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Alter-geopolitics: Other securities are happening

Article  in  Geoforum · June 2011

DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2011.01.007

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 Geoforum 42 (2011) 274–284

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Geoforum
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum

Alter-geopolitics: Other securities are happening

Sara Koopman
University of British Columbia, 1984 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In an age of increasing state (in)security, some are coming together on their own to build alternative non-
Received 12 January 2010 violent securities. They are making connections across distance and difference which focus on the safety
Received in revised form 12 January 2011 of bodies (often by actually moving bodies), and ground geopolitics in everyday life. The term anti-
Available online 22 April 2011
geopolitics focuses on resistance to hegemonic geopolitics (material or discursive), rather than this sort
of effort to build something new. Feminist geopolitics is a form of anti-geopolitics that not only takes
Keywords: apart but also puts the pieces together in new ways – with broader definitions of security for more bodies
Geopolitics
in more places. Yet it has not generally looked at that practice as engaged in outside of academia. I pro-
Critical geopolitics
Anti-geopolitics
pose the term alter-geopolitics for a type of feminist geopolitics as a way to extend both the concepts of
Feminist geopolitics anti- and feminist geopolitics. I argue for the term as a reminder to look to grassroots practice, to the
Progressive geopolitics ways that groups are doing geopolitics in the streets, in homes, in jungles, and in many other spaces
Alternative geopolitics ‘off the page’. Though they may not think of their work as geopolitics, framing it in this way can open
Alter-geopolitics fruitful conversations. As academics we have much to learn and offer through collaboratively thinking
Peace with such groups about security. I have been doing this with international accompaniers in Colombia
Non-violence and discuss their work, and the peace community of San José that they accompany, as forms of alter-
Accompaniment
geopolitics.
Solidarity
Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Colombia

1. Introduction nist geopolitics that is happening outside of academia, an alter-

geopolitics.
I came into alter-geopolitics on the ‘over-ground railroad’. It To get at this I look at what the term geopolitics is widely
was 1984, and we were driving North on I-5 (the major West Coast understood to mean, and then how critical geopolitics has un-
highway in the US). The signs in the windows said ‘‘Sanctuary Car- packed it. I discuss anti-geopolitics as one particular sort of critical
avan’’. The car in front of us was carrying Sandra, Sergio and their geopolitics, and then feminist geopolitics as one particular sort of
daughter Natalia, refugees coming to a Seattle Quaker Meeting. We anti-geopolitics. I then argue for alter-geopolitics as a particular
were offering them sanctuary because the US government was sort of feminist geopolitics, and explore how two groups in Colom-
refusing Salvadorans asylum, since that would mean admitting bia are doing it. It was trying to understand the work of these
that the US was giving over a million dollars a day to a Salvadoran groups that led me to grapple with this question of what is geopol-
government that was attacking its own people. We resisted by itics and how is it being done differently. I turn to these alterna-
going around the government and creating our own security, by tives as a source of inspiration and hope. To understand how
putting our bodies together for safety, by establishing our own some are doing it differently, let me first clarify what I mean by
people to people relations across place. mainstream geopolitics.
I have been a solidarity activist ever since, including several
years as an organizer of CISPES, the Committee in Solidarity with
the People of El Salvador. I have also worked as a professional 2. Geopolitics
Spanish interpreter and translator for 15 years, and organized
interpreting for the solidarity movement. I came back to academia Outside of academia geopolitics is widely imagined as (depend-
to understand differently what it is we are doing when we build ing on your generation) chess, the board game Risk, or the Total
solidarity, and how to do it more effectively. I found the concepts War video games. Big men moving big guns across a big playing
of anti-geopolitics and feminist geopolitics useful and want to field. The world divided into clear sides. It’s all on the map, as little
build on them. I argue here for paying attention to a sort of femi- figurines. Put a fort in here, a uranium mine there. They ’ve blown
up the runway. Hold the port. Why do all of this? Oh, right, for
security. To avoid, or win, the war. To keep the people safe. Or just
E-mail address: [email protected] maybe, to keep the investments safe, to build an empire.

0016-7185/$ - see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2011.01.007
 S. Koopman / Geoforum 42 (2011) 274–284 275

