POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY, Vol. 12, No.

6, November

1993,491-503

Publishing American identity: popular geopolitics, myth and The Readers Digest
JOANNE P.

SHARP Uniuerxiy, Syracuse NY

Department of Geography, 343 H.B. Grouse, Sacuse 13244-l 1 GO, USA,

ABSTRACT. The recent traditional their geopolitical which contextualizes social representation and assessed importance

emergence traditional, The

of a new critical geopolitics interpretation. are the prime elite geopolitical media

has opened

up of

texts for thorough

Yet there is little work example of a site of

texts within the institutions

reproduction.

at which elite texts are interpreted in these terms. It is also through structures. of studying popular conceptions of the popular

in the terms of popular culture socialization at these sites that in America through

elites form their interpretative an examination

This paper will make the case for the of geopolitics

magazine The ReudersDigest from 1980-90.

In his recent

paper

on United

States

foreign

policy

after the Cold War, Vlahos (1988: 28)

states:
More than other modern cement Popular its confidence culture, we do not share a coherent societies, America relies, Americans even depends, are profoundly on myth to ahistorical;

in current policies.

sense of our own history in formal, academic terms. system, shapes

not an educational

our common sense of

identity. If this is the case for United States history then surely the case could be made even more strongly for geography. Unlike century, American geography business requirements tied to prevalent American ethos of its counterpart in Europe, especially at the end of the 19th did not receive the institutional support from state and overseas exploration and colonialism. Added to this is the possessive individualism which has strengthened local

autonomy and decision making at the expense of a sense of wider scale integration and interdependence (Kirby, 1991). It is thus important for geographers to study the geography written in the mass media because of the role of this institution in the creation and dissemination of knowledge of the world. This paper will argue for the importance of studying popular conceptions of geopolitics, using an examination of the American edition of the popular magazine 7&e Readers Digest. The paper will posit that popular sources of information can enrich the newly emerging critical geopolitics by providing the context within which elite geopolitical texts are received but also in which they are produced.
0962.6298/12/06 0491-13 @ 1993 Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd

492
The

Publishing American

identity

geopoliticat

tradition

and poststructuraiism

Geopolitics can be defined as a long established area of geographical inquiry which considers space to be important in understanding the constitution of international relations (Smith, 1986: 178). It has relied on the conceptual separation of political theory and political practice; the supposedly objective spatial forms and place-bound characteristics of geography provide a transparent and atheoretical basis for an understanding of world politics (Agnew, 1993a). Geography cannot, however, provide a mimetic presentation of that which it seeks to describe. ~though certain geographical facts can perhaps be agreed upon, such as the relative size and location of continents and the distribution of material and human resources, the use of geographical description is always selective. As the geographical orders which form the basis of geopolitics are created rather than discovered, these orders can always be recreated-the prevailing geographical order is also a political one. In other words, geography is not an unchanging or independent variable but rather it is a form of power/knowledge, a social and historical discourse which is always intimately bound up with questions of politics and ideology (0 Tuathail and Agnew, 1992: 192). This is one aspect of the pos~t~cturalist critique of objective social research. The one-to-one relationship which SOCid scientists descriptions are expected to have with the world has been questioned (Duncan, 1990: 12). This linkage of signifier (description) to signified (real object), the epistemological bridge supporting truth claims about the world, has been problematized. From a structuralist position Saussure claimed that meaning does not lie within a stable connection between signifier and signified; the meaning ascribed to the description is independent of the real object. Meaning is not inherent to a word because of its relationship with reality but in its difference from other words in the linguistic system (Eagleton, 1983: 97). The dominant modernist meaning of space has also been questioned. The Cartesian conceptualization of space, as an empty framework within which social life is played out, has been rejected because of an acknowledgement of its historical specificity. Realizing the historically specific nature of the meaning of space facilitates an awareness of the constructed nature of space: of placeless, imaginary spaces such as the imagined community of the nation-state (utopias); and multiple, overlapping, contestatory spaces such as borderlands (l~eterotopias). The work of Michel Foucault has been of primary significance in this current reconc~ptuali~dtion of space (see especially Foucault, 1986). He has highlighted the power inherent in any socially demarcated space-the power of territoriality and the power which can be gained from the administration of territory and through the contestation of this spatial institutionalization. Strategies of power always require the use of space and, thus, the use of discourses to create particular spatial images, primarily of territory and boundaries in statecraft, is inseparable from the formation and use of power. The term geopolitics has been reinscribed so that it covers a wider range of approaches than it did when it was first introduced at the turn of this century. Geopolitics stretches from being employed as an aid to statecraft (for example, Gray, 1988, and other members of the Committee on the Present Danger, see Dalby, 1990b), or being more consciously manipulated to this end (as with the uses made of Mackinders 1904 Heartland Thesis by American politicians, see 0 Tuathail, 1992), to the creation of critical works which expose the constructed nature of geographical orders. These latter critical geopolitical writings, often drawing on insights from poststructuralism, are primarily concerned with denaturalizing the encoded spatial ~s~llnl)tions and related power dynamics contained

