 July Toronto Star 2007, “The Artic Cold War”, 12 August, http://www.thestar.com/sciencetech/Ideas/ article/245440

(22) Quoted in Scientific American (21 September 2007) and available at: http://www.sciam.com/ article.cfm?articleID=28591A94-E7F2-99DF-31EE65D88983AE31.

The Geopolitics of Sports – Important & Interesting Role Sports Can Serve

The importance of geopolitics of sports cannot be overemphasized when it comes to rivalries of super powers in Olympics in general, Cricket in South Asia and Football in European continent in specific. Sports seem to constantly acquire an important position in geopolitics. Pakistan and India are already famous for their intensity of rivalry and Cricket diplomacy and Cricket matches between these countries are the prime example of nationalistic sentiments and its expression through sports. Many of the important political events happened behind or through this geopolitics of Cricket. India and Pakistan rivalry dates back to 1947. The bloodshed and hatred created during the partition of India in 1947 had lengthy ramifications. A root cause was the dispute between the two nations about the region of Jammu & Kashmir which is located between them. This feud has affected both their diplomatic and political relations and their gaming rivalries. From the beginning of the 21st century, prospects have remained bright for an enduring thaw in the relationship of the two countries, but it is a fact that for too long Indo-Pakistani cricket was equated with Indo-Pakistani war as two sides of the same coin. How horrific the scenario was can be gauged from the remarks of an Australian cricket commentator some time ago. He amused and indeed shocked TV viewers when he began his commentary with a stark observation before the start of an India v Pakistan cricket match in the Cricket World Cup 2003: “There is always great interest in India and Pakistan for they have fought three wars. There has been no war since 1999. So there is so much excitement in this match!”. A critic may dismiss it as a diabolic sense of humor and pardon the imaginative commentator. But nevertheless it was not far from the truth – at least until recently. In this prevailing context, cricket assumes a much larger significance than it should. An interesting fact is that India have lost roughly 60% of their matches against Pakistan and Pakistan have lost most of matches against India in World Cup Tournaments. Be it India or Pakistan, rivalry against each other is so intense that a loss at the hands of the other was (and probably still is) considered nothing less than national failure. Instances when the players’ homes were pelted after a match was lost were not uncommon. Over-zealous supporters even burned effigies of a losing team’s players or even of individual players that had simply performed less than well. A successful team and successful players could expect to be given hero status for months after the victory. Thus both the teams were under tremendous pressure to perform well and win. With both teams trying their level best, the matches often became very exciting.

It was after the 1999 Kargil Conflict that much of the hatred transformed into a peaceful rivalry between the teams. They played each other in Australia in the 1999-2000 Triangular Series. The two teams met in the 1999 Cricket World Cup in the Super Six part of tournament where India won against Pakistan but lost against Australia and New Zealand. Pakistan went on to face Australia in the finals. In the 2003 Cricket World Cup they again met each other in the Super Six section where India achieved a memorable victory and later went on to appear in the Finals. Then, in the 2003-04 season, India completed a tour of Pakistan in which there were rare scenes of Indian and Pakistani supporters in unison, followed in early 2005 by a reciprocal tour by Pakistan in India to complete 3 Tests and 6 ODI’s Indian and Pakistani fans joined together in what was described as “cricket diplomacy”.

