The conflicting logics of cross-border reterritorialization: Geopolitics of Euroregions in Eastern Europe

Europe is currently experiencing an unprecedented process of reterritorialization in the context of European Union integration. Central to this process is the implementation of various cross-border cooperation schemes, commonly known as Euroregions, aimed at redefining fixed, border-induced Westphalian territoriality. The literature on Euroregions has primarily examined the reterritorialization of state power and institutions across borders, documenting the emergence of cross-border governance networks. However, the territorial underpinning of cross-border reterritorialization, as well as the process of territorial constitution of cross-border spaces has been less well explored. This paper examines cross-border reterritorialization from a geopolitical perspective informed by multi-scalar conceptualizations of political territoriality. Actors at supranational, national and local scales often follow territorial logics that are at odds with each other. Competing meanings of territory and territoriality interact to produce a geopolitics of Euroregions that shapes cross-border reterritorialization. The paper focuses on the Euroregions established at the current fringes of the EU, in the Romanian–Ukrainian–Moldovan borderlands.     

Rethinking the Spatiality of Spatial Planning: Methodological Territorialism and Metageographies

This paper argues for increased attention to the role of territory and territoriality in framing sociospatial discourses in the context of spatial plan making. In particular, it is suggested that the engagement of political actors with processes of spatial planning tends to be framed within particular spatial imaginaries which reflect established political-administrative and territorial boundaries. It is contended that a critical analysis of the territorial framing of processes of spatial planning is necessary in order to understand the capacity for spatial strategies to effectively challenge and reconfigure established sociospatial imaginaries in functional or relational terms. It is suggested that spatially explicit public policy statements, such as planning strategies, may be characterized by specific assumptions of territorial space, in a similar manner to which mainstream social science has contained implicit assumptions of state-centrism. The salience of territorial spatial imaginaries is demonstrated in the case of European spatial planning and through a local case study of city-regional spatial planning and politics in the Greater Dublin Area.     

Territory,sovereignty and entitlement: Diplomatic discourses in the United Nations Security Council

This paper builds upon feminist approaches within political science, international relations and geography that study how bodies haunt global politics, by exploring how entitlement to power connects through the scale of the body to that of the state. In a context of rising populism and political bluster, as well as post-#metoo discussions of personal entitlement displayed by well-known political figures, there is a need to take seriously how discourses of statehood within security crises are gendered in specific ways. This paper argues that the concept of entitlement offers potential for geographic enquiry by opening up new perspectives on masculinist framings of territory and state in critical geopolitics and in critical international relations. It considers specifically how diplomatic discourses ground and naturalize claims to territory by showing how states’ entitlement to territory and masculinist forms of personal entitlement are connected. Drawing upon feminist approaches to language, discourse and power, this paper studies diplomatic interventions at the United Nations Security Council in New York in 2014–2017 on the crisis in Ukraine. Methodologically, it analyses diplomatic speeches through the concept of entitlement to show how territorial claims are naturalized through rhetorical devices grounded in hegemonic forms of masculinity. It argues that a clearer understanding of the connections between discourses of personal entitlement and state territorial sovereignty can further our understanding of territory.     

Spiritual geopolitics of Georgia's territorial integrity

This paper represents a study of the geopolitical reasoning of the Georgian Orthodox Church (GOC) and its leader Patriarch Ilia II regarding the question of Georgia's territorial integrity. Does the GOC's territorial discourse complement or challenge Georgia's territorial nationalism? The empirical analysis of the geopolitical discourses of Patriarch Ilia II in the early 1990s and in the wake of the 2008 August (Russia-Georgia) War shows a complicated relationship between spiritual and secular geopolitical discourses on Georgia's territorial integrity. Ilia's spiritual geopolitics is neither dissident nor entirely complementary. The Patriarch's definition of Georgia's territorial integrity eschews the broadly accepted formulation of “Russian occupation” within Georgia and in its place, insufficient faith and religiosity within the Georgian society take a more prominent place in the explanation of the problem's origins. Ilia II defines the religion and the GOC as the unifying factor, spiritually, territorially, and politically, of the rival parties and alienated peoples and territories. The church's canonical territoriality, rather than the state's sovereign territoriality, plays the key object of concern in the Patriarch's geopolitical discourse. However, Ilia II frames this narrow institutional interest of the church as the basis for the nation's territorial unification. By advocating more narrowly for the GOC's canonical jurisdiction across the entire disputed territories, rather than actively embracing secular anti-Russian geopolitical narratives, the church simultaneously stands outside of the territorial conflict, taking a seemingly neutral position, and reinforces the territorial claim of the Georgian state. By distinguishing and problematizing the role of GOC's canonical territoriality in the question of Georgia's sovereign territoriality, the paper concludes that the GOC is a territorial power in its own right, not merely a spiritual wing of the state of Georgia.     

