Chapter 11: Why is the world divided territorially? Stuart Elden
The division of the world into separate territorial units (states) > artificial (not natural) & arbitrary
(random)
- Territory
An area of space under the control or jurisdiction of a group of people, which might be a
state, but which might potentially be other types of political organisation
> bounded space, with a border
- Max Weber: a state > with human community that has successfully claimed the monopoly of
legitimate physical violence within a territory, territory is another characteristic
1. Community
2. Legitimacy
3. Violence monopoly
4. Territory
A nation “group of people who have a strong sense of unity and common consciousness”
Geopolitics: studying foreign politics to understand international political behaviour through
geographical variables
International political system is based on sovereignty
Peace of Westphalia: first division of states with the recognition of state sovereignty > stress on free
exercise of territorial right > exclusive political rule to a state > state has exclusive internal
sovereignty and equal external sovereignty
Territoriality: the way we organize ourselves within territory > more about behaviour, the interaction
in relation of the power over territory
General responses (the emergence of territory)
1. Political-economic approach
Capitalism: Importance of private property > land as significant taxable assets
Territory = property
Rise of capitalism: territory became important > stress on national markets, centralisation of
the state > control of territory
Perry Anderson: Land cannot be produced, only redistributed. Political control revolves
around possession of land, people are made less important
2. Political-strategic approach
States want to ensure that land is manageable > concerned about issues around security
Michael Foucault: power is not possessed, but exercised
Deterritorialization: Territory is no longer fixed
Supra-territorialisation: Spaces of interaction can no longer be contained with the borders of the
states
Exclusive internal jurisdiction in states because of territory > unlikely to give this up, but there has
been an emergence of supranational organizations, globalization, natural challenges transcending
the territorial nation-state and international law
Three staged process of boundary making:
1. Allocation (shaping, coordination)
, 2. Delimitation (selecting specific boundary sites on ground)
3. Demarcation (marking border by fences, etc.)
Chapter 2: How do we begin to think about the world? Veronique Pin-Fat
How we think about the world affects how we live in it
- Ethics: How should we live with other people in this world?
- Politics: What kinds of living are there and ways of thinking about who we are
Ethics and politics are inseparable
Thinking and language separate from the world? > does the world continue regardless of our
thoughts, or do we create a world with our language and thinking?
General responses: Thinking about ethics
Ethics: thinking about moral rules and how they govern the way in which we treat each other
But to how far do our moral obligations extend? To our community, or to humanity?
1. Cosmopolitanism (Charles Beitz)
All humans are free and equal (universality) > human rights as well
Ethical obligations go further than just our community
2. Communitarianism (Michael Walter)
Cultures have different understandings of the world, people have their own community,
culture, etc.
Ethical obligations are only for culture/state/community
Cosmopolitanism Communitarianism
Picture of the reason Reason transcends are Reason cannot overcome
What is most relevant in interests and biases interests and socio-cultural
ethics? meanings
Picture of the subject Individual as moral subject The state/political
Who are ‘we’? The moral > as a member of humanity community as moral subject
subject
Picture of the ethico- Ethical responsibility extends Ethics takes place within
political space to every person, regardless states > outside not primary
Where does ethical of where they live concern
political action take place?
Thinking about thinking
Thinkers belief their pictures (describing global political reality) are a representation of the
reality of reason, the subject and the ethico-political space
But is it actually what happens, independent from us and our thoughts? Or does a meaning
of something depend on the meaning we give it with picturing, framing and language games?
We are dependent on our language to make sense of our world and understand it > this is
not external reality
, Chapter 10: Why is people’s movement restricted? Roxanne Lynn Doty
Globalization: people are moving across borders, sometimes this is encouraged by states (tourism,
education, etc.) > but sometimes not: unwanted immigrants
General responses: Ideas of states and citizenship
You can cross borders, but there is still a strong link between sovereign legal territorial state and its
citizens > share legal, political, social and cultural marks > ultimately expressed in exclusive
citizenship
Unauthorized movements are disturbing, because of this notion that some people belong in some
places and other people in other places
Citizenship: people have the right to move freely within their state’s territory > across borders: with
legal authorization
No citizenship? Hard to exercise rights > citizenship has an exclusive element, as it is based on the
notion of an “insider”, which automatically implies an “outsider”
Understandings of identity
Exclusiveness of citizenship: a subject as a citizen opposed to a subject whose existence is regarded
illegal in that place
> Identity seen as fixed? Defined the essence of individuals and groups and differentiates them from
others
> Identity as inherently unstable, multiple, full of tension, complex and socially constructed >
constructed by political and social interactions + less categorizing
Identity and citizenship links with racial categories of identity > Race and culture as markers of
identity that define a group > cultural racism
Neo-racism: natural for antagonisms (hostilities) to develop between members of a bounded
community, which creates outsiders
Othering > provides a simplified and dangerous way of interpreting the consequences of
(unauthorized) movement
Chapter 12: How do people come to identify with nations? Elena Barabantseva
Ethic and national differences > at the core of violent conflicts
> How we come to identify with nations is most prominently expressed in marginal spaces,
boundaries or limits of what is assumed to be a national community
- State: Political unit, an institution
- Nation: An ethno-cultural collectively of people who share an identity
Nationalism studies: what is the link between nation and state?
Different views on nationalism
1. Primordialism
Objective factor in the formation of ethnic groups are important > Religion, language,
common ancestry, etc.
1. Common descent and common cultural features drives organization of group
2. Common factors are rooted in the nature of human beings > ethnic identity is
sentimental because of psychological significance
