ABSTRACT

This chapter identifies and assesses the intersections between popular geopolitics and popular culture and world politics (PCWP). It argues that a foregrounding of the politics of aesthetics, or the aesthetics of politics, provides a means of engaging with other senses that are also central to the construction of geographical imaginations in popular geopolitics. The chapter offers conceptual framings that position cultural artefacts as theories and practices of geopolitics in their own right, rather than reflections or representations of a separate 'real' world of (geo)politics. It suggests that being attentive to the interdisciplinary aspects of popular geopolitics and PCWP can help to address or reframe these short-comings. The chapter concludes by suggesting that while the direct connections between popular geopolitics, PCWP, and concrete geopolitical behaviours will always remain open to contestation, a sensitivity to embodiment and the importance of audience suggests that a turn to assemblages may provide new insights into popular geopolitics.