Passing as a tourist: Exploring the everyday urban geopolitics of tourism

This paper presents a case study of territorial boundary transgression and intergroup encounters mediated by tourism in a volatile and contested urban space. I present the notion of ‘passing as a tourist’ as a prism to investigate the nexus between performative tourism and everyday urban geopolitics. Situated in East Jerusalem's core geographies of colonization and political violence, this paper uses archival news material and a textual analysis of primary questionnaire data to critically examine how Jewish Israeli Jerusalemites visiting the Muslim Quarter in the Old City negotiate encounters in a conflicted space. The study reveals how the performative dimensions of ‘tourism’ in a context of polarized ethnonational division expose the role of embodied, everyday geopolitics in the production of urban spaces of tourism.     

Nations,states and homelands: territory and territoriality in nationalist thought

This article is a response to growing recognition that the role of territory has been neglected in recent explorations of nationalism. To improve understanding of how and why territory has been significant to the development of nationalist thought, this article advances two closely related arguments. The first is that the ideology of nationalism is, itself, a product of attempts to merge two very different views about the value of territory and, consequently, two different practices of territoriality. Secondly, I argue that the main lines of division in explanations of nationalism reflect the differential privileging of one view of the significance of territory, and one practice of territoriality, over the other. To substantiate these assertions, the article begins by identifying the latent powers of space and outlining the process of territoriality that allows human beings to harness these powers. This is followed by a discussion of how nationalism – as part of the shift to modernity – contributed to a major transformation in the general significance of territory and territoriality. Drawing on both pre–modern and modern views, the article demonstrates how different understandings of the significance of territory and territoriality help to define the spectrum of nationalist thought that has emerged from the eighteenth–century work of Herder and Rousseau. Through this geographical lens, the article as a whole reveals the profoundly territorial quality of nationalism and thus confirms the view that neither nationalist ideology nor practice can be understood without reference to the spatial powers which it mobilises and creates.     

EUROPEAN INTEGRATION AND THE TERRITORIAL‐ADMINISTRATIVE COMPLEX

Detractors of European integration and many of its protagonists invoke state territoriality where the social and the spatial come together in a “Territorial‐Administrative Complex”. Like the military‐industrial complex claiming once to procure security, protagonists claim to guarantee democratic legitimacy. At the same time, the interests of the territorial constituencies prevail over others. The underlying notion of space is absolute and of territory that of a container. Costs and benefits are calculated in terms pertaining to it. The underlying “meta‐geography” is one of boxes‐in‐boxes, but rather than viewing space as a container, based on academic literature in the matter, planners now pursue soft planning for soft spaces. In the face of the apparently incontestable claim of the Territorial‐Administrative Complex to a monopoly on the production of democratic legitimacy, the article points out, albeit rare examples of constitutional theorists challenge this monopoly. Voting in territorial constituencies, they claim, has never been properly argued for, making it an arbitrary institution.     

Geographic dimensions of enduring rivalries

In this study, we show that our understanding of rivalries can be enhanced by a greater consideration of the connection between this phenomenon and geographic factors. More specifically, we seek to understand the impacts of territoriality (i.e. disputes over land control) and space (i.e. contiguity) on rivalry. Prior works tell us that these factors are important in individual militarized conflicts, but until now we did not know whether they also impact patterns of recurring conflicts. Although we find that both territorial disputes and contiguity matter little for rivalries in general, we do demonstrate that both factors’ importance grows as we consider the more serious types of rivalries. In other words, most rivalries are not fought over territory or between neighbors, but a substantial portion of proto- and enduring rivalries are conditioned by territorial disputes and proximity. We also investigate whether disputes over land and contiguity have impacts on conflict density, rivalry development, and rivalry severity. We show that both factors increase the frequency of conflict and the chances of serious rivalry development. In contrast, rivalry severity is more of a function of the underlying issue the rivals disagree over (i.e. territorial control) than of opportunity to fight (i.e. proximity).     