JOANNE

P. SHARP

493

within the texts of international politics (for example see: Agnew, 1996; Ashley, 1987, 1988, 1989; Dalby, 1988, 1990a, 1990b, 1991; DerDerian and Shapiro, 1989; 0 Tuathail, 1992; 0 Tuathail and Agnew, 1992; Taylor, 1990; Walker, 1990).

Popular geopolitics:

decentering

the elite focus

These critical approaches tend to share a focus upon the writings of geopolitical elites such as politicians and their intellectual advisors. The aim of this paper is to argue that a more equal weighting between an analysis of elite texts and more popular sources of geopolitical information, primarily education and the media, would be fruitful. First, an over-concentration on the understandings of elites tends to collapse the sociology of knowledge production into the internal dynamics of the geopolitical text. Geopolitics does not simply trickle down from elite texts to popular ones. It is thus not sufficient only to interpret elite texts. Second, because texts produced by those who are not directly implicated in the power/knowledge of statecraft do not always present their arguments as a political statement, and, I would argue, are certainly read with less suspicion of motive than the text of a politician, the political encoding of such texts is more subtle and thus more easily reproduced. In order to have their texts accepted as reasonable, geopoliticians have to draw upon discourses already granted hegemonic social acceptance. These discourses are reproduced within culture. Geopolitics pulls out themes learned in school and reproduced in the media. The media gain acceptance and power because thay are generally perceived as providing knowledge of the world: geopoliticians cannot ignore it. If geopolitics were to be consistently created independently of the negotiated reality of its readership, it would face an insurmountable crisis of representation. Suggesting that there is no single, all-powerful elite view does not involve advocating a conceptualization of power dynamics which gives equal force to all interpretations of a situation. Indeed there is a hegemonic geopolitical view of nationalities and states not least because of differential access to the mass media which various social, political and economic groups, and individuals attain. But the media do not simply reflect the perceptions of the political elite. They are not part of a monolithic state structure such as that suggested by Horkheimer and Adornos (1972) culture industry or Althussers (1971) ideological state apparatuses. Nor, however, do they innocently announce some form of bottom up mass understanding. Instead they should be regarded as part of a Gramscian hegemony-which explains, legitimates and at times challenges the dominant understanding by pulling it through the lens of popular discourses. The nature of explanation by elites cannot be understood independently of knowledge of wider cultural values. What is of interest is the question of which discourses are utilized and why it is that certain of these discourses resonate particularly well with the population. It is illuminating to study what it is that is used by the media to tie events happening in another part of the world to the concerns of the potential readership. An empirically grounded piece of evidence for the importance of popular understanding of international politics is Rieselbachs (1966) study of isolationism versus internationalism in American politics, He shows that voting for isolationism or internationalism in the House of Representatives could not be understood with reference to party allegiance. Instead the nature of political opinion was most closely matched to region of origin. This certainly suggests the existence of processes of political socialization which have some degree of autonomy from the central dictates of the American government. Trubowitzs (1992) study of the American national interest similarly

