ABSTRACT
This chapter examines three inter-related concerns–the discourses of power, space and identity, respectively–wherein it traces and theorises the relationship between cultural studies and popular geopolitics as two meta-disciplines. The profound impact of popular geopolitics has been in identifying how popular culture impacts citizens' political action. While advancing this extremely valuable project, like cultural studies, popular geopolitics has been concerned about the legitimatisation of its discourse and own academic institutionalisation. Popular geopolitics has been framed as a discipline concerned with symbolic articulations, whereby its two principal constituent parts–space and politics–have been reimagined as cultural articulations. Cultural studies aim to explore culture and, through constantly re-defining what it means by the term 'culture', cultural studies re-consider and re-invent its own objectives. From a critique of culture as a domain of arts created by the upper classes, cultural studies have shifted its attention to the culture and cultural practices of other social groups.
