The territorial trap: the geographical assumptions of international relations theory (original) (raw)
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Territory, territorialisation, territoriality: Problems of definition and historical interpretation
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Territory, territorialisation and territoriality are polysemic concepts. Efforts to come up with a shared notion have been numerous, and also quite effective. But the etymology of the Latin word territorium had actually a plurality of meanings. In the Middle Ages the concept was mainly associated to the notion of Jurisdiction, and this link implied that for medieval jurists it became quite normal to imagine that a single area could be interested not only by many jurisdictions, but also by many territories and therefore different forms of territoriality. In more recent times, this idea have been lost in favor of a statecentric notion, according to which the concept of territory would be considered primarily as the spatial projection of modern states and the salient features of territoriality should therefore be continuity, homogeneity, and isotropism. This 'traditional notion of territory' seems to still enjoy some luck with many disciplines, and also with the historians. But actually the notion poses several problems, and so it had better to be abandoned to return to imagine-as suggested also by the ethological, biological, and ethno-anthropological studiesdifferent possible forms of territoriality and many possible forms of territorialisation.
Introduction: Fragmented territoriality (with Philip Liste)
For the time being, important segments of our world are organised in terms of territorial fragments. At the same time, processes of 'globalisation' are interpreted as a move away from territoriality, the latter concept commonly understood as an organising principle of the international world of nation-states. Where this principle is subject to alternative types of fragmentation, the spatiality of regulation is indeed put into question. However, insight into the contingency of spatiality alone will hardly lay the ground for understanding the conceptual and practical pitfalls of transnational space.
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Der Aufsatz untersucht die sich überlagernden Territorialisierungsmuster in der Finnisch-Russischen Grenzregion. Dabei wird den Friktionen zwischen diesen verschiedenen Mustern im Rahmen von EU-Politiken vor dem Hintergrund sich wandelnder historischer Formen supranationaler, nationaler und regionaler Territorialisierung besondere Aufmerksamkeit gewidmet. Das Fallbeispiel Karelien stand als historische Region für mehr als tausend Jahre im Zentrum von Auseinandersetzungen rivalisierender Projekte der Staats- und Nationenbildung im europäischen Norden. Der Aufsatz untersucht u. a., welche Rolle dieses historische Erbe in der Regionalpolitik der Europäischen Union spielt und in welcher Form es in heutigen supra-nationalen, nationalen und regionalen Vorstellungen von grenzüberschreitender Regionalisierung präsent ist. Karelien kann als Paradebeispiel für das Aufeinandertreffen verschiedener Formen der Regionalisierung, der Staatsbildung wie auch der Definition der Ost-West-Konfrontation...
A Research Agenda for Territory and Territoriality
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Boundaries Delimited. The Notion of Territoriality in International Relations Theory
What does territoriality mean and how is it evaluated in the globalization era? What are the main strands in IR theory debating the issue of territoriality-sovereignty and especially about “states function in a debordering world?” This study deals with the above-mentioned questions, trying to explain and understand the multiple gradations of the notion of territoriality in the field of International Relations Theory. We consistently rely around the methodological scheme of Martin Wight‟s, International Theory, linking the current theoretical debate around territoriality and state sovereignty to a pendulum, at both ends of which are the anarchic international system and the world civil society. The former coincides with state sovereignty -international anarchy as the constitutional framework of the modern international system that described and analyzed by the two thoughts waves of International Theory-Realism-Rationalism. The latter is crystallized in cosmopolitanism belief of humanity as the sole ingredient and determining driving force to world society, based on the revolutionary strand of International Theory. A more refined and broader theoretical approach, grounded on the “liberal-rationalist” thought waves, is globalization literature, which seeks to weaken state power and status in the anarchic international system. As a result, the key issue here is the international political discourse focusing on human beings ontological security into state or above state.
The roles and future of bounded territories have become important themes in research. Scholars have in particular theorized new forms of spatialities that have emerged along with the geopolitical and geo‐economic upheavals that followed the Cold War. Many scholars, dazzled by the supposed power of globalization and the related rise of a world characterized by ‘flows’ and networks, have suggested that we are moving towards a ‘borderless world’ and a retreat of the nation‐state. At the same time, partly as a reaction to globalization and partly as a response to emerging regionalism and ethno‐regionalist movements, a number of states have set in motion a process of re‐scaling in which they have devolved part of their power in governance to supra‐state and sub‐state regions. Concomitantly, new, increasingly technical forms of governance have been taken into use to control state territories. This paper will first scrutinize how academic scholars have by tradition interpreted and theorized the roles of ‘boundedness’, borders and territoriality. Some new conceptual perspectives will then be developed in order to understand the persistence of bounded territorial spaces. It will suggest that, in spite of the increasing interactions and networks, the state is still a crucial organizer of territorial spaces and creator of meaning for them, even though these spaces are becoming increasingly porous. The paper looks at how such meaning‐making occurs in spatial socialization and in the governmental practices that perpetually aim at making territory calculable. It suggests that, instead of being mere neutral lines, borders are important institutions and ideological symbols that are used by various bodies and institutions in the perpetual process of reproducing territorial power.