494

Pub&b&~ American ider+

concludes that American leaders autonomy in making foreign policy is contingent upon dmestic politics (Trubowitz, 1992: 188). Geopolitics should, then, be seen to have a virtual rather than an actual existence (0 Tuathail and Agnew, 1992: 193). It should be regarded in the sense in which Said talks of discourses, as forming an intertextual frame of reference (Said, 1979: 42) with which people can interpret subsequent events which come to light, rather than as having an ontological status of its own. It follows that geopolitics is more about selecting elements of the socially (at present, predominantly nationally) negotiated truth for emphasis than creating events from scratch. The scripting of geopolitics cannot be removed from the process of the social reproduction of knowledge. This is, of course, not to suggest that discourses drawn upon by geopoliticians present themselves as a direct outcome of the specific contexts within which they are socially and materially embedded. In fact, like Bat-&ess mythologies, more often than not they have the task of giving an historical intention a natural justification, and making contingency appear eternal (Barthes, 1973: 142). This dehistoricizing (and deg~ographicali~ii~g) has the effect of depoliticizing speech. I do not mean by this that a geopolitics which give recourse to mythologies either makes up or denies the existence of political phenomena and events already incorporated into knowledge; quite the contrary:
its function is to talk about them, simply, it purifies them, it makes them innocent, it gives them a natural, eternal justification, it gives them a a clarity which is not that of an expfanation but that of a statement of fact (Barthes, 1973: 143).

This is not, then, simply a manipulative ideological tool although it can have a similar effect. Instead it is a historically constituted way of understanding the world. By imposing narrative closure, in the form of reference to commonly accepted truisms, the complexities of life are presented in easy to manage chunks, the conceptual apparatus for their interpretation already having social existence. Another way to view such language is as common sense. Common sense, as Ross has argued, is a powerful discursive practice: It works to incorporate and rearriculate the most uncommonly uncritical ideas and perceptions as part of its explanatory presentation of the values that survive-the vafues that endure--in a world whose volatility is depicted as politically hostile to the stability of all values (Ross, 1990: 9). Common sense appeals through the obviousness of its claims; it makes the world simple, and manageable. This is facilitated thraugh a silencing of complexity, of problems which do not produce right or wrong, true or false conclusions. In effect, the elements complicating simple notions of right or wrong are disciplined to binary simplicity by pulling the world through the discursive practice of common sense. Many writers have formulated conceptions of the importance of mythology to the construction of North American identity. Campbell suggests that:
If all states are imagined communities, devoid of ontological being apart from the many and varied practices which constitute their reality, then America is the imagined cornmuni~~~~ excekrzce. (Campbetl, 1992: 105). The remainder of this paper will examine the mythologies

of one understanding war.

which structure the constitution of America during one particular historical period, the second cold

JOANNE P. SHARP

495

The term second cold war suggests a distinct time period. Indeed it did mark a difference from the previous period of detente, 1969-79 (Halliday, 1983). After this point there was an increase in tension, a breakdown of attempts to negotiate and a rise of movements opposing internal repression. Yet the second cold war should still be seen within the framework of the whole cold war as significant themes are continued. By this stage in the development of American-Soviet relations, in American geopolitics the division between east and west was so ingrained in the structure of world-scale political narratives that it no longer needed explanation. To a majority of the population it had become a matter of common sense that the USA and USSR were polar opposites. This discursive structure is a prevalent one in American society and can be found recreated in school textbooks, the scripting of movies and news reports, fiction and factual accounts. I now want to examine this common-sensical construction of the geopolitical world through an examination of the second cold war representation of the Soviet IJnion in the popular magazine, % Rea&rS Digest, between 1980 and 1990.*