The term geopolitics was coined in 1899 by Kjellen. Around this of as the ‘Great Game’, struggles by states over imperialist expansion,
time Kjellen, Ratzel, Mahan and Mackinder each developed ideas of rather than the discourses that make that possible, or as something
how states are shaped by conflict over territory and resources done by ordinary people.
(Kearns, 2009). Carve up Africa. Rule the heartland to rule the Who gets to draw the map? Who gets to color it in? Geopolitics
world. The term is now widely associated with ‘realist’ interpreta- is often assumed to be something done by elites. Popular geopoli-
tions of international relations, but often left undefined by those tics, the imaginaries in the (corporate) media, is hardly ‘the peo-
using it. ple’s’ geopolitics (a phrase used by Dittmer (2007)). There has
What is the difference between politics and geopolitics? This is been a recent turn to the reception of these imaginaries by various
an ongoing debate in geography, often framed as the difference be- publics and how they actively make geopolitical meanings
tween capital P politics (states) and little p politics (everything (Dittmer, 2008), but it is rare to find an analysis of imaginaries in
else?) (Flint, 2003). What makes it geo? Territory? Land? Space? ‘the people’s’ media – that is, alternative grassroots media such
Since geo means the earth, does it have to be global? Is it only as indymedia, witness.org, or email alerts (though see Gregory’s
geo if it has do to with the foreign policy of states? With war? With analysis of blogs out of Baghdad (2004)).
security? But whose security, defined how? I am afraid there has The task that critical geopolitics sets out of problematizing the
been a gendering of these discussions. The dearth of women and ways that elites write space continues to be important, yet I want
feminists in political geography has been noted many times before to argue for everyone having access to re-envisioning and rework-
(Staeheli and Kofman, 2004; Sharp, 2007). Feminist political geog- ing both the map and its rules, including who gets to see, speak,
raphy has reworked the concept the ‘political’, but still many who have agency, and how we all get to move. I will come back to this
work on what might be called the ‘small p’ do not identify as polit- as I outline alter-geopolitics. For now, I want emphasize that
ical geographers (Flint, 2003). But even those that do seem to be whether geopolitics is understood to be moving things on the
having different conversations. Critical geopolitics has tended to map, or seeing and painting the map different colors, it is widely
focus on the reasoning of statecraft (Dalby, 2008), feminist geopol- understood to be done ‘from above’, by elites, and through the con-
itics looks not only at the state, but has also tended to look beyond tainer of the state. If we want to imagine geopolitics as something
and within it – though it has been arguing that scales are inter- that we all have access to, from all directions, it is important to
twined (more on this below). Mixing up these conversations would specify that when we use the term.
help to better understand both drones and the day to day. To me Those critiquing hegemonic geopolitics have sometimes been so
geopolitics means a focus on peace(s) across places, including the busy looking at those doing the looking at the maps, that they
place of the body. This is more often framed as security across failed to see the people on the map, much less their agency. At first,
space, and all too often simply as the study of war. critical geopolitics was too often not ‘peopled’, other than by Big
Men. That is to say, there was not a sense of how the politics based
on those scripts affect and are affected by the daily lives (and resis-
3. Critical geopolitics
tance) of the non-elite (Sharp, 2000a,b; Sparke, 2000; Dowler and
Sharp, 2001). It was also not peopled in the sense that the authors
Hegemonic geopolitics focuses on issues of location, resources,
themselves were not present in the work, but wrote in a disembod-
and terrain – and these do matter for the security and wellbeing
ied way (Sharp, 2000a,b; Sparke, 2000). New directions in critical
of states and of people. But how they matter has more to do with
geopolitics have worked to people it in various ways.
the ways we understand them, and as a result what we do with
them, than any determinant of ‘nature’ (Dahlman, 2009). Five riv-
ers meet near the peace community of San José in Colombia. That 4. Anti-geopolitics
alone does not make them more or less safe. But biodiesel is the
new big thing, and narco-paramilitaries are laundering their One such stream has been anti-geopolitics. Anti-geopolitics
money through oil palm plantations which need heavy irrigation, looks at the people on the map that are pushing back, that are try-
which makes those rivers matter (Hylton, 2006).1 ing to move themselves rather than be moved from above. Though
Critical geopolitics2 understands geopolitics to include the dis- the term was earlier used by Abdel-Malek (1977), Dalby (1990,
courses and imaginaries of P/politics – that is, the way the world 1993) and Ó Tuathail (1996), it has been frequently associated with
is understood and represented. If geopolitics is like the game of Risk, Routledge, who has defined it more explicitly (1998, 2003, 2006).
this is not moving the little tank figurines on the game board map, Whereas hegemonic geopolitics is traditionally carried out by
but the step before that – figuring out which side they are on. those with political, economic and cultural power, anti-geopolitics,
Who and what on the map is painted the color ‘us’ (blue?) or the col- as Routledge puts it, is ‘‘geopolitics from below’’. This is not a par-
or ‘them’ (red?). It has looked at these imaginaries in the studies, re- allel to Thompson’s (1968) ‘social history from below’, but rather is
ports and arguments of academia and think tanks (formal a challenge of the hegemony of the state and its elites by those who
geopolitics); political speeches, state actions (practical geopolitics); are dominated by it. Anti-geopolitics resists the material and/or
and mass media and public opinion (popular geopolitics) (Ó Tuathail discursive geopolitical practices of the ruling elite, through mate-
et al., 2006, p. 8). Yet my sense is that outside of academia many rial and/or discursive forms of resistance.3 This may be a resistance
think of it as only ‘practical geopolitics’, that is, Kissinger moving to the policies and representations of the state, financial institutions,
blue figurines, or the US opening seven military bases in Colombia or the media.
immediately after Ecuador closed its US base. It is widely thought As Routledge uses the term then, it is not necessarily, as the
Zapatistas put it, ‘‘from below and to the left’’, but rather any mate-
1
Hylton’s book is a good introduction to the Colombian conflict, where one out of rial or discursive challenge to geopolitical hegemony made by
10 have been displaced by war (the highest displacement rate in the world) and a those who are dominated by it (2003). But how dominated are
huge reverse land reform is happening through violence used for land grabs. For a US citizens by US empire? Those of us not in the high elite are
geographer’s analysis of this process and how it creates landscapes of terror see
Oslender (2007).
2 3
Critical geopolitics was popularized in the early 1990s, in particular by Ó Tuathail Routledge has argued that it ‘‘challenges both material geopolitical power of
(1996) and Dalby (1990). For what this thinking looks like today see the 2008, 13:3 states and political institutions and the representations imposed by political and
special issue of Geopolitics, the 2009, 75:4 special issue of Geojournal, in particular the economic elites upon the world and its people to serve their geopolitical interests’’
roundtable (Jones and Sage, 2009), and the 2010, 29:5 special issue of Political (Routledge, 2003, p. 237), but in personal communication (2007) he emphasized that
Geography. it could be one or the other or both.
276 S. Koopman / Geoforum 42 (2011) 274–284