Likewise is the case with Football. Football can, it seems, revive national rivalries and conjure the ghosts of past wars. But football, can also, in a different way than long speeches or international resolutions, help induce progress toward peaceful solutions for military conflicts. Football allows symbolically limited confrontations. The spectators of a match can enjoy the mythical excitement of battles taking place in the stadium knowing that neither the players nor they will suffer any harm. In football, defeat is never definitive, but it is always passionate. For football lovers, FIFA (the governing body of international football) should have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize long ago.For others, exasperated by football and the emotions it stirs up, the sport is no longer a game, but a type of war that stokes the basest sort of nationalist emotions.Is there a relationship between football (and sports in general) and a spirit of nationalism and militarism? During the Middle Ages, sports were regularly forbidden in England because they came at the expense of military training. After France’s defeat by Bismarck’s Germany in the Franco-Prussian War, Baron Pierre de Coubertin (who re-launched the Olympic Games a few decades later) recommended a renewed national emphasis on sport, which by this point was seen as a form of military preparation. In a football match, the rituals – the flag waving, the national anthems, the collective chants – and the language that is employed (the match starts with a “breakout of hostilities,” one “bombs” the goal, blows up the defense, launches “missile”) reinforce the perception of war by other means. And, in fact, real war has actually broken out over football. In 1969, Honduras and Salvador clashed after a qualification game for the World Cup. Football matches can, it seems, revive national rivalries and conjure the ghosts of past wars. During the 2004 Asia Nations Cup final, which pitted China against Japan, Chinese supporters wore 1930’s-style Japanese military uniforms to express their hostility to the Japanese team. Other Chinese fans brandished placards with the number “300,000″ written on it, a reference to the number of Chinese murdered by the Japanese army in 1937. But can one really say that football is responsible for the currently bad diplomatic relations between China and Japan? Of course not. Hostility on the football pitch merely reflects the existing tense relations between the two countries, which carry the weight of a painful history. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the dramatic semi-final between France and Germany in Seville in 1982 produced no political ripples, either for diplomatic relations between the two countries or for relations between the two peoples. Antagonism was confined to the stadium, and ended when the match did. WHAT FOOTBALL really provides is a residual area of confrontation that allows for the controlled expression of animosity, leaving the most important areas of interaction between countries unaffected. France and Germany will soon have a common army – they already have a common currency – yet the survival of national teams channels, within a strictly limited framework, lingering rivalry between the two countries. Football can also be the occasion of positive gestures. The joint organization of the 2002 World Cup by Japan and South Korea helped accelerate bilateral reconciliation. The performance of the South Korean players was even applauded in North Korea. Sport, indeed, seems to be the best barometer of relations between the divided Korean people. Moreover, football, more than long speeches or international resolutions, can help induce progress toward peaceful solutions for military conflicts. After their qualification for this year’s World Cup, the Ivory Coast’s national team, including players from the north and south, addressed all of their fellow citizens, asking the warring factions to lay down their weapons and to put an end to the conflict that has shattered their country. After Haiti’s president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was overthrown a few years ago, Brazil’s football team acted as an ambassador for the United Nations’ Brazilian-led peacekeeping forces. And, when conflict stops, from Kosovo to Kabul, football is the first sign of a society returning to normal. The former president of the FIFA, Joao Havelange, often dreamed of a football match between Israelis and Palestinians: the American vice-president Al Gore regarded such a match as a means to help Washington solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Perhaps one day it will take place. Certainly the Iran-United States football game in 1998 offered a moment of fraternization between the two teams. Another Iran-US match might be helpful at this difficult time. It is because football allows for symbolically limited confrontations, with no major political risks, that it is useful. Its impact on national and international public opinion is broad, but not deep. As the sociologist Norbert Elias put it: “The spectators of a football match can enjoy the mythical excitement of battles taking place in the stadium, and they know that neither the players nor they will suffer any harm”.

Cricket and Football well emphasize the importance of geopolitics of sports and the role they can serve to influence public opinion to bring countries closer and bring peace.

Geopolitics of place you live-How Geography Influence Our Living-Where You Live Is What You Are!

(An interesting article I came across written by Patricia Cohen – NYT )

Pick up a geography textbook from the first half of this century and you can discover a simple rule-of-thumb explanation for the varying fates of the human race: the weather.

”As a rule, people do their best thinking and planning, their minds are most alert and inventive, and they have the best judgment when the thermometer out of doors falls toward freezing at night and rises toward 50 degrees or 55 degrees by day,” declares Ellsworth Huntington in ”Principles of Human Geography.” ”In an invigorating climate” — like that of Europe and the northern United States — ”it may also be easier to be honest and sober and self-controlled than in a more enervating one.”

Such pronouncements ultimately made geographers seem like phrenologists who pondered the size of bumps on a person’s skull. Most serious scholars shunted geography aside and forgot it.

Yet after decades of neglect, geography is being rediscovered. The study of how location affects the way people live is not only drawing in new students, it is also attracting the attention of scholars in other fields. Historians, economists and political scientists are using it to explain everything from why some nations are rich and others poor, to why Brazil and Nigeria are rising as regional powers, to why Africa produces so many superior distance runners. It’s as if New York City real estate agents were suddenly given the job of explaining some of the globe’s most elusive questions and chorused: Location, location, location.

The geographic renaissance, propelled in part by new advances in science and computers, is significant, scholars say, because it is generating a new intellectual dialogue. ”It is a wonderful bridge among disciplines,” David Landes, professor emeritus of history and economics at Harvard University, said in an interview. ”It compels people to put together ideas they might not otherwise.”

Most unexpected, however, is that the very field that had a racialist taint is now being used to knock down theories that define achievement in racial terms. Geography, once employed to justify colonialism and the innate superiority of whites, is brought in to undermine works like ”The Bell Curve,” which argues that racial differences in intelligence are inherited and linked to differences in performance and economic success.

The gradual eclipse of geography began 50 years ago when Harvard University eliminated its geography department. The decision had less to do with discomfort over screwball theories (which weren’t necessarily seen at the time as screwball) than with academic infighting and weak teaching. ”Geography is not a university subject,” declared James B. Conant, who was then the president of Harvard.

In the next decades, other universities followed Harvard’s lead: Stanford, Yale, the University of Michigan, Columbia, the University of Chicago. According to a report in the Chronicle of Higher Education on the 1987 meeting of the Association of American Geographers, department chairmen organized a seminar ”to find out what they could do to avoid finding their departments on a university hit list.”

