Japan is a surprising land of abundance, with archeological evidence that challenges hunter-gatherer/farmer dichotomies and accentuates the world cultural importance of Sui and Tang China. Ancient Japan lacked the rich political, economic, social, or cultural capital of Indus Valley Civilization, the Persian Empire, or Han Dynasty China. But from the third century BCE, the archipelago was a key node in increasing regional interaction. Classical Japan (Heian, 794–1185 CE) was defined by imperial court culture, but echoing the fifth-century fall of the Western Roman Empire, "medieval" Japan was marked by political fragmentation and the twelfth-century rise of the samurai and feudal society. Just as the Crusades (1096–1291) presaged the fall of long-time hegemon, the Byzantine Empire, Japan’s invasion of Joseon dynasty Korea (1592–1598) precipitated the end of Ming Dynasty China.

This chapter summarises the findings from across the previous chapters and attempts to discuss both the ‘region’ status of the Arctic, and what the Arctic is a case of in terms of security dynamics, regionality, and security regions. First, it evaluates the relevance and usefulness of security regions theories – the RSCT in particular – in unpacking Arctic security relations. Thereafter it takes a look at what these findings mean for the study of security regions and regional security complexes more broadly. It concludes with an emphasis on state-centric small-scale SRSCs, which can roughly be conceptualised as circles of overlapping spatial and security domains (i.e., a Venn diagram), before musing about the increasing relevance of maritime ‘regions’ in security considerations.

This chapter introduces the book and its main themes and concepts. It starts with Arctic-specific examples including the maritime agreement between Norway and Russia, and the US interest in taking control over Greenland, to highlight how the notions of geography, security, and geopolitics are at the forefront of contemporary international relations. It then goes on to discuss the concepts of geopolitics, regions, and security regions that in turn frame the approach taken in this book to understand some fundamental questions about states, security, and geography.

The intensification of the US–China rivalry has placed a great deal of attention on how the small states caught in the middle are managing their relationships with these two great powers. The most intense glare is cast on countries in the Asia-Pacific as China is the resident regional power while the United States, though not a resident power, has a history of long engagement with the countries in this region. Earlier studies have shown how small states choose to balance, bandwagon, or hedge their external relations when faced with a rising threat from a much stronger state. However, many similarly situated states do not act similarly. New Zealand offers one example. As a member of the Five Eyes, it has not always acted in concert with its partners (the US, the UK, Australia, and Canada) in its criticism of China’s appalling human rights record. When Australia clearly moved to balance against China by initiating AUKUS, promoting the QUAD, and expanding its security engagement with Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asia, New Zealand did not go along but instead asserted its own independent foreign policy by continuing a hedging strategy. Why does New Zealand choose a different path?

This chapter traces William Burroughs’ self-imposed exile across the Americas, North Africa, and Europe, arguing that the geographic settings where he lived were integral to the conceptual structure of his work. Rather than treating setting as backdrop or exotic inspiration, Burroughs reimagines place as a set – simultaneously stage, fiction, and experiential filter – through which he explores identity, language, and systems of control. From his ironic travel ethnographies in Junky and The Yage Letters, to the colonial parody of Queer, and the fractured landscapes of Naked Lunch and the cut-up novels, Burroughs engages in a layered literary expatriation that aligns him with, but ultimately distinguishes him from, figures like Bowles, Baldwin, Stein, and Beckett. Focusing on Tangier and Paris as creative epicenters, the chapter argues that Burroughs’ spatial displacements catalyze formal and thematic experimentation. His work reveals a persistent tension between immersive estrangement and mediated construction, exposing alterity not only in foreign cultures, but within language and self.

The varied topography and climate of Iberia posed challenges for prehistoric hominids, as well as for later traders, fishers, farmers, and herders attracted by the peninsula’s mineral wealth, arable land, and diversity of marine and land animals. Iberians arrived from North Africa, Celts later arrived from the north, and Phoenicians and Greeks arrived from the Mediterranean. All of these diverse peoples brought their culture and language to Spain – founding cities, farming the land, mining, herding, trading, and therefore connecting what the Greeks called Iberia to the Mediterranean, North Africa, and Northern Europe.

