Abstract

John Agnew is one of the most prominent figures in political geography. He has contributed widely to debates about the political economy of the state, the nature of the international, and theories of geopolitics. Within international political economy, John Agnew has worked on theories of development, geographies of the world economy, and regions of the United States in the world economy. He has longstanding research interests in the changing regional and urban geographies of Italy and in the relationship between human geography and sociology. The first of John Agnew's Hettner Lectures 2000 explores the origins and logic of precise national boundary delimitation in Europe. It is argued that from 1600 onwards national boundaries were necessary to define who was to be Europe's dominant agent on a world scale, and that the process of delineating rigid national boundaries still shapes current debates on Europeanness and the characteristics of statehood. In his second lecture, John Agnew provides a discussion of the philosophical perspectives on which the two main positions on the 'nature' of the international in contemporary political geography rely. He suggests an historical approach to geopolitics that endeavours to explicitly recognise the joint effects of geographical representations and the spatial distribution of material conditions on political practices.