Saul Cohen, a political geographer and former president of the geographers’ association, says: ”Very few people were exposed to geography who went to college after the 1960’s. What they knew about it goes back a half century.”

Quietly Wiped Out As a Discipline

French historians like Fernand Braudel and other members of the Annales school did look at geography, climate and land use. But in the United States, said Mr. Landes, geography was ”a kind of outcast among intellectual disciplines.” He continued: ”More than any other field I can think of, geography was wiped out kind of quietly. I can’t think of another discipline that suffered this sort of erasure.”

Geography was fine if you worked at Rand McNally or played Jeopardy (Moroni. What is the capital of Comoros?). But when American scholars tackled persistent questions like why industrialization first took root in Europe instead of China or India, geography was played down. ”If you look at most works on global development,” Mr. Landes says, ”there is very little on geography.”

That has been changing. Jared Diamond, a physiologist at the University of California at Los Angeles, combines epidemiology, sociology, zoology, anthropology and botany to conclude that geography is the key to the pace and timing of economic development.

In his book ”Guns, Germs and Steel” (W.W. Norton, 1997) he goes back 13,000 years to explain how food production is the starting point for success. Because farming communities produce more food and domesticate animals, they can feed non-food producers like professional soldiers, bureaucrats, writers and craftsmen.

Mr. Diamond argues that the east-west axis of Eurasia’s land mass meant a shared latitude and similar growing conditions, which enabled one of the first domesticated crops, einkorn wheat, to spread relatively quickly from the Fertile Crescent to Europe; more than twice as fast, for example, as corn and beans spread from Mexico northward to what would become the eastern United States.

Fewer ecological barriers like mountains also made it much easier for livestock and, eventually, writing, the wheel and other inventions to spread than in the Americas or Africa, which both have a north-south axis. For example, cattle, sheep and goats, first domesticated in the Fertile Crescent, stopped short for 2,000 years at the northern edge of the Serengeti Plains, with their deadly, disease-carrying tsetse flies. And of the 14 large mammals domesticated before the 20th century, Eurasia had 13 of them, including sheep, goats, cows and horses, which provided meat, fertilizer, wool, leather, transport, plowing power and military assault vehicles.

Domesticated animals also served as the petri dish for nasty epidemics like smallpox and measles to which Europeans over time developed immunity. So when the Europeans arrived in the New World, up to 99 percent of the unexposed native populations were killed — instead of the reverse. It wasn’t virtuosity but viruses that helped paved the way for conquest.

Setting the Stage For Growth

Building on Max Weber’s ”The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,” Mr. Landes believes that Western culture based on Judeo-Christian and Enlightenment values is the single most important reason for the West’s economic success. Still, maintaining that geography is ”terribly important,” he has titled the first chapter of his new book, ”The Wealth and Poverty of Nations” (W. W. Norton, 1998) ”Nature’s Inequalities,” and describes how a nation’s geography — its rainfall, its suitability for food production, its indigenous animals and the deadliness of its pathogens — helps set the stage for economic success.

Europe was lucky. He, too, argues that the temperate climate and relatively even rainfall, a gift from the Gulf Stream, allowed Europeans to grow crops all year round. In addition to the other advantages, larger and stronger animals like the European battle steed instead of the Mongolian pony provided richer fertilizer than, say, the human night soil used in East Asia.

A Great Windfall Of Gold and Silver

James Blaut, who wrote ”The Colonizer’s Model of the World: Geographic Diffusionism and Eurocentric History” (Guilford Press, 1993), also takes a geographical tack, but comes to a completely different conclusion. He declares Europeans got rich because they were closest to the Americas and able to plunder it first.

In the 16th century, says Mr. Blaut, who teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago, other maritime societies like those of ”the Chinese, the Indians, and the East Africans were at the same level of development, but the Europeans were much, much closer to the New World.”

Through a combination of looting and mining, the amount of gold and silver in circulation probably doubled between the years 1500 and 1600, says Mr. Blaut, and Europe got it all free. That tremendous windfall meant that the emerging middle class could buy off the ruling land-owning powers, enabling capitalism to take root and allowing the Europeans to outcompete Asia and East Africa. A shorter commute made all the difference.

Geography’s sudden comeback is due in part to technological advances. Sophisticated mapping computers known as geographical information systems have generated new research areas for freshly minted geographers and raised the discipline’s profile. A report last year by the National Research Council estimated that the number of undergraduate geography majors increased by 47 percent between 1986 and 1994. At the same time, advances in molecular biology, radiocarbon dating and archeology are providing new information about where cultivated crops, domesticated animals and diseases originated and where they spread. And economists are exploring statistical correlations between such things as poverty and distance from the equator.

Geography also complements the turn to interdisciplinary studies that is catching on at universities across the country. ”Geography is the integrating field par excellence.” Mr. Blaut observed.