certainly also negatively affected since, say, more military spending offer of this relationship useful. They look at how fear circulates
means less money for schools, but we are not dominated. into and out of life not through a flat ontology but as an assem-
If ‘‘from below’’ does not mean from the left, does it mean from blage, something like the strands of DNA where, ‘‘the ‘two strands’
a social movement? This seems to be a common misimpression of carry the same information and are bound by numerous connec-
the term, as several other geographers in briefly reviewing the con- tors . . . We could see these connections as events, encounters,
cept say that it is resistance by movements (Kofman, 2005, p. 527; movements, dialogues, actions, affects and things . . . these engage-
Agnew, 2003, p. 116; Power, 2003, p. 202). Perhaps this is because ments are fragile . . . the breaks and discontinuities . . . might repre-
Routledge himself has done so much work with movements, and sent the awkward, unfinished, disunited, conflicting nature of
has made calls for critical geopolitics to critically engage and iden- relations between the geopolitical and everyday; but ultimately
tify with movements (1996). Yet in his introduction to the anti- they are inter-reliant and complementary ’’ (p. 7). They want to
geopolitics section of the Geopolitics Reader, Routledge argues that, re-imagine the nexus of geopolitical and everyday to open up pos-
‘‘Anti-geopolitics can take myriad resistant forms, from the opposi- sibilities for ordinary lives holding solutions to political problems.
tional discourses of dissident intellectuals, the strategies and tac- They point to the ways that the everyday speaks back and changes
tics of social movements to armed insurrection and terrorism’’ seemingly immutable forces. This question of what ‘the political’ is,
(2006, p. 233). The term anti-geopolitics is a reworking of Konrad’s and its relationship to scale, has long been a focus of Anglo feminist
term anti-politics, for the political activity of ‘‘those who don’t political geography. A key collection of this work is Mapping
want to be politicians and who refuse to share in power’’ (2006, Women, Making Politics, edited by Staeheli et al. (2004).
p. 260). It would appear then that anti-geopolitics is people want- The term feminist geopolitics was first used in print in 2001.
ing only to move themselves on the map, not others. That year Dowler and Sharp organized a special issue of Space
For understanding solidarity activism, like our sanctuary cara- and Polity on feminist geopolitics (Secor, 2001; Dowler and Sharp,
van, the term anti-geopolitics seems both too broad (including 2001; Staeheli, 2001; Smith, 2001) and Hyndman (2001) published
all sorts of challenges, even violent ones) and too specific (depend- a separate call for feminist geopolitics. When they used the term
ing on how one defines ‘from below’). It also does not address the feminist geopolitics Dowler and Sharp (2001) were grappling with
part of sanctuary and efforts like it that matters most to me. I do this relationship between, as they put it, the international and the
not simply want to resist being moved by those playing the Great everyday – how identities and mundane practices shape recon-
Game, I want to play a different game! I want to change the rules. I structions of the nation and the international, just as global geopo-
push back against what I do not want in the world in order to make litical discourse shapes daily lives and bodies. They argued for
space for nurturing what I do want. To be critical means to do both. widening the realm of the political. This means not only writing
As Blomley (2007) argues, it means to be animated by both anger women back in, but grounding geopolitics in practice and in place
and hope. in a way that makes the experiences of the disenfranchised more
visible. Geopolitical discourse can be understood more broadly,
not only as representation but the ways that geopolitical discourse
5. Feminist geopolitics is worked out and always embodied in mundane everyday prac-
tices. They argue for bodies not merely as ‘‘surfaces for discursive
Feminist geopolitics does turn to hope, and it is another way inscription’’ but as ‘‘sites of performance in their own right’’
that critical geopolitics has been ‘peopled’. It is included as a form (p. 169). Dowler and Sharp remind us that the danger in talking
of anti-geopolitics in the Geopolitics Reader (Ó Tuathail et al., 2006). of a feminist geopolitics is that it can render feminist critique sin-
It does resist dominant representations, but it goes beyond decon- gular, and argue for the importance of engaging with ‘non-western’
struction or resistance to a more positive focus on alternative feminists.
understandings of geopolitics (Dowler and Sharp, 2001; Hyndman, In Hyndman’s (2001) article she likewise argued for feminist
2001). Unfortunately the term feminist geopolitics is widely mis- geopolitics not as any one new theory, but rather as an analytic
understood to mean simply gender and geopolitics. It is actually or imaginary that not only exposes the investments of dominant
a much broader project which reworks what geopolitics means geopolitical imaginaries, but then works to, as she puts it, put
by re-envisioning who does it, how, and at what scales. humpty dumpty back together again, to point to new ways forward
Cynthia Enloe’s book Bananas, beaches and bases (2000 (1990)) in practice, recognizing the contingency of place, people and con-
did not use the term feminist geopolitics, but was an important text in making change. Hyndman here lays out three steps that
early feminist receipting of what geopolitics means. She argued can be taken in a feminist geopolitical approach: using a ‘finer
that the personal is international and the international is personal. and coarser’ scale of security than the state that instead focuses
This relationship is one that feminists have continued to grapple on the safety and broader wellbeing of people, as both individuals
with.4 The collection the Global and the Intimate, edited by Rosner and groups; analyzing spaces of violence that traverse public/pri-
and Pratt (2006), understands these two as intertwining. It disrupts vate, domestic/international distinctions; and focusing on people’s
grand narratives of global relations by focusing on the specific, not varying mobility as a way to analyze geopolitical power across
by reifying the local. They argue that the intimate is not the opposite space.
of the global but its supplement, its undoing, even as the global can Hyndman has written several articles about feminist geopolitics
haunt the intimate. The intimate is not a refuge but a politicized (2003, 2004, 2005, 2007), and has done much to circulate and de-
sphere, which feminists can use to approach the world. For reviews fine the term. Now many more are engaging with it, as evidenced
of work that does this see Mountz and Hyndman (2006) and Wright by the three paper sessions and panel on feminist geopolitics at the
(2008). 2009 AAG.5 Because Hyndman has made such an important contri-
Another recent collection, Fear: critical geopolitics and everyday bution to thinking about what a feminist geopolitics is and can be, I
life, edited by Pain and Smith (2008), works with this recognition engage with her work more closely here.
that the scaling of phenomena as geopolitical or everyday, global
or local is an artificial and political move. I found the image they
5
The annual conference of the American Association of Geographers. These
4
Enloe herself has continued to do powerful work along these lines, see sessions were organized by Deborah Dixon and many of those presentations are
particularly her most recent Nimo’s War, Emma’s War: Making Feminist Sense of the forthcoming as a special issue in Gender Place and Culture edited by Deborah Dixon
Iraq War (Enloe, 2010) and its use of personal stories. and Sallie Marston.
 S. Koopman / Geoforum 42 (2011) 274–284 277

