Stateless Nation-Building: Quebec,Catalonia and Scotland in the Changing State System

Abstract. The reconfiguration of political space is bringing about new forms of territorial politics. The meanings of nationalism and the state are being transformed and new types of autonomist movement are emerging. These are often seen as a resurgence of ethnicity, or as attempts to recreate mini nation-states fragmented from the existing ones. Mainstream political science tends to regard them negatively. It is argued that the resurgence of minority nationalism is also a response to the needs for collective action in a world of weakened nation-states. New forms of collective identity and action are emerging which recognise the limitations of traditional sovereignty and the necessary interdependence of the contemporary world. There is much that is new here, but also much that has always been present but has been lost in the state-centred perspective of political science. The argument is illustrated by an examination of three of the most electorally successful nationalist movements in the Western world, in Quebec, Catalonia and Scotland. These are seen not as classic nationalist movements but as nation-building projects which recognise the limitations of the nation-state formula and are engaged in ‘stateless nation-building’. This project is difficult to translate into constitutional terms or to reconcile with the model of the state prevailing in the respective majority communities.     

The production of borders in nineteenth-century Europe: between institutional boundaries and transnational practices of space

The article proposes a synthesis of the major historical works on nineteenth-century European borders. Founded on an original methodological approach, the article advances a rethinking of the concept of ‘territoriality’ traditionally attributed to the rise of modern nation-states. The innovative method adopted is based on combining the focus on spatiality in recent historiography – especially in global history – with the categories and the ethnographic method developed within the border-studies field. The analysis is conducted in two directions. The first focuses on ‘borders’, specifically on some border-creation processes developing throughout the European continent. The second is more centred on European ‘borderlands’, conceived as trans-state and trans-national regions, mainly linked to the space's well-established social practices, familial and economic networks and religious experience. On the one hand, the article highlights how nineteenth-century borders were not simply the product of an institutional decision performed by emerging nation-states, but also the result of an interactive dialectic between state institutions and social actors inhabiting the borderlands. On the other, it shows how the borderlands as cross-border territorial entities continued to exist alongside the new territorial state limits, helping shape a more complex European spatiality than traditionally stated.     

Money,citizenship, territoriality and the proposals for North American Monetary Union

Discussions regarding a possible North American Monetary Union (NAMU) between Canada and the United States exploded in 1999. Advocates of a NAMU emphasized the economic benefits to be had by creating a supra-national currency across the world's largest trading partners, including the elimination of transaction and hedging costs; the creation of a less volatile trading area; and an anticipated increase in the intensity of continental trade. But what impact would a NAMU have on the relationship between the state and civil society, particularly vis-à-vis social citizenship? This paper examines the potential impact of the proposed NAMU with respect to three aspects of state–society relationships: (1) national community and belonging; (2) political sovereignty and accountability; and (3) social rights and the welfare state. In so doing, I set out a framework for thinking about how the national organization of money in Western nation-states, a territorialization that was coterminous with the formation of a national economy, is interconnected with the rise of social citizenship in the early 20th century. Understanding the constitutive relationship between currencies and citizenship suggests ways that social, cultural and political concerns need to be taken into consideration in the restructuring of monetary organization.     

Infrastructural territorialisations: Mega-infrastructures and the (re)making of Kenya

This paper, based on historical and contemporary dynamics of railway infrastructures in Kenya, analyses how mega-infrastructures are central in state practices of infrastructural territorialisation – an infrastructure-based production of territoriality as a historically and geographically specific form of spatio-political order and organisation, imbued with social tensions, stemming from the state-led imposition of a techno-politics onto its territory. Focusing on territorial and political objectives of the state advanced through the Uganda Railway and the Standard Gauge Railway, the paper demonstrates how both of these projects have been central in colonial and contemporary practices of infrastructural territorialisation, albeit in mercurial ways that do not fully represent original techno-political intensions of the state. This discussion, first, highlights how megaprojects – although primarily analysed by recent geographical scholarship as advancing contemporary geographies of global capitalism – also contingently coalesce with state (re)territorialisation practices. Second, undertaking these analyses in the Kenyan context, the paper shows how, despite shared historical dynamics of contingent state territorialisation – and the reconstitution of racial and socio-economic inequalities, advanced through megaprojects that in Kenya are socially interpreted through historical experiences of colonialism – current infrastructural territorialisations are also different; whilst the colonial territorialisation of Kenya emerged as relatively unchallenged, its present state territory-making is undermined by both the global character of megaprojects and the external actors that the state relies on for its practices of infrastructural territorialisation.     