Another trend has coincided with geography’s comeback: using genetics to explain behavior. Geography provides a new wrinkle to the nature vs. nurture, or biology vs.culture debate. Some scholars are using geography to help provide a counterweight to what they see as a crude biological determinism implying, for example, that Europeans won out because of some inbred superiority.

In his introduction, Mr. Diamond offers this one-sentence summary of his 480-page book: ”History followed different courses for different people because of differences among peoples’ environments, not because of biological differences among people themselves.” At its publication, ”Guns, Germs and Steel” was praised for rebutting ”racist theories” of history.

The Making Of Marathoners

Historical questions aren’t the only ones that have enlisted geography to balance genetic explanations. The Swedish physiologist Bengt Saltin, for example, has studied Kenyan distance runners to find why so many excel at the sport. He found they have a muscle composition similar to that of Nordic athletes who train in similar conditions, at high altitudes and in hilly regions, according to a recent article in the New Yorker. Geography may be the critical variable, not genes.

With all the new attention on geography, some scholars warn against crediting it with too much. ”I think there are societies in which geography is very formative and times when it’s not,” says the economic historian Robert Heilbroner. ”I wouldn’t make it a very high priority.”

So geography is not destiny any more than genetics or culture is. But after years of neglect, it offers a useful reminder: Location matters.

Geopolitics of New Colonization-Turkey and European Ring-Cartoon

Turkey's try in European Ring and its subsequent geopolitical implications will be very important for future geopolitical dynamics

Geopolitics of War-Decisionmaking in Leadership & its Geopolitical Implications – South Asian Regional Perspective

This article answers few historically important points about Pakistan because current form and function of the country seems more of a resultant effect due to these past events.

• If there was no WWII there would be no Pakistan.
• How feudal system arrived, become necessity and penetrated Pakistan’s Political System and its role in history of Pakistan.
• Muslim League and feudals were indispensable for each other.
• Unique political situations faced by Mr. Jinnah.
• Historic mistake of Indian National Congress eventually leading to Jinnah’s victory.