How might feminist geopolitics approach violence? In a 2003 framework, rather than described as a practice that is also engaged
article using feminist geopolitics as a framework to analyze the in outside of academia.
September 11, 2001 attacks, Hyndman argues that feminist geo- Dowler and Sharp (2001) critique critical geopolitics for giving
politics is ‘‘a more accountable and embodied notion of politics ‘‘little sense of alternative possibilities’’ and argue for feminist geo-
that analyzes the intersection of power and space at multiple politics as a more constructive form of critical geopolitics (p. 167).
scales, one that eschews violence as a legitimate means to political Yet feminist geopolitics has so far given little sense of the many
ends’’ (p. 3). Here then she goes beyond her 2001 argument for alternatives being worked out on ‘the streets’. There is much to
analyzing spaces of violence to say that the analysis itself should learn from the ways forward being worked out in practice. I want
‘eschew violence.’ Others have not taken this up, and Hyndman to both imagine a better world and work with others to build and
has not come back to it in quite this way.6 Her later work empha- live it.
sizes how feminist geopolitics sees more violences, and in different
ways. Feminist geopolitics offers powerful avenues for doing embod- 6. Alter-geopolitics
ied analysis of violence across intertwining scales. Yet the idea that
the analysis itself could eschew violence intrigues me. Could we ex- Another world is possible, and everyone seems to have different
tend this to refer to analysis that is done through and with nonvio- ideas about what it can look like. I want to hear more about them.
lent action? I will argue for this below. Many grassroots groups are not only pushing back against hege-
From violence to what? Hyndman, in her 2001 article, argues monic policies of (in)security (anti-geopolitics), but also nurturing
that feminist geopolitics should point to ways forward, and in her other types of nonviolent security in connection that they do want
2004 article she argues that it works to render possible paths of – what I have been calling alter-geopolitics (Koopman, 2008).
change. But what of paths and ways forward that are already being Grassroots groups are not waiting for (or trusting) the state, but
worked out by people organizing for change? How can it engage coming together on their own, non-violently, for safety.
with them? Later in her 2001 article Hyndman says that a feminist The securities they are able to build look untraditional. As the
geopolitical project relies on and aims to strengthen a healthy civil Zapatistas put it, there is one no and many yeses. There is no Zion
society that does not tolerate systematic violence against citizens to escape to, we are never fully off the Matrix, or totally safe. But
(p. 219). She does not directly address whether organizations of ci- we can all be safer, in different ways. In Colombia it may be the
vil society are themselves part of such a project, though she seems safety of resisting being displaced by the paramilitaries by living
to leave that possibility open. Though she makes no mention of the and working together in rural areas, being part of the alternative
relationship between feminist geopolitics and civil society per se in land registry, or running an independent school so that children
later articles (2004, 2007), she talks of O’Kane’s reporting from Bos- will not be recruited into armed groups. In the Democratic Repub-
nia as a kind of feminist geopolitics ‘‘at work’’ (Hyndman, 2004, p. lic of Congo women walk remote areas searching for rape victims
311). In 2003 she argued that ‘‘A feminist geopolitics might be left to die and take them in and nurse them back to health. No,
viewed at once as a critical approach and a contingent set of polit- not safe, but safer. In Uganda shelters gather child ‘night commut-
ical practices operating at multiple scales that include, but are not ers’ resisting recruitment. In the United States churches are once
restricted to, the nation-state’’ (p. 4). It is unclear here who is again taking immigrants into sanctuary to resist deportation. In
engaging in these practices, but I would argue that many outside Palestine, Israeli women stand watch at checkpoints.7 In countries
of academia are. In 2003 Hyndman went on to argue that, ‘‘A fem- around the world ‘take back the night’ marches create safety through
inist geopolitics takes this deconstructive impulse one step further numbers,8 the copwatch9 movement monitors police with video
back into the ‘real world’ so to speak so that identities, ways of see- cameras to deter abuse, and international accompaniers walk with
ing, and intervention on the ground can also reconstruct alternative those under threat.
futures’’ and that ‘‘It seeks embodied ways of seeing and material I am interested in how geopolitics is thought differently not just
notions of protection for people on the ground’’ (p. 5, emphasis by writing about bodies, but by moving bodies. I am interested in
added). the thinking that is being done in and through action, particularly
Is feminist geopolitics then the subset of anti-geopolitics that is by those that are using their bodies, together, to build alternative
done by social movements? I do not think so. Though the AAG nonviolent securities. I want to engage with feminist geopolitics
2009 sessions on feminist geopolitics included several papers that as it is being done by bodies ‘in the streets’10 (and in homes,
discussed social movements, these generally offered a feminist churches, the jungle, on youtube, etc., but at any rate ‘off the page’11
geopolitics analysis of this activism, rather than arguing that these as Pain has put it (2009b).
groups were themselves engaging in feminist geopolitics. There Feminist geopolitics is not just about critiquing hegemony, but
has been a good bit of work in geography on social movements, also about pointing to, and I would argue also creating, alternatives.
even in critical geopolitics, and even on feminist political activism What does that look like in action, off the page and in the struggle?
in particular (Dalby, 1993; Sparke, 1996), but I have not seen this Let me turn now more in depth to two forms of alter-geopolitics
activism framed as feminist geopolitics in practice. Instead that I have been close to, peace communities and international
feminist geopolitics has been widely taken up as an analytical
7
See www.machsomwatch.org.en.
8
After a spate of rapes in my neighbourhood in Bogotá we had a take back the
night march, winding around our blocks shouting ‘‘solidaridad es seguridad’’ (solidarity
6 is security).
She has however recently argued for critical geopolitics generally as ‘‘a space for
9
the production of less chauvinistic, and hopefully nonviolent universalisms that do not There are over 70 copwatch groups across the US, with others in Canada, Australia
come with pre-given content, political values, and prescribed outcomes, but that and France using a nonviolent model of directly monitoring the police with video
attend to context, history and vulnerability to violence’’ (2010, p. 254 emphasis cameras to both deter and document police abuse. The movement is some 20 years
added), though in that same article she quotes Butler on non-violence not being a rule old (Alex, 2007). In Palestine B’Tselem has a camera distribution program to foster
that can be applied in all situations, implying that it to do so would be foundational. this sort of monitoring.
10
Instead Hyndman is compellingly arguing here for what she calls a ‘post-foundational When I started writing about alter-geopolitics (2008) I described it as ‘feminist
ethic of encounter’. By privileging the thinking that happens in and through geopolitics on the ground.’ Yet Hyndman understands all feminist geopolitics to be
nonviolent practices I am certainly not saying that non-violence is the only right ‘on the ground’ in the sense that it focuses on material bodies in everyday life
response to injustice. Gandhi himself recognized that non-violence was not always (personal communication, 2010).
11
possible and said that it was better to resist violently than to be passive (Hardiman, Writing pages about these actions is often a key part of the action itself, but these
2003, p. 59). are usually circulated in forums that are more grassroots than say, Geoforum.
278 S. Koopman / Geoforum 42 (2011) 274–284

accompaniment, and then turn more specifically to what charac-

terizes these and other such work as alter-geopolitics.

7. International accompaniment

I recently spent over a year in Colombia thinking with accompa-

niers about what they do. Protective accompaniment puts bodies
that are less at risk next to bodies that are under threat, as a sort
of ‘‘unarmed bodyguard’’ (Mahony and Eguren, 1997; Henderson,
2009; Pratt, 2008). Though described by Gandhi and used in India
by his Shanti Sena (peace army), it was first widely used by the US
civil rights movement when whites accompanied blacks.12 The
term accompaniment was first used for this work by Peace Brigades
International (PBI), which sent the first international team to Guate-
mala in 1983. There are now international accompaniers in ten
countries. Though Colombia did not receive a team until 1991, it is
now the country with the largest number of international groups
(10,13 including PBI’s largest team). There are also international
accompaniers working in Sri Lanka, the Philippines (Mindanao), Pal-
estine, Guatemala, Mexico, Nepal, Iraq (Kurdistan), Sudan, and First
Nations territory in Canada.
Why does simply walking with someone protect them (Fig. 1)?
Well, usually it is not just any body at risk that is being accompa-
nied, but the bodies of those struggling to build peace and justice
in the midst of conflict. Usually it is not just any body that is doing
the accompanying, but a privileged outsider body that is less likely
to be killed. The idea is that, as accompaniers often put it, by being
there accompaniers ‘‘make space’’ for peace. But it is also about
more than just being there in the moment, walking alongside. It
also relies on networks with the ability to pressure chains of polit- Fig. 1. FOR accompanying displaced San José peace community members as they
ical and military influence in other spaces/times, which raises the return to their homes, February 2008. Photo by author.