Geopolitics

and you: popular participation

in the creation of a geopolitical

enemy

Y%e Readers Digest was established in 1922 by Dewitt Wallace and his wife Lila Bell Acheson. Initially the magazine reproduced condensed versions of articles from other, predomin~tly regional, sources which the Wallaces thought deserved a wider readership. The Wallaces continued to dominate the editorship of Z%eReaders Digest until Dewitts retirement in the mid-1970s. The characteristic booklet form of the Digest was designed as a collectible volume of lasting interest without the overly demanding reading requirements of a book-length tome (Dorfman, 1983). Since its initial publi~tion The &&as Digest has become incre~ingly popular so that it can now guarantee advertisers a circulation of at least sixteen and a quarter million in America alone (me Readers Digest, 1991). The Digest reaches a more diverse range of consumer subgroups than any other American magazine (Edward Thomson, editor-inchief 3976-84, pers. comm. 1991). It is also the worlds most widely read magazine although each version is specifically targeted to the tastes of the national populace it is reaching. The editor-in-chief wields a great deal of power.3 The editorial process is based on the art of condensation which relies on the ability to distil out the essence without changing the basic thrust of the argument (Thomson, pers. comm. 1991). A chosen article moves its way along murderers row (Schreiner, 1977: 49) from the most junior editor to the editor-in-chief, each of whom rewrites the version passed on to her/him. There are no written guidelines avaiiable for new employees. They learn what is required of them by reading what is sent up the editorial hierarchy by those senior to themselves (Schreiner, 1977). Because of the magnitude of the condensation of articles (for example a novel to ten or twenty small pages, a Time or Newsweek article to two to four pages) the editorial decision of what is of importance in the article is obviously an intensely political act as it will greatly influence the overall impression the article will convey. Furthermore, there is a politics to the choice of sources picked to represent the national medias coverage of American concerns. In the period studied, the majority of 89 pieces were originals written for the Digest, seven represented condensations of books, and the remainder came from a number of newspapers.* The authors chosen for inclusion in the Digest also indicate a particular selectivity. In the geopolitical writings there is a predominance of authors from the Committee on the Present Danger, military and government elites, and university

496

Publishing American

identity

intellectuals, although articles on similar topics are presented with the same authority when written by less technically qualified authors such as the novelist Tom Clancy. 7%e Readers Digest has been in existence for around the same period of time as the USSR. Initially the magazine was sympathetic to the Russian revolution because it was seen as a movement against what this American viewpoint regarded as an undemocratic, hierarchical European form of society. By the 1930s however, it had forged an exclusive link between the IJSSR and Communism and as such wrote of the newly emerged state as a danger to the emerging American world-order based on free trade. Walter Burnham has noted that collectivism has meet with antipathy in American society. And, although he admits that sometimes paranoids have real enemies (Burnham, 1982: ZSO), he nevertheless acknowledges that this anticollectivism, expressed primarily as the repression of individuality, forced interpretations of Soviet action into a more sinister light than the states military capacity, economic potential or actions might otherwise place it (Campbell, 1992: 159). The Self-Other dualism of the IJSA-USSR structured all articles concerning the USSR in the period 1980-90. This structure has become so deeply embedded in the Digest argument that the magazine was highly sceptical of the authenticity of even the most far-reaching changes in what was the Soviet Union. Articles are written in such a way that they perpetuate a particular discourse of America which will be described below. This is not always done directly. A dualism is set up between the USA and the USSR so that a description of events in, or characteristics of, the USSR (totalitarianism, expansionism and so on) automatically implies that the opposite applies to the US (in this case: democracy, freedom .). The Soviet Union becomes a negative space into which i%e Readers Digest projects all those values which are antithetical to its own (American) values. It is not possible to have coexisting but different values in this system; always one set of values is right, the other exists in op~sition and is thus wrong. By implication, rhe positive side of this value binary can be found to exist in the positive (conceptual and physical) space of America. In his detailed study of popular conceptions of America, Robertson (1980) examines the myths that have had the greatest resonance with the contemporary populace. I want to pull out two general themes from his work which I think provide the greatest latent source of imagery of the Americanness, both at the individual and state level, to be used in discussions of geopolitics. These are: mission and destiny, and relations between individual freedom and the state. Many discourses structure difference (see Table 2) but the major schism is that constructed around the opposition of individual freedom to collectivism, The American mission is thus to promote the good side of this value system. It will become obvious that the two are in now way unrelated, nor do they exhaust the possible mythologies from which geopoliticians can draw. Nevertheless, I feel that they occupy a particularly important position in the hegemonic American collective imagination.

