Research: The port as a geopolitical crossroads: towards a theory of its connections with the political organization of land.
The research project aims to develop a theoretical framework for understanding the port as an agent of geopolitical regionalization in the contemporary world. In particular, by drawing on the concept of “crossroads” developed by Jean Gottmann, a cosmopolitan geographer active from the 1930s to the 1990s, the project seeks to highlight the mechanisms through which commercial ports influence power relations in the contexts in which they are situated. The theoretical elaboration of the concept, the contextualization of the author within the major traditions of European thought, and the application of the results to a case study aim to introduce a politically oriented perspective into a field that has so far been dominated by a functionalist paradigm.