stakes of an attack.
As movement thinking tends to happen, I had many informal
ongoing conversations with accompaniers about what it means
to make space for peace, and how privilege is part of that. My hav-
ing long been active in the solidarity movement was key to making
this kind of talk possible. It is not always safe to have these conver-
sations in Colombia, but we found ways – often over lunch, at par-
ties, etc. These conversations eventually gelled into a series of
interactive workshops that I held with six of the organizations.
I worked most closely as a critical collaborator with FOR, the
Fellowship of Reconciliation, which has two to three accompaniers
(mostly from the US) living full-time in the peace community of
San José de Apartadó, Colombia (Fig. 2). The members of the peace
community are struggling to resist pressure by armed groups to
run them off their land and make them yet another of the 1 in
10 displaced Colombians who have had to flee their communities.
In Colombia struggling to stay on, or even just near, your land is
dangerous for small farmers – but there is a growing movement
that is doing just that, as families join together and form what they
call peace communities, or sometimes humanitarian zones, to keep
the different armed actors from using violence to push them off Fig. 2. The peace community of San José is near the border with Panama. Map by
Eric Leinberger, UBC.
their land. Accompaniment has been crucial for making this
possible.
In 1996 and 1997 the Colombian military carried out two mas- town. Around 500 people who had come down from the mountains
sacres near the village of San José. Most survivors fled to the city, decided to stay in the village. They issued a public declaration that
but some just came down from their hamlets in the mountains they would not collaborate in any way with any of the armed ac-
and gathered in the village center, which at that point was a ghost tors, that is, not the military, the paramilitary, the highly milita-
rized police, the guerillas, or the plain old drug traffickers
12
Certainly not all in the movement saw the role of whites allies in this way. (though there are few of those, because all of the above are in-
13
The teams currently in Colombia are: Christian Peacemaker Teams (US/Canada), volved in trafficking). The community declared themselves neutral
Fellowship of Reconciliation (US), Swedish Fellowship of Reconciliation, Presbyterian in active non-violence, and no one was allowed to carry arms. The
Peace Fellowship (US), Projet Accompagnement Solidarité Colombie (Quebec, Can-
ada), the European Solidarity Network, Espacio Bristol (UK), Peace Brigades (Europe/
idea was that by declaring themselves a peace community they
US), International Peace Observatory (Europe/US), Witness for Peace (US), and would make it clear that none of these armed actors had any rea-
Palomas de Paz (Italy). son to attack them.
 S. Koopman / Geoforum 42 (2011) 274–284 279

was up there with his family working his crops to get the area
ready for the return when he, his family, and another family
(including three small children in all) were massacred and their
bodies cut into pieces by the military, working with paramilitar-
ies.14 Because Luis Eduardo had travelled the world telling the story
of the community, even speaking at the vigil to close the US Army’s
School of the Americas in Georgia (see Fig. 3), this massacre has be-
come a key case in the struggle against impunity in Colombia.
At that point the police insisted on setting up a police post in
the main village. The community is so clear that they will not have
anyone with guns in their space that they displaced, yet again, and
rebuilt the village just down the road, away from the police. They
also kept working on moving back up into the mountains.
On February 21, 2008, the third anniversary of the massacre,
five brave families went ahead and moved back to the hamlet of
Mulatos anyways. A group of international accompaniers and 150
members of the community hiked with them the 9 hours up to
the massacre site to hold a commemoration and house blessing
ceremonies. I was honored to be along. Several of the accompaniers
had come from Spanish and Italian sister cities specifically for the
occasion, and some of these were so moved that they established
permanent accompaniment there, as ‘Operation Dove’.
Accompaniment keeps growing because it seems to work. Of
course, it is hard to know exactly why actors choose not to attack,
but a peace community member told me that even after having
FOR there for several years, when he runs into armed actors on
paths further up the mountains they ask him, ‘‘are those interna-
tionals still there with you?’’ Since FOR has been in La Union the
attacks have happened away from the hamlet, away from the
internationals.
FOR works to end US military aid to Colombia (which has
reached six billion US dollars over the past 10 years15) and docu-
ment how that military aid is tied to human rights abuses against
the peace community and across the country. Yet as they push back
Fig. 3. Luis Eduardo Guerra speaking at the vigil to close the US Army’s School of
the Americas, November 2004. Photo by Linda Panetta, www.opticalrealities.org, against what they do not want, they also use their own bodies to fo-
used by kind permission. cus on and non-violently support the creation of what they do want
in this world.
Astoundingly this has been seen as very threatening – all of the Accompaniers widely describe their work as ‘‘making space for
armed actors continue to claim that the community is supporting peace’’. There has been a great deal written in geography about the
the other side, and continue to attack them. These attacks have in- war, but surprisingly little about spaces of peace (McConnell and
cluded over 186 assassinations in the past 10 years, nearly 30 of Williams, forthcoming). Even collections of geographies of peace
these by the guerillas, the rest by the military and paramilitary, of- have been more about war (Flint, 2005; Pepper and Jenkins,
ten working closely together. The community has grown to around 1985). This was also true of the recent Annals of the Association of
1200 as others who had fled came back and joined, but 186 dead is American Geographers special issue on geographies of peace and
still a huge number. Attacks have also included rapes, burning armed conflict. There were very few articles that focused on peace-
homes and the school, armed robbery of scarce community re- building – and most of those focused on technocratic peacebuild-
sources, bombs left in fields, and blockading the road and cutting ing that failed (Kleinfeld, 2009; Stokke, 2009; Akçalı and
off supplies for months at a time – as well as constant death Antonsich, 2009). One article did look at how sharing has hap-
threats. pened in territorial disputes (Cohen and Frank 2009). Only two
This community is incredibly brave and determined, and after a articles out of the 24 look at grassroots peacemaking (Blumen
couple of years they decided that a group would try moving back to and Halevi, 2009; Henderson, 2009). I am grateful that this issue
La Union, one of the closest small hamlets – a several hour hike up came out, but I wish that it had discussed the meaning of peace. In-
the mountains. In response the army committed a massacre in La stead the introduction, and most of the articles, seem to imply that
Union, killing six people in 2000. Amazingly this time the survivors peace is simply negative peace (i.e., the absence of war). One of the
did not all flee. Instead they sought a way to increase their safety dangers of this definition is that it easily slips into peace as simply
and be able to stay. the absence of death, or simply certain deaths, and as such ‘peace’
At that point Peace Brigades was coming into the village center becomes something that can be kept by occupying troops. Loyd
a few days a week, and the community had seen that attacks de-
creased with PBI there. They felt that the riskier action of staying 14
One military officer (Captain Gordillo) pled guilty and implicated his superiors.
in the more remote hamlet of La Union required more support, Another 10 military officers were acquitted. Five paramilitaries have been found
and they asked another organization, FOR, to accompany them guilty through the supposed demobilization process. No charges have been filed
there full-time. FOR started doing this in January of 2002 and has against higher officers responsible for ordering the operation (Generals Fandiño and
Montoya), nor against Colonel Duque, who coordinated it. The case has become
had a team of two internationals there since.
emblematic of the army going beyond tolerance of paramilitary activity to actually
A few years ago the community decided that some would try to coordinating atrocities with them.
move back to Mulatos, another hamlet further still up the moun- 15
For documentation of US military aid to Latin America see Just the Facts at
tain trails. In 2005 Luis Eduardo Guerra, a leader of the community, www.justf.org.
280 S. Koopman / Geoforum 42 (2011) 274–284