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.     

Territoriality,social boundaries and ancestor veneration in the central Andes of Peru

This article examines the relationship between social boundaries, territoriality and ancestor veneration during the Late Intermediate Period (1000–1450 AD) in the Rapayán Valley of the Central Andes of Peru. Constructing upon recent theoretical work on social boundaries and territoriality combined with the analyses of early historical sources, I argue that the distribution of various types of above-ground mortuary structures across the landscape was a powerful mechanism of social control through space that not only served to assess territorial rights, but also to confine or exclude people from a bounded space by the delimitation of social boundaries. I sustain that above-ground mortuary structures reflected a growing concern for territorial behaviors during the LIP that allowed household members, kinship groups and/or political units, according to varying contexts, to draw social boundaries between insiders and outsiders by reifying identity and social solidarity through ancestors worship. Within the broader Andean context, I suggest that the widespread distribution of mortuary monuments across the landscape provided the political landscape with an ideology of fragmentation which encouraged the distinction between insiders and outsiders and thus promoted group identity through social exclusion from a geographical point of view at many different levels.     

Eastern Asia's revitalization of the state ideal through maritime territorial disputes

In the midst of globalization and other processes that redefine state-territory-sovereignty relationships, reassertion of traditional state ideals is common. This article highlights one venue through which this takes place. Building on Stuart Elden's distinction between territorial sovereignty and territorial preservation as two aspects of “territorial integrity,” among other conceptual guides, the article posits that strong emphasis on territorial preservation through territorial disputes in effect works to counteract territorial sovereignty's slippage. Analysis of states' semi-official prosecution of five maritime territorial disputes in eastern Asia shows various rhetorical strategies that prop up traditional notions of unbreakable bonds between state, territory, and sovereignty. These include obscuring state historicity and naturalizing the nation-state relationship, using territory to represent historical victimhood and sanctifying state territory, and using the disputes to find a place for the state within the international state system. The analyzed territorial disputes include the southern Kurils/Northern Territories (Russia vs. Japan), Dokdo/Takeshima (Korea/Japan), Senkaku/Diaoyutai (Japan/China), Paracels (China/Vietnam), Spratlys (Vietnam/Philippines/China, especially).     

Tibetan Range Wars: Spatial Politics and Authority on the Grasslands of Amdo

This article focuses on one of the most disturbing features of life on the Tibetan grasslands today: intractable, violent conflicts over pasture. The author argues that understanding spatial and historical dimensions of the process through which Amdo was incorporated into the People's Republic of China (PRC) helps us make sense of these conflicts. State territoriality attempts to replace older socio–territorial identities with new administrative units. However, histories remain inscribed in the landscape and lead to unintended consequences in the implementation of new grassland policies. The author draws on Raymond Williams’ insight into residual formations to theorize the relationship between range conflicts and secular state officials’ lack of authority. At the same time, dispute resolution by religious figures challenges both triumphalist readings of state domination and romantic notions of Tibetan resistance.     

Sovereignty and territoriality in the city–state: A case study from the Amuq Valley,Turkey

This article investigates the relationship of state authority and territory in the city–state, using the Iron Age Syro-Anatolian culture of the ancient Near East as a case-study. Although more sophisticated spatial modeling of political authority has appeared in the past decade, archaeologists are still prone to assume that territoriality in ancient city–states operated according to a “container model” principle in which, like the modern state, political power is evenly distributed across the landscape within clear boundary divisions. The present work examines both the historical record from the Iron Age on the one hand, and regional settlement pattern data on the other, to evaluate the appropriateness of this conception of territory and power in the Syro-Anatolian city–state of Patina, located in southern Turkey. Textual accounts and gravity modeling of settlement distributions point toward a pattern of territoriality in which power was present inconsistently across the geographical extent of the city–state, and in which borderlines as conventionally drawn did not apply. I refer to this flexible relationship of authority and space as malleable territoriality.     

