Introduction to Geopolitics

sense of place
. People’s identity is a function of mem-
bership in a number of collective identities; gender, race, social class, profession,
nationality, and, last but not least, place. Sense of place is a collective identity tied to
a particular place, perhaps best thought of as the unique “character” of a place. People
are guided in their actions by particular identities that say who they are and what 
they can and cannot, should and should not, do. Belonging to a particular ethnic group
socializes people into particular expectations and life-chances. Part of one’s sense of
“belonging” is attachment to place, which can translate into visions of what a place
should be “like”: notably who “belongs” and who doesn’t. A harmless example is the
urban myth underlying the self-proclaimed moniker of the “Dover Sharks.” The name
is dubiously derived from stories of piracy from centuries ago when the locals would
set lights to confuse the channel shipping and induce wrecks. They would then wait for
and loot the cargo that washed ashore. The name “Dover Sharks” is claimed to derive
from the habit of freeing rings from the bloated corpses by biting off their fingers! More
disturbing is the way that Dover residents have reacted to the refugee “outsiders” as
undeserving recipients of local government services that should only be available to
residents of Dover. To relate place identify to contemporary conflict, the quote in Box
1.1, is an observation of a Palestinian man whose political beliefs are clearly tied to his
attachment to place.
Using a sense of place to construct an identity politics of insiders and outsiders
(Cresswell, 1996) is evident in the language of hate politics in the US when those deemed
“not to belong” enter places with dominant or established “identities” and “traditions.”
Such politics are frequently racial, but homosexuals are regularly targeted too. Gentrified
neighborhoods that are known to have large gay populations are often associated with
anti-gay hate crimes that are spurred not solely by homophobia, but also by indignation
over how the place has changed from an understanding of its “traditional” form. For
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example, particular visions of place are evident in anti-gay hate crimes in the Victorian
Village neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio:
When you have somebody who, say, has a rainbow flag on their house and
then you drive by and you see that it’s been torched, it’s not just a crime against
the people living in that house. That is sending a message to the entire com-
munity the same way that having somebody put a cross on somebody else’s
front lawn sends a message to the entire community.
(Executive Director, Buckeye Region Anti-Violence Organization,
May 29, 2001, quoted in Sumartojo, 2004, p. 100)
In another example, the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by Islamic radi-
cals in the Netherlands in November 2004 sparked a debate about the political future
of a country proud of its record of tolerance. One Amsterdam newspaper, the 
Algemeen
Dagblad
, claimed that anti-Muslim graffiti suddenly appeared everywhere, and attacks
on mosques and other Islamic buildings erupted. However, the Amsterdam newspaper
Trouw
argued that such reports were overblown and reported the Prime Minister Jan-
Peter Balkenende as saying:
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91
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20
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30
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Box 1.1 Place and Palestinian identity
The man who entered the room was visibly distraught. Wasting no time on
pleasantries, he threw himself down in a chair and announced that the
soldiers had gone berserk. This was in early 1994, before the Israeli pull-
back. Just before midnight, the man said, twenty or thirty people in the
al-Boureij refugee camp had been forced out of their homes. Some of them
hadn’t even had a chance to put on their shoes; others complained that the
soldiers had kicked and hit them. They were led to the UNRWA school
(United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the
Near East) and ordered to pick up some garbage and rocks that had been
strewed in the yard. Furious, the man said that someone was made to write
slogans in Arabic on the wall. “Life is like a cucumber,” was the worst of
them. “One day in your hand, the next day up your ass.”
During the four years of the intifada, Kafarna [the man who entered the
room] had witnessed countless violent clashes and far greater indignities
than those he recounted that day, but he never managed to come to terms
with any of it; he was simply unable to swallow the insult.
(Hass, 2000, p. 31)
In this quote, note not only the evocation of the Gaza Strip as a place, but also
how Kafarna’s individual identity and politics are inseparable from his place-
specific experiences.

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We must not allow ourselves to be swept away in a maelstrom of violence 
. . . Free expression of opinion, freedom of religion, and other basic rights are
the foundation stones of our state . . . all moderates will join together in the
fight against the common enemy: extremism.
(All quotes from