Muslim leadership, at their wit’s end begged Jinnah to return from England and take over Muslim League. He had gone to London after he had been repudiated by the INC (Indian National Congress) when he had protested against introduction of religious imagery by Gandhi into politics. He was able to cow down the different factions of the party at the national level, though he did not make much headway in organizations in the provinces. He set about putting the House in order. But Pakistan remained a nebulous idea till the formal Lahore resolution in March 1940. Prior to that Allama Iqbal had asked for an entity inside independent India. The name was coined by Choudhury Rahmat Ali who was at Cambridge University and head of a group of Indian Muslim students at the time. It was not taken seriously by the Muslim League, Indian National Congress, or the British and was dismissed as a pipe dream of a well meaning but inconsequential student group. Even in 1940, the concept was not accepted by a defined majority of Muslims of India. The party advocating creation of Pakistan, the Muslim League, did not command credible support in Muslim majority provinces. Jinnah was disdained by the Muslim establishment. Mian Shafi of the Punjab had successfully set Punjab Muslim leadership against the idea. Except for Bengal, the Muslim leadership in all other Muslim majority provinces had serious reservations about the idea. The top leadership of the party came from Muslim minority provinces, as did the most enthusiastic support. It is a curious quirk of history that people from the regions where they enjoyed privileges far in excess of their numbers vociferously demanded a separate homeland, and those who were in economic and social bondage to the minority did not. In the UP Muslim population was 12% and they held 64% of the jobs for which Indians were eligible. In the Punjab, according to the 1930 census, they were 60% of the population, and non-Muslims controlled 94% of industry and 86% of agriculture. The former were virtually non-existent in education and administration. After partition immigrants from minority provinces were able to take over a most of the positions vacated by non-Muslims. This led to serious ethnic ill will and contributed to the eventual demise of United Pakistan. This eludes the historic reasons for the apparently inexplicable attitude of the Muslims in majority provinces. They are complex and deserve an independent study. In the 1936 elections, held under the 1935 Act had provided for separate electorates. Muslim League had done very poorly in the seats reserved for Muslims. Jinnah and the party had not yet caught Muslim imagination. It is a marked tribute to Jinnah’s resilience and determination that he carried on with renewed vigor. He challenged the given wisdom, and made tireless efforts at grass roots organization. He was able to energize the ordinary Muslim all over the country. But he got support from the Muslim establishment only in the minority provinces and Bengal. Students from all provinces heeded his call, but only those from the minority provinces proved to be effective. The ones from majority provinces, bereft of support from the elite did not have the wherewithal to be able to give up their studies and go on tours for membership drives. The party could not provide them sustenance. Notable among the institutions which proved critical in winning support of Muslim masses was Aligarh University. Jinnah was able to make some impact on the Muslim mind, but was unable to sway the Indian National Congress or the British Raj. Nehru arrogantly declared that there were only two parties in India, the INC and the British. The rulers simply ignored Jinnah’s assertion that there was a third party, the Muslims of India. The British governors of the provinces did not exercise their reserve powers to rein in the ministers in the provinces where the INC had formed governments. In many recorded instances INC ministers were unfair and unjust. The Pirpur report commissioned by ML documented evidence of discrimination against Muslims. It fell on deaf ears. Justice, fair play and high ideals, unless backed by strength, be it of numbers, arms or ideology, are not paid a great deal of attention. Generally, struggle for Pakistan is grossly mis-represented and Jinnah is not given due credit for his work. Clouds of impending war were darkening over Europe. Britain was gearing for general conflagration. The only initial advantage they had over the Germans was their vast colonies. And India was the biggest and the richest. They asked the INC for cooperation in war effort. INC leaders, Pundit Nehru specially, were all opposed to the Nazi creed. But they wanted advance payment for their support. They wanted an unequivocal declaration that they will be granted independence after the war. They also wanted to join the war effort as equal partners and insisted on taking charge of the department of defense in the government of India. Churchill, the die hard imperialist, would have none of all that. INC badly miscalculating British resolve and latent strength resigned from the government of India and gave call for non-cooperation with the British administration. The British retaliated by putting nearly all the leading lights of the INC in jail. Jinnah called for a day of deliverance, which by all accounts was celebrated by a great majority of Muslims of India. He did not have to convince the Muslim masses that INC government would not be good for them. The ministers had