Such are the idiosyncrasies and ambiguities of Los Angeles’s sociospatial conditions that they have birthed a body of nonfiction writing dedicated to understanding them. This chapter presents such works as a distinct literary tradition. Dimendberg identifies the 1930s, when Los Angeles matured into a metropolis, as the period in which a range of now-familiar (and mostly negative) tropes about the city solidified, while the German geographer Anton Wagner marveled at how rapidly LA’s urban fabric was changing. In the 1940s Carey McWilliams offered a clear-eyed portrait of Southern California that remained alive to its flaws and inequalities, but his assessment was far fonder than those of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. In the 1970s and 1990s respectively, Reyner Banham and Mike Davis offered contrasting images of the city. Banham was among the first theorists to champion LA’s uniquely spatialized mode of city living as for the most part a success. Davis, meanwhile, embodying the critical urbanism of the LA School of Geography, excoriated its violent underpinnings and enduring carcerality.

When discussing Asian religion, art, and philosophy, Emerson generally bestows praise and tends toward cosmopolitan, universalist sentiments. Old Asian ideas, especially from Persian, Indian, and Chinese traditions, reinforced his Transcendentalist sense of morality and, especially, his belief in “the infinitude of the private man.” In the contexts of geography and history, however, he gravitates toward nationalist, imperialist, and racist views. Here he betrays his vulnerability to some of the ruling ideas of geographical determinism and teleological historicism informing the ideology of manifest destiny. Yet, true to form for a writer who so famously abjured consistency, this basic distinction does not always hold. This chapter thus begins with an examination of Emerson’s discrepant Asias before analyzing how, despite this general dichotomy, he was sometimes able to subvert prevailing tendencies and introduce uncommon subtleties to his representation of Asia, its cultures, and its peoples.

In today’s world of increasing spatial inequalities, geopolitical tensions and global shifts in value chains, having a solid grasp of the spatial and multi-scalar dynamics that condition transition dynamics is of ever more importance. Initial theories of sustainability transitions have been criticised for being insufficiently equipped to assess the benefits, conflicts and unevenness that are constituted by the territorial contexts in which transitions dynamics and pathways unfold. Questions how sustainability transitions emerge across places and scales were largely off the radar. Interest and engagement with geographical dimensions of sustainability transitions grew however quickly into a prominent sub-field, characterised by a fruitful trading zone populated by geographers, transition scholars and other social scientists seeking to better account for place specificity, multi-scalarity, and spatial unevenness. This chapter outlines the contours of the Geography of Sustainability Transitions (GeoST) wider theoretical research agenda and ongoing debates, framing these specifically around conceptualisations of place and scale.

The chapter describes colonial India’s unique urbanization story. In 1750 India had big urban centres such as Hyderabad and Delhi and urbanization was close to the global average. While urbanization in India increased over the next two centuries, the increase was small compared to the rest of the world and Indian urbanization had fallen significantly below the global average by 1950. Yet the modest temporal change masks the important shift in urban centres from inland in the 1700s to the eastern and western coasts by the 1900s. As British rule expanded, the port cities of Bombay and Calcutta emerged as the new centres of administration, trade and commerce. More generally, cities close to railways grew faster than cities close to rivers. Unlike rural India, colonial towns and cities were characterized by more educated residents, more industrial and service sector jobs, male-biased sex ratios and growing political influence.

Humans are born helpless and require others to nurture and care for them for a lengthy period. This requires paid parental leave policies, which the US, almost uniquely, doesn’t have, thereby compromising our health. During our forager-hunter era, vigilant sharing took place. The advent of agriculture 10,000 years ago led to a decline in health as exploitation began. This reversed only in the last few hundred years due to advances in sanitation, standard of living, and basic medical care. Population health is much more than adding up factors affecting individual health, with political context and governance being the most significant factors. Income inequality impacts health in three realms. Health promotion requires action by policy makers and national leaders. Women live longer than men. Geography matters, with a wide range of health outcomes across US counties. Culture and racism have strong impacts. Diets are less important. Physical and chemical environmental hazards impact health outcomes, mostly to a lesser degree