Popular culture, geopolitics, and identity

204 Pages·2010·2.274 MB·English

by  Dittmer, Jason

Popular Culture,
Geopolitics, and Identity
Human Geography in the New Millennium
Issues and Applications
SERIES EDITOR
Barney Warf, University of Kansas
Human geography is increasingly focused on real-world problems. Ap-
plying geographic concepts to current global concerns, this series focuses
on the urgent issues confronting us as we move into the new century.
Designed for university-level geography and related multidisciplinary
courses such as area studies, global issues, and development, these text-
books are richly illustrated and include suggestions for linking to related
Internet resources. The series aims to help students to better understand,
integrate, and apply common themes and linkages in the social and
physical sciences and in the humanities, and, by doing so, to become more
effective problem solvers in the challenging world they will face.
TITLES IN THE SERIES
Boundaries of Faith: Geographical Perspectives on Religious Fundamentalism
Roger W. Stump
Six Billion Plus: Population Issues in the Twenty-first Century (second edition)
K. Bruce Newbold
Popular Culture, Geopolitics, and Identity
Jason Dittmer
Popular Culture,
Geopolitics, and Identity
Jason Dittmer
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK
Published by ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
http://www.rowmanlittlefield.com
Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom
Copyright © 2010 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval
systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer
who may quote passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dittmer, Jason.
Popular culture, geopolitics, and identity / Jason Dittmer.
p. cm. -- (Human geography in the new millennium : issues and
applications)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7425-5633-1 (cloth : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-7425-5634-8 (pbk. : alk.
paper) -- ISBN 978-0-7425-6831-0 (electronic : alk. paper)
1. Geopolitics--Social aspects. 2. Popular culture--Political aspects. 3. Mass
media--Political aspects. I. Title.
JC319.D4995 2010
306.2--dc22
2009049395

™
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
For my grandmother Florence Fitzpatrick,
who always told me to work hard at something I loved.

Contents
Preface ix
Introduction: Popular Culture—Between Propaganda
and Entertainment xv
1 Geopolitics: Histories, Discourses, and Mediation 1
2 Popular Culture: Theories, Methods, and Intertextuality 23
3 Representation of Place and the British Empire 47
4 Narration of Nation in the Post-WWII United States 69
5 Affect, Embodiment, and Military Video Games 91
6 The Active Audience and Evangelical Geopolitics 111
7 Hegemony, Subaltern Identities, and New Media 133
8 Conclusion: Identity, Subjectivity, and Going Forward 155
Bibliography 165
Index 173
About the Author 181
vii

Preface to the First Edition1
hat is the relationship between popular culture and geopolitics?
W
And what does that relationship have to do with you and me?
These are the questions that animate this book, and hopefully they will
interest you as much as they interest me. I’ve seemingly always had an
interest in popular culture and geopolitics, although it’s only relatively
recently that I started asking myself these questions. At the risk of self-
indulgence, I’d like to walk you through a retrospective of how these twin
interests have developed in my life—not to talk about myself (although I
rarely need an excuse) but to give an example of how the three main top-
ics of this book, popular culture, geopolitics, and identity, are enmeshed
in often very personal ways. Hopefully this will inspire some introspec-
tion about how these three things intersect in your own life, and will
pique your interest enough to read the rest of the book.
In 1988 I was twelve years old and entering junior high school. It was a
brutal time for me, as early adolescence is for most of us, and it didn’t
help that I was perhaps a bit more bookish than most. My favorite class
that year was World Geography, taught by Mrs. Schoenberger. It was an
excellent class, and as she told us about various parts of the world I paid
close attention; this was the start of a life-long passion for the variety and
difference found in the world, in terms of both physical and cultural land-
scapes (a professional passion most geographers share, I would later dis-
cover). The class was, however, not a politically neutral experience. It was,
after all, the very end of the Cold War, with the Soviet Union still per-
1 I am an optimist by nature.
ix