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John Agnew is one of the most prominent figures in political geography. He has contributed widely to debates about the political economy of the state, the nature of the international, and theories of geopolitics. Within international political economy, John Agnew has worked on theories of development, geographies of the world economy, and regions of the United States in the world economy. He has longstanding research interests in the changing regional and urban geographies of Italy and in the relationship between human geography and sociology. The first of John Agnew's Hettner Lectures 2000 explores the origins and logic of precise national boundary delimitation in Europe. It is argued that from 1600 onwards national boundaries were necessary to define who was to be Europe's dominant agent on a world scale, and that the process of delineating rigid national boundaries still shapes current debates on Europeanness and the characteristics of statehood. In his second lecture, John Agnew provides a discussion of the philosophical perspectives on which the two main positions on the 'nature' of the international in contemporary political geography rely. He suggests an historical approach to geopolitics that endeavours to explicitly recognise the joint effects of geographical representations and the spatial distribution of material conditions on political practices.

Hegemonia e império são termos diferentes, que oferecem interpretações profundamente distintas do poder estadunidense e suas manifestações contemporâneas, e de como dito poder pode ser mudado. Depois de uma breve introdução sobre ambos os termos, o texto procura mostrar como a hegemonia pode ser entendida espacialmente e, dessa forma, como a hegemonia dos Estados Unidos dificilmente será canalizada em um império, destacando o fiasco politico-militar estadunidense no Iraque, apesar da sua aparente supremacia militar depois da Guerra Fria. Finalmente, considerarei a emergência de uma nova configuração do poder global, em que a hegemonia já não pode ser exclusivamente associada aos Estados Unidos. A questão central que subjaz é a necessidade de fugir da armadilha de pensar o poder em termos exclusivamente territoriais: Estados versus impérios. O poder se desenvolve espacialmente de maneiras muito mais complexas, e necessitamos entendê-lo, se quisermos questioná-lo.

From one viewpoint, interstate borders are simple 'artefacts on the ground'. Borders exist for a variety of practical reasons and can be classified according to the purposes they serve and how they serve them. They enable a whole host of important political, social, and economic activities. From a very different perspective, borders are artefacts of dominant discursive processes that have led to the fencing off of chunks of territory and people from one another. Such processes can change and as they do, borders live on as residual phenomena that may still capture our imagination but no longer serve any essential purpose. Yet, what if, although still necessary for all sorts of reasons, borders are also inherently problematic? We need to change the way in which we think about borders to openly acknowledge their equivocal character. In other words, we need to see a border not as that which is either fixed or that as such must be overcome, but as an evolving construction that has both practical merits and demerits that must be constantly reweighed. Thinking about borders should be opened up to consider territorial spaces as 'dwelling' rather than national spaces and to see political responsibility for pursuit of a 'decent life' as extending beyond the borders of any particular state. Borders matter, then, both because they have real effects and because they trap thinking about and acting in the world in territorial terms. Adapted from the source document.