The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. (Paine, 1978:
402) [The American

Revolution was] actually to espouse the cause and expand the base for freedom in the world (Robertson, 1980: 71) It is as though America as a whole had espoused this sect-like destiny ~. the whole of America is preoccupied with the sect as a moral institution. (Baudril~~rd, 1988: 91)

TAHLE1.

Article topic, narrative Discursive Time Ilnchanging Degeneration Rationality Gender Environmental determinism content

structure

and discursive

content,

7k &a&rs

Digest 1980-90

Narrative stmlcture

Article topic

Mission and destiny

Individual freedom and the state

Total

2 3 z E

Military Undercover activity Diplomacy Domestic issues People Misc.

21 (24)

15 1 2 3 1 6 15 (17) 23 (26) 6 (7)

(57) (11) (50) (12) (8) (38)

2 (22) _

13 (54) 6 (44) 3 (19)

3 2 l 9 3 3

(13) (22) (25) (38) (23) (19)

_ 2 (22) _ 9 (38) 3 (23) 1 (6)

4 (17) 3 (75) 8 (33) 2 (15) 6 (38)

4 (17) _ _ l (4) 1 (8) _

1 (4) _ _ 1 (4) I (6) 3 (3)

23 9 4 24 13 16 89

Total

26 (29)

24 (27)

Figures in parentheses

represent

percentages.

498

Publhhing

American

identity

The above quotations, originating from such diverse pens as Thomas Paine and Jean Baudrillard, highlight that, more so than in other nationalisms, the predominant American self-conception is one of a national exceptionalism. In the hegemonic narrative of its history, America is not merely a territorial nation-state in the manner which we might use for European countries. America can also be seen as an idea transcendent of national borders: America is a place which is at once real, material and bounded (a territory with quiddity) yet also a mythological, imaginary and universal ideal with no specific spatial bounds (0 Tuathail and Agnew, 1992: 196). Liberation from Britain was not seen by the Founding Fathers as being limited to promoting freedom in America but should signal a change in the human condition around the globe. With an almost religious sense of mission, Americans are told to feel that they have not been granted the riches, size and power which they possess for no reason; it is there for some God-given purpose. The myth of America posits that Americans have, and should have, an unrivaled influence in human affairs (Robertson, 1980). In addition to the experience and constant reworking of the revolution, this mythology can be linked to frontier settlement: The moving frontier was never only a geographical line; it was a palpable barrier which separated the wilderness from civilization (Robertson, 1980: 92). America has thus been given the duty of expanding this civilization beyond its own boundaries; intervention beyond its territorial limits is not only legitimate but a moral responsibility. This was reinforced in the postwar period by the rising economic, cultural and political power of America, climaxing in pax-Americana which effectively shaped the postwar order around the American system. 7&e Readers Digest scripting of America in relation to the USSR in the context of 1980s geopolitics conveys a clear sense of mission. Indeed 26 of the 89 pieces devoted to the Soviet Union in the period 1980-90 were overtly structured around this heroic narrative. In the case of articles centered on military and diplomatic themes, half were structured this way (Table 2). Articles describing Soviet invasion anywhere in the world-past, present or threatened-imply the moral duty of America to resist it. The invasion of Afghanistan in 1980, for example, was explained by our failure to act to defend the freedom of that country:
we have led the Russians to take any action they could pursue into irressitible without temptation fear of reprisal. our repeated (Leeden, failures that 1980: 73).

