Territoriality In The Globalizing Society

Globalization is one of the buzz-words in the 1990s. It points to a world in which geographic location becomes increasingly irrelevant, a vision that has aroused both hopes and fears. Surprisingly, globalization is accompanied by increasing regionalization. This volume is a timely contribution to the debate on globalization and regionalism. Coming from several disciplines, its contributors explore the consequences of a world with no geographical barriers. Refuting simple notions of globalization, they argue that location and space will remain important dimensions of economic and social development. In view of this, the book develops a more balanced view of the tension between globalization and regionalism.

Predictions that globalization would undermine territorial attachments and weaken the sources of territorial conflict have not been realized in recent decades. Globalization may have produced changes in territoriality and the functions of borders, but it has not eliminated them. The contributors to this volume examine this relationship, arguing that much of the change can be attributed to sources other than economic globalization. Bringing the perspectives of law, political science, anthropology, and geography to bear on the complex causal relations among territoriality, conflict, and globalization, leading contributors examine how territorial attachments are constructed, why they have remained so powerful in the face of an increasingly globalized world, and what effect continuing strong attachments may have on conflict. They argue that territorial attachments and people's willingness to fight for territory depends upon the symbolic role it plays in constituting people's identities, and producing a sense of belonging in an increasingly globalized world.

Where does the nation-state end and globalization begin? In Territory, Authority, Rights, one of the world's leading authorities on globalization shows how the national state made today's global era possible. Saskia Sassen argues that even while globalization is best understood as "denationalization," it continues to be shaped, channeled, and enabled by institutions and networks originally developed with nations in mind, such as the rule of law and respect for private authority. This process of state making produced some of the capabilities enabling the global era. The difference is that these capabilities have become part of new organizing logics: actors other than nation-states deploy them for new purposes. Sassen builds her case by examining how three components of any society in any age--territory, authority, and rights--have changed in themselves and in their interrelationships across three major historical "assemblages": the medieval, the national, and the global. The book consists of three parts. The first, "Assembling the National," traces the emergence of territoriality in the Middle Ages and considers monarchical divinity as a precursor to sovereign secular authority. The second part, "Disassembling the National," analyzes economic, legal, technological, and political conditions and projects that are shaping new organizing logics. The third part, "Assemblages of a Global Digital Age," examines particular intersections of the new digital technologies with territory, authority, and rights. Sweeping in scope, rich in detail, and highly readable, Territory, Authority, Rights is a definitive new statement on globalization that will resonate throughout the social sciences.

Nowadays political territoriality is profoundly put to the test by globalization, the rise of the network-society, international migration and new types of risk that state governments find hard to control. Yet, new political configurations do not invalidate the relevance of territory and territorial identity right away. Moreover, people who want to escape or forget foreign dominace still reach for the traditionally sovereign state (Eastern Europe, Asia). In this book an international group of political geographers analyse the meaning of post-modern transfromation in territoriality at different geographical scales: global, (inter) national and local. They cover such varied topics as the probability of a clash between civilizations, the rise of World-cities, the disintegration of African States, ethnic conflicts and politics in Europe, the meaning of a supranational territorial order (European Union), the end of the welfare state, nation-building and its symbols, Israeli cultural politics, urban regimes and local conflict-defense mechanisms. The perspectives put forward, match more general theoretical geography and political science and involve case studies from different parts of the World. This important new study is of immediate interest to students of all levels of politcial science, sociology, social geography, administrative science, international relations, contermpoary history, and to policy makers and politicians.

This book offers a comprehensive, highly informative and interdisciplinary study on territorial integrity and the challenges globalization, self-determination and external interventions present. This study aims at not only to fill an epistemological gap in this regard, but also answer the question of whether International Law is adequately equipped to help states address these challenges. The author argues that the biggest threat that many states are confronted with today is their disintegration rather than their obsolescence, and that International Law has not often been able to prevent that eventuality. In fact, states, when they were not destroyed by war, managed to survive, thanks to the flexibility of territoriality, i.e. their ability to adjust to difficult situations as they arose. It is this understanding of adaptation that urges an increasing number of states today to revive territorial autonomy and restore an original understanding of self-determination in which democracy is a pivotal factor in establishing congruence between the states and their nations. While this move is endorsed by International Law, it is not the case for globalization; for their own sake, proponents of globalization should recognize that the states are irreplaceable as long as they remain the sole providers of protection for their peoples.

Written before the war in the Balkans and the Maastricht Treaty, but noting long-term trends anyway, nine essays by sociologists, geographers, and political scientists from eastern and western Europe and the US, delve into the conflict between the globalization of economics and the survival of individual cultures. Developed from a symposium at the July 1990 congress of the International Sociology Association in Madrid. No index. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject Politics - Topic: Globalization, Political Economics, grade: 1.5, The Australian National University, language: English, abstract: 1993 when Ruggie termed the ‘unbundling of territoriality’ was a year in which knowledge and communication that is its accessibility and dissemination entered a new realm of space and time. On the 30th of April 1993 the World Wide Web and its underlying technology was made freely available to use by anyone. Today over one billion people use the Internet, or every sixth person on the planet. A collective brain one might say is forming in front of our eyes growing with every new person entering three W’s into a web browser. While Ruggie aimed to search for, and investigate into, a fundamental transformation of the modern system of states, he emphasized that such an analysis would find a fruitful starting point in the [re]conceptualisation of territoriality. This paper will utilize Ruggie’s concept, by applying its analysis to the emerging and manifesting space-time implosion driven by the Internet and other communication technologies. Therefore, it is argued that Cyberspace provides a practical sphere to investigate into the unbundling of territoriality in a postmodern world. In the first section the impact on territoriality resulting from the emergence of the Cyberspace will be discussed. Ruggie’s model of differentiation between systems of rule and territory is applied to explain the transformation of territory in the postmodern era of Cyberspace. It is followed by an investigation into the consequences of Cyberspace on sovereignty. Showing that Cyberspace does indeed provide a new stage in Ruggie’s terms, facilitating an unbundling and relocation of sovereignty away from state territory. The third section discusses the implication of the virtual space on the rise and acceleration of globalisation. It is argued that globalisation, could not be perceived as a postmodern phenomenon without the Cyberspace revolution. The last part of the paper, proposes the need to rethink the notion of movement in the age of virtual and real spaces. Cyberspace allows ‘tourists’ in line with Bauman’s description to choose between virtual and real movement. The preceding discussion will finally lead to the conclusion that the conceptualisation of Cyberspace as one aspect responsible for the unbundling of territory provides an important explanatory insight into the transformation from modernity to postmodernity.

The European nation state is now placed between the interconnected processes of globalization and European integration. This new book examines these evolving relationships, showing how the conventional territorial basis of the state is being reappraised. Bringing together leading thinkers on the nation state, this volume tackles key questions about how we should conceptualize and discuss the political significance of territory in today’s world. For example, does the era of Europeanization and globalization herald the end of citizens’ traditional attachment to their national territories? Do our conceptions of the state no longer correspond to contemporary political realities? These questions are approached from a range of positions that illuminate the debates now taking place across the world. This book delivers a clear set of key concepts, indicators and theoretical notions to carry out a historically and empirically grounded examination. Drawing upon case studies from across Europe, the lessons and conclusions detailed have a fascinating international scope and can be applied to our understanding of globalization, which is intimately connected with European integration. This is an invaluable book for all students of European integration, political science and international relations.