The Geography of War and Peace From Death Camps to Diplomats

Our world of increasing and varied conflicts is confusing and threatening to citizens of all countries, as they try to understand its causes and consequences. However, how and why war occurs, and peace is sustained, cannot be understood without realizing that those who make war and peace must negotiate a complex world political map of sovereign spaces, borders, networks of communication, access to nested geographic scales, and patterns of resource distribution. This book takes advantage of a diversity of geographic perspectives as it analyzes the political processes of war and their spatial expression. Contributors to the volume examine particular manifestations of war in light of nationalism, religion, gender identities, state ideology, border formation, genocide, spatial rhetoric, terrorism, and a variety of resource conflicts. The final section on the geography of peace covers peace movements, diplomacy, the expansion of NATO, and the geography of post-war reconstruction. Case studies of numerous conflicts include Israel and Palestine, Afghanistan, Northern Ireland, Bosnia-Herzogovina, West Africa, and the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Colin Flint, Associate Professor of Geography at Pennsylvania State University, is a political geographer whose research interests include terrorism, geopolitics, war and peace, and the Arab world. He is editor of Spaces of Hate: Geographies of Hate and Intolerance in the United States of America (2003) and co-author, with Peter J. Taylor, of Political Geography: World-Economy, Nation-State, and Locality (4th edition, 2000).