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.     

Territoriality, social justice and gendered revolutions in the speeches of Malcolm X

Geographers have, in recent years, attempted to develop an anti-racist research and teaching agenda. Critical to this endeavour has been an engagement directly with the theories and philosophies of key activists and scholars, such as W. E. B. DuBois and Richard Wright. Contributing to this effort, I provide a study of Malcolm X. As an activist and outspoken member of the African American Civil Rights Movement during the 1950s and 1960s, Malcolm X re-articulated Black radical thought in significant ways. In particular, Malcolm X placed a territorial dimension at the heart of the Civil Rights Movement and in so doing re-conceptualized the theoretical and practical linkages between the African American movement and other 'Third World' movements. The immediate purpose of this paper therefore is to delineate the territorial dimensions of the revolutionary thought of Malcolm X. Heuristically, this paper is situated within four broad areas of inquiry: revolutions and social movements; the thinking of space; anti-racist geographies; and the imbrication of gender and revolutionary thought. More broadly, however, this paper reiterates the call for a more sustained engagement by geographers on the theories and philosophies of Black radical intellectuals.     

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.     

The Clash of Epochs: Traditional,Modern, Postmodern,and Evolutionity

Several authors have written about the clash of civilizations and have described it as the main form of conflict in today’s world. My thesis is that the clash of epochs is far more fundamental. It is the hitherto insufficiently noted ground on which different forms of conflict can take place. The clash of epochs, in the form of a conflict among traditional society, modernity, and postmodernity, has led the West to be internally torn apart and increasingly incapable of withstanding new emerging challenges. I argue that to reverse this trend, the Western world has to reconstruct itself again as a civilization. It needs to rediscover the value of its classical moral and intellectual traditions. This should be not merely a return to the past but a creative return that will initiate evolutionity—a new evolutionary epoch, which would replace modernity and postmodernity.     

Zooarchaeology in Complex Societies: Political Economy, Status, and Ideology

The zooarchaeology of complex societies provides insights into the interrelated social and economic relationships that people and animals created. I present a synthesis of zooarchaeological research published since the early 1990s that addresses political economy, status distinctions, and the ideological and ritual roles of animals in complex cultures. I address current approaches and applications as well as theoretical shifts in zooarchaeological practice. Research indicates there is great variability across space and time in how past peoples used animals to generate economic surplus, to establish status differentiation within societies, and to create symbolic meaning through sacrifices, offerings, and in feasts. The study of human/animal interactions in complex societies can contribute to fundamental questions of broad relevance regarding political and social life.     

Conflict,Order, Harmony: The Modern Meaning of the Confucian Tradition

An examination of how a focus on the reading of traditional Confucian texts as a spiritual exercise can enable us to deal productively with modern understandings of the divergences among different ideals of human excellence.An investigation of such ideals has often focused on virtue discourse,but that discourse generates understandable suspicions in many people.A productive approach to these suspicions is to examine both the idea that new virtues (such as spiritual regret) are needed,and the notion that three distinctive modern emphases must play a central role in any contemporary consideration of the relationships among diverse ideals.After considering two kinds of principled opposition to this approach,we turn to Walter Benjamin's exemplary account of the huge gulf between modern and traditional understandings,and the possible aid some texts may offer in bridging it.Focusing on the distinctive operation of specific forms of presentation in the Confucian tradition,we conclude by investigating the idea that reading Confucian texts can be seen even today as an illuminating kind of spiritual exercise.