What do we mean when we say Political Geography? We mean to talk about the way politics influences places and, how particular spaces shape politics as well.

To back up though, what is meant when we speak of the ‘political’ or ‘politics’? Our newspapers carry political sections and we may even maintain that politics occurs in places like Ottawa or Victoria. Rather than think of ‘politics’ as a sphere of public life that is interested in government and statecraft we’ll take a broader approach that sees politics simply as the means through which we make (and increasingly, remake) relationships.  Relationships are crucial because they are encoded with so much meaning that in turn changes the way we interact with each other in and with space. Let’s take a simple example to see how this plays out. The beginning of a new university course is often greeted with a list of rules, the instructor there positioned as ‘in charge’. Students are often expected to show up on time and raise their hands. Our relationship in the classroom is one of student and teacher. This relationship is held up by all sorts of processes—including that lengthy bus ride to campus—that assert the power imbalances  inherent in relationships. When you invite me over for dinner (I eat anything, thanks for asking!), power has shifted and you are in charge. “Please take your shoes off!” you might say. Our relationship—our power inequality has changed as we have moved to a private space that could reasonably be called yours and not mine.

We will spend this term de-familiarizing, that is to say, taking banal, commonplace moments and pulling apart the multiple and competing relationships and claims to space that are at work. We will quickly discover that arrangements we may take for granted—boundaries, laws, cities, parks, policing—are not pre-ordained but deeply fraught and constantly evolving. When we do this, when we scrutinize the way our days are held together through a series of power relationships, we’re able to critique who those relationships serve and to what end—particularly here, thinking about spatial justice. We are chiefly interested in examining these relationships to identify the ways our access to space and our relationship to a public space is supported or challenged.

Why does any of this matter? Isn’t this just an academic exercise? Hardly. These are precisely the issues the Supreme Court of Canada negotiates on a daily basis—questions that get to very heart of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and what a Canadian society looks like against the challenges of economy, security, and culture.