Redai dili (Nov 2021)
Progress and Prospects of Western Geopolitical Research in the Arctic Region
Abstract
As the melting of Arctic Sea ice because of global warming creates new shipping routes and energy resources, the post-Cold War peace and stability of the Arctic has been shattered. It has once again become a strategic location for multinational rivalries, attracting widespread attention in international geopolitical circles. Compared to other regions of the world, studying the Arctic region from a Western geopolitical perspective is at the forefront of international research. Although China, as a near-Arctic country, has developed geopolitical research on the Arctic in response to its practical needs, domestic research in this field started late, with room for improvement in its breadth and depth. Therefore, 98 papers in the Web of Science core database that are highly relevant to Arctic geopolitics are selected as the object of the study. Through a literature review, we summarize the development of Arctic research from a Western geopolitical perspective, and the shift in perspective and hot topics; we adopt a forward-looking perspective of future research development trends to provide reference for innovative research in this field in China. The results reveal the following: (1) Research on the geopolitics of the Arctic has been conducted in a wide range of fields and topics in Western academia, with some correlation among the topics, although the links among the studies are not strong, and the research scale generally shows a fluctuating growth trend. (2) The research content, composed of six major fields (boundary and territorial politics, Arctic shipping routes, Arctic resource development, Arctic geo-strategy, Arctic security and governance, and indigenous population issues), focus on politics and economics but is lack of cultural research. (3) Under the influence of aesthetic humanism and the "cultural and institutional turn," the trend in the cross-fertilization of geopolitical, geo-economic, and geo-cultural perspectives has increasingly become more obvious. (4) Research on the Arctic from a geopolitical perspective has been relatively fruitful, although there remain shortcomings in the depth of theoretical research, breadth of research scale, diversity of research methods, and geo-economic and geo-cultural research paradigms, which require further development. Future research will generate new ideas and directions in immaterial areas such as theoretical framework studies, interdisciplinary studies, and emotional culture, and will focus more on the role of multiple actors, such as indigenous peoples and NGOs, in geopolitical knowledge production and power competition.
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