Minorities or citizens in the Middle East? Locating the ‘minority question’ in the intersecting histories of collective national belonging and state-building

This article contributes to the growing scholarship on minority politics in the Middle East by arguing that if minorities are socially or politically constructed then the meaning and implications of minority terminology requires greater historical contextualisation. Focusing on the experience of minority-ness rather than the deployment of the terminology, which only became prevalent after World War I, this article offers additional insights into the historical roots of contemporary minority politics, as well as the (un)making of national minorities. It explores how debates and reforms pertaining to inclusion/exclusion in the period preceding and during the shift from empire to nation-state directly contributed to the reception and understanding of who is a minority in the modern Middle East. This is particularly examined through the cases of Chaldean Christians in Iraq and Coptic Christians in Egypt. Many of the leaders of these communities publicly reject minority identification and instead favour locating their communities in the nation-state through the notion of inclusive citizenship (al-Mowāṭana). According to this narrative, belonging as citizens erases the meaning of minority. The article suggests that the framing of citizen and minority as mutually exclusive notions is one contemporary expression of an enduring tension around constructing belonging in political communities.     

Territoriality and Nation-State Formation: The Yishuv and the Making of the State of Israel

Abstract. Students of the State are to this day bewildered by the subject matter of their discipline, and disagree over the formation of the modem state. In their search for clarity they have dedicated a relatively large part of their attention to redefining the boundaries between the state and society, and questions regarding the independent role of each in the modem nation-state. This probe left the two settings separate from each other. The renewed interest in the origins of the modem manifestation of the polity, the nation-state, assumed that a better understanding of the beginning would shed some light on the question of its future. The study of nation-state-making may produce a common denominator between the two constructs -society and the state. It is the purpose of this article to look at the role of the territoriality factor in the Jewish case of nation-state-building and to develop it as a concept that combines societal and statist elements. The link between territoriality and legitimacy, institution-building and leadership formation, was a major factor in the transformation of a diaspora-based society into a modem polity that eventually became a nation-state.     

Transnationalism in the Era of Nation-States: China, 1900–1945

Transnationalism tends to be seen as a late twentieth century development associated with advanced capitalism, flexible production and post-modernism. However, if, as many claim, nationalism emerged in the era of capitalism, then it surely had to deal with the boundary-crossing and globalizing impetus of capitalism from its inception. This article explores how nationalist regimes and spokesmen dealt with the transnational flows, demands, and ideals generated not only by capitalism, but by historical forces such as universalizing religions and the distribution and movement of populations across territorial nations. Focusing on East Asia in the first half of the twentieth century, three cases are studied: the convergence of Chinese and Japanese ideals of pan-Asianism; the Chinese republican regime's effort to incorporate the non-Chinese peoples of the vast peripheries into the territorial nation-state; and this regime's efforts to cultivate the loyalty of overseas Chinese to the nation-state. Mobilizing and deploying these transterritorial phenomena was crucial to the nation-state's internal power, yet such a mobilization tended to transgress the conception of territorial sovereignty upon which the nation-state was equally dependent both domestically and internationally. The recent signs of a tendency for the territorially sovereign nation to develop into a deterritorialized nation has consequences that can only be understood in the context of the nation's relationship to transnational forces in this earlier period.     

Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism: Situating al-Qaeda and the Global War on Terror within Geopolitical Trends and Structures

Two North American political geographers situate contemporary terrorism in the world within broad historical trends and geopolitical structures. They employ Rapoport's "four waves of terrorism" to illustrate the changing geography of terrorism (from an intrastate to an international phenomenon) and place it within the context of broad historical shifts in modes of warfare that envisages terrorism as a form of war stemming from imperialism and state-building. The authors broaden the structural setting of terrorism to include geoeconomics and the concept of relative deprivation, using empirical analysis to argue that contemporary terrorism is primarily a feature of the semi-periphery of the world-economy (middle-income countries). Specific characteristics of the Global War on Terror are interpreted by relating processes of imperialism and state-building to a situation in which the U.S. is facing geopolitical challenges and a possible decline in global-power status. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: I390, O100, Y900. 3 figures, 1 table, 52 references.     