in one crisis after another their own desires

have led the Soviets to conclude

Furthermore, it was feared that if we allow the nuclear balance to tip strongly in Moscows favor, Western Europe will inevitably be brought under predominantly Soviet influence (Griffith, 1980: 149, emphasis added). This approach is premised upon a bipolar structure of power: Afghanistan and Europe will be held either within the Soviet or the American sphere of influence; there is no third option. The Soviet Union is evil and threatens the survival of the free world unless America can act preventatively. Any American action is therefore automatically legitimated. In the morality of their attempts to resolve this power stalemate, Americans are pictured as innocently ploughing on while the Soviets are seen to exploit every advantage. One 1981 article on Soviet negotiation style states that the search for a reasonable middle ground of argument, the heart of the western sense of negotiation, is foreign to them (Rowny, 1981: 67). America occupied the moral high ground. The Soviets occupied the mirroring conceptual space; they represented a moral void (Barron, 1983: 214). Indeed, so much is this the case that Gorbachev, hailed as the savior of freedom by so

JOANNE P. SHARP
as presenting

499
He was seen

many in the west, is treated in X&eReaders Digest with immense scepticism. a challenge to the ~erican-centered mission of morality:
His goal, the most ambitious ever sought by a meaning for the Western alliance. It is nothing less the world, full moral equivalence with the US American leadership of the free world, the very longer exist. (Rosenthal, 1988: 71-72). 7&e Readerk Digests

Soviet leader, has profound than achieving, in the eyes of That would mean the end of concept of which would no

narrative structuring of the American destiny is clearly based on an extreme moral distancing of the two superpowers. common sense dictates that the American position was the moral one, the Soviet the immoral. When they were seen to converge, as under Gorbachevs leadership they sometimes did, Americas unique morai mission was challenged. If America were to lose this hegemony of moral perspective, it would collapse (Baudrillard, 1989: 91). Its major transcendental signifier, the moral high ground of the city on the hill, would be lost.

The Founding Fathers beiieved that the American destiny was to spread freedom. Although assumed to be universal, this notion was a particular construction of freedom; the kind of freedom assured under the democratic government system, a freedom which strove for the maximization of individual happiness within society. Thomas Jefferson was the major proponent of freedom in early America. He argued that the action of individuals should be relatively uncontrolled by government:
I am convinced that [native American Indian] societies which live without government enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under European governments. (Jefferson, 1975: 415).

Part of the seen as an coincident report the

American freedom was the position of the individual vis-&vis society. This is unantagonistic relationship as the betterment of the individual is regarded as with the betterment of society. Contemporary students of American society still working of this notion:

Society is no more or less than the colIective expression of the will of the people; the people are sovereign; society, then, represents the will of the sovereign. (Robertson, 1980: 219). What strikes you in the American system, is that there is no honor in breaking laws, nor prestige in trangression or being exceptional. (Baudrillard, 1988: 92).

In this vision, there is no class conflict-the economic gain of one would enhance the possiblities open to another. This produces a myth of homogeneity of opportunity which reinforces the democratic nature of society. Any differences in socio-economic levels therefore are seen as a result of the natural differences in peoples abilities. There is, then, not the degree of class allegiance in America that a European might expect. Indeed, Robertson suggests that the very notion of class is divisive, like frontiers, and thus works against the equalizing dynamic of the continuing American revolution. Most Americans, as surveys have attested, would like to insulate themselves from the extremes of class iden~fication and thus label themselves middle cfass (Fussell, 1983).

