在学科发展的演变中理解和把握地缘政治及地缘政治学——兼论对地缘环境研究的启示

To Understand and Grasp “Geopolitik” and the Discipline of Geopolitics in the Evolution of Disciplinary Development:The Discussion on the Enlightenment of Geo-setting Research

通过对地缘政治学发展演变的系统梳理,将"地缘政治"理解为解析国际政治或国际秩序特有的空间视角和多要素、跨领域和跨尺度的综合分析方法,而地缘政治学则是其特有空间视角和综合分析方法以及基于其视角和方法形成的理论学说的集合。这种特有视角集中体现在对国家层面空间范围内的自然要素和人文要素的优化组合分析,在系统层面的比较和关联分析以及跨领域和跨尺度的相互作用研究。研究方法主要有时空分析法、历史分析法和系统分析法等。但是,整体而言,地缘政治学是一门发展极不完善的学科,这不是源于其思想不够深邃,而是源于分析方法和分析技术无法跟上复杂现实的需求。这为开启真正的中国地缘政治研究提供了绝佳的机遇,中国学者不应该仅仅成为西方地缘政治学说的跟随者和推广者,而应成为原创理论和方法的贡献者。这或许就是国内在复兴地缘政治研究中确立以地缘环境解析的理论与方法为研究主要方向的根本原因。

Up to now, the understanding of “geopolitik” and the discipline of geopolitics remains highly controversial. The development of critical geopolitics fails to dispel this misunderstanding and enhance the social influence of geopolitics. It is a deep-rooted misunderstanding to regard geopolitics simply as the influence of geographical environment on politics and to equate the geographical environment with the physical geographical environment. By systematically sorting out the development and evolution of the geopolitics, this paper considers “geopolitik” as the unique perspective, and multi-factor, cross-domain and cross-scale comprehensive analysis on international politics or international order, while geopolitics refers to the collection of its unique perspective and the comprehensive analytical methods, and the theories based on the perspective and methods.This unique perspective is mainly embodied in the analysis of the optimal combination of physical and human elements within the space at the national level, the comparison and correlation analysis at the system level and the cross-field and cross-scale interaction. The research methods mainly include the spatio-temporal analysis,historical analysis and system analysis. However, geopolitics as a whole is a poorly developed discipline, not because its thoughts are not deep enough, but because its analytical methods and techniques cannot meet the demands of complex realities, which meanwhile provides an excellent opportunity for the real study of China’s geopolitics. Chinese scholars should not only become the followers and promoters of western geopolitical theories, but also strive to be the contributors of original theories and methods. This may be the fundamental reason for establishing the theory and method of the geo-setting analysis as the main research direction in the revival of geopolitical research in China.