全球化时代美国史的书写——托马斯·本德的跨国史研究

跨国史研究的知名学者托马斯·本德依据个人学术经历的发展逻辑,从理论构建和学术实践层面,探讨了全球化时代如何书写美国历史这一重要课题。在民族构建理论的基础上,本德重构民族国家及其历史,批评“美国例外论”,融合跨国视角与综合性叙事,提出比较、关联和语境化三种跨国史研究方法,撰写了《万国一邦》一书。面对学界的挑战与质疑,本德依然认为跨国史是一种未来可期的研究视角与路径,它丰富了长期主宰美国学界的民族国家史学的内涵。     

Why ethnic parties? A new theory of ethnic minority political strategy in Europe

Why do some ethnic minority groups in Europe form ethnic minority parties (EMPs), while others work within established, mainstream parties? I argue that an ethnic minority group's historical background influences its political engagement strategies. I propose that native groups (those that inhabited the territory of the modern‐day state in which they reside prior to that state's establishment), groups with territorial attachment (historical concentration in particular regions of the state) and groups with historical experiences of autonomy are more likely to form successful parties. Groups perceiving themselves as native to their state and that have enjoyed autonomy are more likely to feel entitled to the unique form of representation provided by an EMP. I test my theoretical expectations on an original data set of elections in European states in the period 1990 to 2012, finding that the three historical variables working in conjunction exert a strong positive influence on EMP entry and success.     

Historical geography and early Canada: a life and an interpretation

The first section of this two‐part paper describes my historical geographical career, particularly the topics and issues I have pursued and the changing intellectual environment in which they have been situated. The second section offers a summary interpretation of the emerging human geography of early‐modern Canada followed by some reflections on its contemporary implications. This interpretation stresses the extent to which boundaries and discontinuities marked early Canada, and contrasts a pinched Canadian experience with the land with a far more expansive American one. It shows how deeply difference was constructed and ingrained in the Canadian past, and suggests some challenges and opportunities that follow from this inheritance.     

Spatializing the ecological Leviathan: Territorial strategies and the production of regional natures

This paper explores a dual absence — the absence of the state within contemporary geographical analyses of nature; and the absence of nature within contemporary explorations of state power. We argue that the modern state continues to play a crucial role in framing social interactions with nature, while nature is still vital to states within their realization of different forms of material and ideological power. In order to reconnect analyses of the state and nature, this paper combines work on the production of nature and state strategy with Lefebvre's recently translated writings on state space and territory. By focusing on the production of territory (or state space), we explore the interaction of the state and nature in the context of the political management of social and ecological space. We unravel the spatial entanglements of the state and nature through an analysis of the British state's territorial strategies within the West Midlands region. By considering three key historical periods within the history of the West Midlands we reveal how the emergence of the regional space called the West Midlands is a product of the ongoing spatial dialectics of state and nature therein.     

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.     

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.     

On the Territoriality of Cross-Border Cooperation: “Institutional Mapping” in a Multi-Level Context

Territoriality is mostly discussed as the political competence to exert control on a certain space, in particular with regard to the nation state. Globalization and European Integration have initiated some debate on this understanding, but cross-cross-border cooperation has rarely been linked to this debate. In these areas enormous political changes have been seen during the recent years. Still, the territorial dimension cannot be addressed, as territoriality as known from nation states is challenging politics. However, the territorial implications are manifold and are increasing throughout Europe. Against this backdrop is conceptual reflection. This paper starts with a brief overview of discussions and the empirical implementation of the territoriality debate. Based on this, the paper attempts to catch up with the political changes – the reflection of cross-border territorialities in a two-fold way. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to this field.

First, we propose a methodological approach to study the essential aspects. We study from a conceptual point of view, the dimensions of territoriality in cross-border contexts. These are explored as well as the political-juridical background of cross-border cooperation. Based on this, a C-B-IM-tool (Cross-Border Institutional Mapping) has been introduced, involving three steps: (a) (a1) multi-level mapping of cross-border institutions, (b) (a2) mapping of policy arenas and (c) (a3) mapping of the political topography in the sense of going beyond formalized and codified governance patterns. Secondly, with the example of the Greater Region around Luxembourg, the empirical and conceptual findings on cross-border territoriality are illustrated. We can state an establishing cross-border territoriality that does not replace domestic, state-centric territorialities but that inserts new and complex elements of a multi-level territoriality system.