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This timely and original book puts the ‘geo’ back into geopolitics, placing environmental resources at the heart of global power, and demonstrating how struggles over energy, water and critical minerals are reshaping the planet. International case studies show how state sovereignty is hollowed out by global capital, with power concentrated in the material networks of pipelines, dams and digital grids.
Bringing together critical geography, political ecology and resource geographies, the author offers a compelling materialist framework for understanding a rapidly changing world. This authoritative and elegantly written book exposes how global power is hardwired into the physical earth, providing an indispensable framework for navigating our reconfigured world order and planetary survival.
'Menga’s book is an urgent reminder of why geography matters in the geo- of geopolitics – but not for the reasons most pundits claim. It is a call to go beyond essentialized readings of geography as a set of fixed constraints that shape the workings of power in the international arena, developing an appreciation of how both global politics and geography are transforming in unprecedented ways. This text should be essential reading for anyone seeking to make better sense of the transformations of territory, sovereignty and the shifting geographies of dependence and vulnerability in the 21st century.' Luiza Bialasiewicz
'Filippo Menga has written a powerful testament to the intertwining of power and materiality in today’s world. I strongly recommend.' Jason Dittmer, University College London
'This book explores the spatial distribution of energy, water and minerals and a suite of actors, financial interests, power-knowledge regimes and securitised infrastructures. Amongst all the inequalities and unfairness, there is a cross-current empathy for those who are willing to challenge the order of things.' Klaus Dodds, Middlesex University
'Power has many material dimensions, but materialities often elude conventional geopolitics. Turning geopolitics on its head, Filippo Menga brilliantly exposes how capitalism mobilizes states, ecological processes, and material infrastructures to reshape global power relations and, in the process, sap its own foundations.' Philippe Le Billon, University of British Columbia
‘Geopolitics in the Anthropocene’ is a must-read for those wishing to understand the co-constitution of resources, capital, and planetary crises – in short, a materialist geopolitics of our present. The book shows the entanglement of water, energy, and minerals with infrastructures of profit and power. Engagingly written, Filippo Menga provides an impressive range of timely examples to demonstrate how the dynamic nature of our planet plays an active part in global geopolitics.' Ingrid A. Medby, Newcastle University
'Leaders stage sovereignty while power travels through infrastructures that states underwrite yet rarely control. Filippo Menga follows that power and takes apart the impossible promise of a transition that soothes our guilt as the world keeps burning. Rigorous and enjoyable, this book speaks to readers well beyond political geography.' Alberto Vanolo, University of Turin
'What is the role of the state in the Anthropocene? This important volume critically reassesses geopolitics in an era of growing interconnection between capitalism, ecology, and global power structures.' Elena dell’Agnese, University of Milano-Bicocca
1. The Geo in Politics
2. Geopolitics: Whither the state?
3. Fire: The Geopolitics of Combustion
4. Liquid Empire: Water Grabbing and the Geopolitics of Flow
5. Earth: The Geopolitics of Green Extractivism
6. Geopolitics After Sovereignty