1. Sovereignty and Nations
1/11/2017

2. What is a political geographer?
Someone who studies human claims and conflicts concerning the use, patterns, and ownership of the land and its resources

3. How to influence decision making?
Geography
Where?
Why there?
Consequences?
Politics
How to influence decision making?
Political Geography

4. What is state?
State  a political unit that has sovereignty (ultimate power within your territory) over a particular piece of land
Almost all habitable land belongs to a country today
In1940 there were about 60 countries and today there are 193!
Some places are difficult to classify as there are many claims to them

5. The term country is a synonym for state Four elements of a state:
People – contains a permanent population
Territory – occupies a defined territory on the earth’s surface
Government – rules people
Sovereignty – control over its internal and foreign affairs, independent from other states

6. What is a nation?
Nation  A large collective of people united by common descent, history, language, culture or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory
A social/cultural concept, more tied to ethnicity; a people with a sense of union with one another

7. Examples of nations Korea – almost everyone in Korea is Korean
Nations can transcend geographical borders
Kurds who live in Turkey, Iran and Iraq
The Kurds are a stateless Nation

8. Nation-State
Nation-State  A political unit wherein the territorial state coincides with the area settled by a certain national group or people.
This term coincides with the geographical area occupied by a nation
Many governments try to build nationalism within a state in order to make it a nation-state

9. Nation-state examples
Self-determination  concept that every nation/ethnicity has the right to govern themselves
There are very few nation-states (mostly in Europe)
Iceland, Sweden, Japan, Greece
They are all mostly homogenous with few minorities

10. How many Nation-States would there be?
What would Africa look like if divided by Ethnicity?
How many Nation-States would there be?