done the job for him. Popular belief is that with all the INC leaders in jail, Jinnah had the field to himself. It is true and his work was no longer hampered by the INC establishment. But INC ministers governing the provinces would have been a much bigger incentive for the Muslims to heed Jinnah’s call. In fact, if the war had not intervened and INC ministers had stayed in power, they would have in time slaked their thirst for “historic” revenge and dealt with the Muslims in a more equitable fashion. They would have come to realize that they could not do with out Muslim support in their struggle against the still entrenched British rulers. The higher leadership would have made them see reason, if they had not done so themselves. They could have pragmatically decided to bide their time till they had got rid of the colonial masters. The banishment of INC ministers from the scene, in fact made Jinnah’s work more difficult. Academia, largely unsympathetic to Jinnah, and nationalist Muslim politicians and Hindu-antagonistic to Pakistan had made a largely successful attempt to deny the latter’s credit for turning the tables on INC and the Raj. Pakistan resolution was presented at the Muslim League meeting in Lahore by Moulvi Fazal Haq, to be known later a Sher-e-Bengal, the lion of Bengal. To call their heroes lion and tiger is a time hallowed Indian tradition. The resolution called for independent states of Pakistan in Muslim majority provinces in the North West and East of India. Jinnah went from strength to strength. WWII ended. INC leaders were released from jail. In a remarkable exhibition of political maturity the British electorate handed a resounding defeat to Churchill. The war had been won. They needed social reforms, not exhilarating speeches. Indians were inducted into the central Government in India. The viceroy was the head of the cabinet, but Nehru as the leader of the larger party was expected to act as virtual head of the government. Jinnah had opted to keep himself above the fray. Muslim League was hankering after the home ministry which would give them control over the police and other security agencies. With a monumental lack of political insight, INC elected to concede finance to them. Liaquat head of the Muslim League faction of the ministry exercised such tight control over the exchequer that the hands of INC ministers were virtually tied down. Stealing socialist thunder from the INC, Liaquat with the help of two Muslim finance men, Ghulam Muhammad and Muhammad Ali presented an egalitarian budget. Industry was heavily taxed. That put a cat properly among the pigeons. INC was funded by Hindu capital. They could not severe their life line, nor could they openly condemn a populist budget. One could count Muslim money men on the fingers of one hand. Muslim League was funded by the feudals. That also put paid to any fond hopes Indian National Congress may have entertained that they would be able to shape India into their cherished form. That convinced them that they could not co-exist with Jinnah. It was also an early harbinger of shape of things to come in independent Pakistan. Ghulam Muhammad, aided by civil servants was to play an infamous role in the history of the country. Indian National Congress and the Raj were not yet prepared to concede Pakistan. Master of tactics that he was, and gifted with an unerring judgment of timing, Jinnah gave a call for direct action. Muslims gave an overwhelming response. It all remained peaceful except for Calcutta which broke out into riots. His detractors jumped on him for the break down of law and order. They conveniently forgot that Gandhi had given many calls for flouting authority with much larger loss of life and property. This was Jinnah’s first and only call for extra legal action. Gandhi had captured international imagination and was forgiven all his aberrations. The difference between the two was that the latter was using esoteric techniques, and the former was using a methodology familiar to the West. Muslim League won an overwhelming victory in 1946 elections. That Muslim League represented the Muslims of India, as Indian National Congress spoke for the Hindus could no longer be questioned, though the latter continued to claim an all India character. Jinnah now took a (mis) step. He proposed and won approval of a unified Federal Pakistan. His vision was of that of a strong country which could play an effective role in the leagues of nations. His intentions cannot be doubted. When Mountbatten ordained partition of the Punjab and Bengal, he allowed Suhrawardy to negotiate for an independent Bengal. Lest people forget that it was fickle, fate which had hitherto favored Jinnah, now turned its smile on Indian National Congress. Nehru the international and liberal face of INC had won the affections of Edwina, the new viceroy’s wife. She had had innumerable affairs before. Her husband was gay and was only too accommodating. In a memorable offer of putting cause over self, Sirdar Nishtar is widely believed to have proposed to Jinnah that he will set aside his aesthetic scruples and bend Mountbatten in Pakistan’s favor. Jinnah would have none of it. He even prohibited publication of the compromising Nehru-Edwina letters. The high principles were to cost Pakistan dearly – West Bengal, East Punjab and Kashmir. Despite a legacy of principle centered leadership, such are the geopolitical implications and consequences that shaped the events that reverberated throughout the century in the subcontinent.

