东西对话:中国政治地理学研究展望

BETWEEN EAST AND WESTWEST: RESEARCH DIRECTIONS IN POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY

中国政治地理学的发展尚处于起步阶段。中国与西方政治地理学者的学术交流相对有限,这主要是由于语言的障碍,以及中国学者对于研究课题政治敏感性的担忧,普遍缺乏对政治地理学研究内涵的理解。本文基于对中西方政治地理学发展现状及相关研究可能性的理解,指出以下五个在中国具有进一步拓展空间的政治地理学课题:广域行政与空间政治;国际关系与地理想象;边界冲突与划界研究;边界与边界区域研究;环境政治地理学。这些课题的开展不仅可以加强中国自身的政治地理学研究,而且对西方正在进行的政治地理学研究也会起到积极的推动作用。

In the West, political geography has emerged as one of the most vibrant of human geography’s subdisciplines over the past few decades. In China, by contrast, political geography is at a nascent stage of development. Interest in political geography is growing in China, but the cross-fertilization of ideas with Western political geographers is limited. There are several reasons for this state of affairs: the unfortunate lack of engagement of most Western political geographers with China, concerns over political sensitivities, and insufficient understanding among some Chinese economic and urban geographers of the nature of scholarly work in political geography. Looking forward, there are significant opportunities for the development of political geography in China—both in its own right and in dialog with Western political geography. Among the topics with the greatest potential to facilitate this type of development are 1)the ways in which the political organization of space in urban(and other subnational)units facilitates or impedes the pursuit of particular policy objectives, 2)the nature and significance of the geopolitical imaginaries that influence international relations, past and present, 3)the role of particular political geographic arrangements in fostering or mitigating conflict, 4)the changing nature of borders and boundary regions in the face of geopolitical and geo-economic changes, 5)political-geographic influences on environmental change. Work on these topics in China has the potential to enhance understanding of critical issues facing the country in the twenty-first century. To realize that potential, it will be important for Chinese scholars with political-geographic interests to demonstrate the nature and significance of work on political geography topics to a Chinese human-geography community focused heavily on urban-economic topics.