Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

This text starting point is the question of the transformations in the daily lives of contemporary metropolis’ inhabitants, focusing on the massive construction of shopping centers that has been growing since the 1970s in Bogotá. The text analyses how the emergence of such places has shaped new sociability spaces where private relationships are translated to the public scene, and also how the infrastructure of the city has developed in the frame of the consumer society. Thus, to live in the city is no longer about going around traditional places, but about the demand and supply of new experiences related to the commodities and services that the market offers. The shopping center is then the place of the noo-politics par excellance, that is, a dispositif which fortifies and materializes a technology of control which operates through the interpellation to the desires and bodies of individuals, which tries to modify people’s daily life dynamics, overcodifying it and putting it at the service of consumer society.

The theory of powers, based to a large extent on the work of Carsten Holbraad Middle Powers in International Politics, has been a reference of International Politics since the 1980s. However, when a detailed revision of the concept is made, authors have found out erroneous empirical interpretations. Why has confusion prevailed so far in the works carried out on this topic? Which are the new theoretical developments about the role played by middle and regional powers in the International Political System of the post-Cold War? This article aims at tracing some theoretic-methodological patterns for the analysis of the structural position of States in the post-Cold War International System and, secondly, at presenting a couple of theoretical models for the study of middle and regional powers.

In this article, it is posited that we are not, contrary to conventional wisdom, living in “post-imperial” times; on the contrary, it is suggested that we inhabit a re-imperialized terrain in the sense that imperial reason has been re-asserted, as clearly evident, for example, in the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan —interventions that express a Western desire to control other key regions of the world. The parameters of imperial politics are still in place and the driving orientation of an imperial mentality has not been superceded. The argument is organised around three intertwined themes. First, there is an identification and differentiation of the key concepts that are to be found in discussions of colonial and imperial rule. Second, two contrasting theoretical approaches to the analysis of the imperial are considered, and an attempt is made to suggest ways in which the cultural and the Marxist political economy perspectives could be linked, even if only tenuously. Third the article examines the main components of what is termed the “imperial mentality”, within which it is suggested that a multi-dimensional contextualization of imperial power might well provide us with a more creative analytical opening. The author hopes to make clear that the imperial present and the geopolitics of power is a thematic which requires much more examination in what are acutely volatile times.

In the post-Columbian age, we have to deal with a closed political system, and none the less that it will be one of worldwide scope, and we are for the first time in a position to attempt, with some degree of completeness, a correlation between the larger geographical and the larger historical generalizations. The pivot region of the world’s politics is that vast area of Euro-Asia which is inaccessible to ships, but in antiquity lay open to the horse-riding nomads, and is to-day about to be covered with a network of railways. There have been and are here the conditions of a mobility of military and economic power of a far-reaching and yet limited character. Russia has replaced the Mongol Empire. Outside the pivot area, in a great inner crescent, are Germany, Austria, Turkey, India, and China, and in an outer crescent, Britain, South Africa, Australia, the United States, Canada, and Japan. From this point of view the real divide between east and west is to be found in the Atlantic Ocean. The oversetting of the balance of power in favour of the pivot state, resulting in its expansion over the marginal lands of Euro-Asia, would permit of the use of vast continental resources for fleet-building, and the empire of the world would then be in sight.

The main purpose of this essay is to analyze the role of the pioneers of Andean geopolitics in the context of the independence processes: Francisco de Miranda and Simón Bolívar in the case of Venezuela, and Antonio Nariño and Francisco de Paula Santander in the case of Colombia; all of whom, with their political, diplomatic and military work, devoted themselves to the important task of establishing the bases of the political project for the future states of Venezuela and Colombia, respectively.

This article introduces a research line developed from the intersection between Social Theory and Human Geography, that is, the perspective of Place. This perspective is a theoretical and methodological proposal developed from the threads of the Structuration Theory, by exploring the possibilities of the inclusion of space as a key element for social life structuration. The main point of this work is, in one side, to underline how the dialogue between disciplines opens frameworks to analyse social and political life, through the perspective of Place; and, in the other, to deepen in a geographical heuristic tool to update questions about the relationship between theory and methodology in research processes.