500

Publishing Ameri.an

iaferztity

By changing the emphasis from minimal state activity in individual life to a prioritization of freedom from any non-denlocratic form of governments this mythology of America also legitimated~erican-backed intervention around the globe. Such action, always motivated by a stated desire to spread freedom, introduces an innocence into the arena of conflict. The Readers Digests second cold war Soviet Union was not free. Twenty-four articles, structured around the contested discourse of individual freedom, are centrally concerned with tales of totalitarianism, repression and unjust imprisonment. Articles centrally concerned with Soviet domestic affairs and individuals were structured by this discourse even more frequently (Table I). Furthermore, antithetical to American individualism are descriptions of state limitations on individLla1 religious beliefs and economic initiatives. Mhat is more, the USSR was seen as determined the natural diffusion of freedom from America. to export this system in competition with

The Soviet lack of freedom is explained as a result of the states reliance on ideology. One article suggests that, to Soviets, ideology is more important than military strength. It gives them justification for their actions (Barnes, 1990: 107). The timeless sense of mission and inherent morality of American actions is presented in the Digest SLS evidence that such actions are free of ideology. Drawing on notions of self-evident logic and natural beliefs, the titfes of articles claim to reveal dangerous myths about nuclear arms (Teller, 1982), provide factual advice on what you should know about American defense (Koster, 1983) and plain old common sense about strategic defense (Clancy, 1988). In stark contrast to the USSR, then, ne Readers Digests cold war America was apolitical in intention; it simply moved along the inevitable, yet sadly contested, path towards the liberation of natural human needs The factual@ reinforced of objectivity of the Digests view of American moral intent and action is further

by the form of its dominant narrative style. The articles convey the appearance through the prodigous use of factual language (in a typical issue, claims

Schreiner j1977: 169],4300 facts are checked). Ideology, then, was associated only with the LJSSR which sought to undermine the natural progression of the American historic mission. The Soviet individual is seen as very much subservient to the whims of the state bureaucracy. Soviet people are described as victims of the ideology of repressive equality while suffering from the gross inequity of the nepotism and favoritism of the ~~~~~en~~at~~a system. Because of the binary discursive system from which irhe Readers Digest draws in order to create its characterization, the Soviet state was pictured as unlike the American equivalent in that it operated without any heed to popular opinion. As with notions of freedom, descriptions of the relation between the individual and the state are reinforced by the style of articles. There are a large number of articles that present important questions and problems which they answer by offering a faCtLId account of how a group of individuals (either western or disaffected Soviet) has overcome this problem by applying such enduring American values as honesty, family values and charity. This legitimating strategy of including familiar examples of real in~lividuaIs having solved problems provides the normative aspect of The Reader? Digest. By including examples of individuals who have solved problems (which are relayed in such a way as to have a direct bearing on the life of the reader) the Digest implies that the reader too could have some effect if s/he acted (unlike the poor Soviet who must accept the dictates of her/his Party just as they must accept the weather). Not only does this tie the concern of the article to (what should be) the concerns of the reader (if s/he is a decent American) but it also reinforces the power of the system defined here as western democracy based around a notion of popular pa~icipation in national affairs in the world system (Dorfman, 1983: 153).