(2009) is the only author in the issue who complicates the defini- under this rubric, though as a very specific sort of progressive
tion of peace and turns to visions of positive peace, or peace with geopolitics.
justice (though Coleman (2009) interrogates meanings of security). Alter-geopolitics is feminist geopolitics as done through action.
In my own work on geographies of peace (Koopman, forthcom- It is people coming together to build alternative nonviolent securi-
ing) I have been exploring both what geographical thinking on the ties. It is groups making connections which focus on the safety of
relational making of space can offer to the work of accompaniment, bodies (often by actually moving bodies) and ground geopolitics
and what accompaniers’ work on the daily making of spaces of in everyday life.
peace and alternative securities might offer to such theorizing, What characterizes alter-geopolitics? First, let me clarify the
and to our understanding of peace and its spatialization. Here obvious. Neither accompaniers nor peace communities nor any
rather than look in depth at what peace space might mean in a par- other groups doing this work use the term alter-geopolitics. Most
ticular context, I am arguing for geographers listening to more do not use the term feminist or even geopolitics. Just as feminist
groups working for different visions of this on the ground, and geopolitics is not necessarily about gender, gender may not be cen-
for understanding their work as a form of geopolitics. tral to a group’s focus, as in these two cases. Yet I consider them
My most animated discussions with accompaniers have been feminist in that they, to use a definition offered by Hyndman
about the paradox inherent in their work. They are using the fact (2003, p. 3), ‘‘address the inequitable and violent relationships of
that their lives ‘count’ more (because of passport/economic/racial power among people and places based on real or perceived differ-
privilege, which are hard to untangle), to build a world where ences’’. Solidarity groups do not talk about their work as ‘‘doing
everyone’s lives ‘count’ – where it matters when a chocolate farm- geopolitics’’, yet I argue it is. It still has to do with location, re-
er is killed in the Colombian jungle. When you use privilege in this sources, even terrain – but by building connections across all sort
way do you make it stronger? By looking closely with accompa- of distances and differences solidarity activists rework who has ac-
niers at how they ‘make space for peace’ – how space is something cess to what, and where, and how we stay safe and well together.
that they practice, produce and perform every day – we got a sense Second, these groups ‘people’ geopolitics very literally. They
of the many ways privilege is at work (Koopman, forthcoming). embody it with actual bodies. They highlight the everyday security
Clearly alter-geopolitical projects are far from unproblematic. Yet of bodies by putting bodies together, putting bodies in unusual
it is precisely the process of struggling with such contradictions, places, putting bodies on the line. In the case of accompaniment
and the thinking through of what works on the ground and how and peace communities it is bodies standing together, walking to-
and why, that are worth both learning from and contributing to. gether, living together, non-violently, for safety. They do so in ways
that challenge both material domination and dominant represen-
tations (anti-geopolitics), but that are also about living the change
8. What is alter-geopolitics? they want, about collectively creating their own alternative securi-
ties here and now.
The term ‘alternative geopolitics’ has been used before to mean Third, groups doing alter-geopolitics weave together various
various things. Lacoste used it to mean a concern with the domi- scales. Feminist geopolitics understands scales to be intertwined,
nated rather than the dominant (Parker, 2000). Scott (2005) uses alter-geopolitics ties more threads through them. Rather than see
it to mean states finding security through cooperation rather than the peace community as ‘jumping’ scale, I like Pain and Smith’s
competition (e.g., the EU). Ó Tuathail (2010) argues that inherent in (2008) image of the everyday and the global as an assemblage with
critical geopolitics is an alternative geopolitics, by which he means many connectors. Geopolitics does not just trickle down from elites
one that is more grounded and localized. Slater has argued for an through media images and policy. Accompaniers do their own geo-
alternative geopolitics of memory and for a postcolonial geopolitics politics, but not just ‘from below’, understood in terms of scale.
(2004, 2007). The term pacific geopolitics is used by Megoran They reweave the connections between the everyday and the glo-
(2010) to refer to a focus on possibilities for peace. The term emo- bal, inserting the safety of chocolate farmers in the mountains of
tional geopolitics has been put forward by Pain (2009c, 2010) to Colombia into Congressional discussions of US military aid to
point to how our understanding of geopolitics is reworked when Colombia. Indeed Luis Eduardo’s assassination inspired organizing
we look at how emotions are deployed and felt in geopolitical across the US that led to much of that aid being frozen for many
events, especially if that thinking is done with those on the sharp months.
end of fear. Sharp (2011) uses subaltern critical geopolitics to refer Creating a binary between what is geopolitical/global/discur-
to geopolitical critique from outside the global North. In Latin sive and what is everyday/local/lived is misleading (Pain, 2009a,
America there has been a growing discussion about changing the p. 220). These groups shift these relations, and weave connections
geopolitics of knowledge (Mignolo, 2001; Walsh et al., 2002; Ulloa, that shape spaces of safety in solidarity. Though they do not as-
2010). These are all useful ways to think about geopolitics differ- sume the state is the container for security, this does not mean that
ently. I am using the term ‘alter-geopolitics’ here to point to some- they ignore the state (Sharp, 2004, p. 98). Quite the opposite, in
thing else, related but more specific. Alter-geopolitics is geopolitics Colombia and in many places around the world the (in)security
being done differently. Of course this doing also involves thinking they face is largely shaped by the state. Yet they thread connec-
through and with action. tions in between and through and beyond the state to weave their
The term ‘progressive geopolitics’ has recently been used by own security.
Kearns (2008, 2009) to argue for geopolitics as more than what is Fourth, alter-geopolitics is not done ‘from below’, understood in
done through states, force, and capitalist markets. Kearns broadens terms of power, but rather from all sides. Indeed, some are explic-
the perspective of what geopolitics is to include non-state entities, itly using what privilege they have access to. International accom-
cooperation, and non-commodified forms of labor. As he puts it, if paniers do this by using the ‘global’ weight of their passport to get
we only study states engaged in force, we will never imagine, or partners through daily checkpoints. They are also weaving the
understand, how peace is made in other ways (2008, p. 1610). everyday work to build alternative securities into and through
Kearns argues for looking at how geopolitics is also being done dominant geopolitics. When Colombian President Uribe met with
non-violently by non-state actors, and for paying attention to these members of the US Congress in July 2007, they raised their concern
neglected practices and their possibilities of progressive change – over the break-in to the office of FOR accompaniers in Bogotá
not instead of, but alongside the important work of critique. I am (members of Congress had received hundreds of calls and letters
inspired by this call and take it up here. Alter-geopolitics falls about the break-in).
 S. Koopman / Geoforum 42 (2011) 274–284 281