Geopolitics of Energy – Russia rising & E.U.’s fall out – Moscow’s renewed vigor!

In the politics of the Black Gold in specific and energy in general, the state of equilibrium between countries and distribution of these resources according to demand, though difficult to keep up with, provide much sought after sense of peace and security and may even serve to establish prestige as a hallmark of the region. Quite naturally, this places energy rich countries diplomatically at a very difficult position and pushes energy-deficient countries to the worst case scenario leaving them at the mercy of circumstances created by power barons of energy. Some such is the case with Kazakhstan. The announcement of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev on May 12^th 2007 that Astana would continue to export all of its gas through Russia has jeopardized European vision to diversify energy sources by building an alternate Kazakh pipeline. The statement was delivered in conjunction with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s tour through Kazakhstan indicates that the Central Asian republic is all towards continuing to nurture its relationship with Moscow and is positioning itself to become a major player in the region by the virtue of Russia considering it as the most dependable partner. On a geopolitical note, this shows Russia’s increased leverage face-to-face with Europe through its former Soviet satellites and a sign of renewed vigor and confidence in Putin’s international relations. It seems quite apparent that Central Asian countries feel Moscow traditionally closer and also keep reservation that they will be able to enjoy power in better form with Russia than with Europe. Kazakhstan, due to lack of infrastructure for extraction and refining gas reserves and due to its very geographical location (that it is surrounded by Russia, Iran China and Caspian Sea) lacks the direct land route to European market looks toward Russia for these politically important concerns of which no alternative seems to be available at hand. Since Moscow makes a near 150 percent profit on gas it buys from Kazakhstan and distributes to Europe. Europe is keen to obtain substantial savings in any possible way including removal Russia from such an equation by any means. Hence stemming from Kazakhstan’s necessity and an objective of savings, Europe eagerly saw an opportunity to develop an alternative gas route through the Caspian Sea and either Turkey or Iran removing Russia from the equation would likely bring substantial savings. Europe also hoped to be freed from what it perceives to be a seesaw of reprisals by Russia; in the past several years, prices have been raised and fuel supplies have been cut following political spats between Russia and its former Eastern territories, the effects of which have rippled across the continent. These volatile responses promote Europe’s perception that energy supplies by way of Russia are fundamentally insecure, and they have encouraged the continent’s efforts to secure natural gas independent from Moscow. Rather than be cut out of the process, Russia made a deal with Kazakhstan — in tandem with trilateral energy agreements with Turkmenistan — to increase capacity of its refining and pipeline capabilities. According to the New York Times, the agreement, which includes construction of a new pipeline around the Caspian Sea, will increase Russia’s control over Central Asian gas reserves substantially. Kazakhstan was not aggressively pursuing the development of an alternate pipeline before this agreement and will now be without a face-saving reason to step away from Russian involvement should it want to do so. Kazakhstan achieved what it required — updated infrastructure to keep pace with its export demand — and Russia maintained its influence in its former outpost. Nazarbayev’s announcement makes it less likely that an alternate route will be constructed in the near future, and thus seems to more tightly bind Europe’s energy needs to Russia. Russia is not motivated solely by practical concerns, but also political ones. The two primary political issues are security and prestige, combined with a related need to feel in control of what it perceives to be its sphere of influence. The West, particularly the United States, often fails to appreciate how deeply the need for security drives Russian foreign policy. With a long historical memory, Russians point to events as distant as the Mongol invasion and Tatar yoke and as recent as the siege of Leningrad and post-September 11 ring of U.S. military bases in Central Asia as proof that they must always be on the offensive. This mentality spills over into trade and energy concerns as well; safeguarding its role in Central Asia’s gas production will contribute to a sense of security in Moscow. The second motivating factor is Russia’s need to appear prestigious in the eyes of the world. The country mourns its loss of status following the Soviet Union’s implosion, and therefore clings to the areas where its influence still effects change. Russia does not see a contradiction between being respected and being feared; from its perspective, fear may beget respect and may even be the necessary ingredient. If Europe fears loss of control over its energy imports, it is a sign of increased stature to Russia. Putin, well aware of the role that security and prestige play in Russian politics, will benefit from his handling of this new agreement; indeed, his soaring popularity indicates that Russians appreciate his proactive policies. Finally, Kazakhstan occupies an important place in the heart of Russians, much as the ideal of the Wild West continues to do for Americans. Although they are now separate countries, Russia feels attached to the fate of Kazakhstan. Touring Kazakhstan and its neighbors as part of energy talks signals that President Putin believes Kazakhstan to be relevant to both defense and status, and enduringly part of Russia’s rightful realm of influence. The feeling of affection may not be mutual, but Kazakhstan has its own political motivations for maintaining and even solidifying ties with Russia.
Reaffirming and enhancing its relationship with Moscow is in step with Astana’s desire to become a stronger regional power. While continuing to nurture its warm relationship with the United States, which has brought it steady economic gains and international stature, it realizes that it needs to be active within its own neighborhood if it wants to be taken seriously as a regional player. Putin courting Nazarbayev on his home turf signals to the region that Russia sees the former frontier outpost as a serious partner. Negotiating regional energy policy from a position of strength and equal footing imbues Nazarbayev with a new aura of dignity from which he can further polish his image; the agreement will be expected to boost esteem accorded him as an interlocutor between Russia and the other Central Asian republics. Astana knows that it can never compete with Moscow on the world political stage, and it does not desire to do so. Instead, it strives to cultivate a perception of Central Asia as a region in its own right, with Kazakhstan at the helm, the porte-parole for its neighbors amidst the intersection of East, West and Russia. Russia, frustrated with a lack of progress thus far in securing its interests in its sphere of influence, is only too happy to have a reliable partner with credibility in the eyes of its neighbors. Enhancing ties with Russia not only promotes Nazarbayev’s regional aspirations, but also supports his domestic position. Kazakh President Nazarbayev has pursued an administration very similar in tone to that of Putin: while opening the country to foreign investment and liberalizing the economic sector, he continues to have a firm grip in the political arena. Having recently been given the unique constitutional right to serve as president for life, Nazarbayev has been criticized by Amnesty International and other organizations for human rights violations and political corruption. Putin is a more valuable ally to have in this regard; while the Russian president intends to step down from his own post when his term expires, he is less likely to publicly cause trouble for Nazarbayev on these issues than an American or European leader. That is, Kazakh and Russian presidents see eye-to-eye on a number of issues — as long as Kazakhstan does not push too hard for total independence (which would be spurious due to the geographical proximity to Russia’s and Kazakhstan’s continued economic inter-dependence on its northern neighbor), and as long as Russia does not interfere