Boundaries, Territory and Postmodernity

David Newman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135263416
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Contributions to this collection seek to determine the extent to which states and boundaries have, in fact, disappeared, or are simply changing their functions as we move from an era of fixed territories into a post-Westphalian territorial system. A group of international political geographers and political scientists examine the changing nature of the state, pointing to significant changes on the one hand, but equally noting the continued importance of territory and boundaries in determining the political ordering of the post-modern world.

Notes on Contributors

Mathias Albert teaches international relations at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University in Frankfurt. He has written extensively on the theory of international relations in general and postmodernism in particular. His current research interests focus on modern systems theory and the globalisation of law.

Stanley D. Brunn is Professor of Geography in the Department of Geography at the University of Kentucky, Lexington. Formerly the editor of the Annals of the Association of American Geographer, he is an active member of the Commission on the World Political Map (WPM) of the International Geographical Union (IGU).

Simon Dalby is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa. His current research interests are in critical geopolitics and environmental security. Recently he has coedited The Geopolitics Reader and Rethinking Geopolitics, (both London: Routledge 1998).

Fabrizio Eva was professor at the Institute of Human Geography, State University of Milan from 1995 to 1998. He is a corresponding member of IGU World Political Map Commission. His academic interests include current geopolitical dynamics, international relations, borders and nation-state issues, ethnonationalisms, the geopolitical legacy of Elisée Reclus, and Piotr Kropotkin and anarchic thought.

Alan Hudson is a lecturer in the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge where he teaches economic and political geography. He has published on sovereignty and financial globalisation in the Review of International Political Economy and Political Geography, and is currently researching the cross-border management of advocacy campaigns by Non-Governmental Organisations.

Vladimir Kolossov is the head of the Centre of Geopolitical Studies of the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow and Chair of the International Geographical Union Commission on the World Political Map. His recent publications include articles in Political Geography, GeoJournal, ‘Post Soviet Geography and Economy on political-geographic topics. His other publications include (co-edited with R Brunet and D. Eckhart) Altlas de la Russie ed des pays proches (Paris: Documentation Française 1995), and with D (Eckhart) La Russie [la constuction de l’identité nationale] (Paris: Flammarion 1999).

David Newman is Professor of Political Geography and Chair of the Department of Politics and Government at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. He is editor of Geopolitics. His book, The Dynamics of Territorial Change: A Political geography of the Israel-Arab Conflict, is shortly to be published by Westview Press. He has published extensively on territorial aspects of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and on boundary related topics.

Anssi Paasi is Professor of Geography at the University of Oulu, Finland. His research fields are the history of geographical thought, political and regional geography and the problems of territoriality, boundaries and identity at various spatial scales. His recent publications include theoretical and empirical studies on the meanings of boundaries, such as the book Territories, Boundaries and Consciousness (Wiley & Sons 1996), ‘Fences and Neighbours in the Postmodern World’ (with David Newman), in Progress in Human Geography 1998) and The political geography of boundaries at the end of the millennium: the challenges of the de-territorializing world (in Curtains of Iron and Gold, Ashgate Publishers 1999).

Mira Sucharov is a PhD candidate in Government at Georgetown University. Her dissertation examines the ideational conditions enabling conflict resolution in the Israeli-Palestinian case.

Gearóid Ó Tuathail (Gerard Toal) is Associate Professor of Geography at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He is the author of Critical Geopolitics: The Writing of Global Political Space and an editor of The Geopolitics Reader, Rethinking Geopolitics and An Unruly World? Globalization, Governance and Geography, all published by Routledge.

Geopolitics Renaissant: Territory, Sovereignty and the World Political Map

1. Exceptional in this respect has been the work of Saul Cohen and his discussion of shatterbelts and gateway states. See S. B. Cohen, Geography and Politics in a World Divided (New York: Random House, 1963); ‘A New Map of Global Geopolitical Equilibrium; Developmental Approach’, Political Geography Quarterly, 2 (year), pp.223–41.

2. P. O’Sullivan, Geopolitics (London: Croom Helm, 1986); G. Parker, Geopolitics: Past, Present and Future (London: Pinter Press, 1998).

3. J. O’Loughlin and H. Heske, ‘From “Geopolitik” to “Geopolitique”: Converting a Discipline for War to a Discipline for Peace’, in N. Kliot and S. Waterman (eds) The Political Geography of Conflict and Peace (London: Belhaven, 1991) pp.37–59.

4. Ibid. See also: S.B. Cohen, ‘Geopolitics in the New World Era: A New Perspective on an Old Discipline’, in J. O’Loughlin and H. van der Wusten (eds) The New Political Geography of Eastern Europe (London: Belhaven Press, 1993) pp.15–48.

5. Tuathail’s definition of critical geopolitics draws on various authors in the field of International Relations and Political Geography to include diverse notions, such as the spatialisation of global politics, and geopolitics as spatial exclusion. See: G. O’Tuathail, Critical Geopolitics: The Politics of Writing Global Space (Minnesota, Univ of Minnesota Press, 1997), Chapter 5, pp.141–86.

6. World Political Map (WPM) is the name given to the political geography speciality group of the International Geographic Union (IGU).

7. Editorial essay, ‘Political Geography: Research Agendas for the Nineteen Eighties’, Political Geography Quarterly, 1/1 (1982), pp.1–17.

8. See, for instance: O’Loughlin and van der Wusten (eds) The New Political Geography of Eastern Europe (note 4); G.J. Demko and W.B. Woods, (eds), Reordering the World: Geopolitical Perspectives on the Twenty First Century (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994):

9. J. O’Loughlin, ‘Political Geography: Returning to Basic Conceptions’, Progress in Human Geography, 15/3 (1991), pp.322–39.

10. D.R. Reynolds, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Geopolitics Renaissant: Territory, Sovereignty and the World Political Map by David Newman
• De-Territorialised Threats and Global Dangers: Geopolitics and Risk Society by Gearóid Ó Tuathail (Gerard Toal)
• International Boundaries, Geopolitics and the (Post)Modern Territorial Discourse: The Functional Fiction by Fabrizio Eva
• On Boundaries, Territory and Postmodernity: An International Relations Perspective by Mathias Albert
• Boundaries as Social Processes: Territoriality in the World of Flows by Anssi Paasi
• Beyond the Borders: Globalisation, Sovereignty and Extra-Territoriality by Alan Hudson
• A Treaty of Silicon for the Treaty of Westphalia? New Territorial Dimensions of Modern Statehood by Stanley D. Brunn
• Globalisation or Global Apartheid? Boundaries and Knowledge in Postmodern Times by Simon Dalby
• Pseudo-States as Harbingers of a New Geopolitics: The Example of the Trans-Dniester Moldovan Republic (TMR) by Vladimir Kolossov and John O’Loughlin
• Regional Identity and the Sovereignty Principle: Explaining Israeli-Palestinian Peacemaking by Mira Sucharov
• Abstracts of Articles
• Notes on Contributors
• Index