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Pour une géographie du pouvoir

Pour une géographie du pouvoir

Preface by Anne-Laure Amilhat Szary

Bibliothèque idéale des sciences sociales



Republishing Pour une géographie du pouvoir forty years after it first came out in 1980 could be construed as a form of manifesto. For the book received a very mixed reception when it was first published. Decried at the time by many people working in the field and today recognised by Claude Raffestin himself as a 'heterodox' work, it continues to have a lasting impact on its readers. The reason that it continues to elicit strong feelings today is because it could have been entitled Pour une géographie du territoire, evoking a key notion in contemporary geography. Raffestin thus makes a major contribution to the social sciences as a whole by defining territoriality as a form of spatial mediation of social relations. The importance which he places on the degree of autonomy which exists between the perception and the construction of power relations is the expression of a committed geography which establishes a basis for critical geopolitics. By placing relational analysis, resources and flows at the centre of his analysis, Raffestin opens the way for a new political ecology.