JOAP*NE P. SHARP Conclusion: representation, repetition and geopolitics

501

The example of me Readers Digest has demonstrated the substantial linkage between the magazines image of itself as representative of American values and the way in which it represents the Other, the former Soviet Union. Obviously not all articles concerned with the Soviet Union in 7&e Readers Digest are geopolitical in content. However, there is a constant set of themes running through all Soviet stories-whether ethnographic, sociological, religious and so on-which provide a consistent characterization allowing the credible creation of a Soviet geopolitics by the Digest. Thus every representation of the USSR is a political action. It fits into the discursive structuring of the USA and USSR as polar opposites: a structure centered upon irresolvable difference. Of the 89 articles considered in this IO-year period, there was only one which was sympathetic to the Soviet case. This was a report on the December 1988 Armenian earthquake. But this was constructed as a human tragedy beyond geopolitical bounds. And, even this was darkened with the specter of a bureaucrat unwilling to deliver bread to a village because there was no surviving official to sign for it (Anon, 1989: 145). This structuring of two discrete and internally homogenized spaces is recreated through the use of subsidiary discourses of Otherness proving the absolute incompatibility of Americans and Soviets. The most important of these include the discourse of time (either employed to suggest an unchanging essential Soviet or as a degenerative system, in contrast to the progressivism of America), of rationality (describing Soviet action which cannot be comprehended as logical within the American-universal system of rationality), of overly aggressive masculinity (structured around the aggressive and unnatural penetration of unwilling societies by the Soviet military and propaganda machine), and also drawing upon the discourse of environmental determinism to suggest that even the Soviet weather works to structure their difference from Americans (see Table I; Sharp,
1991).

Although the USSR was created as the ultimate alter ego in ne Readers Digest during the Cold War, other places are also represented in ways which are used to reinforce the journals utopian image of America. In parallel to Judith Butlers explanation of the construction of gendered identity, the Digests conception of American identity is constituted through a stylized repetition of acts not [through] a founding act but rather a regulated pattern or repetition (Butler, 1990: 145). 7%eReaders Digest seeks to describe the diversity of the world; however, by distorting all the images through its own narrow representational lens and measuring these places against its own values, diversity is lost: underneath the monthly anecdotal variations lies a profound structural unity.
Each selected technique piece cannot help but repeat the same language, procedure, 1983: and ideology as all other pieces. The same flag, climate, and geology on all apparently independent islands. (Dorfman,

are cyclically reiterated

139) Especially by referring to its definition of morality as an apparently universal measure, the Digest recreates America by continually comparing others to it. This morality and the transcendental knowledge of common sense structure the constant repetition of these other places as simulacrum, referring to an original which does not exist, 7%e Reaakfs Digests mythos of America. It would be surprising if a magazine with the popularity of fie Readers Digest were at a radical disjuncture to the dominant view. Nevertheless, it has been the argument of this paper that it is important to study the magazine as a source of geopolitical knowledge

502

Publishing American identity

because this is the role it plays within the sociology of knowledge reproduction in American society (especially in the context of the poor state of geographical education in this country). Not only is geopolitical information represented in this text but it is contextualized within a wider undertstanding of the nations in question. In essence, then, in making the case for popular sources of geopolitics, this paper has argued for a move away from the sharp distinction between the high politics of statecraft and the mass politics of the media. The media are a site of representation structured by dominant, historically reproduced discourses and partially scripted by elites who contribute articles or are written about. However, elites are socialized through this site themselves and are thus inclined to write their geopolitics in such a way that they will not irresolvably challenge the common sense of their readership. Acknowledgements I would like to thank John Agnew, Jim Pickett and three anonymous reviewers for their extensive
comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Notes
1. It is important to note, however, that even these seemingly objective measures are not independent of their historical construction, as illustrated by the case of the British Imperial system used in the objectification, classification and thus statistical domestication of its Empire. 2. The characterization of the content of me Readers Digest articles is based on an analysis of the
discursive structure content of each article and their concerned discursive with the Soviet Union. content can be found A tabulation in Tuble 1. of the narrative of the articles

3. The editor-in-chief in fact decides upon policy. This, as Edward Thomson (editor-in-chief 1976-84) has stated (pers. comm. 1991), is because Be Readers Digest is a digest of articles, not a news magazine. 4. These included three articles from 7&e New York Times, and one each from The [London] Times and Financial Times, Newsweek, Time, The Washingtonian, Foreign @airs, The National Review, Encounter, Halpers~ The Wilson Qwzrterly, 7%~ Virginian Pilot, and 71~ Wall Street Journal.

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