从国家间到多尺度的政治地理学：日本的历程与启示

二战后日本政治地理学经历了盛极而衰之后再起步的曲折历程，政治地理学一度成为日本地理学中最不活跃的分支学科，也少有学者出席相关的学术活动。但是，20世纪90年代以后，这种状况发生了转变，政治地理学在日本再度兴起。本文通过分析在日本政治地理学相关出版物的变化，考察了二战结束以来政治地理学在日本复兴并被重新建构的过程。研究发现，与地缘政治和领土相关的出版物在日本比较多，经历了两个高峰，而最近又处于增长趋势。政治地理学在此期间经历了由国家间地缘政治向多尺度的政治地理学的转变。基于日本政治地理学的发展历程，本文认为，未来包括中日韩在内的东亚政治地理学的发展尤其要重视以下三点：一是要注重东方国家政治地理学的独特性；二是要警惕回归到作为治国方略的古典地缘政治学的危险性；三是要充分认识多尺度视角的重要意义。本文认为，这三方面的努力，将有可能使东亚政治地理学为当代世界政治地图的领域性和复杂性理解做出独有的贡献。     

Territory and lithium extraction: The Great Land of Lipez and the Uyuni Salt Flat in Bolivia

The Uyuni salt flat in Bolivia is a strategic location with a vast deposit of lithium; a key mineral for the production of Li-ion batteries for electric vehicles and energy storage. Over time, the Uyuni salt flat has become a space of contestation and grievances over its mineral resources, its territorial limits and for the most ambitious State-led project for lithium extraction and industrialization in Bolivian history. The paper aims to interrogate how notions of space ownership are intertwined with the governance of strategic resources such as lithium. Using qualitative primary data collected in Bolivia between 2014 and 2017, I explore the case of the Uyuni salt flat and the territorial arrangements of the nearby region (southwest region also known as the Land of Lipez). By examining the geo-spatial history, this case, I argue, illustrates geo-spatial delimitations are inherently political, contested and co-produced by the surrounding communities to define forms of access to and control of resources and the territory. The co-production of territory and the governance of its resources produces new spatial and political configurations in which there is a growing tension in terms of the recognition of indigenous land rights in spaces where the extractive frontier is expanding and the State maintains and perpetuates power imbalances in the sphere of decision-making. As this case shows, the history, the struggles over the governance of its resources and the land titling process behind reveal a territorial project in constant making and entangled in a political project to control mining of lithium in Bolivia.     

Operationalizing a contested concept: indicators of territorial cohesion

European territorial policies increasingly refer to broad goals such as sustainability, well-being and cohesion. For their operationalization as political goals, there is a need to create indicators. But how can an indicator be meaningful in relation to a complex concept that is not well defined? If the creation of an indicator is primarily aimed at quantifying a concept and making it more operational, in the case of a contested concept (such as territorial cohesion), the process of building indicators also helps stabilize it, allowing a potential decontestation. A participatory constructivist approach – as used by the ESPON project Indicators for Territorial Cohesion (INTERCO) – is considered to be the most suitable for building indicators of contested concepts. While ensuring computability of the indicators, it allows more flexibility and reconciles the different meanings of the concept in order to stabilize it. Ultimately, the validity of indicators of contested concepts lies in pragmatic criteria: usability, usefulness and use.     

空间、权力与领域:领域的政治地理研究综述与展望

随着空间的社会转向,权力-空间研究已成为西方人文地理学的重要议题,国内也陆续出现了空间政治的相关讨论。本文通过梳理中西方人文地理学领域研究的相关成果,力图建立以领域为基础的权力-空间分析框架,并将其运用于当下中国的空间政治问题解读。领域是权力赋值于空间的产物,是解读现实世界权力-空间关系的重要视角,也是当代政治地理学区别于其他分支学科的主要概念。地理学对领域概念的运用从生态视角到社会视角、从国家尺度到多维尺度,体现了领域研究的日渐深入与系统化。本文在综合既有研究成果的基础上,提出领域化、去领域化和再领域化的权力-空间分析框架,并期冀其成为进一步相关实证研究的指引。     

(Re)constructing borders through the governance of tourism and trade in Ladakh,India

This paper analyses how everyday life, the state and nationhood are regulated and organised in a conflict-affected borderland space through economic activities. It focuses on two elements that are often overlooked when scholars discuss spatial governmentality: tourism and trade. Both are commonly declared to be elements of peace, peacebuilding and cosmopolitism. However, the spatial governance of tourism and trade can also profoundly shape how national belonging and the limits of territory are perceived and experienced by borderland populations and visitors. These dynamics can be acute in conflict-affected border zones, where state sovereignty may be under existential or territorial threat. This paper exposes such dynamics in the Indian conflict borderland area of Ladakh, a part of Jammu and Kashmir State until October 2019. Building on scholarship that has analysed cultural and social dynamics of “bordering” in the region, this paper argues that it is possible to read (socio-)economic boundary-making in Ladakh through the state's influence in the organisation and experience of trade and tourism for Ladakhis and visitors. The paper highlights how their spatial organisation, in part, underwrites difference and separation, and aids in framing the contested territory as ‘Indian’.     