excessively in the internal affairs of Kazakhstan, the two countries may be seen to have found a mutually beneficial equilibrium. Europe’s desire to diversify its energy resources by rerouting Kazakh gas has, at least for the immediate future, hit a dead end. The agreement between Kazakhstan and Russia does not explicitly prohibit the development of alternate routes, but Nazarbayev’s statement that, “Kazakhstan is absolutely in favor of exporting the majority of its oil, if not all of it, via Russian territory” makes such a development appear unlikely. Europe’s response is likely to be two fold. First, it will need to reassess its energy supply. There may be areas in which the continent can further reduce usage, and more importantly, there may be other energy partners with which it can develop a relationship. While convenient, such a large percentage of their fuel does not have to come from Kazakhstan. This effort may provide stopgaps in the event of another shortage; long-term, Europe needs to reevaluate its relationship with Russia itself. The second task will be to lay the groundwork for a multi-dimensional relationship with Moscow, one with enough layers and points of mutual concern to provide a buffer when the latter decides to give out punishment to its former Eastern satellites. Right now, Moscow perceives that it can punish the entire continent for the sins of one country — this past year, it was Ukraine. The European Union should find enough common ground with Russia so that the latter will risk too much by alienating Brussels.The European Union should also decide how it is going to handle the inevitable fluctuations in gas prices and supply due to political retribution from Russia. Moscow benefits from the awkward position in which it deliberately places Western Europe; it knows that Western Europe cannot be seen to abandon its Eastern neighbors — especially new members of N.A.T.O. and the E.U., but that Western European citizens will not tolerate being sacrificed to a moral standard of defending Eastern Europe if it means paying more for gas, or going without. Improving its relationship with Russia may not in itself lend results, but it is a necessary step to take in conjunction with efforts with Kazakhstan. It is important so that Russia does not perceive that it is being sidelined; instead, it should feel that it is a partner and that its stake in the network be protected. Kazakhstan, while having made a commitment to Russia, cannot afford to lose its European market, and therefore will also be expected to have some wiggling room in future discussions. Therefore, Europe, while exploring alternative markets and improving its relationship with Russia to lessen the effects of retribution, should delicately continue its discussions with Kazakhstan. Although renewal of Kazakh prestige may seem tied quite significantly with Russia’s efforts to renew its vigor but such a strategy will hold only an intermediate term benefit for Astana. The Russia where palpable tendency of using fear as an important ingredient to regain the regional prestige and respect, still thrives as a tradition in foreign policy, seems not very much letting go of haste desire to regain its stature as it used to enjoy during its Soviet era. It is not perhaps secure for Kazakhstan to virtually depend upon Russia. Moscow, to ensure that Astana remains tilted towards Russia (especially sooner as President Putin steps down) will leave no chance to get more involved in domestic politics of Kazakh as to make Astana’s dependence domestically-politically maneuverable such that dependency of Kazakhstan on Russia remains for significant time period if not life long. Another important thing is that stemming from the socialist past, and with the standing need for further revitalization of economy, Russia is not completely relieved from its unwelcoming type of market branding in the region in the global eyes as yet; and moreover, Russia, as a reliable and dependable partner is still largely viewed with skepticism. On one side, the very geography of Kazakhstan renders the country to remain under the influence of Moscow and on the other side the same Kazakhstan with its better policies can serve as a pivot point or as a bridge between Europe, Russia and China. Such a development of policy would ensure greatly better economical outcome with greater security over multilateral aspects. Kazakhstan should ideally best utilize its geo-strategic situation in its favor rather than to rely upon any single power. It’s not that only Kazakhstan needs to deal with delicacy the complex picture of oil politics in the region but also Europe needs to be more strategic. Because after when Mr. Putin steps down and Nazarbeyev’s life long presidency support in Eastern and Central Asian sphere would undergo analysis and will possibly come under debate sooner as being uniquely non-democratic, the EU will, as a common method of foreign policy for non-democratic regimes, may resume to exert some sort of economic and diplomatic pressure on Nazerbayev’s regime to decentralize the political system. Anytime in future, such an act would only shift the oil favor graph more skewed towards Russia and even a small room left for Europe in Kazakhstan’s oil politics will be shut down. It seems that the best policy for Europe in this case scenario would be to lure Kazakhstan and help her to rise to the act of a diplomatic, political and oil fulcrum between Europe and Russia. The Kazakhstan can avail a better leverage in economic and power brokerage of the region by keeping both the parties in the show rather than unilaterally looking for Russia for any quantum development and this would also entail the fact of making the best use of its geo-strategic position. Therefore, some such fundamentally important incentives should be offered to Kazakhstan to win for Europe as a constant space at the table of discussion such that Europe should also be officially consulted for any such oil deals that can cause effects at continental level. Quite automatically, when we talk about the continental effects we are talking about not a single country but a group of countries being affected providing a common notion to create number of blocs based upon interests. Another way the Europe as E.U. can overcome this emerging issue is that to bring about strategically placed investments in both Kazakhstan and Russia alike. This will help these countries to grow stronger economically and taper down the growing gaps between Europe, Russia and Kazakhstan and create a space in the heart of people from the both the countries. This can largely lead to emergence of such an anatomy of domestic politics with in both the countries such that any elected government in both the countries would contain people that have equal room for Europe. Europe needs to work on the people of these countries rather than just governments such that it would bring about the domestically favored politics towards balancing paradigm shift between East and the West. Such a long term strategy holds a better and stronger promise but require significant patience on the part of Europe to bear its fruits. The very heart of regional (and thereon global) security lies with equilibrium, decentralization of energy supplies, lower dependence on any single power and creating balance to relieve the world from monopolization of commodity. Kazakhstan’s announcement that all of its gas will continue to be processed and shipped via pipelines through Russia is a severe blow and a shock to Europe’s pocketbook and pride. In negotiations with Russia, the E.U. is not accustomed to holding the losing hand; in this instance, the body was not even consulted or invited to the table. Kazakhstan looks to benefit from the agreement — not only by solving its immediate problem of insufficient infrastructure to process its natural gas reserves, but from the increased esteem the visit from Putin accords it regionally. Russia was the big winner in the agreement: Putin demonstrated his ability to outmaneuver Europe, sending another signal of Russia’s renewed ascendance; he reminded the world of Central Asia’s place under Moscow’s sphere of influence; and he ensured, at least for the foreseeable future, that Moscow will continue to benefit from Kazakhstan’s lucrative gas trade. This single event and/or any such series of events alike in near future can prove to be detrimental to the very integrity of European Union. The effects of energy politics have a tendency to change the very anatomy of politics at global level and potentially dangerous enough to harbor the new reality of European Union’s fallout.