Fifth, alter-geopolitics is collective not individualized. It is done I have been struck by how often groups building alternative
by groups, but these may not count as or consider themselves to be securities turn to putting bodies together for safety, be it at night
social movements. There is disagreement amongst accompaniers as (Ugandan night commuters), or in the desert (women walking to
to whether what they do is ‘‘activism’’ or a ‘‘movement’’. The grow- find abandoned rape survivors in the DRC), or in dark alleys (Take
ing number of peace communities in Colombia do not all agree nor Back the Night marches around the world). The primary focus of
work together. It does not seem useful to have any litmus test as to these groups is on physical security. But those who have enough
what sort of group can be understood as doing alter-geopolitics. physical safety to work for other forms of security might do this
They might be large or small, organized or messy, stable or ephem- not by putting bodies together, but perhaps by putting together
eral. It could be a spontaneous gathering of neighbors to non-vio- food, or land, or engaging in other forms of commons-ism. In the
lently stop a military incursion (see León, 2004). It could even be case of the peace community it has also meant saving seeds, alter-
DIY (do it yourself) actions, like taking pictures when you stumble native schools, a feeding program for children and the elderly,
onto police abuse. Though there is an organized copwatch move- infection control, and certifying as fair trade so that they can earn
ment, one does not have to have been active in it to do this. It seems more for their cacao. Accompaniers in the peace community work
though that DIY actions make an impact when many people do to stop military abuses as a way to highlight the need to stop US
them and spread the word, so even though they are not done in military aid, which they regularly point out is money that could
groups per se, I consider this to be action by a group of people. be used for social needs in the US. For now I have focused on
Alter-geopolitics is not, however, DIY paranoid parental hyper- how groups build alternative forms of physical security, but often
vigilance. As Katz argues, the nannycam hidden inside the stuffed this is done so as to be able to work for broader securities, and
monkey is also deeply inside the security state (2009). These sorts these economic, food, environmental, health, and other securities
of responses that individualize and privatize security are not tied are intertwined.
to groups promoting alternatives. They are not building connec- Finally, alter-geopolitics works to change the rules of the game.
tions across difference, but rather distancing. They provide a false Geopolitics is not simply some Great Game to be played by Great
sense of physical security that diverts attention from broader social Men. Accompaniers and peace community members are doing it
insecurities, like healthcare, education and employment. for themselves. Alter-geopolitics means not only pieces moving
Sixth, alter-geopolitics is nonviolent. Megoran (2008) argues for themselves on the map, not only changing the way they draw
critical geopolitical thinking to contribute to non-violence as a vi- and see the map itself, what colors, what bodies, they see where
sion and method. Hyndman (2003) argues that feminist geopolitics – but also changing who gets to move what, where, when, how
in particular ‘eschews violence’. I want to argue here that as it and why. This does not mean groups doing alter-geopolitics are
moves into ‘the streets’ it becomes more actively nonviolent. Not advocating any one new set of rules, for these will necessarily be
all grassroots groups working for alternative securities are doing different across contexts.
alter-geopolitics, for many of them are using violence. Militias,
paramilitaries, privatized security and gated communities are pro-
liferating, North and South. But alter-geopolitics instead works to 9. Solidarity scholarship
build and live alternatives to the (in)security of violence. It tries
to live the change it seeks in the world. Alter-geopolitics does If alter-geopolitics happens ‘off the page’, what is the role of
not work to keep ‘us’ safe by keeping ‘them’ out, but rather works academics? I do not want to ‘study’ these groups, nor do social
to keep a larger us safe by building connections with former thems. movement theory about them. I am interested in understanding
Peace community members farm together with their neighbors for what these groups do as a form of geopolitics and in thinking about
safety. US citizens live in the jungle in Colombia to stop death security with these groups, through collaborative theorizing. Tradi-
squads. This no to violence does not necessarily mean a no to the tionally academics thought about geopolitics to serve the prince,
state, but it can be an engagement with state (in)security, an at- not the people, but I want to support the thinking and organizing
tempt to shift it. In the case of accompaniment this is done through happening ‘in the streets’. I do this academic work both on and in
monitoring, and regular meetings with the military and both solidarity. As Haraway argues (1988), our knowledge is situated
Colombian and US officials. and partial (in both senses of the word), which is why it is impor-
Seventh, alter-geopolitics works to build security in a broader, tant to think through ‘non-innocent conversations’ with various
multiple, sense. It is people coming together across difference not others, so that we can strengthen both our solidarities and
just to stay alive and be safe, but to live well, to live with dignity understandings.
and justice. Positive peace is more than simply the absence of vio- The over-ground railroad to sanctuary, a peace community in
lence. Well-being also requires security of food and housing and the mountains of Colombia, international accompaniers living with
health, for a start. Far too often though the first priority has to be them – these practices of alter-geopolitics tend to be done by small
physical safety. You cannot organize your community for access groups of people, but they are not ‘‘little things’’ (Thrift, 2000; Mül-
to food if you get killed for speaking out about paramilitaries tak- ler, 2008), and they can have a bigger impact if as academics we
ing the land. The peace community of San José has been able to re- honor, listen to, learn from, contribute to, connect and share the
sist further displacement and stay near their original lands by work they are doing. Much as Gibson-Graham’s (2008) focus on
coming together to work the land, and by asking for international alternative economic practices has been a way to re-imagine what
accompaniment. Unlike the nannycam in the monkey (Katz, 2009), economic geography can be, honoring alternative peace and secu-
alter-geopolitics does not focus on bodily security so as to ignore rity practices reworks what political geography can be and do. I am
other securities, but rather to make struggles for broader securities arguing for making visible and nurturing ‘‘those alternatives al-
possible for broader groups of people. ready in our midst’’ as a way to think differently (Blomley, 2007,
Alter-geopolitics, then, to use the Zapatista slogan, says one no, p. 60).
to violence, and many yeses, to various visions of security. The no is I am arguing for academics asking what positive peace is in dif-
to making us safe by making them unsafe. The no is to the (in)secu- ferent contexts, how it can be made, and thinking about this with
rity state, to geopolitics as usual. The many yeses to alternative peacemakers. Certainly it is also worthwhile to look at groups with
securities are necessarily different across contexts. Different vi- violent visions of security, such as Gallaher’s work on militias
sions of what security is and can be are being worked out in the (2003). Critique, both of such groups and of more hegemonic geo-
doing, as groups work to create that security. politics, can inspire and open space for resistance. But to be critical,
282 S. Koopman / Geoforum 42 (2011) 274–284