Historicizing territorial currencies: monetary space and the nation-state in North America

In the growing scholarly literature analysing the origins of the territoriality of modern states, the historical roots of territorially homogeneous and exclusive national currencies have been quite neglected. This neglect is surprising not only because these `territorial currencies' are seen as one of the central symbols of the modern nation-state, but also because it is in the monetary realm where challenges to the practice of territoriality are particularly apparent in the contemporary age. This article analyses the historical reorganization of monetary structures that produced territorial currencies focusing on the North American region. It demonstrates that this development involved a set of elaborate and extensive state initiatives which took place at different speeds after the mid-nineteenth century in Canada, the United States and Mexico. I argue that the different timing of these reforms across the three countries demonstrates well how this monetary transformation was associated closely with the broader political project of building modern nation-states on the North American continent, a process that followed a different trajectory in each country. Specifically, I show that the creation of territorial currencies was seen by state authorities to be intricately connected with the consolidation of three dimensions of nation-states in North America: their economic territoriality, the direct link created between state and domestic society, and the sense of collective identity among their inhabitants. The analysis contributes to scholarship that historicizes territoriality and the nation-state, as well as to our understanding of the nature and significance of challenges to territorial currencies in the contemporary age.     

Urban atmospheres of terror

This essay advances an affective agenda in urban geopolitics that studies the everyday felt experience of urban terrorism. It takes as examples the relations between the spatial politics and affective atmospheres of Place de la République (Paris) and Place de la Bourse/Beursplein (Brussels) in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 2015 and 2016. Intersecting feminist geopolitics and non-representational geographies, the essay bridges geographical studies of experience and affective atmospheres with experiential accounts in urban geopolitics. It argues for a renewed conceptual engagement and scholarly focus on the affective dimensions of urban geopolitics and security, that highlights the contested and unequal topographies of everyday experience in the aftermath of terrorism in urban Europe.     

The structuring of political territory in early printed atlases

Abstract

The atlas emerged as a cartographic and bibliographic response to early modern Europeans’ search for geographical order in a rapidly changing world. In particular, atlases were mediators in the restructuring of European ideas about political territory which culminated in the emergence (by the end of the eighteenth century) of the territorial state and its progeny, the nation‐state. For more than two centuries atlases defined political territories ever more precisely for their readers and expressed hierarchical relationships among those territories, while giving form to the political territoriality and geopolitical orientations of particular nations.     

The definition of culture in culture-based urban development strategies: antagonisms in the construction of a culture-based development discourse

Implementing culture-based development strategies is a recent trend in large and small cities all over Europe. The definition of culture and the objectives of cultural strategies are highly contested in the public debate. Analysing the newspaper debates on the establishment of the Cultiva foundation in Kristiansand, Norway, this article discusses how and why the discursive debate on the definition of culture creates different discursive positions in the public debate on culture-based development. In the different discourses on what these strategies should be, there are a number of antagonisms that contribute to defining the relationships and interfaces between the different discursive positions. The main lines of discursive conflict are between urban planners and/or policy-makers who follow a spatial logic that emphasises a comprehensive understanding of territorial planning and cultural workers and/or artists who follow a critical artistic creation logic that emphasises the values that exist in art and the potential of the cultural field for personal development, general education and social criticism.     

THE FIRST SOVIET CONFERENCE ON HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY

An attempt is made to demonstrate the need for a joint focus for microterritorial and socio-economic planning in small areas of cities. It is suggested that such a focus might be the territorial (spatial) structure, a derivative of the socio-economic structure of a territory that has long been the object of territorial planning at various levels. With particular reference to the transport services in the southernmost section of the city of Volgograd, it is shown how social processes are affected by the extent and the parameters of territory. Particular attention is given to the problem of “location,” including the meaning of “location” in microgeographic investigations.     

Partition,consociation, border‐crossing: some lessons from the national conflict in Ireland/Northern Ireland

ABSTRACT. Outlining Ireland's long history of ethno‐national conflict, and the recent protracted ‘peace process’ in Northern Ireland, contextualises a critique of the problems underlying such conflicts, and the difficulties in transforming externally imposed conflict management into self‐sustaining conflict resolution. It is argued that the problems and difficulties are deeply rooted in a thoroughly modern complex of nationalism, ethnicity, sovereignty and representative democracy. These are knotted together in a common denominator of territoriality, and the nub of the problem is the ‘double paradox’ of democracy's undemocratic origins in the present. Territoriality, the use of bordered geographical space, is a powerful and ubiquitous mode of social organisation which simplifies social control. But it can grossly oversimplify and distort social realities, particularly at borders and especially where territory is contested, thereby reinforcing other distorting simplifications typically found in ethno‐national conflicts. In consequence, radical remedies are needed if the problems are to be overcome. Making ethno‐national peace paradoxically calls for more creative border‐crossing conflicts around other issues.