as put forward by the Frankfurt school, implies a two-way motion: each other? If they see that the board is not flat, and weave across
both taking apart what one is against, and building what one is for its many levels? Can they just throw out the game board, with its
(Benhabib, 1986). This does not mean that academics should not hand from above? The problem with that is that there is no Zion off
critique peacemaking. Indeed, many members of these groups the Matrix to go to. Even as some pieces work to change the rules
are quite critical of their own work. Rather, I am interested in and play their own game, others try to move them, to play the
engaging in that critique with them, as a critical collaborator, in game on them. It’s not just pawns that are changing the rules
ways that learn from and also strengthen that organizing. and the configuration of the board. The laws of war have been
Again, I am not suggesting social movement studies of groups changing fast. Whose life counts. Who gets a day in court. What
building alternative securities. I am not interested in describing bodies can go where.
and critiquing how these struggles come together, but rather Grassroots groups often look to the rules, to international law.
engaging with them around their own why’s and what for’s. Rather The peace community of San José has appealed countless times
than what tends to be a dry and distant analysis of what move- to the Inter-American court, which has repeatedly ruled that they
ments are doing,16 I am arguing for getting messy and doing theory require protective measures from the state. Yet they continue to be
together. It is the thinking while doing, the theory in action, of these attacked by the military and paramilitaries, and so seek some mea-
groups that there is much to learn from and with. sure of safety with international accompaniers. They stand with
I recognize that even ethnography is unusual in political geog- those whom the rules might work more for, but their very standing
raphy (Megoran, 2006), and that participatory and collaborative together is bending the rules in their own way. The grassroots may
work is more of a stretch. Yet my sense is that many political geog- wish that the rules of the chessboard were fixed, but it is more
raphers are already collaborating in some way with various organi- strategic to recognize and expose that they are changing, and to
zations, though that is rarely discussed. This is particularly true of be part of making those changes.
feminist work, which is part of a broader feminist project that cuts The global justice movement (or network of movements) has
across ‘borders’ such as what is academic and what is political. It is widely insisted in recent years that it not be considered anti-glob-
my hope that we can keep opening more space for collaboration by alization, but rather as working for a different sort, an alter-global-
supporting each other as academics in honoring collaborative prac- ization. The slogan of the World Social Forum is ‘‘another world is
tices and thinking. possible.’’ In recent years ‘‘and we are building it’’ is often added. It
This is not a new argument. Routledge (1996) has called for aca- is in that spirit of honoring and learning from and with organizing
demics doing critical geopolitics to engage in solidarity, to work as that is already doing geopolitics differently to build another world
critical collaborators with social movements. Rather than the that I propose the term alter-geopolitics.
indignity of speaking for others, he argues for Haraway’s (1992)
politics of articulation, for networking ideas as subjects working Acknowledgments
together to understand. Geographers have increasingly been doing
participatory research – though not much in critical geopolitics. Endless thanks to Derek Gregory, who is so generous with his
Pain (2009b) and Askins (2008) are notable exceptions.17 Pain calls support. Many thanks to Rachel Pain, Jennifer Hyndman, and Deb-
for a co-production of knowledge, and argues that ‘‘engaged and orah Dixon for careful reads of drafts. Thanks too to Fiona McCon-
explicitly relational scholarship has much to contribute to critical nell, Nancy Hiemstra, Katie Willis and the reviewers for catching
geopolitics’’ (2009c). Sparke (2005) argues that as academics we holes. Of course those that are left are my own. Thanks to too many
have a responsibility to examine other graphings of the geo. I have geographers to name who have talked about this with me over the
found it not so much a responsibility as a joy to engage with the past few years. I am so grateful to be part of a vibrant discipline
graphings being done with and through action. with so many committed to social justice. La lucha sigue y sigue.
Mil gracias a John Lindsay-Poland and all of the accompaniers
10. Conclusion who have thought about this with me. This research was supported
by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Is this geopolitics? If geo means only international, only states, Council of Canada and the American Association of University
then no. If geo means global, and we see how the global is always Women.
intertwined with the intimate, then yes. Is this critical geopolitics?
If that means only taking apart big P grand war strategies (Dalby, References
2010), then no. If critical also means new ways of putting peace(s)
back together, then yes. Abdel-Malek, A., 1977. Geopolitics and national movements: an essay on the
If geopolitics is chess, what sort of game is alter-geopolitics? If dialects of imperialism. Antipode 9 (1), 28–351.
Agnew, J.A., 2003. Geopolitics: Re-Visioning World Politics. Routledge, NY.
hegemonic geopolitics is Big Men moving pieces on the board, crit- Akçalı, E., Antonsich, M., 2009. ‘‘Nature knows no boundaries’’: a critical reading of
ical geopolitics has tended to focus on the thinking behind their UNDP-environmental peacemaking in Cyprus. Annals of the Association of
moves. Anti-geopolitics is a pawn, or many pawns, protesting American Geographers 99 (5), 940.
Alex, Fischer, 2007. First National Copwatch Conference: A Movement Takes Rise.
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and the pieces on the board, the relationship between them, and Askins, K., 2008. (Re) negotiations: towards a transformative geopolitics of fear and
the ways the pieces might move themselves. Alter-geopolitics is otherness. In: Pain, R., Smith, S. (Eds.), Fear, Critical Geopolitics, and Everyday
Life. Ashgate, Burlington, VT.
not only pawns but all sorts of pieces, from both sides, working to- Benhabib, S., 1986. Critique, Norm, and Utopia: A Study of the Foundations of
gether to move themselves into shapes that make them all safer. Critical Theory. Columbia University Press.
But if the pieces move themselves, are they anyone’s pawns? Is Blomley, N., 2007. Critical geography: anger and hope. Progress in Human
Geography 31 (1), 53–65.
it the same game if the players change the rules about who can
Blumen, O., Halevi, S., 2009. Staging peace through a gendered demonstration:
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16
Cohen, S., Frank, D., 2009. Innovative approaches to territorial disputes: using
For a critique of social movement studies along these lines see Croteau et al. principles of Riparian conflict management. Annals of the Association of
(2005). American Geographers 99 (5), 948.
17
Of course there has also been feminist collaborative work done that has not been Coleman, M., 2009. What counts as the politics and practice of security, and where?
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